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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).
 

[lhwidget]

I'm very interested in streaming 1080p content wirelessly because I live in an apartment.  After 4 years of putzing around with this, my results are as follows:

From a WHS running on an ATX motherboard with a two core Celeron and WD green drives (Drive Extender service turned off while streaming) to various HTPCs, all with hardware like the server or better.

Audio - un-compressed wave files
Streaming load: ≈ 1400 kb/s (1.4 mb/s)
Trivial load, wireless G works fine.

DVDs
Streaming load: ≈ 5 to 9 mb/s
Had occasional dropouts using wireless G, wireless N works fine.

HDTV (live and recorded)
Streaming load: 10 to 20 mb/s
Stream size depends on broadcast quality and actual audio used in broadcast (ie 720p + 2 audio channels vs 1080i + 5.1 (6) audio channels)
Have occasional dropouts using wireless N, but this is typically minor and I'm currently using this set-up.  Wireless G was unusable, too much stuttering/dropouts.

Bluray (Unencrypted ripped files)
Streaming load: 25 to 45 mb/s (mostly depends on number of audio tracks and if they are ripped to compressed format or left as true HD audio (up to 7.1 ( channels @ 96 kHz sample rate & 24 bit depth)
100 mb/s wired connections typically carry this load with ease, and wired gigabit connections don't break a sweat.
I haven't been able to get usable results over wireless N bridges on the 5 GHz channels.

The key to clean BluRay streaming is consistent performance.  Whats remarkable (in a bad way) is the sustained performance of wireless networking equipment.  Using Netgear WNHDE111s as AP/bridge pairs, I see very high data rates for tiny files, but as soon as I stream, or transfer a large file, the sustained through-put drops to hugely reduced levels...

I use Net Meter to monitor the network performance at the receiving computer and see the following;  For large file transfers (copying three 1.3 GB files) to simulate streaming:
100 Mb/s wired connection - 60 to 80 Mb/s
1000 Mb/s wired connection - 450 to 580 Mb/s
Wireless N - 25 to 35 Mb/s

The problem is in the sustained performance during the transfer.  To prevent stutters/dropouts, the transfer rate needs to always be above the maximum bit rate of the media.  For BluRays, 60 Mb/s would provide a comfortable margin, and 40 Mb/s would probably provide usable performance with only occasional dropouts.  Instead of a nice steady 25 to 35 Mb/s performance on my wireless N connection, I see the transfer rate hold steady at about 25 Mb/s with drops to about 5 Mb/s occurring.  These drops in transfer rate will cause stutters if they are short, or stop playback if the outlast the receiving program's buffer (not very long for a BluRay with HD audio).

After looking at the streaming performance of the Wireless N and 500 Mb/s Powerline products tested at SmallNetBuilder, it's possible to get usable performance from either of these systems if everything is perfect and you're not trying to transmit a stream too far, in other words, under ideal circumstances only.  Otherwise, you see streaming performance ranging from 60 to 80 Mb/s (ideal) to 14 Mb/s to a tough location.  Powerline products and a few of the 3 radio wireless N products are providing more reliable streaming performance (ie, fewer or no dropouts), but the actual streaming rates are in the range above.  They're getting close, but they aren't there yet.

Right now, wire is still the only way to get reliable (ie, perfect, no dropout) performance for HD video, and a good 100 Mb/s network works fine.