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what is the current state of/solution to streaming 1080p content?

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JustinChase:
I really don't want to run cat5/6 cable to the outside walls of my home, so I'm left with a wireless solution.

I know I'll need to upgrade to wireless N, but beyond that, reports are all over the place.  What I've read is that no solution is guaranteed (or even promised) to work when trying to stream 1080p content.  I'm okay with that.  however, I'd like to increase my odds of success as much as possible by making good decisions up front.

I'm also fine with MC transcoding the 1080p mkv files to a smaller file to stream, since the laptop resolution isn't 1080 anyway, 720 would be fine with me.

I've messed around with trying to get video streaming to work, and keep seeing reports in new builds that it works, but I've never had any luck.  Of course, I am still running a wireless G solution, but if I could get conversion to work at all, I could get poor quality to the laptop, then know that a faster wireless connection should lead to better quality.

However, I can't seem to get MC library server to convert at all, so I'm stuck.

With that said, does anyone have a solid solution to make this work?

Matt:
I push a lot of 1080i television around my house using a slow wireless connection (54 MBit / G) with Media Center and Library Server.

It's not super fast to start or seek, but otherwise it works fine.  The television system does a nice job of buffering.

I haven't tried 1080p MKV files.

Osho:
I have tried 1080p MKV streaming over wireless (802.11n) and do it routinely. It works well. I am streaming it to a 1080p 50" plasma so I do not do any conversion. The content I have tried is : 1080i OTA .ts recordings, 1080p mkv from blu-ray rips, 1080i/1080p recorded from consumer HD camcorder (usually at around 16Mbps AVCHD encoding). All of these work well after some experiments. Here is what I have learned along the way.


* Do not do any transcoding, i.e. conversion to 720p or other formats. The compute power requirements to do this in real-time (i.e. transcode 1 second of 1080p to 1 second of 720p in 1 second of wall-clock time) is very demanding.
* Get a "good" 802.11n router. Preferably one that works on both 2.4 and 5 GHz frequency. Read the test reviews at http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless in pick from one of the ones in their performance leaderboard. I use Dlink DIR-655 but I believe there are better ones available in the market right now. Ditto for your wireless client in your desktop/laptop (if you have a choice - most laptops already come with something built-in - which may work just fine).
* If possible, change your wireless to 802.11n only. I couldn't do it as my smartphone requires 802.11g - but I have heard that making 802.11n only wireless increases through-put. YMMV.
All said and done, your location may be the biggest impediment in getting this to work if you usually put your laptop in one of the dead-zone. Moving to 5GHz helps alleviate some dead-zones but not all. If you live a mansion, your options may be limited :).

Osho

BartMan01:
Pushing 1080p around on anything other than a 1GB wired network is going to completely dependent on having a close to ideal setup.  From my personal experience:

Wireless N should theoretically work, but in my house it does not.
100MB ethernet and '200MB' (really more like 80MB up/down) power-line networking are marginal.
1GB ethernet networking works.

Everything above works fine with 1080i or 720p, but as soon as I start to push 1080p files around things start to fall apart with anything less that 1GB.

YannisA:
Don't forget also the dependency of the mkv size.
For example, a 2 hour movie of 25Gb, needs a throughput of 3,6 Mb/sec as an average.
A 2 hour movie of 8Gb, needs the 1/3, ie 1,2 Mb/sec, which i think is possible for 802.11g. (including any peaks of bandwidth).
 

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