Wireless video server?

[moosik]

I am using Squeezebox 2 as a wireless music server from my hard-drive. I was wondering if there is a similar technology for wireless (or even wired) broadcast of DVDs stored on a hard drive.

[Treebeard]

You could build your own media file server to store all your dvd's in ISO format. I would go with wired gigabit connection for streaming reliabilty, music runs great wireless b/c its low bitrate and size. And if you build a server I would probably set it up as Raid 5 in case of a disc failure.


Heres a discussion that may interest you.
http://htpcnews.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18591&hl=

[greymalkin]

edited to spare myself further embarrassment.

[shiet]

for streaming DVD you need about 1MB/sec
= a solid reliable wifi or a 10MB/sec lan

i just tried it over the wireless B... and a 100MB/s lan...
no frame drops

[ROF]

I use a D-link media player to stream video all the time to my home theater. It's wireless G 54Mbps and has no problems at all. No need to run cumbersome wires unless you are transmitting through several walls and floors.

[Treebeard]

I use a D-link media player to stream video all the time to my home theater. It's wireless G 54Mbps and has no problems at all. No need to run cumbersome wires unless you are transmitting through several walls and floors.

Yes, proximity of wireless AP to the machine does play an important part. just wait til blue ray movies are here and we try streaming them.

[bits]

One other small point to remember is that anything that transmits or recieves at 2.4GHz will interfer with your wireless network!

If you want max performance and reliability go with wired.

[greymalkin]

i'm a terrible terrible person.
you may all flog me for my terrible math mistake.

i was careful to give accurate transfer rates of the lan technologies but failed to convert the 9.8mbps max dvd rate to bytes per second. So approximately 1.22 megabytes per second is all that is needed for dvd transfers. So in theory wireless g would be fine and wireless b would barely squeak in.

[ROF]

It's going to be quite sometime before we see an affordable PC internal blu-ray drive. Most people will be looking at buying an external set top device which in most cases won't be streaming the video. Even if it were it wouldn't be able to stream it properly due to IP protections for the HD content of the media.

[shiet]

yeah, 'IP' ... screw fair use...

anywho, for now we can download those HD clips & demos they have

[DereX888]

my home 'main dump' has few shared drives 120-200GB. It is running Windows 2000 from a separate old 6GB drive. It is hooked through 100Mb wire to the d-link router.
It has accounts for all the users on my home network, so anyone on the network can access this machine and its drives with music, videos and DVDs (their Video_ts folders).
There are no stupid Digital Restrictions Management in this configuration, thus there is no problems whatsoever to play any music or video on any machine on the network. One laptop has just 11Mbps wireless connection - yet it is still enough to play DVDs over the network even in the furthest corner of my backyard.
I also have a special account for remote connection with an admin priviledge, and a net meeting remote desktop sharing running.
In this configuration I can easily acces the machine from anywhere in the world through internet, and do whatever I want on it (providing there is sufficient connection speed ofcourse).
I never understand why would anyone use any DRM'ed software for 'sharing' your own music/video on your own home network

[ROF]

@DereX888

Do you live in a house with walls? Do you have an outside repeater? I can not reliably stream video to my backyard. The only structures between the points is two walls(one inner wall in the room the PC is located in and a wall which houses my back door. I can stream music without much issue but video becomes to unstable to reliably watch it. How do you do it on your limited bandwidth? BTW, I have Wireless G 108Mbps but the D-Link media player which is in the home theater is only 54Mbps.

[greymalkin]

he has walls in his house..and they are all covered in tin foil

[ROF]

I have a hat made of tin foil for those paranoia days.

[edDV]

I've found that wireless B and G are not up to DVD sustained rates. It's more like VCD 1100 Kb/s and on a very good day SVCD 2.6 Mb/s for a dedicated G link.

802.11 specs are for burst, not sustained transfer rates. Your mileage may vary but in all cases it's better to go wired.

PS: It is possible to move video data nonrealtime wirelessly to a local video server at the watching point. Then the playout is from the server, not realtime over wireless.

[DereX888]

@DereX888

Do you live in a house with walls? Do you have an outside repeater? I can not reliably stream video to my backyard. The only structures between the points is two walls(one inner wall in the room the PC is located in and a wall which houses my back door. I can stream music without much issue but video becomes to unstable to reliably watch it. How do you do it on your limited bandwidth? BTW, I have Wireless G 108Mbps but the D-Link media player which is in the home theater is only 54Mbps.

How about reading on subject before asking me ridiculus question like "do you live in a house with walls"?

Before I changed my home network to wireless, I've read alot.
I found out one most important factor for problem free wireless network:
location of the transmitting/receiving antenna (in my case its the location of the whole router).
I wasn't willing to move entire home server machine to my living room, which is located somehow in the middle of the area we use wireless devices. So I just installed the router there, I hid it behind plants on the shelf, and ran only 2 wires inside the wall (1 for internet, 2nd for my home 'media server'). Thats all. Works perfectly for me. Never had any problems, including streaming DVD-Video from VOBs located on the media server machine.
Yes, there are too many walls to have a good reception i.e. at the street where my driveway begins (I tested it), probably there are other bad connection spots throughout my property too, but I obviously don't sit on the curb in front of my house with my notebook on my laps, nor don't I use it in my attic etc etc, so who cares?
Use your brain and place your router (or its antenna if it has some external one) in the middle of the area where you will use it, not in the geometrical center of your property

My D-Link is standard G 108Mbps too.
But I am sure in most cases even standard B should be enough for streaming DVD-Video (one of my laptops has just 11Mbps pc card, and its still enough - edit: see below).

