How do you stream media around your home? - Page 2

This is not a very good use of English:

"In this fast moving digital age of streaming media, AVS is wondering what you use for your local network connection for streaming digital media."

I know what you mean to say, but it could be phrased better.

You should be OK, as long as you can get a strong WiFi signal at the receiving end. I'm streaming high bitrate BluRay ISOs from an HP MediaSmart server upstairs to a homebrewed Zotac HTPC connected to the main TV downstairs.

Powerline networking could also be considered, but it can be finicky based on whether or not the sending and receiving units are both on the same wiring phase in your house.

Mike

1+ for Android WiFi Analyzer, great little app for both home and when you're out and about....

Mike

Joe,
It's spelled 'grammar', not grammer ....

Mike

I think hard wire is the best. CAT6 or CAT5 are both faster than wireless. That seems better to me. But some situations dictate the use of wireless. I use both.

Personally, the arguments over grammar are the most fun though.

I personally only use wireless for my iphone when at home. I have not had much success streaming 20gig files (HD BD Rips) OTA to my PS3. Just too choppy...

I use MoCA (Netgear) adapters between my server, three Win7 HTPC boxes, and my WD TV Live. Wireless N to my Mac Mini and iPad (running the Air Video app for on-the-fly conversion of HD material).

Since MoCA isn't listed in the poll, I didn't vote.

Wired the whole house with cat5e. Drop in every room.

Have a small network setup in a basement closet.

Cable provider's modem, 20mb connection, to a Linksys WRT54g router. That goes into a d-link 24port gigabit switch, that goes to the patch panel which connects to the individual drops.

Have a Synology 410 NAS w/ 4x 2tb drives in Raid5 giving about 5.5tb of storage. Have 3x WD HD Live players, 2 xbox 360s, and a variety of computing equipment connected up.

While most of the media devices only connected at 100mb, streaming HD media files to multiple sources from the NAS is flawless.

The gigabit equipment is quite generic now and cheap. Personally, my switches scattered around the house are dLink "Green" of various sizes, with a Dell 2824 as the core switch in the computer room/wine cellar.

VLAN'ing lets me control the network access of the different SSIDs on the Ruckus wifi system, from "guest" SSID that can only see the internet, to full a fledged hidden SSID that can pretty much see entire network. I can have up to 15 different SSIDs running over the ruckus system, using the same networked APs. I can even choose which APs each SSID is allowed to appear on. And because they are "mesh" APs, I can run them at remote locations outside of the house, as long as I have a power source nearby.

It's way overkill, but loads of fun.

Thanks. I was hopping someone would notice. [joke]

Your system is only as good as its weakest link.
For my new house, The AT&T Uverse tech (butcher) made their 10/100 switch and Wireless G router the centerpiece of my home network, even clipping off 4 of the 8 Ethernet Wires to every room!

Consumers need to realize that cable TV companies don't want you to get a taste of freedom (streaming), as you will soon realize how limiting and costly their single room designs are. The dirty little secret is U-Verse is limited to 25mbit/sec for picture AND Internet!

Instead get a Gigabit 8 or 16 port switch and dual band Wireless N router. Disable the FIOS/AT&T/Charter legacy Wireless G and only feed the outside Internet as a single input to the Gigabit router. Then you are free to stream at 800mbit/sec

Twelve years ago I crawled under my house and ran CAT5 to all the major rooms. Six years ago I upgraded from 10 Mb switches to 100 Mb, and a G router. Since then I can’t recall being limited by the home network. But I am curious to find out how prevalent CAT6 and fiber is in homes today?
I would like to see another survey about home infrastructure. How many homes still have only the” knob and tube” wiring installed in the 1890’s, to the number of homes with fiber run to the bathrooms?

can i plug outside net into my time capsule router and remove from uverse 2wire

Wireless A Connection?

Here's the thing about Gigabit... It's only use is on backbones (in most all circumstances).
Simply because your computer (mainly, hard drive) won't ever run as fast as the connection. Your computer becomes the bottleneck.

So 100mbps to the end clients is all you'll really need (at this point in time, until computers improve... IMO Requires SSDs to become mainstream, for starts).

