Streaming HD to the 360; an update

I have 2 360s streaming HD content from my Media Center. Working great without any issues.

Who ever said 802.11a has a real world throughput of 10mbps is smoking crack. Real world is 22mbps. Remember this is a shared medium and if you are going to stream HD, the xbox needs to be the only thing on that particular network.

I have my media centre PC streaming HD video to my xbox360 via my DLink 784 router on a 802.11a network, which works flawlessly. I use stream video on a trend net router useing 802.11g, this was full of problems, every 30 min or so I'd get a "network congestion" message, I assume this was due to interference from the microwave/cordless phones/wireless controllers from other people in my apartment.

No i would if i had an hd set though *sad*

It really pisses me off that you can't stream video from xp pro.

802.11A does not have enought bandwidth to handle ATSC HDTV Transport Streams.

I have a few HD movies that clock in at under 10mbps, but these collapse into macro block hell any time the camera even shakes. Bend it Like Beckham is so over-compressed, any time there's a soccer scene, you see huge blocks all over your screen.

As a rule of thumb you want 15mbps MINIMUM for decent HD, and often this still ain't enough. The summer olympics, for example, looked terrible, and they rated higher than 15mpbs.

Okay, all this to say, 15mpbs -- even 10mpbs in "real world" -- is ABOVE the highest rate for 802.11a. You'll lose lots of packets. ATSC can handle packet loss, so you can still watch, but it will macro on you.

I'm betting most people have 802.11b now, so it's no so much an issue. Does beg the question though: what's an HD Blog doing streaming over 802.11a? Don't they know better?

-Pie

in that microsoft video I downloaded over live, they said B and G had interferance problems and dident stream properly, so you gotta use a. I think thats kinda silly. Why would it have that much interferance? My wireless lan (on G) does not drop below 40mbps because of interference. So why should my 360 drop?

I dont have a wireless card fo my 360 so I cant really test anything here

#3, 802.11a most certainly does have enough bandwidth to pipe ATSC as evidenced by the graph and our article. 802.11g has enough as well; both are 54MBps and an ATSC stream (which is MPEG-2) requires 19.39Mbps. Real throughput on 802.11a or g is roughly 25Mbps due to overhead, but it's enough.

Another way to put it: I've cancelled my locals through DISH and now get all of them in DTV or HDTV via the ATSC tuner in the WMCE machine we built. That signal is streamed (both live and recorded) via 802.11a to our Xbox 360. We watch 2-4 hours of local HDTV a night directly through the Xbox 360 and the WiFi signal.

Comment #4 is correct, there is too much interference on b & g (both in the 2.4 GHz range), so a is recommended by Microsoft and proved better in our testing.

Error in my comment: 802.11a is 54Mbps, not MBps, although we wish it was!

I cant even get my streaming to work. I have both my pc and my 360 running on a wired network. Windows media connect works for streaming music and pictures, but when i set up windows media center extender the pc cant find the 360 on the network. I dont understand why one works and the other doesnt. But i do know that its lame. Anyone have any ideas? I turned off all my firewalls, and still it does not find it.

*nitpick alert*

line 4 "although THEIR are some small problems" Shouldnt it be there?

EatingPie, 802.11b is SLOWER than 802.11a.

Guys, I have the exact same problem! And I tried the Netgear xe104 84mps...its BS.

Bottom Line: NOT WORTH ANY $$$ or $170 ($85 * 2)

Since no one has reviewed this device I had to be a pioneer. I am trying to find a solution to stream HDTV to my xbox 360 without running cat 5e wires.

So it appears that Netgear has taken the same position on throughput as they have with WiFi; Lie about it. I read no where that it is a theoritical 85Mbps but that is most certainly the case. I live in a 3 story town home. I am trying to link the 1st floor to the 3rd. The XE104 won't even connect!!! In truth I get a connection every other minute, only to be dropped. The two outlets are probably 60 wired feet apart.

Test 1: Same floor with outlets 4ft apart: 14Mbps! :(
Test 2: 1st floor to 2nd floor, outlets 30 wired feet apart: .5Mps
Test 3: 1st floor to 3rd floor, constant dropped connections: 0Mbps

Test Setup:
The tests were run with a laptop at each end. One laptop had a ftp server. Throughput was given from the file transer of a 4GB movie file.

Yes. Via my wired connection it is working absolutely perfectly! ATSC HDTV works 100% with no issues. I think my wife actually likes my 360 more than me! :)

#5 Kevin Toffel.

My apologies. I saw 802.11a and read 802.11b, and as you point out -- and #9 too -- indeed, 11a is high enough bandwidth.

Maybe I'm the one who should know better! Or read better anyway. :(

Once again, Kevin, my apologies for the slight against your information.

-Pie