What am I doing wrong?

[stevech]

Re IxChariot - do you guys have a way to use a freeware or dirt cheap version in a non-commercial setting?

 

[StratmanX]

rhombus:

70 Mbps sounds insane! I'm sure we will be there in our lifetimes.

My reason for HomePlugs was to be able to stream Bluray one day. Right now I have no critical need to stream, but I will be setting up a home server at some point. Being able to serve movies without the possibility of mishaps with the physical disks, or a graham cracker in the player's slot, would be nice.

Thank you for the important information!

Just curious - would the differences in your UK electrical system and my USA electrical system lead to performance differences using the same HomePlug device?

 

[stevech]

USA vs. UK - two-phase in US, single phase in UK.
Signals often have difficulty crossing the phases. Not always. Depends on wiring, 220V appliances, etc. Sometimes signal "bridges" are added.

 

[rhombus]

70 Mbps sounds insane! I'm sure we will be there in our lifetimes. My reason for HomePlugs was to be able to stream Bluray one day.

Just curious - would the differences in your UK electrical system and my USA electrical system lead to performance differences using the same HomePlug device?

The overall max data rate for the blu-ray specification (inc video, audio and overheads) is 54Mbps. When video is encoded to spec, it respects the video max data rate. This means if the buffer is sized also to specification (as it is in all blu-ray players) then the buffer will never underrun. Momentary peaks measuring higher than the max data rate are possible, because they can be followed by lower bitrates which stop the buffer from running empty. You only need a specified max data rate and buffer size, these two things are all you need to encode to spec and get guaranteed perfect playback.

The only streaming playback I've encountered (in my limited experience so far) that has a reliably configured buffer is VLC on a PC/HTPC, which you can even specify in seconds (but not in size). So, you can use it to swallow up any peaks above the average bitrate. I think the highest blu-ray overall average bitrate I've seen is around 42Mbps, and the throughput figures for a Windows download test probably translate pretty well to VLC's streaming throughput.

Us vs UK voltage: the only potentially relevant info to note is that the best result I got out of the Homeplugs with around 490Mbps link rate in the same socket was about 110Mbps*, slightly slower than Tim's best results of 125Mbps.

*If youre wondering why my "Best Location" results are a bit slower still than 110Mbps, this is because it wasnt the same socket pairing. This was chosen in the interest of fairness, since some plugs did suffer overload (Trendnet, Devolo - 80Mbps in same socket), whereas some just got even faster (Netgear, Zyxel, Solwise - 110Mbps in same socket).

 

[rhombus]

Re IxChariot - do you guys have a way to use a freeware or dirt cheap version in a non-commercial setting?

Nope. They already have a license for small networks (up to 10 endpoint pairs). What did you have in mind?