So Cat6 or Fiber is really only of use when you have multiple computers utilizing it (IE, a backbone).

Most homes are run in a star formation so Cat6/Fiber is quite overkill.

I have a basic Linksys 4 port 10/100 router. Yes, advanced.

My primary connection to my HD movies store is the road on which I drive to rent the Blu-ray

Basic 10/100 here. Nothing I stream comes anywhere near hitting 100Mb/sec, so a Gigabit connection is unnecessary, IMO. Most of what I stream is standard-def, but since even Blu-ray's native bitrate is less than 100Mb/sec, I don't think I'll be needing anything faster.

We did a remodel in 2005 and I ran 2 fiber, 2 coax, and 2 cat 6 (structured wiring bundle) to each outlet, and put 2 - 4 outlets in each room. The fiber I left unterminated. I have a 24 port D-Link dgs-1024d for the Cat 6.

Streaming media doesn't require > 100Mbs, true. But if you're doing a fresh install, the incremental cost of going Cat 6 and Gb over Cat 5 and 100Mb, isn't that great. (Yes, I know you can do GB on Cat 5E)

If you are backing up a USB 2 hard disk, figure you get 30 MB/sec read on it, so you can back it up over the network to another host using Gb and not really lose much speed.

10Gb Cat 6 copper cards are starting to hit now but are still too pricey. Someday...

I am moving from Twonky running on NSLU2s to Fit-PC2's.

We shoot the family video on AVC-HD and serve it from the NSLU2 to a PS3. It works great. The amount of media clients is increasing at an astounding rate, so once you have a media server, you'll be hooked.

Think of the most precious memories you have- digital photos, digital home movies, etc. With a home media server and home network they are only a click away and watchable anywhere.

I have Comcast's Xfinity to the home, which gives me 25-30 mbps. My main computer, running XP SP3, is plugged into an old Linksys Wifi-G router, the wired jacks of which are 10/100.

Another PC in the same room is connected wired as well.

An OS X G4 Mac that belongs to my fiancee is connected via Wifi-G (WPA PSK) a few rooms away by plugging it a into a Netgear "4port wireless print server" - essentially a Wifi G router with its radio set to receive mode to serve as a bridge. (My printers are plugged directly into to the main Linksys router via ethernet - the easiest way to share printers between Windows and Mac.)

The G4 Mac and my XP laptop (with its built-in Wifi-G modem) each get 25-30 mbps when I go to Speakeasy's java-based speed test sites.

I have another of those Netgear bridging boxes in my basement to feed my theater's Panasonic BD-50 Blu-ray player, but that wasn't worth the trouble, since the signal is so weak that it runs at about 1 mbps, being two floors down from and the length of the building away from the my apartment.

Also in the theater is my old Audiovox/Verizon XV-6600 Pocket PC phone, retired from telephone use but still in service as an streaming internet radio feeding the theater's amplifier. The XV-6600 gets its data connection from an old Viewsonic Wifi-B card plugged into the memory card slot. That weak Wifi-B connection, while totally inadequate for video, is fine for internet radio, since no one streams internet radio faster than 128kbps, which even an attenuated Wifi-B signal can handle. (I set up a separate access point in my apartment to feed that unit so it wouldn't make the rest if the Wifi network downshift to Wifi-B.)

Anyone out there up on mesh networking? I occasionally stay at a cohousing development in western Mass that has a mesh network set up. It consists of tiny repeater boxes about the size of an ice cream sandwich that just plug into an AC outlet for power. That network gives my laptop good Wifi-G speed - if I could hook up a few of those at home I could bucket-brigade a decent connection to my theater more easily than running a cable hundreds of feet long. If anyone here knows how to set up a mesh network, please let me know!

The other alternative would be to rent a second cable modem from Comcast for the theater, since it already has a hi-def cable box feeding that system. Of course, sending files between the two places would then have to go through the public internet!

When I need to do an update to the player's firmware (very infrequent nowadays - the Profile 2 Blu-ray standard seems to have stabilized), I just burn a CD on my main PC and put it into the player. Not as elegant as having it update itself automatically, but I don't want to risk "bricking" the player with an update that gets interrupted!

