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Because SWMBO said so, we re-arranged our whole living room. It really does help, the layout kind of sucked before, with the couches being in the middle of the room, but the problem is, the TV is now on the opposite wall as the Coax, phone, and ethernet connections for my TV, blu ray, Satellite box, and HTPC.
Pulling cables to the new wall (hopefully) wouldn't be terrible, since it's on an interior wall which backs up to a bathroom, however if I can avoid hacking into my walls, I'd love to do so. So, I started thinking, maybe this is a good opportunity to set up a client/server HTPC/Media Server setup. I have 3 PCs that we would watch TV on, and a Windows Home Server, so jamming all my tuners in the WHS with SageTV or similar, and streaming HDTV around the house to the various PCs would be very attractive. So, I decided to investigate my options for streaming HDTV to my HTPC in its new location. I currently record HDTV on one of the PCs in the house and use MCE on the "client" PCs to pick up the recordings once they're finished.
I started with my trusty Linksys USB 802.11g adaptor, connected to the 2wire DSL gateway/router. I noted 1.55 MB/s transfer speeds.
I would guess it streamed a 1080i HDTV recording from my server reliably 50% of the time. i.e. two good minutes followed by two minutes of hitching, buffering, dropped audio, etc.
So, a trip to Best Buy later, and I have a Netgear XAVB101 (supposedly) 200Mbps Powerline kit. Notice, the product page explicitly says "Fast enough to stream HD video" twice. Also, in the screenshot below, Netgear's diagnostic app says my connection quality is "HD video".
The good news about my new living room is, I have cat6 gigabit ethernet on the opposite wall from the TV, so wireless options should be able to get a good connection. So I plugged one adaptor into the Cat6 cable on one side of my living room, and the other adaptor into my HTPC. Despite getting nearly perfect connection, transfer speeds were only 1.77 MB/s, and an HD TV recording still could not stream reliably from my server. It worked better than 802.11g, but I would still experience brief hitching or studdering every couple minutes.
After playing with it for a day or two, reading up a bit on various forums, I became convinced that it wasn't going to satisfy my needs, and exchanged it for a couple Linksys 802.11n products, the WRT400N router and the WGA600N gaming adaptor (because it was the only ethernet bridge Best Buy had in stock....I hope to be able to plug the bridge into a small switch, which will connect to my HTPC and Blu Ray player).
I tested first at 5GHz, even though signal strength was only about 70% (despite the bridge and router having line-of-sight connection from about 10 feet apart). Transfer speeds were about 3MB/s.
This was easily the best speed so far, and HDTV recording streamed better, but I still experienced hitching every 5 minutes or so.
Connecting at 2.4GHz (~95% signal) improved the situation a bit more, with 3.4MB/s transfers, but still, hitching every few minutes.
I also tested using my laptop, which has an Intel wireless chipset in it, and it connected at 2.4ghz. Windows says it connects at 130 Mbps, but transfer speeds are 2.5 MB/s.
Am I missing something? I've played with some of the settings in the WRT400N, including setting the transmit rate to its highest value. I attempted to disable "mixed mode", (transmit ONLY 802.11n), but still no noticeable change.
Pulling cables to the new wall (hopefully) wouldn't be terrible, since it's on an interior wall which backs up to a bathroom, however if I can avoid hacking into my walls, I'd love to do so. So, I started thinking, maybe this is a good opportunity to set up a client/server HTPC/Media Server setup. I have 3 PCs that we would watch TV on, and a Windows Home Server, so jamming all my tuners in the WHS with SageTV or similar, and streaming HDTV around the house to the various PCs would be very attractive. So, I decided to investigate my options for streaming HDTV to my HTPC in its new location. I currently record HDTV on one of the PCs in the house and use MCE on the "client" PCs to pick up the recordings once they're finished.
I started with my trusty Linksys USB 802.11g adaptor, connected to the 2wire DSL gateway/router. I noted 1.55 MB/s transfer speeds.
I would guess it streamed a 1080i HDTV recording from my server reliably 50% of the time. i.e. two good minutes followed by two minutes of hitching, buffering, dropped audio, etc.
So, a trip to Best Buy later, and I have a Netgear XAVB101 (supposedly) 200Mbps Powerline kit. Notice, the product page explicitly says "Fast enough to stream HD video" twice. Also, in the screenshot below, Netgear's diagnostic app says my connection quality is "HD video".
The good news about my new living room is, I have cat6 gigabit ethernet on the opposite wall from the TV, so wireless options should be able to get a good connection. So I plugged one adaptor into the Cat6 cable on one side of my living room, and the other adaptor into my HTPC. Despite getting nearly perfect connection, transfer speeds were only 1.77 MB/s, and an HD TV recording still could not stream reliably from my server. It worked better than 802.11g, but I would still experience brief hitching or studdering every couple minutes.
After playing with it for a day or two, reading up a bit on various forums, I became convinced that it wasn't going to satisfy my needs, and exchanged it for a couple Linksys 802.11n products, the WRT400N router and the WGA600N gaming adaptor (because it was the only ethernet bridge Best Buy had in stock....I hope to be able to plug the bridge into a small switch, which will connect to my HTPC and Blu Ray player).
I tested first at 5GHz, even though signal strength was only about 70% (despite the bridge and router having line-of-sight connection from about 10 feet apart). Transfer speeds were about 3MB/s.
This was easily the best speed so far, and HDTV recording streamed better, but I still experienced hitching every 5 minutes or so.
Connecting at 2.4GHz (~95% signal) improved the situation a bit more, with 3.4MB/s transfers, but still, hitching every few minutes.
I also tested using my laptop, which has an Intel wireless chipset in it, and it connected at 2.4ghz. Windows says it connects at 130 Mbps, but transfer speeds are 2.5 MB/s.
Am I missing something? I've played with some of the settings in the WRT400N, including setting the transmit rate to its highest value. I attempted to disable "mixed mode", (transmit ONLY 802.11n), but still no noticeable change.
