Wireless through HD

P

perrosky

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 31, 2009
Messages
169
is there any solution to transfer HD throught wireless?

I have a WHS and a livingroom htpc connected with cat6 everything works fine my HD movies and everything is in my WHS but now I have a htpc in my room and there is no way I can get it hardwire four a couple of reasons (I rent an apparment and my wife don't want the wire mess) so I was thinking if there is a reliable wireless solution to this problem.

thanks

I was looking at this POWERLINE ADAPTER

or buy this ROUTER and this wireless bridge and set it up to 5ghz band
 
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Full 1080p isn't going to work over wireless. There are new wireless standards coming that it will work over. Just not anytime soon.
 
It depends on how congested your network is. I have streamed 1080p over wireless successfully from my mythtv backed to a frontend.
 
What kind of bitrate is a 1080p mkv? 720p works fine over my 54Mbps wireless router. I'd think 300Mbps of Wireless N would be enough for a compressed 1080p file.
 
A trick i use is to set the diskbuffer in haali to a high number, like 250MB for wireless computers.

This means that when a MKV starts it immediately starts to fill the diskbuffer up, meaning that during parts of the movie where the wireless cannot handle the bandwidth, it doesnt matter as its most likely in the diskbuffer. It works very well and stops the occasional stutter i used to get.

This works only if the wireless can sustain the avg bitrate and helps a lot if high motion/bitrate scenes dont appear as soon as the movie starts (they normally don't)
 
What kind of bitrate is a 1080p mkv? 720p works fine over my 54Mbps wireless router. I'd think 300Mbps of Wireless N would be enough for a compressed 1080p file.
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That's peak bandwidth which I don't care who you are..you're not getting. There are so many factors with good performing wireless. Distance, types of wall structure..etc. The problem with streaming High bitrate HD over wireless is the fluctuation of bandwidth and signal.

Toytown, that's a really great idea.
 
Forget WiFi. Its inherent error correction is what makes streaming HD video a chore, not just straight bandwidth.

Either Powerline or MoCA is the way to go. Personally, I went with MoCA as you can snag Actiontec MI424WR routers are DIRT cheap on Ebay. Throw them in MoCA -> Ethernet bridge mode a you instantly extend your LAN through your existing Coax cable in your house. You're limited to 100Mb/s but that is MORE then enough to stream two 1080p movies at the same time.
 
1. If you are streaming to a non-PC type box, it will be hard to get a deep buffer.

2. The first time your connection goes a bit wonky in the middle of a video, you will be annoyed.

3. The first time your movie studders 10 or 15 times, you will want to be throwing your remote at the screen.

With video, please run wired. It just minimizes so many hassles. If you have a wife, you might get to keep your balls.
 
Wired is still the way to go for jitter-free and pain-free video streaming.

Too many devices share the 2.4Ghz range for it to be reliable IMO. There are at least 20 access points in range of my WAP and most of them are on 6 and 11. I'd hate to see what their throughput is.
 
Is English not your first language? Just curious... I note grammatical and spelling errors.


Second, it should work fine if you're stream just one 1080p. Depends on the distance, and computers themselves though. If you're getting full or near 48-54Mbps you're only going to use about half of that to stream over it. At most.
 
AMDXP said:
Is English not your first language? Just curious... I note grammatical and spelling errors.


Second, it should work fine if you're stream just one 1080p. Depends on the distance, and computers themselves though. If you're getting full or near 48-54Mbps you're only going to use about half of that to stream over it. At most.
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It depends. I had a dual band wireless N router and wireless card in my computer. Even just streaming regular music to my Xbox which was wired to the router wouldnt work, or my girlfreinds laptop either (with a dual band wireless N card as well). Video wasnt even an option. I was only going through one wall and my avg bitrate was around 67 meg, but streaming a tv show captured using a Hauppauge tuner in HD was not feasible at all.

Even when I had the computer in the same room it didnt work that well. Vista Media Center also was quite laggy wirelessly. Once I spent the time to hardwire everything (including laptop) there have been no problems at all streaming any content.

I also live in an apartment and simply got a 100 ft ethernet cord and ran it along the baseboard and under the carpet as applicable. Yes it was a PITA but now everything is a breeze. I would highly recommend finding a way to hardwire it or use those powerline adaptors as a last resort.
 
