Wireless media systems

[Richard C]

All my music & many of my DVD’s are kept on my main desktop PC in a study. I have limited hard wired system at the moment but have been looking into wireless audio streaming to a high end Dennon A/V, CD, DVD & speaker system in my lounge. A friend has had a Phillips media system for about a year now & I was quiet impressed by this; I was also considering the possibility of video streaming to the same A/V unit.
Still in the process of learning/understand wireless networking at the moment so am not very conversant & struggling a bit in understanding the necessary transfer rates. There seems to be loads of different solutions available & I don’t want to replace one lot of stand alone kit in the lounge with another that is equally as obtrusive. So, before I start spending (wasting?) money, I’m wondering at just what stage this technology is at the moment? Things have already moved on from my friend Phillips system & he only has a budget Hi Fi; bearing in mind the sound quality I have at the moment, am I likely to be disappointed?
With video, what transfer rate would be required for, say, using a PC DVD player & streaming this to the A/V system? Again, is the technology there yet or will I be disappointed with the video/audio quality compared to what I have now? Anyone got any experience with this sort of thing? Any advice on transfer rates to aim for or particular equipment available greatly appreciated.

 

[holmslaw]

Its easier for me to describe my system.
I do not and would not bother trying to stream video to my tv. An AVI movie is about 700MB, therefore if you had a 100 movies you would need at hard drive bigger than 700GB - impractical and costly.
I have a dvd player (cost £50) and all the movies are saved on DVD-R at a cost of about 20p per dvd, each dvd will hold 6 AVI movies.
My audio is via a netgear mp101 (cost £70 ish) about 2 years old, hard wired and it works perfectly. I think the transfer rate is 100Mbps. When it was wireles the transfer rate was about 60Mbps and was totally unacceptable, although ok for wireless operation of my laptop.

Feel free to ask me any questions but I am teetering on the edge of my level of incompetence.

 

[Richard C]

Hi holmslaw.
I had almost given up on any replies so thanks for that. Storage is not a problem as I have access to around 1.5 terabytes on both internal SATA & conventional HDD’s; I’m also well aware of the possibilities of DVD compression.

I’ve no intention of sounding pompous but I have a high end AV system so watching/listening to anything other than mildly compressed medium would not suit. What I am attempting to do is maintain (or not suffer a noticeable loss) the quality AV I already have but with the ease & convenience of streaming the media archive stored on my PC; scrapping the need for separates stacked in the lounge underneath my flat screen & rows & rows of unsightly CD’s/DVD’s sitting on shelves! I’m currently looking at a D-link unit that delivers 108Mbbps & although I guess this will be OK for audio, I have my doubts it will be enough for quality video streaming; as I said I’m still trying to educate myself!

 

[damage]

Hi,
I would not recommend streaming large video files over wireless, you will notice a large amout jerkyness and stuttering in the playback on your TV.

Depending on what your current AV system supports I would suggest you use a Cat5 cable and maybe gigabit network cards / switch for vidoe files.

Or, do what I have done and build yourself a HTPC. Mine is the size of a regular DVD player and runs Vista so has all the networking options for getting data from my main PC upstairs. I usually copy my files over Wifi to the HTPC and play them directly to my TV.

Damage

 

[Richard C]

Hi,
I would not recommend streaming large video files over wireless, you will notice a large amout jerkyness and stuttering in the playback on your TV.

Depending on what your current AV system supports I would suggest you use a Cat5 cable and maybe gigabit network cards / switch for vidoe files.

Or, do what I have done and build yourself a HTPC. Mine is the size of a regular DVD player and runs Vista so has all the networking options for getting data from my main PC upstairs. I usually copy my files over Wifi to the HTPC and play them directly to my TV.

Damage

Hi Damage, thanks for the comments. That’s what I was afraid of; it’s beginning to look like I’m a bit ahead of the game for what I’m after doing, still I’m sure it won’t be long though!

Must admit I hadn’t considered building a local HTPC, that’s one way of doing it I suppose; presumably transferring the video files of an average length film takes only a couple of minutes? Are you also able to use the HTPC as a hard disc recorder? If so, what capture software do you use?

 

[Deluks]

Or, do what I have done and build yourself a HTPC. Mine is the size of a regular DVD player and runs Vista so has all the networking options for getting data from my main PC upstairs. I usually copy my files over Wifi to the HTPC and play them directly to my TV.

Damage

I'm thinking of that as a future project too. What are the hardware/software specs of your machine? Do you have a usable option to capture video?

 

[damage]

Hi guys,

Heres what I got in my HTPC:

Motherboard:
AN-M2
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-132-AB

Case:
Hiper Media Case
http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=11737&category_id=449

AM2 4000 AMD Cpu

2 Gig DDR Memory

500 Gig Hdd

Slim Line (laptop style) DVD-Rw

Digital TV Tuner Card

Vist Ultimate

I have never really looked at video capture but it is just like having a PC beneath your TV. I guess you just need to get a motherboard that will suit your own needs.

Its great because all I now have in my AV stack of goodies is my TV, HTPC and my Wii!

presumably transferring the video files of an average length film takes only a couple of minutes

I just tend to transfer AVI files of around 700mb so they dont take more than 5 minutes over my wifi connection, but if you want to move gigs of data the only way to go would be cat5 with maybe gig network cards / switch.

Damage

 

[Richard C]

Thanks again for the info. Lost touch a bit with developments recently so wasn’t even aware you could get such cases so may well consider building one as an option. Can’t see the DVD slot, is it in the side? Also, how quiet are the PSU/CPU fans? I find they are nearly always a problem with PC’s!