Increasing Wifi speed in living room

[sohaibrazzaq]

Hey all, I have a TPLink TD-W8980 wifi router + ADSL modem which is hooked to my PC that acts as a media server. The mentioned router is Dual Band Wireless N 300 + 300 simultaneous router. At 2.4GHz band I get an average transfer speed of 10.5 MB/s in the same room, good enough but in my living room where my smart tv is the transfer speed drops to an average speed of 3.5 - 4 MB/s.

Now that speed is ok and I get no problem streaming mkv's and other hd media but when I play m2ts videos from BD folders stored on my media server they lag which is understandable as they usually have overall bitrate of 48mbps, in order to play those fluently I need a transfer rate of around 6.5-7 MB/s in my living room. 7 x 8 = 56Mbps

The purpose of this post is just that, is it possible to increase transfer speed of my wifi in my living room by means of signal boosters or something? If so then which one do you suggest. I have also tried mucking with wifi settings but they don't help much. I get around 3 bar signal in my living room, I tried lowering transmit power but that didn't help, it is currently set to 100% which is max allowed in settings.
I have also tried changing channels which have very minimum effect, no huge gains. And oh, my Samsung smart tv does have wifi n but not sure if it is 150 or 300 mbps, don't know if it will make any difference though.

[yoda313]

http://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Universal-Ethernet-Adapter-WNCE2001/dp/B003KPBRRW/ref=sr...gear+universal

Check that out. I have one but I can't remember if it's the 150 or 300 model. I can stream vudu hdx without stuttering from a wifi n router to a different room just fine. (a sony bluray player that is lan only but has the smart apps, this makes it wireless)

Though I admit I haven't tested streaming bluray rips with it so I don't know if its ideal for that heavy of a payload.

Worth looking into though.

Edit - fyi I have cable internet through comcast.

[sohaibrazzaq]

I am not trying to stream bluray rips but actual bluray m2ts video files from bluray folders that are usually 40GB+ and with an overall bitrate of around 50mbit. 1080p rips which have max bitrate of 20mbps stream fine on my tv without any problem.

The link you gave is pretty identical to TP link wireless repeater I was already looking at:
http://www.tp-link.sg/products/details/?model=TL-WA850RE

Guess the only test can be to take your laptop to somewhere you are getting 3 or less bar signal, copy a file over your wifi network and see the transfer speed, then turn on the range booster and copy the same file to check the difference. Time to fork out some money and experimentation.

[yoda313]

The link you gave is pretty identical to TP link wireless repeater I was already looking at:

Not exactly. The netgear link is a dummy device. The way I think of it is actually a RECEIVING unit. So far as I know it is just a receiving unit that will let you connect a device with a lan port and make it wireless. It must do transmitting and receiving obviously but to boil it down to the bare basics its a receiver unit to turn your device into a wifi capable unit.

So I think it would be cheaper in that sense.

Time to fork out some money and experimentation.

I'd love to help out with the unit I own but I won't be able to right away. I can try with a bluray rip and I did mean the original files not a h264 encode job.

I might try it during the holiday break.

If you haven't bought something by next weekend I'll still post it. I'll to check back to see if you did go and buy something.

Otherwise if you aren't in a hurry I can try to do a test this holiday break.