AMDXP said:
Is English not your first language? Just curious... I note grammatical and spelling errors.


Second, it should work fine if you're stream just one 1080p. Depends on the distance, and computers themselves though. If you're getting full or near 48-54Mbps you're only going to use about half of that to stream over it. At most.
Click to expand...

Do you even know how access points work or what TCP/IP is? You will never get 54Mpbs from a WAP.

1. It's a half-duplex.
2. It's shared bandwidth.
3. You lose around 20% off the top for the underlying protocols to do their work to get the video stream to the computer that needs it.
4. It's subject to interference by tons of other things not to mention walls, pipes, other APs, cordless phones, etc, etc, etc...
 
Vader said:
That's peak bandwidth which I don't care who you are..you're not getting. There are so many factors with good performing wireless. Distance, types of wall structure..etc. The problem with streaming High bitrate HD over wireless is the fluctuation of bandwidth and signal.

Toytown, that's a really great idea.
Click to expand...

I know it's peak, I just trying to reference that I am using Wireless G, and I figured N would be enough. But still, I'd imagine its about 20-25Mbps constant, and wireless N could probably handle 100-150Mbps. Of course considering other factors, such as signal strength and interference would depend on how close you could get to 100-150Mbps and depending on network traffic would be whether it would be possible to transfer a 1080p wireless.

IMO, if you have low network traffic, there aren't tons of routers around you, and your router is fairly close to this other computer, wireless N is possible. Assuming we are talking compressed files, not raw Blu-Ray rips. I think Toytown's idea is great, and would definitely help eliminate the stuttering. Of course a wired connection is a safe bet. Any have any idea if the powerline network he linked is any good?
 
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Wireless just isn't going to cut it. Also, it really depends on how much you're compressing the file. I've seen streams come off BD that are over 25,000kbps, and I know they do get higher than that. At 25,000kbps that's about 24Mbps and you're still not going to get that over wireless. I tried PoE for my setup and that failed on HD content as it could only muster a max of 11Mbps. Now I'm running wired getting about 11MBps.

If you want to run HD save yourself the headache and go wired. I've seen wireless networks that couldm't handle streaming SD DVD rips.
 
AMDXP said:
Is English not your first language? Just curious... I note grammatical and spelling errors.


Second, it should work fine if you're stream just one 1080p. Depends on the distance, and computers themselves though. If you're getting full or near 48-54Mbps you're only going to use about half of that to stream over it. At most.
Click to expand...

Yes I'm sorry for my spelling and grammatical errors I just move to USA about 2 years ago
 
I have all my BD backedup as ISO's in my WHS I use MEDIABROWSER FOR THEM now the tv-series I watch some of them are in blue-ray MKV rips.
 
Just for point of reference this is what I've experienced.

I have an apple extreme base station wireless n routing a a 2.4 ghz congested network with b/g compatibility in the basement. My cheap usb wireless N adapter on the first floor can't get a steady 54G connection much less N connection. My macbook c2d N connection gets a 130mbs connection on the first floor. I can stream 1080P mkv's, file size ~ 8-9 GB fine but I also have my buffer set at 150 MB, if I set the buffer at 70 MB I get stuttering after 2-3 minutes, impossible to watch with no buffer. With 1080P Blu-Ray source material it's unplayable.

So yes, if you encode your bluray rips into a manageable file size, you can stream HD quality video. It's very dependent on the quality of your router/adapter and distance.
 
CrazyCuz2k said:
Just for point of reference this is what I've experienced.

I have an apple extreme base station wireless n routing a a 2.4 ghz congested network with b/g compatibility in the basement. My cheap usb wireless N adapter on the first floor can't get a steady 54G connection much less N connection. My macbook c2d N connection gets a 130mbs connection on the first floor. I can stream 1080P mkv's, file size ~ 8-9 GB fine but I also have my buffer set at 150 MB, if I set the buffer at 70 MB I get stuttering after 2-3 minutes, impossible to watch with no buffer. With 1080P Blu-Ray source material it's unplayable.