Actually, now that I think about it, I don't actually "stream media around my home" - at least not in the sense of playing files residing on one machine through another - except that I do use an old audio relay box made by US Robotics (remember them?) that uses a radio link in the same band as Wifi-B and G routers and cordless telephones to play the sound from my living room hifi through my kitchen table radio. That toy I found in a hole-in-the-wall computer shop on vacation a few years ago - US Robotics discontinued it long ago.

I'm using gigabit ethernet for my home's wired backbone, and have a Meru Networks AP320 and MC500 controller (commercial grade WiFi) using dual band N & G networks segmented for various uses.

For those contemplating a GE setup, make sure jumbo frame is supported or you're throughput will be crippled.

GE is great, but the largest bottleneck remaining is still the ISP.

I work for a wireless networking company (commercial WiFi), and I've not seen consumer level networking products with the ability to do a mess. With a mess network, effectively you're running a wireless long-haul using the AP's as bridges/repeaters, each hop will reduce your speed by half. It's great for certain applications, but not the ultimate setup for performance.

There's a product from Netgear that extends an ethernet connection over your inside AC wiring. They have an 85MB and a 200MB setup, which would be great for those that don't/can't run cables and have challenging wireless obstacles.

Best mesh equipment I've used is Ruckus wireless - It's what I've selected at home and for work.

It's also one of the most cost effective true mesh solutions out there - though more than a typical home solution. We use them in full-scale hotel networks as well, with more than 50 APs per site.

The most expensive part is the "Zone Director", such as the ZD1000. Extremely easy to set up, massively intuitive interface. Once the ZD is set up, you just plug the AP units into your network, and it sees them and programs them automatically.

Once the AP units are programmed, you can power then up anywhere thats in range of one of the root units. A root unit is simply any of the APs that is connected to the wired network. Any AP not plugged in to network automatically sets itself as a mesh and looks for the nearest root.

That's true of the early mesh iterations, but it's not necessarily an issue. With wifi N meshes, there is so much speed, that there is plenty left over - but I usually plan the networks with a maximum of 1 or 2 hops.

With the newer "dual band" units out there, they have multiple radios, so they can manage the backbone on separate radios, so avoiding the loss of bandwidth when used properly - but of course, the dual band units can be a lot more expensive.

I realize you probably know all this but was just posting it for the benefit of the other folks

Linksys WRT54GL for downstream internet and HP ProCurve gigabit switches for LAN. Nowadays, there's barely any price premium associated with gigabit. I figure at least it's there if I need it.

Why the subforum change from AV Distribution and Networking, to just AV Distribution?

Networking needs a home. It's not just for AV distribution, or media streaming.

LAN installation and maintenance is a challenge. I use mine primarily for audio distribution and internet access, but have plans for distributed 232 and IP control.

Installation is the same for a LAN, regardless of the purpose. Don't keyhole it into media streaming and AV distribution.

I'm using a WD Live media extender in one room, a Samsung B650 tv in another, a Sony 370 BD player in another and an Insignia BD player in the 4th all connected to a 10/100 wired network and I have no issues streaming mkv HD with DTS or DD audio content from my computer or Netflix. For me I see no need for a Gig system.

The computers are in one room and the living room is next to it. So they're all hooked up via Gigabit. Once that reaches the 5 port ethernet switch, in the living room, it downgrades to 10/100 for the PS3, Wii and Tivo.

We use PS3MS to stream stuff from either PC to the PS3, or we directly attach one of our Droid phones to the front of the Onkyo 805 for music.

Seggers

We have a section for networking the home for such things...so we removed the confusion with the other name.

"Networking, Media Servers & Content Streamers"

When I first got my Roku Soundbridge 1001 I tried wireless since I was in a hurry and already had a wireless router, but it would constantly rebuffer (even though my laptop showed a very good or excellent wireless connection), so I pulled some CAT 5 and have not had any problems.
I also pulled CAT5 to my wife's PC upstairs, since a wired connection will always be more reliable than wireless.

you forgot about MoCA