looking for a good wireless hd media streamer box

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kobalt

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I've been looking for a media streamer box that would stream 720 and 1080 pc-based content over the network on a remote television. Specifically .mkv container, and wireless (apartment), with metadata support being a plus. Now I found plenty of reviews for boxes made by Netgear, WD, and Seagate, but very little information as far as wireless streaming performance goes. Any recommendations? That's what I get for being the family/friend go-to computer guy.
 
Angry_Birds said:
wireless and 1080p is not happening, sorry.
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+1! As he said.

You may be able to get away with 720p, but 1080p is almost impossible even with dual band wireless N. You can try other options like powerline networking or MoCA if pulling cat5/6 is not a viable option in the apartment.
 
+1 again. 720p will work most of the time, but you will have problems with 1080p (25Mbps+), especially in a congested environment such as an apartment building. This may or may not also make powerline networking tricky, I'm not sure.
 
I have a patriot PBO box and it works great for streaming 720p media from my server.
 
What are you guys talking about? I can stream 1080p on my tablets and even on my laptops. What I can't do is stream 1080p blu-ray over wireless. But if I use Handbrake and transcode a 25+ GB movie down to 1-2GB 1080p m4v, then I can stream that. Resolution doesn't tell the entire story...that's why saying 1080p or 720p means very little.
 
kobalt said:
That's what I get for being the family/friend go-to computer guy.
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It can take years to have that moniker dropped, ask me how i know :p. I especially hate when family/friends attempt to send you on a fool's errand ;)

On a more serious note, check out some media streamer forums if you find extra time and patience to do further research.

As mentioned prior, there should be a product that can at least handle low and maybe medium bit-rate 1080P wireless, if not then this friend of yours is going to have to drop some cable.

Good luck.
 
AQ_OC said:
What are you guys talking about? I can stream 1080p on my tablets and even on my laptops. What I can't do is stream 1080p blu-ray over wireless. But if I use Handbrake and transcode a 25+ GB movie down to 1-2GB 1080p m4v, then I can stream that. Resolution doesn't tell the entire story...that's why saying 1080p or 720p means very little.
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]

Would you not also scale the video down to the right resolution for your small screened devices as part of transcoding? If you are what is being streamed is not 1080p. If you're not then you should be, the penalty for lowering the bitrate is reduced if the resolution is brought down with it. Also less work for the target device as it doesn't need to scale from 1080p down to it's native resolution.
 
Wifi N @ 5GHz is enough for 1080P. It took me a while to figure out a good setup but this is working for me quite well, where as stand alone media streamers all failed me:

Server:
Windows Server 2008R2
CAT6 to Router (Gigabit)

Router:
Linksys E4200 (3x3 on 5GHz)

HTPC:
Windows 7
Linksys AE2500 USB NIC (2x2)

Connect over 5 GHz, and I can pull about 9 MB/sec sustained. Enough for high bit-rate MKV's w/DTSMA or TrueHD.

My Thinkpad T420s with a 3x3 antenna can pull 14 MB/sec.

The media streamers I've tried (Patriot Box Office, Pivos AIOS HD) failed. I feel like those Realtek based streamers are not powerful enough for network communication + decode.
 
dustNbone said:
]

Would you not also scale the video down to the right resolution for your small screened devices as part of transcoding? If you are what is being streamed is not 1080p. If you're not then you should be, the penalty for lowering the bitrate is reduced if the resolution is brought down with it. Also less work for the target device as it doesn't need to scale from 1080p down to it's native resolution.
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I have many transcodes at 1080p. These can be watched on my laptops and tablets. Too much effort to make more than one transcode for the same movie. Even the tablets play them fine. The scaling work seems to be of little impact. And the transcodes, done with handbrake, look pretty good.
 
powerline networking is what you want. I use a set and can get about 10MB/s or 100mbit.
 
While some people may have success with 1080p over wireless, it is not a given. I would have to say 3 out of 5 times (if on N) something goes wrong in cases I have dealth with (6 houses in our neighborhood). Hell, even a phone ringing once was enough to drop the stream.

Sorry, but a 60% success rate, for all intents and purposes, is failure IMO.
 
benogil said:
Maybe this ? http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/multimedia-voip/multimedia-voip-reviews/31645-actiontec-mywirelesstv-multi-room-wireless-hd-video-kit-reviewed
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That thing encodes the HDMI signal into H.264 and transmits that. Not exactly a proper HDMI extender, I guess it really depends how much you're willing to spend and how much quality matters.

If you're going to have a go at doing it across 802.11n, you'll definetly need both router and streamer to support 5Ghz operation. There is way too many things out there that will smack a 2.4Ghz link down, microwave ovens, Bluetooth and 802.11b and g devices to name a few of the worst offenders.
 
Great help in this thread, thank you everyone! Oh the joys of being everyone's go-to pc/av guy...
 
Vengance_01 said:
powerline networking is what you want. I use a set and can get about 10MB/s or 100mbit.
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I was getting about 9.8 MB/s over my powerline network....it worked fine for a lot of blu-rays, but not all. I ended up going gigabit for 100% reliable streaming of blu-rays. I use LAN Speed Test 2.X to test my streaming speed.
 
I find even when you can (rarely) get 1080p streaming over N, the experience just isn't ideal. Fast forwarding and stuff incurs a much bigger delay than if it's wired, and it's a given that over the next couple of years the 5Ghz band will become overwhelmed same as 2.4 has become now. Any sort of high bandwidth media streaming is going to work much better over a cable for the foreseeable future imho.
 
Bottom line: it doesn't matter if it is 1080p or not, the bit-rate is what mostly matters. High bit-rate encodes are much harder to stream....and if you want to stream bit-perfect 1080p blu-ray, you need gigabit networking for reliable 24/7 performance. If you are willing to transcode down to lower bit-rate rips, then you can use wireless. Powerline networking will work fine for all but the most demanding blu-ray ISOs.
 
I'd hate to open a new thread, but does any media streamer box other than Boxee do Hulu ( NOT Hulu Plus )
 
Try ATV2 with XBMC. It has played back everything I threw at it (including various mkv formats). It's limited to 720p, but if that doesn't bother you, then it's pretty damn awesome.

If you can wait long enough...there will be a $25-35 raspberry pi board you can purchase...XMBC is already working on getting it to run on this platform.
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=113824
 
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