Can it be done? WiFi Blu-Ray movie server.

It's difficult enough to get a wireless network configured well enough for HD broadcasts. I seriously doubt that you will be able to get a clean enough signal for BD bitrates.

Nope NOT gonna happen. B/G is absolutely way too slow for HD streaming, hell its almost way too slow for DVD streaming.


Your weakest link is the G wireless. What CAN be done is if you want to stick with wireless is move up to 802.11N draft 2.0 equipment. which is the ONLY way you will be able to stream HD over a wireless network.


Check out MyMovies Plugin, you can set mymovies to auto launch third party dvd apps outside of MCE.

- Josh

I've had a different experience with wireless HD. Last summer, we brought our projector out by the pool for some outdoor movie action. I plugged in a USB Linksys 802.11g adapter into my HTPC and a watched few HD movies. This was content that was ripped from my HD-DVD collection or taken from my old transport stream recordings. I did not re-encode the HD-DVD video streams so we are talking about video streams with 15Mbit/s or more streaming down.

Your experience may vary as others have not been successful. You can help narrow down the cause by first plugging in via ethernet and disabling wireless. Then, try watching the movies again. I suspect your dual core 1.61ghz CPU is the weakest link here and you might find that you get the same choppiness while connected via Ethernet.

Theoretically it is possible. The bandwidth on 802.11g is 54Mbits, BUT I never seem to get more than 5-7Mbits from any of the connections that I have when testing on the internet. I think the 54Mbits is a peak or spike but not the average maximum for non stop use. My wired PCs always get 18-20 while the Wifi get 5-6. This would be fine for SD, but HD is not really going to run on that. From what I remember the actual bandwidth used by most movies is around 20Mbits (It can go much higher, but this the average).

Now wireless N? I don't know. I really depends on what your ACTUAL bandwidth is.

It sounds like you are mixing up bits and bytes.

Mbps= MegaBITS per second
MB/s= MegaBYTES per second

802.11g = 54Mbps = 6.75 MB/s

So, it sounds like your measurements of your Wi-Fi getting "5-6" are actually 5 to 6 megaBYTES per second. This is certainly enough bandwidth for HD. Your measurements of "18-20" for your wired connection sounds like 18-20 megaBYTES per second (I take it you have a gigabit connection for that measurement). HD content can range anywhere from 15Mbps up to 30Mbps (around 2 to 4 megabytes per second).

The real problem with wireless is the ability to keep the data rate constant. Interference from other devices, bad chipsets, and other Wi-Fi clients can screw with your stream.

For reference, my equipment used in the successful Wi-Fi streaming of HD:

- Linksys WRT54GL with DD-WRT firmware

(I use DD-WRT firmware for its tweakability - including wireless settings.)

- Linksys WUSB54G

If you try this test again with wireless, try some tests with all of your other Wi-Fi clients turned off. Or, measure your bandwidth (try a file copy with robocopy or something like that. Robo copy should give you an average transfer rate after it completes).

Blu-ray allows (and has) peak bitrates close to 40Mbps.
Wireless G, on paper 54Mbps, sustainably can handle hardly half.
It can be enough for MPEG-2 files (TS or PS) that are not available to consumers
at rates above 20Mbps but won't be able to handle Blu-ray's bandwidth twice as high.

Diogen.

I've got two N routers here in my office I am testing. First one is the EnGenius 100mW ESR-9710 the other is the TRENDnet TEW-633GR draft 2.0 router.

Both are N, MIMO routers, and both so far have been giving me anywhere from 100 - 120mbps constant speeds. I've been able to stream 3 HD movies from my server one to one wireless pc, and one to each of my laptops and so far N has faired extremely well.

Also your Internet bandwidth has absolutely NOTHING to do with the speeds as which wireless/wired networks run, so if the speed tests your talking about are tests you have done to sites like Speedtest.net or speakeasy then the tests you have done are NOT even valid speed tests because that is just showing you your internet speeds and NOT your home network speeds.

- Josh

The problem with wireless isn't the raw bandwidth, as noted, G has sufficient bandwidth to handle even Blu-ray peaks. The problem with wireless is the reliability of that connection, wireless connections just aren't very reliable/stable. When you're surfing the internet, or transferring files around the network, a glitch or dropout in the connection will go unnoticed, but when you're streaming 10, 20, 30Mbps video a small glitch in the connection is enough to interrupt the video.

i have been streaming hd content from my living room to my bedroom wirelessly for two years. i use wireless n but it has never given me problems. i even use my xbox 360 as an extender @ times to stream hd channals from time warner cable and it has no hiccups either. yes it van be done.

FWIW, it's not that it can't be done, it's that there's so many variables there's a decent chance that you may fail going wireless. IMO wireless is a last resort, if you can run wires, run them, you'll be happier in the long run because it basically eliminates the network as a source of problems.