So yes, if you encode your bluray rips into a manageable file size, you can stream HD quality video. It's very dependent on the quality of your router/adapter and distance.
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How do u set the buffer in a video player?
 
Power over Ethernet is for powering low current devices using the extra pairs in Cat5 cable. It's not a networking standard, it's a power standard.

Dustin
 
PolygonGTC said:
Because you brought it up.
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I most certaintly did not. Judging by what you have posted about it so far, i don't even think you know what it is. PoE is used to power Ethernet enabled devices over the same Ethernet cable that data is sent over. That has NOTHING to do with the current discussion.

We are discussing Powerline networking, WiFi and MoCA.

Get ya facts straight! :p

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePlug_Powerline_Alliance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_over_Coax_Alliance
 
How do u set the buffer in a video player?
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Im not sure what players support it natively (if any do), but i set the option in "Haali Media Splitter" which handles all my MKV's anyway (regardless of player), to configure it.

1. Click the start button
2. Goto the Haali program group (or wherever you installed it)
3. Click "Media Splitter Settings"
4. Goto Options>Input>Input Buffer size and change the value (it defaults to 8MB) which is written in KB as 8192. Set it to 200-300MB should easily be enough.
 
Like Toytown says it depends on your media player, if you use VLC you can go to settings and increase it that way. Biggest hit is that it'll take a minute or two longer before the stream starts, well worth it to get stutter free playback.
 
I been reading about MoCA and I like the idea, criccio is gonna help me out with this. I will let you know how it goes.
 
all i know is 270mb wireless N is way freakin better then 130mb. i have a linksys usb stick that connects at 240mb through two floors, while my laptop connects at 120mb. that dual band really helps with streaming, but even at 130mb you can stream 1080p ~8gb sized rips (which is the sweet spot for quality and size anyway). 270mb wireless n is very much the same as a 100mb wired connection... at least they seem the same....
 
perrosky said:
I been reading about MoCA and I like the idea, criccio is gonna help me out with this. I will let you know how it goes.
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I haven't seen any good reviews of MoCA, it's expensive and slow. That's why I went wireless N.
 
Biggest hit is that it'll take a minute or two longer before the stream starts, well worth it to get stutter free playback.
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No, with Haali it still starts the stream immediately, and starts to fill the disk buffer up as it goes along. It really works great and i cant recommend it enough for wireless only systems.
 
CrazyCuz2k said:
I haven't seen any good reviews of MoCA, it's expensive and slow. That's why I went wireless N.
Click to expand...

That's funny... Used Actiontec MI424WR routers are dirt cheap on ebay and once put in bridge mode give you steady 100Mb/s to any room in your house with a coax drop.

I stream 1080p BD encodes and have never once had an issue... 100Mb/s is more then enough for even two 1080p streams at once.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
mattjw916 said:
Do you even know how access points work or what TCP/IP is? You will never get 54Mpbs from a WAP.

1. It's a half-duplex.
2. It's shared bandwidth.
3. You lose around 20% off the top for the underlying protocols to do their work to get the video stream to the computer that needs it.
4. It's subject to interference by tons of other things not to mention walls, pipes, other APs, cordless phones, etc, etc, etc...
Click to expand...

:rolleyes: I said if he gets at least half that it should be fine. I've never had an issue. To each his own.

perrosky said:
Yes I'm sorry for my spelling and grammatical errors I just move to USA about 2 years ago
Click to expand...
It's cool.
 
AMDXP said:
:rolleyes: I said if he gets at least half that it should be fine. I've never had an issue. To each his own.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_correlation

The fact is, wireless for video is unforgiving because the standards are based upon wired. The systems do not match well. While MKV has an out by increasing the buffer depth, what about DVD or Blu-Ray? Again, there isn't a lot of wiggle room "yet" especially if you are transcoding on the server and streaming. This further compounded by if a packet is corrupt when received causes tedious retry cycle which can really screw with wireless.

If you want us all to go wireless, fine. But please back it up with ways to deal with all the crap that can and usually does go wrong in a wireless system.
 
criccio said:
I most certaintly did not. Judging by what you have posted about it so far, i don't even think you know what it is. PoE is used to power Ethernet enabled devices over the same Ethernet cable that data is sent over. That has NOTHING to do with the current discussion.

