Netgear N750 for streaming HD over lan

[cougs_83]

Just wondering if anyone has any feedback on how the N750 from Netgear works for streaming HD across a LAN. Right now I have a Linksys WRT160N v 3. Both are 3oo Mbps routers. But it looks like everyone is saying pretty good things about the N750. I know it is a lot newer and technology should have improved. It shows up to 450Mbps but it looks as though that is on the 5gh band which doesn't have great range. Don't want to swap my 2.4 cards just to find out the speed doesn't improve because the range isn't as good.

Would just like some feedback.

I would really like to avoid wired connections running through my home if at all possible. I will be building a new home within a year and plan to hard wire it for gigabyte. But until then I would like to avoid the hassle of wiring everything.

PS I would like to be able to stream video recorded from my Hauppauge 1212 HD PVR. to multiple PC's throughout my home. most video has been captured at rates between 6Mbps and 12Mbps. There are a few with variable bitrate, but most are constant.

[redwudz]

I can't directly comment on the Netgear N750. I have a Netgear WNR3500 and it seems to work fine to my laptop with a 'N' connection. I tried a MKV at about 12Mbps average and it played smoothly using MPC-HC, though my laptop was using about 30% CPU at times. (I rarely use it for HD playback.) The CPU usage would probably improve with some tweaking in MPC-HC.

I checked the Task Manager and it showed about 7% max usage of the 150Mbps connection, so plenty of bandwidth available. I use the 2.4Ghz band. (Edited)

However, with several wireless devices connected at the same time, all viewing HD video, you could have a problem. I only have my laptop wireless. The rest of my system is wired gigabit LAN.

[cougs_83]

I definitely wouldn't be trying to stream multiple HD movies simultaneously. I just want to be able to stream them to multiple PC's period.

3Mhz? Is that specific to the WNR3500? Is the signal strength better than 5Mhz but receives less interference than 2.4? I have turned off all other pc's and the fastest transfer rate that I can get is up to about 3MBps at a 24Mbps transfer rate I would think I would be able to stream a 6Mbps file. I guess a lot more plays into it though than just 24Mbps > 6Mbps. I have notices that as I was tweaking my current router and improving the network speed that it seemed to get closer to streaming.

Surprised that your 12 Mbps file played while utilizing 7% of your 150Mbps connection. Unless I am calculating wrong that would mean it was using 10.5 Mbps to transfer a 12 Mbps file.

I am still learning about this so I am sure it is just something that I don't know about yet. All my files I have kept in .ts. Maybe that is making a difference?

[smitbret]

The theoretical 450mbps would only be possible if you have the 3 stream hardware on the receiving end, too. If you're gonna need to get a new router anyway, then you might as well get something 450 capable but if you already have a wireless N router I wouldn't upgrade just yet.

That being said, I stream untranscoded Blu-ray rips across my wireless N connection (300mbps) with no problem. 60 and 70mbps peaks have been fine so far. From my experience, you can expect less than half the range of a 2.4Ghz connection with a 5Ghz. A single wall can kill the signal strength. My router and bridge are about 12 feet apart through a floor snd wall and if I don't have my antennae and bridge in the right spots, m signal strength can drop to the high 20's. With everything in thhe right spot, I usually see 75-85%. 5Ghz is just moody.

[redwudz]

I don't know how reliable or accurate Task Manager is in reading the LAN throughput. That file was also a variable bitrate MKV, so the transferred bitrate is all over the place. I'm not sure I have a constant bitrate MKV file.

The '3Mhz' was a typo. It should have said 2.4Ghz band. I'll change that in my other post. I never had much luck setting up the 5Ghz band and only my laptop is used wirelessly, and it's only at 2.4Ghz, so I didn't pursue it. Some wireless routers can use both bands simultaneously. If only 5Ghz is enabled, some devices such as laptops may not work, AFAIK.

[cougs_83]

The theoretical 450mbps would only be possible if you have the 3 stream hardware on the receiving end, too. If you're gonna need to get a new router anyway, then you might as well get something 450 capable but if you already have a wireless N router I wouldn't upgrade just yet.

