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| Thread ID: 102410 | 2009-08-18 10:08:00 | Streaming media over a home WLAN | Lizard (2409) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 802221 | 2009-08-18 10:08:00 | I have a wireless LAN setup at home. I have one main desktop computer which is wirelessly connected to my router (it's too far away for a convenient wired connection), and I now have a laptop wirelessly connecting with the router. File sharing is on, and so I thought I would try playing a video on the laptop that was stored on the external HDD connected to the main desktop computer. It starts out alright, but after about 10 secs, it gets choppy and breaks up. I'm guessing that this is due to one of the following: The 54mbps throughput of 802.11G standard is not being achieved The drive speed of the source/destination drive is not fast enough The processor of the destination computer can't keep up The cache memory is not big enough. I'm bluffing on that last one (it just sounded plausible), and I'm pretty sure the T6500 Core 2 Duo 2.1GHz processor on the laptop can handle the video being received (also has ATI HD3470 256MB graphics onboard), so I'm guessing it's one of the first two. Does anyone have any light to shine on this? It would be really cool to not have to copy stuff across when I want to view it on a different laptop, and just stream it on demand. Cheers Lizard |
Lizard (2409) | ||
| 802222 | 2009-08-18 10:16:00 | It'll be the wireless connection. Best way to test it is to bring the laptop real close, connect it with an ethernet cable and see what happens when you try to stream then :) You may be able to make it work better by making either the laptop or desktop wired via ethernet to the router. |
jwil1 (65) | ||
| 802223 | 2009-08-18 10:21:00 | Its definetly the wireless. What player are you using? Have you tried increasing the buffer? |
Blam (54) | ||
| 802224 | 2009-08-18 10:33:00 | It's a tricky business IMHO - I have a WRT310N router that streams to my Thinkpad (probably about 8 metres) from a media server in another room (via ethernet) and it's still choppy; Thinkpad is dual core with 3Gb RAM. Have never managed to get it to run smoothly. :o |
nofam (9009) | ||
| 802225 | 2009-08-18 10:36:00 | It's a tricky business IMHO - I have a WRT310N router that streams to my Thinkpad (probably about 8 metres) from a media server in another room (via ethernet) and it's still choppy; Thinkpad is dual core with 3Gb RAM. Have never managed to get it to run smoothly. :o Eh? Choppy over ethernet!!!???? What player are you using? |
Blam (54) | ||
| 802226 | 2009-08-18 10:43:00 | I'm with blam here. A powerful machine using an ethernet connection shouldn't even think about problems like that. Have you tried something like VLC to play it? Any firewalls? |
beeswax34 (63) | ||
| 802227 | 2009-08-18 10:51:00 | Thats a good point Blam - Choppy over Ethernet and only 8 Mtrs away ???? Something's wrong. One of the WHS in the workshop, which has movies,music, etc - by the time you take the length of cable to the first switch - 5 Mtrs, then the workshop to the Router in the Office - another 20-25 mtrs, then from router (wireless capable) to the lounge, connecting to another switch - 15 -18 Mtrs, across ( under) the lounge floor,10 Mtrs to the Media Center - NO Buffering/ Jitters/ choppiness -- all play fine. IF I try to play anything, even music Via the wireless - it IS choppy, even if its only within a few Mtrs. |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 802228 | 2009-08-18 11:32:00 | Sorry, should've been clearer - Media Server is connected to WRT310 by ethernet (router with 4-port switch) which streams wirelessly to laptop. Router is under the bed across the hall from the lounge where the laptop is. I just play my DVD rips etc with VLC. It's weird, because when I find 802.11n substantially faster to surf the net with than my old Belkin access point. Keen to try anything you guys can suggest? |
nofam (9009) | ||
| 802229 | 2009-08-18 11:34:00 | Connect *everything* via ethernet and take the wireless out of the loop completely. If everything works fine, then your problem is with the wifi (this is pretty likely). Once the problem has been isolated, we can concentrate on the issue rather than trying to debug everything at once. When you say DVD rips, do you mean uncompressed 9.4GB images, or compressed somehow? If they're compressed, what did you use to do it, and with what settings? |
Erayd (23) | ||
| 802230 | 2009-08-18 11:45:00 | Connect *everything* via ethernet and take the wireless out of the loop completely. If everything works fine, then your problem is with the wifi (this is pretty likely). Once the problem has been isolated, we can concentrate on the issue rather than trying to debug everything at once. When you say DVD rips, do you mean uncompressed 9.4GB images, or compressed somehow? If they're compressed, what did you use to do it, and with what settings? Did that the day I got it Erayd, and it pretty much fixed it. Have just learned to live with it, by copying the files down to the local device first, rather than streaming it over the share to the media server. Most of the rips are xvid .avi files or more recently, h.264 mkv's. Doesn't seem to make any difference. Just looking at VLC, is there any difference between open file (from another device on the LAN) and open network stream? |
nofam (9009) | ||
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