I'm in 100% agreement. My HTPC career began trying to use wireless (g). After a year of intermittent results - just trying to stream 320Kbps MP3's, mind you - I gave up. It would work most of the time, but with the amount of music I listen to, most of the time wasn't even close to good enough. I pulled a Cat 5e through my attic and I haven't spent another second worrying about it for 3 years. Now I spend that time trying to figure out my digital recording studio setup! 8) A much more worthy way to spend my time, IMHO.

So Wireless G is sufficient for SD DVD streams? Is processor speed important? Minimums?

Is gaming decent on Wireless N?

(sorry for the hijack)

802.11N is really your only hope then.

Or a new wife

[looks over his shoulder]

No honey, I didn't type that, someone is using my account again.

I know this is an old thread but I wanted to solicit some help from the experts on here.

I setup a HTPC for wirelessly streaming content from a server PC in my office. I am using a D-Link DIR-825 (dual wireless-n) with a wired gigabit connection to the HTPC. In the office I have a D-Link DAP-2553 configured as a wireless client, connected with a wired gigabit connection to the server PC and then a wireless connection to the router. Both PCs are running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

For about the last 6 months I had no problem streaming Blu-Ray movies (mounting ISO files from the server, using VCD and MyMovies as my front-end), but all of a sudden in the last couple weeks I am getting loads of stuttering. My wireless connection rates are in the 270-300 Mb/s range and signal quality ranges from 75-85%. If I transfer files using copy/paste in Windows explorer I get sustained transfer rates ranging from 7.5-10MB/s.

I feel like I have plenty of bandwidth here to stream this content, so I can't for the life of me figure out why I'm getting unwatchable movies due to the constant stuttering.

Any suggestions on what could be going on?

Thanks.

Does the same content play locally without stuttering?

No stuttering locally. I should also mention the HTPC plays the Blu-Ray disc without stuttering either. One thing, I haven't copied the ISO file to the HTPC but I assume that would work without stuttering if the disc does.

more the likely something is interfering with your wireless connection. Log into your router and try changing the channels it is operating on. Also are you using 5ghz for sure and not 2.4ghz?

Make sure the router is set to 40mhz bandwidth as well.

- Josh

The router is definitely set to 5ghz and if I change either channel setting away from auto scan or the channel width from Auto 20/40mhz (to just 40mhz) then I can't connect from the wireless client to the router. So it seems I can't really deviate from the auto settings on these or the client goes a bit wonky.

Ok here's something I tried just out of curiosity. I copied a 28MB file from the server to the router in about 3.5 seconds, roughly 8MB/s transfer speed. When I copy the same file from the HTPC back to the server it transfers only at about 300KB/s. I'm not sure if this could be part of my problem, but I thought it strange. I would think the files would transfer at the same speed from server to HTPC and vice versa.

I have watched a full blu ray over wireless from my server, the laptop was in the same room as the router but i did not have any lag as long as I didnt fast forward. Used a G router from fios and a higher end laptop, Set the cd drive as shared and used mcp-hd.

How do you know it is "definitely set to 5ghz"? I have direct experience with both the same router and client adapter and I know for a fact you can get outside of the auto settings and use 40mhz bandwidth.

if you want proper N speeds you NEED to have 40mhz only, and you need to get outside of the auto settings for channels.

This is the reason I gave up on streaming HD with wireless completely, it is just too unreliable.

- Josh

This particular router has a 5ghz band and a 2.4ghz band. Each band has it's own unique SSID. I am connecting to the SSID that is on the 5ghz band. I'm not sure how that would somehow be outside of 5ghz, but I'm open for suggestons.

In terms of the channel width, I agree it would probably be better to have 40mhz fixed and not use the Auto mode. My problem is I can't get the wireless client to connect to the router wirelessly unless it is in Auto 20/40mhz mode. I will try D-Link with this issue and see what they say.

Irrespective of these points, none of them seem to address the fact that I seem to have enough bandwidth (average file transfer 8MB/s) and yet don't get stutter free Blu-Ray playback.

Either way, I appreciate your input.

ok just focusing on bandwidth here. Most likely that is not sustained bandwidth, but peak. IF there was an RF interference issue, which changing channels would remedy, RF interference causes packet loss, or packet retransmissions.

RF isn't like ethernet, you won't get 8/MBps all the time, ie sustained.

http://www.paessler.com/info/free_bandwidth_meter

use that, transfer a file to your HTPC from the server and run that tool and log exactly bit for bit per second to see what you are getting for bandwidth.

Streaming is a finicky thing, specially when trying to do it wirelessly, I have media center extenders through out my home and I was trying to use wireless for one of the extenders, on 5ghz, and less than 30 feet away from the AP (but one floor down) and I couldn't even sustain a stable enough connection for ATSC HDTV, which is much less bandwidth intensive than Blu Ray.

So like I said you need to figure out the channel options first, once you figure that out try and see what your speed, and sustained speed is. Doing wireless networking for a living I can tell you any type of interference will kill your speed/bandwith.

- Josh

That`s a little false, channel bonding does not increase speeds in any point of your router`s range. It can actually decrease speeds in some places.