Streaming wirelessly to an tablet/ipad?

[Davidg1230]

Sorry for yet another basic thread containing the same old question, but I have spent the afternoon trying to locate the information required, some of the stickies seem out of date and not sure with the latest tech, better results can be achived.

Basically, I've had to change my ISP to Utilities Warehouse (Talk Talk) and they've given me a fairly basic wireless modem (sorry but can't remember off hand the spec) but my question is how best to achieve wireless streaming of movies and photos to various devices around the house.

I have an ipad, PS3, Sony laptop and soon to acquire a Google Nexus 7 and would like to store all my movies and photos onto a drive and stream wirelessly around the house.

The movies I have aren't HD, or particularly high quality and are normally basic rips from DVD's or ones I have downloaded.

My question is do I upgrade my modem to something like a Netgear N600 or similar, plus a basic NAS drive like the WD My Book Live, or upgrade to a better router and just plug a current external HDD?

I'd like to stream movies, browse photos from my Nexus 7 and other wireless devices within the home and not really fussed about remote access to the files.

What's the best and most econimical way in acheiving a simple stream facility for my movies and photos wirelessly within the home? Sorry but I've read plenty this afternno but not got the best answer..

 

[thiggins]

The key questions you need to answer are the bandwidth requirements of the content and how many simultaneous streams you want to support.

Uncompressed non-HD DVD rips can have peak requirements near 10 Mbps, as described here.

Most of the devices you describe are single-stream N, so will have best case (strongest signal) throughput of 30-40 Mbps. With even a bit of distance, that can drop to 10-20 Mbps.

"N300" and "N450" (and their simultaneous dual-band "N600" and "N900" equivalents) can't improve the throughput because the limit is on the client end.

Most current "storage" routers can now support around 10 MB/s (80 Mbps), so might be able to handle multiple streams. I know for sure that low-end NASes can.

Bottom line is that trying to view uncompressed DVD rips could be iffy. Use any of the good current low bit rate codecs and your chances go up significantly.

 

[Davidg1230]

Thanks for the reply, all my movies are compressed already, some quite heavily so I'm assuming bandwidth won't choke? They have all been watchable through the PS3 until now are almost exclusively MPEG-4 or AVI format.

For example, most movies have been remastered using Xilisoft and I've used their preset iPad setting which is H.264/MPEG-4 AVC @ 720x576 ratio.

Also, when streaming, I'll be the only one accessing the HDD, so if I limit myself to all of the above, do I still need a NAS drive through my router, or can I get away with my normal HDD? Are NAS drives superior in their output or am I still been restricted by the modem and wireless speed?

 

[thiggins]

What is the "normal HDD"? If it's on a wireless device, your effective bandwidth is cut in half because the router is receiving then retransmitting. You want the streaming source on a wired device. That can be a NAS, shared folder on a Ethernet connected machine or a drive connected to a router that supports one.

 

[Davidg1230]

Sorry, I'm referring to a normal external USB2 Hard drive. Will this do the same job as a NAS drive if they are both connected to the wireless device?

 

[thiggins]

What is the hard drive connected to?

 

[Davidg1230]

Okay, I've now spent the evening playing with my current modem. It's fairly basic Technicolor TG582n, but it does have a USB port and after turning on the built in UPnP AV Media Server and profiling an external HDD, I have been able to see the HDD and the contents on both my laptop and the iPad (using a UPnP app) the movies play too and the photos view, albeit slowly.

The movie playback works and would do the job as my current crop of movies have a fairly low bit rate of between 650 and 1000kbps. Is this the determining factor that will dictate if I get could playback?

So, I have something that works, whats the best way to improve things? I'm still tempted to upgrade the modem to something better as mentioned previously, would this help the streaming too?

 

[tipstir]

What do you have to playback the HD Video through? The Streaming device needs to support HDMI 720p or 1080p. Are you connecting to a HDTV? Make sure your using the right type of cables. Does the Router support HD streaming. When you first run HD through WiFi it does take a slight while for it to clear-up of graphics before it's sharp and clear. Using newer hardware will be instant compare to older streamer players. I only use the SONY SMP-N100 or SMP-N200 both are set to:

1080p/60p(this feature is from SONY)
802.11n @ 300MHz
HDMI out to HDMI

Example Vudu HDX = 1080p 5.1 Dolby Digital Streaming over the Internet. This requires a min of 9MB or higher.