Streaming HD content wirelessly IS possible!

[LongbowFoSho]

I've FINALLY gotten PMS to stream 720p content wirelessly to my PS3 without stuttering nearly 100% of the time. I've been trying for nearly a year to get this to happen, but the stuttering would always start at some point in the movie, usually within the first 10-30 minutes with no stopping once it started.

Obviously, I'm not streaming DTS sound with 1080p resolution, but I AM able to watch 720p mkv files with 5.1 AC3 sound (384 kbits/s) with almost zero stuttering.

I think a lot of it had to do with my router being nearly 120 feet away at the other end of the house with at least six walls between the PS3 and the router. Once I moved the router to the room next door (and did some other minor tweaks in PMS), everything became much easier. Now I don't have to use the TsMuxer GUI to demux and convert DTS tracks to AC3, then remux and split them into 4 GB files onto my 500 GB external and then run it back and forth between the PS3 and my PC to transfer files or play them. Now I leave my 500GB external plugged into the desktop and stream it directly from there. I was also able to reformat my external back into NTFS so I don't have to split files in order to accommodate the FAT32 4GB file size transfer limit. Its grrrrrrreat!

The crazy part? I can actually stream HD content from my wireless laptop to the PS3.

I'm going to post all the relevant info I can think of in hopes that others can use it to do the same thing. While I would love to be able to stream 1080p movies with DTS on a badass gigabit network, some of us don't have the resources to be able to do that. I would have to run a shit-ton of new wiring in my house as well as spend more $$$ on routers, etc. Besides, I'm only in this house for another year and then renting it out after that, so spending the money to install a good network setup (only to move a few months later) doesn't make much sense for me.

For those that are trying this and wondering about my specs:

The desktop:

3.4 Ghz P4
1 GB RAM
500 GB external connected via USB
XP Home
Linksys WRT-54G router with Tomato firmware


The laptop:

2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB RAM
Vista Home Premium 64-bit

The PS3: Original release 60GB (not that it matters, just giving all the info I can)

PMS Settings: I've included some screen captures of PMS to show all relevant settings. Everything not shown is still at the default setting. These settings are for the desktop. The only difference between these settings and the laptop is the selection of 2 cores on the transcoding tab.







Now, I have to admit that sometimes I do experience SOME stuttering, but its easily corrected by:

1. Hitting L2 to momentarily rewind for no more than 3 seconds. The image won't even change.
2. Hit "X" to continue viewing. I say hit "X" only because pushing Start seems to cause a DLNA error, making the movie start over or suddenly "corrupt". X just seems to work better.

After hitting X to continue playing, the video may stutter again momentarily, but it usually smooths out within a few seconds.

I may be the only one left trying to stream HD stuff wirelessly, but at least shagrath will know that PMS indeed capable of streaming wireless HD content.

True story.

[xcalibur]

Sorry to burst your bubble my friend,
but you have so degraded your movies quality by selecting 25-8-3 it makes the eyes bleed :\

Close but no cigar I'm afraid :\

[LongbowFoSho]

The quality is degraded? No shit.

Like I already said, I'm not getting 1080p or anything like that, but its definitely HD quality, albeit a bit grainier than I would prefer. It is certainly better than DVD quality, but I'm sure you've never had to partake in such an assault on the eyes.

Thanks for bringing your blowhard videophile nonsense into my thread that was meant to encourage and help others.

[raven-au]

Sorry to burst your bubble my friend,
but you have so degraded your movies quality by selecting 25-8-3 it makes the eyes bleed :\

Close but no cigar I'm afraid :\

Don't think so!
From what I've seen so far that setting is only used when transcoding.
In this case the mkv should be sent to tsMuxer by mencoder with little more than a copy.

Ian

[madmoe]

Hey mate,
Just saw your post about being able to stream HD content on wireless to the PS3 without any stuttering!! Very well done on that!

Just last night I was able to get PS3mediaserver working and was able to stream most stuff well except my .MKV files.....it would start and stop all the time

Now the PS3 is connecting wirelessly to my Cisco EPC 2425 router (the latest NTL one) but I would prefer it to be wired to the router as they are side by side under my TV. The thing is for some God only knows reason when I wire it in directly, the PS3 can't then see the PS3mediaserver running on my laptop I'm sure if I could get this working there would be less stutter for the .MKV files.

Is your PS3 connected to your router wirelessely and how is the laptop connecting to the router?

Cheers,
M

[raven-au]

Just saw your post about being able to stream HD content on wireless to the PS3 without any stuttering!! Very well done on that!

Well, almost without pauses. It's kind of difficult to do as you know.
There are a couple of unavoidable facts that we have to live with.

First, if the media server machine does any sustained disk IO it will interrupt the stream for a bit. I guess the disk IO takes priority over the network IO.
And, wireless has an annoying habit of the signal varying a lot which means you need to have wireless bandwidth somewhat more than your stream bandwidth for it to work OK. But I've managed to get it going fairly well. I was able to watch Stargate The Ark Of Truth (1080p) on my Sony Bravia with only one pause which was caused by me waking up the computer making it swap in the Gnome session. I'm only able to get 720p reliably to my sons PS3 (in another room) with its 54g wireless. But I'll fix that by installing another WRT320N wireless router (see below).

