[00bolt]

I built a pretty nice HTPC about a year or 2 ago and it works great. I have it hooked up in my one media room.


But here is my problem, Im not able to watch all my movies and videos on other tvs in the house. Believe it or not, I dont have 5 brand new HDTVs with ethernet adapters.. lol


so i have 3-4 other tvs in the house that Id like to be able to watch all my movies and videos on. a friend suggested I get a WDTV hub with 1TB and load up all movies on it, then get the little WDTV for all the other rooms and they will all work together using my home's wifi and stream full HD video.


This sounds like a great way since I cannot hook up a HTPC to some of my older tvs in the kid's rooms (they would have to be svideo or rca or whatever).


so here are my questions.


1. if i go WDTV hub, can I add more than 1TB of storage? like an external HD to it or upgrade the internal?


2. does full HD really stream over my home's wifi okay without problems?


3. will it work okay for the older tvs using svideo or rca (obviously i know wont be HD)


4. are there any other better options like the new googletv, popcorn hour, etc?

 

[00bolt]

oh, btw... about half my movies are DVD rips some in folders, some in ISO and some in avi, mkv, etc files..... other half are bluray rips in 720p or 1080p quality... some are ISO, but most are files like avi, mkv, etc

 

[frankspin]

You could load a DLNA server onto your HTPC (tversity, ps3mediaserver, playon, etc) and use that to distribute the media throughout the house instead of using a WDTV hub and having to worry about keeping it up to date. It also gives the flexibility of transcoding if the device can't read the file or other internet services (hulu, epsn3, mlb, nhl, etc) if the device supports playon.


You didn't give information about your network so all I can say is you'd probably want to be on N. Maybe others will say differently but my results on G were so-so, sometimes I could stream a movie fine other times it'd get choppy. Test it out and see, if you can get by on G then do it if not you will need to consider N. Keep in mind if you upgrade to N you will need to either A. upgrade all the devices in the house to N or B. buy a router/ap that can broadcast both N & G as two different broadcasts as opposed to mixed mode. Again this is something another member could debunk.


As for the device, it depends on what you want. If you just want file playback the WDTV would work fine but if you want more you may want a Roku.

 

[Freak1]

Even with Wireless N you can get problems. When i tried streaming a blu-ray over N its was choppy and not watchable. That was even at only a few meters between the units. But if you don't need blu-ray you should be good. Right now i have a labtop setup for streaming DVDs over G and that works fine most of the time. That is with about 6 meters to the Access point going through 2 walls.

 

[00bolt]

well I dont really have a real "network" right now. I just have my HTPC and 2 other PCs in the house. Both are cnnected wirelessly but I believe they are just G (little cheap usb wireless adapters)... but my router is N capable, its an apple airport base station thingy...


i know in a perfect world, i would drop some ethernet lines in all the rooms of my house, but that is just alot of work... may consider it though if its a must.

 

[00bolt]

when i mentioned getting the WDTV hub, i was thinking I could give my HTPC a rest. I currently use this computer as my main computer to do graphics and gaming because its built up pretty good. Ideally id like something like WDTV hub so i can have my computer back to use as just a computer....

 

[frankspin]



Quote:
Originally Posted by 00bolt /forum/post/19569388


well I dont really have a real "network" right now. I just have my HTPC and 2 other PCs in the house. Both are cnnected wirelessly but I believe they are just G (little cheap usb wireless adapters)... but my router is N capable, its an apple airport base station thingy...


i know in a perfect world, i would drop some ethernet lines in all the rooms of my house, but that is just alot of work... may consider it though if its a must.

You'd really just have to test it. I don't have the full luxury of running lines either so I need to rely on wireless so I do tests. I would go to each room and try streaming a file from the HTPC to see what it is like. You can also use a tool like inSSIDer to for a better assessment of signal strength and channel crowding.

 

[shadymg]

i think a central server is really the way to go for you, and then there's a number of different Media Players (in addition to the WD) that would work depending on how future-proof you want it.


I just finished creating a Buyer's Guide for Media Players-Streamers, might be worth a look if you consider going that route - http://www.missingremote.com/guide/m...ers-comparison