We are discussing Powerline networking, WiFi and MoCA.

Get ya facts straight! :p

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePlug_Powerline_Alliance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_over_Coax_Alliance
Click to expand...

Ah ha!

Fair enough. Thank you for the links. I know about MoCA but I never really knew the difference between powerline and PoE. In that case, my point is valid as the adapters I was using were powline adapters.

Thank you for the correction.
 
I just bought one of the MoCA devices from the bay for $40 shipped now I'm wating to see if I can get another good deal.
 
External HDD dock plugged into HTPC, and hotswap HDD caddy in WHS. Then you just take your "movies" to your HTPC and have no wiring, and no hassle.

What is Haali? Heading to google to start looking, sounds interesting.
 
It sounds like a lot of people here assume that channel settings are the end of what you can do to tune a wireless connection, which would explain the wildly ranging results reported in this thread. There is a considerable amount of settings that can be obtained within your wireless devices that will assist in compensating for your environmental drawbacks, especially if you are able to make use of a dd-wrt or Tomato firmware.

You can most certainly stream 1080p mkvs over wireless N. G is stretching it and completely depends on the content and compression rate, but N is capable of pretty much everything I've thrown at it.

My setup consists of two cheapass Netgear wireles N routers flashed with some random dd-wrt firmware. One is my main router and the other is set to be a client bridge for the computer in my bedroom. I have four wooden doors between them and thick plaster walls as a frame of reference for what I needed to power through. I scanned for wireless networks and determined that I'd want my wide channel of the 40mhz spread to be an upper channel since those were less populated with my neighbors' shit. I got them linked and then started doing a simple Windows network copy of a DVD sized mkv file from the same source to the same destination each time as I tweaked the various settings until I got about 6-7 MB/s consistent on the file transfer. My final SNR resulted in a 35 and the signal quality was only reported as 40% by DD-WRT's scale, but it was perfectly capable streaming HD content without destroying my ping latency, which is always a good indicator of how saturated your connection back to your main system is getting.

Another assumption I would have to make is that the power levels of the devices in use on this forum are varying a lot. Something powered by your wall outlet and having its signal tuned from the GUI is going to kick the ass of an unconfigured USB wifi adapter any day. A simple $20-30 investment on Newegg can usually solve that problem. =)
 
Bonehead said:
It sounds like a lot of people here assume that channel settings are the end of what you can do to tune a wireless connection, which would explain the wildly ranging results reported in this thread. There is a considerable amount of settings that can be obtained within your wireless devices that will assist in compensating for your environmental drawbacks, especially if you are able to make use of a dd-wrt or Tomato firmware.

You can most certainly stream 1080p mkvs over wireless N. G is stretching it and completely depends on the content and compression rate, but N is capable of pretty much everything I've thrown at it.

My setup consists of two cheapass Netgear wireles N routers flashed with some random dd-wrt firmware. One is my main router and the other is set to be a client bridge for the computer in my bedroom. I have four wooden doors between them and thick plaster walls as a frame of reference for what I needed to power through. I scanned for wireless networks and determined that I'd want my wide channel of the 40mhz spread to be an upper channel since those were less populated with my neighbors' shit. I got them linked and then started doing a simple Windows network copy of a DVD sized mkv file from the same source to the same destination each time as I tweaked the various settings until I got about 6-7 MB/s consistent on the file transfer. My final SNR resulted in a 35 and the signal quality was only reported as 40% by DD-WRT's scale, but it was perfectly capable streaming HD content without destroying my ping latency, which is always a good indicator of how saturated your connection back to your main system is getting.

Another assumption I would have to make is that the power levels of the devices in use on this forum are varying a lot. Something powered by your wall outlet and having its signal tuned from the GUI is going to kick the ass of an unconfigured USB wifi adapter any day. A simple $20-30 investment on Newegg can usually solve that problem. =)
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I do have 2 linsys wrt300n both with dd-wrt the same conf. you have one client one bridge the client is in my bedroom with my htpc but still can't play 1080p 720p play so so but not great. perhaps you want to give me some more clear ways to tune the client bridge setup.
 
Sure, I'll be happy to help. Gimme a day or so to type up something. Gotta go to work now.
 
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