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Comcast killed my streaming set-up

1571 Views 13 Replies 5 Participants Last post by  gmd024, 
I
Man, I should have stayed with Uverse. The live RJ-45 in their STBs made for rock-solid streaming (thought not quite good enough for high bit-rate Blu-ray rips.) Now I'm living the nightmare of wireless, and have to watch DVD ISO rips buffer often enough for it to be painful. I made the erroneous assumption that the wireless N router and my Boxee could handle SD rips without much of an issue.


So now I have to decide the best way to upgrade my streaming. I'm leaning towards a MOCA adapter, which will set me back a little over $100. Is there a cheaper method I'm not thinking of? Perhaps a better wireless router that can be had for less? Hard-wiring is not an option, sadly.
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S

Quote:
Originally Posted by Irishdoom /forum/post/20816201


Man, I should have stayed with Uverse. The live RJ-45 in their STBs made for rock-solid streaming (thought not quite good enough for high bit-rate Blu-ray rips.) Now I'm living the nightmare of wireless, and have to watch DVD ISO rips buffer often enough for it to be painful. I made the erroneous assumption that the wireless N router and my Boxee could handle SD rips without much of an issue.


So now I have to decide the best way to upgrade my streaming. I'm leaning towards a MOCA adapter, which will set me back a little over $100. Is there a cheaper method I'm not thinking of? Perhaps a better wireless router that can be had for less? Hard-wiring is not an option, sadly.
Click to expand...

What kind of router are you using? If I remember correctly the Boxee Box by D-Link uses wireless-N... If you can configure you router correctly you should be streaming DVD ISO rips easily - but may encounter issues if you stream Blu-RAY ISO rips or MKV files 20GB or bigger (although some people were able to successfully do it).


Here is what you need to do to your router:


1. Use WPA2 Encrypytion

2. Set Channel width to 40MHz


When you do those two things especially #2 - any device that does not have wireless-N will not be able to connect your router... which allows ONLY wireless-N devices to connect = fast streaming speeds up to 15Mbps to 30Mbps from my experience = good enough for DVD ISO rips and MKV sizes up to 25GB.


If even one wirelss-G, B, or A device can connect to your router then it will only operate at Wireless-G throughput speeds because the router will operate at Channel width 20MHz instead of the required 40MHz for Wifi-N....
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I
The Boxee Box does have Wireless-N. The router is the free one Comcast gives out, a Netgear WNR1000. I am running the router in mixed mode due to the fact that I also have a PS3 that I use often as well, for Hulu Plus and gaming online,etc. Maybe the answer is to find a cheap way to get the PS3 on the N band, but I don't know if there's a cheap way to do that. I'm assuming you can't just use an N dongle with the PS3, and likely need a second router to bridge.


One other possibility is I think I may have an older Linksys G router laying around somewhere, maybe I could set up 2 wireless networks, one designated for all my "n" devices, and one for all the "g" devices.
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I
Ok, I managed to find my old WRT54G router in the garage, and got it set up as a secondary router. (Also explained to my wife that THIS is why I don't throw old gadgets and such out!) I changed the PS3's wireless settings to point to it. Every other device that we use is on N, so I changed the main router to N only. We'll see if that helps!
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I
So what's a good way to test my setup? I don't have any blu-ray rips. Is there a certain bit rate I should be testing against?
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M
My N netgear was fine with just 1 ATV2 and h.264 720p rips but once a second was added things fell apart quickly. Went with two Netgear Moca adapter kits and all is well.
Set up one at the router and the remaining three to three ATVs, one of which is in the HT system where i've added a 4 port switch as well.
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I do think that aside from a hard-wired network, a MOCA network would be the first thing I tried. That IS what my Uverse box was running, basically. They just didn't tell you about it!


Now why can't Comcast enable the frigging MOCA networking already built-in to their STBS??
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M

Quote:
Originally Posted by Irishdoom /forum/post/20819177


I do think that aside from a hard-wired network, a MOCA network would be the first thing I tried. That IS what my Uverse box was running, basically. They just didn't tell you about it!


Now why can't Comcast enable the frigging MOCA networking already built-in to their STBS??
Click to expand...