That being said, I stream untranscoded Blu-ray rips across my wireless N connection (300mbps) with no problem. 60 and 70mbps peaks have been fine so far. From my experience, you can expect less than half the range of a 2.4Ghz connection with a 5Ghz. A single wall can kill the signal strength. My router and bridge are about 12 feet apart through a floor snd wall and if I don't have my antennae and bridge in the right spots, m signal strength can drop to the high 20's. With everything in thhe right spot, I usually see 75-85%. 5Ghz is just moody.

This is what is frustrating. I know the Linksys Wrt160n was an early wireless N router. I am nowhere near 60-70 Mbps peak or otherwise. I have heard people say the N750 or N900 from Netgear is giving them very fast speeds. My router is stable. I just can't get above 24 Mbps consistently. And that just isn't getting it done.

[cougs_83]

So I decided against the Netgear N750 looked like the reviews weren't the best. To do a little testing I actually went and picked up a Belkin N750 router and two dual band 300Mbps +300 Mbps N600 belkin wireless N cards. Read some good things about the Belkin router and wanted to see if I would notice a speed improvement which I did.

On the 5Ghz band I was getting transfer speeds of 7+ MBps when copying a large file from PC to PC. Again my issue is that I am attempting to stream .ts files recorded anywhere from 6-12 Mbps. To me it seems like that speed should far exceed what I need to stream the video files over my WLAN.

Now I am starting to wonder if my hardware is just insufficient on the receiving PC that I am most concerned about streaming the files to. It seemed like there wasn't really any improvement to the amount of glitches when steaming (original transfer rate between pc's was between 2.5 -3 MBps. on old network) (new network transfer speeds 7 MBps +)

Can someone tell me if my hardware is lacking.

CPU intel Pentium (R) 4 3.20 Ghz
2GB pc 6400 Ram
NX 7900 GT MSI video card (I know this is more than I need. Picked it up for 10$)

Let me know if there are any other specs that could factor in

[smitbret]

I think you are probably overanalyzing your network. If you can connect at all to a wireless N network, then you should be able to watch a 6-12mbps video stream. In fact, a decent wireless G connection should carry that.

Your hardware is fine to stream media. However, if you are streaming h264 encoded HD video, your bottleneck could be on the CPU end. A 3.2Ghz P4 is really not a good CPU for h264 playback, especially if you are running any other processes in the background. If the receiving PC has the same or lesser specs then I would be willing to bet that decoding the h264 stream in real time is more than it can handle. I had a AMD 4400+ dual core that struggled with that task, so I can imagine what the task would be doing to a single core.

[cougs_83]

Awesome that is exactly what I was thinking. In fact I was looking around at local used CPU's and found a dual core 4400+ for 25$ that I was thinking would probably work. You said the 4400+ struggles to decoding the h264 stream do you think I need to find something a bit better?

The sending PC has a Phenom 8450 triple core.

[smitbret]

It could play 720p/1080i as long as I wasn't doing anything "extra" besides normal antivirus and firewall stuff sitting in the system tray. Occasionally it would take a few seconds before it would play clearly and kind of set itself, but they would usually playback ok. 1080p was a different story. It was just choppy or never really load up at all and I would be staring at a black screen listening to the audio while the CPU tried to play catch up.

It may be less expensive to invest in a video card that offloads HD playback from the CPU. Most of the current cards will do this, even the cheap ones.

[cougs_83]

Is there a setting to have my graphics card offload the HD playback from the CPU? I assume my video card should be able to handle that not sure how to set it up though.

[smitbret]

It'll do it automatically. You'll need to have an Nvidia card with Purevideo VP4 or higher or AMD card with UVD. A 7900 won't have it. Your software needs to support it, too, but most mainstream players already do (Windows Media Player, etc.). If video playback is all you're worried about then $30-50 for a GT210 or GT220 might be a better investment than a new CPU.