Just last night I was able to get PS3mediaserver working and was able to stream most stuff well except my .MKV files.....it would start and stop all the time

Now the PS3 is connecting wirelessly to my Cisco EPC 2425 router (the latest NTL one) but I would prefer it to be wired to the router as they are side by side under my TV. The thing is for some God only knows reason when I wire it in directly, the PS3 can't then see the PS3mediaserver running on my laptop I'm sure if I could get this working there would be less stutter for the .MKV files.

That's odd.

I would have thought the broadcasts should be passed through untouched, although maybe the switch on the Cisco is not really acting like a switch (bridge).
If you connect everything with wire then the only potential problem should be transoding overhead. I avoid that wherever I can by using things that my renderers can display natively, at least for high definition. I doubt I would be able to display 720p or higher if it had to be converted on the fly.

Is your PS3 connected to your router wirelessely and how is the laptop connecting to the router?

Well, everything is connected by wireless, between rooms in my house.

I have an oldish computer (using Fedora 12) running PS3MS that is connected by wire to a WRT610N (using dd-wrt, build 13064).

On that router I have set the 2.4Ghz wireless to act as a repeater bridge (so I can add a virtual interface) which connects to another router with my internet connection. I added a virtual 2.4Ghz wireless interface so that my sons PS3 and XBox360 can connect directly to the router to avoid double handling of the wireless traffic (which gets me a good increase in throughput) for serving video, but they can still reach the internet via that router. The PS3 54G wireless connection is just sufficient to handle 720p (PS3MS reports around 16-18Mb/s) streaming and I get occasional pauses. The 5Ghz wireless on the WRT610N can be used independently of the 2.4Ghz wireless on these routers and I have a WRT320N (using dd-wrt, build 13064) in the living room set to use 5Ghz and it connects as a client (bridge) to the 5Ghz interface of the WRT610N. In spite of a number of walls and obstacles I still get around 30Mb/s reported in PS3MS and that is sufficient to handle the 18-25Mb/s (or so) needed for 1080p streaming.

The pauses I do get aren't actually that annoying since they happen so occasionally, as long as I leave the server alone that is,

I'm going to get another WRT320N for my sons kit, so I should be able to stream 1080p video to the PS3. The XBox360 is another question since I'll probably have to do some heavy transoding to display just about anything on "it" but it is in the same cabinet as the PS3, so that's not really a problem.

Ian

[LongbowFoSho]

Ian, I'm having hard time understanding how a N wireless router would make a difference with wireless streaming considering the PS3 only supports up to G speeds. Is there something I don't know?

[raven-au]

Ian, I'm having hard time understanding how a N wireless router would make a difference with wireless streaming considering the PS3 only supports up to G speeds. Is there something I don't know?

Yeah, I thought the above would be a bit hard to digest.

Your right, but between router the server is connected to, and the router the the TV is connected to, both ends are wireless N "and" I'm using the 5Ghz band, which is commonly faster than 2.4Ghz wireless N. So I'm getting about 30Mb/s out of that even though there are a bunch of walls and obstacles between the two devices which is sufficient to stream 1080p to the TV. Putting another wireless N router in (set to use the 5Ghz band) to connect both the XBox360 and the PS3 to the router that the server is connected to will give them the the same bandwidth the TV gets (I expect, since there are less obstacles). Also, I admit that I increased the transmit power of the 5Ghz wireless on each router a little as well and got an extra 1-2 Mb/s although people advise against doing it.

AFAICT 1080p needs between 18-25 Mb/s (with some higher peaks) so that fits quite well for the TV.

People say that wireless G clients perform a little better when connected to a wireless N device but that's probably wishful thinking. I get around 15-18Mb/s to the PS3 over its 54G wireless. I can't remember now what I needed for 720p, but I think it was around 8 to 15 Mb/s (but I'd need to check that again), I remember thinking it was just sufficient for 720p with little or no allowance for peaks, so those numbers are probably a bit low.

So, in reality, the only thing that really matters is that you have enough bandwidth between devices and, for wireless, enough extra to cover the relatively wide variations in signal strength and consequently speed of the link and the varying bandwidth requirement of the video stream. As long as the sums add up and you don't get hit with disk IO for something like paging from memory over commit or the wakeup of an interactive session or the like then it should work,

Unfortunately, often the numbers don't quite add up!

Ian

[CANUCKER]

Sorry to burst your bubble my friend,
but you have so degraded your movies quality by selecting 25-8-3 it makes the eyes bleed :\

Close but no cigar I'm afraid :\

I have been doing 720P for years at 3-2-3

[jbarr2000]

I just started using PS3MS, don't really know much about anything. I basically installed it and ran it with the default settings, except I upped the buffer to 600. AC3 is set to 640 and quality is at 1-1-2 and I'm streaming 720p over wireless just fine. Am I missing something?