Opinions Sought On Freezes and The Fix

Help and Support Vero 4K / Vero 4K +
1

I have been having some intermittent problems whilst trying to play/playing video files, 1080p & 4K movies. I only play files from external portable USB drives.

The problems are: (A) select a file and it never loads, just sits there with a twirling symbol. I can stop it and try again, sometimes. (B) a few seconds after the video/movie starts, it freezes and I sometimes can back out but most times it freezes. I have to turn it off/on at the wall. One time, after freezing, it gave me the ‘sad face’.

It does not happen with all the external drives so last night, I was attempting to demonstrate the beauty of 4K demo videos on my Samsung JS9000 TV to a friend who was scoffing at 4K and the darn thing started freezing, etc. Lots of scoffing was forthcoming from my friend, which is aimed at the Vero 4K. (can I have another friend, please. lol)

I have a lot of external portable drives ranging from 1TB through to 4TB. All are powered from the Vero 4K. I started to suspect that maybe the 4TB drives are drawing too much power and causing a conflict.

Without rebooting the Vero 4K, I copied the 4K demo’s onto a 1TB drive and played them with no problem at all. Ejected the drive, attached the 4TB, attempted to play the videos and the original problems returned.

I am buying a powered USB hub, that should solve this problem with the 4TB drives. Went to buy the OSMC hub but find it does not have the option for a New Zealand pined power supply. Searched the forum and see that a fellow Kiwi had asked that question in late 2018 and Sam’s reply that an NZ power pack is not supplied. Bugga. I have ordered a USB 3.0 4-port powered hub from a supplier in NZ. It will arrive tomorrow.

Searching the forums, I read a few posts from 2017/2018 about some Hubs feeding power down the cable that attaches the Hub to the Vero 4K, which is not good and Sam did say that can cause damage. How am I going to know if the one I have bought, complies with the USB spec and does not feed power to the Vero 4k? Hopefully, with me providing the European link to the Hub, those in the know will be able to answer that question.
Thanks, people :slight_smile:

2

I get this after my drive has gone to sleep and I start a video from the library. If I navigate to it using the Files menu the navigation exercise wakes up the drive so it starts OK.

I don’t think it’s ever frozen, but I can, after (A), end up with the video playing in the background with the twirling symbol in the foreground. STOP key works, though.

I don’t know the answer to that - maybe adjust some timeouts in Kodi.

FWIW, I have the same issue trying to play videos from that drive on Kodi in Windows 10. Actually screwed up so much I had to re-boot Windows.

3

Well, time waits for no man, as the saying goes. The hub arrived and as there has been no reply to my question about it, I went ahead and used it. With the Vero 4K power plug removed, I connected a 4TB HDD to the hub, connected the hub to the Vero 4K and switched on the hubs power. As the Vero 4K stayed off, it looks like no power goes through the cable connecting the hub to the Vero 4K. A good start :slight_smile:

Tested all ports with different 4TB drives and all is well. In fact, the handling of the 4K movies seem to be faster. Duck into one movie, jump chapters, back out, select another movie & do the same. All seems so much quicker.

I will take note of needing to wait for the external HDD to wake up & not rush things. Thanks for that tip.

4

Why would you remove the cable that connects the vero to the mains ? I know in theory you can but since you have multiple Drives connected to the poor hub already it may be a bad idea

5

It was a test to confirm that the hub was not back feeding power to the Vero.

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