As I mentioned yesterday I have been converting my DVD’s to digital format. Last night I decided to test out a couple of the files by watching them on my TV. I am using a demo version of a program called Connect 360 on my Mac and my XBox 360 to stream the videos from my computer to to my living room TV over my wireless network.
I watched parts of the files on my computer and they looked great. Then came the real test, streaming them. At first everything looked good then the video started “chugging”. I let it play a bit more and hoping the buffer would be able to catch up, but the chugging never got better. My first thought was that on a wireless network if you don’t have a strong signal it drastically reduces the amount of data you can transmit.
So I checked my network connection the XBox 360 looked like it had a good connection, but the Macbook, which sits 3 feet from the router, was showing a weak signal. I rebooted the Macbook and put some tin foil behind the routers antenna in a very unscientific manner. (They say if it shaped like a parabola it helps, but I didn’t get that technical) The signal improved to almost full strength.
With a better connection I tried streaming again, but it was still chugged along. It was obvious that the files were too large to be sent over the network fast enough for the video to run smooth. So I have two options: 1) make the network run faster or 2) make the files smaller. Last night I set up a file to encode at a slightly lower bitrate (1500 instead of 2500) and I was just reading that I might have to fix a setting on my XBox 360 to run on 802.11g since before my wireless router was only 802.11b. I would think this gets set automatically, but who knows.
Of course the optimal solution would be a hard line from the Mac to the router and a hard line from the router to the XBox, but that’s not going to happen so I will just have to keep tweaking things till I find the best combination of size, speed and quality.
– Jeremy
GIG-E man
GIG-E!