Perhaps youre using one of those stupid DRM'ed software? ( i.e. that D-Link media player - I have no clue whats that)
I am not sure, but perhaps DRM has something to do with it if its not working for you?
I have few ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon and ATI Radeon cards in my machines.
I've used once ATI's software to setup streaming for videos etc (part of ATI's MultiMediaCenter software, don't remember its exact name now, where you setup one machine as server and other machines as clients) and it was a DISASTER! I couldn't stream DVD-Video over the same network at all, only VCD and SVCD and alike low bitrate files were viewable. But as soon as I ditched that stupid DRM'ed ATI software - it works now no sweat.
For DVD-Video I use PowerDVD software player on all of my machines. Everyone simply navigates to network drive , selects the video_ts folder of desired movie, and play. It works.
For all other media files (except MP3 - I still like good old WinAmp 2.9) I use standard-issue Windows Media Player 6.4 that came with Windows 2000 (and on a machine with WinXP I have there WMP6 set as default player for all its supported formats too; open "Run" type "mplayer2.exe" and hit enter, this will open WMP6 that is hiding on WinXP; go to View/Options/Formats and click "select all" to set it up as default player for all supported formats and kick out this stupid behemoth WMP9/10 goodbye)
Oh, and for mounting disc images over the network (i.e. for SVCDs I prefer to dump them as images on the server, to keep subtitles, chapters etc options available) i use Alcohol 120%, but I know there is plenty of other software capable of mounting remotely stored disc images.

EDIT:
here's a screencap of network-accessed DVD files stored on my 'media dump' taken from my 'kitchen' notebook, with the indication of its network connection speed:
(in powerdvd select "open dvd on hard disk drive" and navigate to your network drive)


and here is the tiny 'kitchen' notebook playing the movie with my hand for size comparison (notebook is 'sticked' with two long velcro strips to the top left side of fridge - example of my 'invention' how to reuse the old hardware instead of throwing it away or selling for a dollar etc - pic just taken with my cell, so its crappy, sorry)

this is one of the furthest distance from the router inside my house; connection goes through 4 walls, about 20-25 meters in straight line.

So yeah, your question shouldn't ask me do I live in a house without walls, but should've ask yourself "do I live in a bunker with thick cement or steel walls?" :P

[patricksull]

I too am looking for a solution. I want to stream music/video/pics to my home theater room. Most people have a pc involved, which is what I use now with my xbox, but I want a stand alone unit (i.e. buffalo's theather link or d-link's media center). I want a wireless unit that will have high def, digital in/out, etc. I just bought a terastation, so I plan on storing my goods there. So my questions are 1: what other options are available for stand alone units to be used between terastation and home theater processor, 2: what format is best for storing (quality without taking up tons of storage). I have used vobs, iso images, avi, mpeg......Again, what is the best format?

thanks

[bits]

I too am looking for a solution. I want to stream music/video/pics to my home theater room. Most people have a pc involved, which is what I use now with my xbox, but I want a stand alone unit (i.e. buffalo's theather link or d-link's media center). I want a wireless unit that will have high def, digital in/out, etc. I just bought a terastation, so I plan on storing my goods there. So my questions are 1: what other options are available for stand alone units to be used between terastation and home theater processor, 2: what format is best for storing (quality without taking up tons of storage). I have used vobs, iso images, avi, mpeg......Again, what is the best format?

thanks

I have been using the Linkplayer2 for about 6 months now and really enjoy it. However, I strongly recommend against going wireless if you want robust, reliable, stable video transfer. Bite the bullet and run a LAN line to your media player, which in turn is connected to your TV. Go to the avs forum or others that deal with media players and you will quickly find that the overwhelming recomendation is to go wired for video.

1. Linkplayer2 or JVC HD Pro
2. The best is stay with mpeg2 using a CBR of 6-8Mb/sec. Cut commercials, this will save about 25% on storage space. I say this because if you use DivX, view on a Big screen TV and do not want to sacrifice quality then going DivX will only save you 25-35% in storage. The work and hassle it is not worth it in my opinion.

When it comes to commercial movies you will need to confirm that the media player you purchase can handle vobs and or iso in the way you want it to. I decrypt and remove everything except the movie and the audio track I want then convert to a one large mpeg file. I do not recommend storing large numbers of commercial DVD movies on HDD. It is a huge amount of work and can vanish in an instant!

[DereX888]

many people forget that the speed output of your wi-fi is a combined number - i.e. 11, 54 or 108Mbps is the total, not the speed per each connection; which means i.e. if youre using an internet on 1 machine, your 2nd machine is participating in some p2p actively, and your 3rd machine is already accessing some files over your local network from one of them - then there is probably not much 'juice' left in your wifi to reliably stream in the same time that dvd-video from one of the machines to your media player

Ofcourse nothing beats 100 or 1000Mbps wired network.

[smearbrick1]

I've found that wireless B and G are not up to DVD sustained rates. It's more like VCD 1100 Kb/s and on a very good day SVCD 2.6 Mb/s for a dedicated G link.

802.11 specs are for burst, not sustained transfer rates. Your mileage may vary but in all cases it's better to go wired.

PS: It is possible to move video data nonrealtime wirelessly to a local video server at the watching point. Then the playout is from the server, not realtime over wireless.

I am using a wireless G network setup from my media server to my Xbox (with media center). I ofter stream full res DVD video from the server (in ISO format) to the Xbox. I have yet to see one hiccup. Maybe the buffer settings on the Xbox are what do it. If it is, it doesn't take long to fill the buffer. I may take 5 seconds to load a 4 Gig ISO file.