There's a new box in beta field testing in a few markets that you might wanna wait for. It has 4 tuners, Moca and a new active GUI. Supposed to hit the remaining markets early 2012.
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MrBobb

Quote:
Originally Posted by Irishdoom /forum/post/20819177


Now why can't Comcast enable the frigging MOCA networking already built-in to their STBS??
Click to expand...

Because the whole point of u-verse is to deliver their content ALL through networking and they KNEW WIFI may not cut it.


Comcast is still in the old COAX mode.


Sounds to me your move to full-N *should* resolve your prob in the short term. Then when u want to steam HD... man, maybe moving is the answer?
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Ahh!! the Good old trusty Linksys WRT54G....


The problem with that Netgear router I think is that it does not have manual settings to set the Channel bandwidth to 40MHz - it only does it automatically if it detects a pure wireless-N connection from wireless-n devices - if its a mixed of wifi-n devices and wifi-g (etc) it will auto change the Channel bandwidth to 20MHz.


What I recommend you do is use an ethernet cable to hook up your WRT54G to the netgear and use the WRT54G as an access point for all your wifi devices that is not wireless-N... and only have all your wifi-N devices connect to the Netgear (don't forget to only use WPA2 encryption). The Netgear SHOULD auto switch to Channel Bandwidth 40MHz and your wireless streaming should improve with your wireless-N devices.


I have this set-up at home right now - I have a Linksys WRT54G hooked up to a Netgear WNDR3700....
... originally I was going to use the 5GHz AP of the netgear for Wifi-N but that signal strength is weak!
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SVG--


That's basically what I stumbled into doing. A little googling about setting up a secondary router showed me how to kind of daisy chain it off my N router as it's own wireless AP. I just set up the PS3 to use THAT routers network rather than the N, then I was able to set the main router to Wireless N only. I did not see an option to manually set it to 40MHz, but I'm hoping it's doing that automatically now that it's only dealing with N devices.


I tried out my ISO rip of Scott Pilgrim, one of the higher bit-rate dvd rips I have. It played fine from beginning to end, though the issue I had with buffering was intermittent, sometimes things played fine, other times they buffered like crazy. I got ahold of a 1080p rip of a blu-ray to test that out (I don't currently have a blu-ray drive, or the storage for blu-ray rips...that's one of my next steps!). I don't expect it to work, but I just want to see where my all N network puts me.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Irishdoom /forum/post/20821776


SVG--


That's basically what I stumbled into doing. A little googling about setting up a secondary router showed me how to kind of daisy chain it off my N router as it's own wireless AP. I just set up the PS3 to use THAT routers network rather than the N, then I was able to set the main router to Wireless N only. I did not see an option to manually set it to 40MHz, but I'm hoping it's doing that automatically now that it's only dealing with N devices.


I tried out my ISO rip of Scott Pilgrim, one of the higher bit-rate dvd rips I have. It played fine from beginning to end, though the issue I had with buffering was intermittent, sometimes things played fine, other times they buffered like crazy. I got ahold of a 1080p rip of a blu-ray to test that out (I don't currently have a blu-ray drive, or the storage for blu-ray rips...that's one of my next steps!). I don't expect it to work, but I just want to see where my all N network puts me.
Click to expand...

Don't forget to go into your Netgear router settings to change it to 300Mbps (or the highest it theoritcally supports) and also if you have a smarth phone in the house hold with wifi make sure it coonects to the WRT54G too...


Good luck...
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I
Both smart phones in the house are fairly new, and both have Wireless N as well. The router only supports up to 150. It is awfully close to the living room setup and the Boxee however, practically Line of Sight close. I tested out a Blu-Ray rip with a bit rate around 9200 on average, and I was able to stream that as well with no issues.


Any recommendations for a movie with a really high bit-rate, just so I can see how far I can push this thing?
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G
You might consider this (wireless n Bridge) or one similar - I purchased 2 of them from Lynksys' outlet/reburb center for about half the reg. price - has a 90 day warranty and I'm quite sure a no ?'s asked return policy (better check tho if you consider ordering one) -- they worked fine most of the time with all but BD/HD content which I began collecting more and more for my library and eventually ran a couple hard wires and retired the N Bridges


They run circles around any regular N adapter by connecting your device(s) via ethernet and eliminating the network overhead of a reg. wireless N adapter/card

http://homestore.cisco.com/en-us/ada...VVviewprod.htm
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