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urbanriot
Premium Member
join:2004-10-18
Canada

urbanriot to Gone

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Re: WD Live-Media player

Agreed. If it's fine over 100mb/s, it would be fine over 802.11n and I know it's fine for 802.11g in ideal wireless environments with 720p TV shows.

Gone
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join:2011-01-24
Fort Erie, ON

Gone

Premium Member

said by urbanriot:

Agreed. If it's fine over 100mb/s, it would be fine over 802.11n and I know it's fine for 802.11g in ideal wireless environments with 720p TV shows.

The WDTV Live only has a 100Mbit Ethernet port. I can get real-world wireless throughput on my above-noted 802.11n network pushing 200Mbit/s. My wireless is faster than any of the 100Mbit ports on my multimedia players are capable of.

dillyhammer
START me up
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join:2010-01-09
Scarborough, ON

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dillyhammer to urbanriot

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to urbanriot
said by urbanriot:

Agreed. If it's fine over 100mb/s, it would be fine over 802.11n and I know it's fine for 802.11g in ideal wireless environments with 720p TV shows.

I seem to be missing some posts in this thread... don't know why... maybe I have someone blocked.



In any event, I have a terrific 802.11n network running and make use of it to its fullest, routinely. That is, I can transfer large files and max the wireless out without any problems at all.

But full 1080P video will not play to the WDTV Live over wireless.

I'm not talking about theoretical wireless speeds or experiments in lab environments with pristine wireless conditions, or from 200 foot tree to 200 foot tree in Mordor. I'm talking about full 1080P and most full 720P media files being played over a wireless network in a real world environment (houses, with walls and floors and such) to a WDTV Live unit. It's horrendous.

That's my experience, with my wireless network, in my environment, with my WDTV Live, and a Patriot Box Office for good measure.

I'm telling the OP to save himself the trouble and either wire up or USB up.

I won't have a hand in saying otherwise.

I hate coming to this forum. Must... remember.... to stay.... the fuck out of here.



Mike

EUS
Kill cancer
Premium Member
join:2002-09-10
canada

EUS

Premium Member

Hm, so I'm guessing my old linksys wireless @ 54Meg will probably not cut it @ 1080p
I have no media @ 720, either regular dvd iso backups, or 1080p mkv backups.

Gone
Premium Member
join:2011-01-24
Fort Erie, ON

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Gone to dillyhammer

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to dillyhammer
said by dillyhammer:

I'm not talking about theoretical wireless speeds or experiments in lab environments with pristine wireless conditions, or from 200 foot tree to 200 foot tree in Mordor. I'm talking about full 1080P and most full 720P media files being played over a wireless network in a real world environment (houses, with walls and floors and such) to a WDTV Live unit. It's horrendous.

My experiences are real-world conditions in my own home, not lab conditions. I don't use 2.4GHz for anything important. I use 5GHz, with 40MHz channels, in Greenfield mode. With this equipment and these settings you will almost universally get more than 100Mbit/s sustained throughput with modestly-decent hardware. Pulling 17MB/s sustained over one of these links is the norm. That translates into 136Mbit/s. This is also just using the 2x2 hardware. The 450Mbit/s air 3x3 link between my laptop and my E4200 is even faster.

To make blanket claims that wireless isn't an option is a complete misnomer. Maybe you can't. I can, better than the built-in Ethernet port on the WDTV Live can. As I said, and will say again, your equipment and/or the ability to deploy a wifi networks sucks. Dual-band routers and compatible dual-band USB dongles for the WDTV Live aren't exactly expensive anymore, either.

urbanriot
Premium Member
join:2004-10-18
Canada

urbanriot

Premium Member

said by Gone:

To make blanket claims that wireless isn't an option is a complete misnomer. Maybe you can't.

The use of italics accurately summarizes the issue and your previous sentence summarizes the disagreement.

dillyhammer
START me up
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join:2010-01-09
Scarborough, ON

dillyhammer to EUS

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to EUS
said by EUS:

Hm, so I'm guessing my old linksys wireless @ 54Meg will probably not cut it @ 1080p
I have no media @ 720, either regular dvd iso backups, or 1080p mkv backups.

I have never been able to stream 1080P to my WDTV live via wireless. Nor my Patriot Box. This is with a TP-Link 1043ND running Gargoyle firmware. I'm really not sure if it's a limitation of the wireless implementation in the firmware on these media devices or what, but it's ugly. I mean, these are very small units with ultra-small processors and diddly for ram, embedded Unix most of them. The Patriot unit has a fan, the WDTV unit does not. Honking wireless connections I'm sure are not part of the grand scheme of things.

I could stream run-of-the-mill media files no problem. You know the kind. 700MB, 2 hours long. As soon as the bitrate got cranked up the wireless would kack. It varied, file to file, but anything 2 hours long greater than 3GB had issues, 5GB got ugly, and 10GB files just outright b-b-b-b-barfed.

The support forums operated by the makers of these devices are littered with similar stories - folks just plain disappointed in the wireless. It's junk.

I had a vision of, you know, a nice wireless cloud of media sharing throughout the house. That got dashed pretty damn quick. On a WDTV Live or Patriot Box, wireless is not an option for 1080P. That is the reality.

Mike

Gone
Premium Member
join:2011-01-24
Fort Erie, ON

2 edits

Gone

Premium Member

The only "reality" to this conversation is that because one single person has no fucking clue what they're doing when deploying a wireless network they assume everyone is equally as unskilled. Quite frankly, this is starting to get stupid.

This is what wireless is capable of in so-so conditions but with decent hardware - this is far from my most optimal performance. 5GHz band, 40MHz channels, 2x2 antenna config, router configured for Greenfield located at the other end of the house. The above image is really nothing fancy, as I pull 15-17 when there's less traffic on the network.

12MB/s is identical to the performance of a 100Mbit/s Ethernet port like what is included on the WDTV Live or any other off-the-shelf media player, and the same speed that these devices will be using to pull that high bitrate 1080p video you are droning on about.

Therefore, I can just as easily stream those 10GB 1080p files over wireless, and anyone who claims otherwise is full of shit. Furthermore, anyone who can't do so simply isn't deploying their wireless networks correctly, either by lack of skill or understanding. Stop spreading unsubstantiated FUD.

And no, the processor in those media boxes doesn't matter any more for wireless as it does for wired as far as being capable of "pushing" things or anything of the sort. The processors that handle network connectivity are, you know, network processors like the Atheros, Broadcom or RALink processor inside the dongle you connect to the player.

Simply put, wireless is fine. Intel even allows real-time 1080p to be streamed over wireless as part of their new Wireless Display specification. If it's good enough to do that, streaming a high-def movie at any bitrate is going to be a walk in the park.