Unsolved
15 Posts
0
1272
ThinOS 9.3 – RDP / AVD regression: no RDP v8 (RemoteFX/UDP) support?
Some notes regarding multimedia on Wyse 3040 and Optiplex 3000 thin clients:
1. On ThinOS 8.6.xxx, audio has constant crackles and snaps and pops. Sounds like compression artifacts or dropped data.
2. Audio on ThinOS 8.6 is in mono only! Not stereo. This is the case for both the onboard analog headphone jack, and using DP audio and using the DAC on the monitor. Mono audio in both cases.
3. Upgrading a 3040 from ThinOS 8.6 to ThinOS 9.3 enables stereo audio.
4. ThinOS 8.6 supports RDPv8, which uses UDP to transfer video data. ThinOS 9.3 does not, and connects using RDPv7 or earlier, so no multimedia traffic channel (UDP/RemoteFX), and the video is nearly unusable.
5. Connecting to the same VM from a 10-year-old Windows laptop results in flawless audio and video.
This seems like a huge regression - note that RDPv8/RemoteFX was released a decade ago. The options are: stay with snap/crackle/pop mono audio but flawless video in 8.6, or upgrade to 9.3 to get clear stereo audio, but unplayable video. This is all on a gigabit LAN with a dozen thin clients.
elowney
15 Posts
0
March 23rd, 2023 10:00
Maybe related but maybe not, the Microsoft_AVD_1.9.2017.pkg version of RDP will result in a black screen a few frames/milliseconds after logging in to Windows that doesn't go away. Downgrading to AVD 1.8 fixes this issue. No RemoteFX/UDP support in either version. Maybe 1.9 is trying "advanced" features, failing, and it just blacks out the screen?
buffalobound
3 Apprentice
3 Apprentice
•
722 Posts
0
March 23rd, 2023 10:00
ThinOS 2203 will be launched at the end of next week, and will launch with the AVD 2.0 package. I would be curious to see your testing results after that.
As the 3040 is a very low-powered device, you may want to test with a more modern platform for performance (Optiplex 3000 thin client).
A key difference between legacy ThinOS 8.x and 9.x is in the approach to broker clients. With legacy platforms Wyse created their own custom broker clients, with 9.x broker clients are based on what is provided by the manufacturer.
While creating custom clients allowed WYSE to create custom solutions and features, it had the downside of being slow to adhere to new changes from the brokers. Using broker-provided clients allows for greater supportability and feature adoption to the brokers, but limits features to what is available from the brokers. The 2.0 SDK from MS/AVD opens up new features (Teams optimization), hopefully, your audio concerns will be addressed as well.
buffalobound
3 Apprentice
3 Apprentice
•
722 Posts
0
March 23rd, 2023 11:00
Sorry, yes 2303
elowney
15 Posts
0
March 23rd, 2023 11:00
Thank you for the quick and detailed response! I'll be on the lookout for the new version. Out of curiosity, you meant version 2303, correct?
elowney
15 Posts
0
April 11th, 2023 13:00
If it helps anyone, there is no difference with any of the Microsoft AVD/RDP clients in the 9.x series as far as multimedia is concerned: up to 3 frames per second in full-screen video , receiving over 5000 TCP packets per second and dropping most audio data.
The 8.6 RDP client could play full-screen video at over 20fps with decent (not perfect) mono audio using UDP transport, so there's some H.264 acceleration and UDP transfer not happening with the new AVD client (both features of RDP8 / RemoteFX).
The next test is to try using the VMware Horizon client (Blast protocol) and see how that compares with RDP/AVD.
lolix2
1 Rookie
1 Rookie
•
88 Posts
0
April 12th, 2023 00:00
Agree that, except for Zoom (and maybe Teams, not tested) optimization, ThinOS 9 still lags behind 8.6
( to date, ThinOS 9.4.1141 + AVD 2.0.2102)
BTW, disabling H264 improves multimedia experience w/ ThinOS 8.6 (and 9).
The moment you think that you can deploy ThinOS 9 in production, the moment your hit by a new no-go drawback. The latest to date : Dual screen support. AVD shows them as a single wide screen to the host, instead of two screens. This brings back memories of ThinOS 7.
All this is flabbergasting.
elowney
15 Posts
0
April 19th, 2023 11:00
Update:
After setting up a trial VMware Horizon VM and installing the Horizon client on the Wyse thin client (and the Horizon agent in the Windows 10 VM), multimedia is basically perfect via the Blast protocol, even up to full-screen 1080p. There is quite a bit of compression artifacts at full-screen, but overall it's miles above the AVD/RDP client. Audio is in stereo and it is clear with no dropped samples.
This is even with the 3040, a very small atom-powered box. Good Job, VMware.
Geblubbt
6 Posts
0
May 1st, 2023 23:00
Regarding the dual screen support: we had the same issue, turned out we had "Force Span" enabled under Session Settings->RDP and AVD Session Settings