Consensus that Placeshifter is better than Client for 802.11g in-home use?

[testlund]

I installed and ran the trial versions of both PlaceShifter 5.0 and SageTV Client 5.0 on my new Dell Inspiron E1505 notebook, looking to find which has the better image quality over a 802.11g network.
Before I could do much testing, both licenses expired.

My SageTV Server on a HTPC is also connected via a 802.11g wifi connection, so the notebook PlaceShifter/Client is two wifi connections away from the Server. This may or may not make a difference.

From what I remember, the picture quality over a wireless 802.11g network wasn't very good. My laptop screen resolution is 1280x800, and I believe there was a trade off between quality and size of the picture window.
A tv window size of about 800x600 was about the best combination of size and quality.

I am ready to buy a license, but I am still confused over which is the better product for use on my home network.

Is there any consensus about which is the better product for inhome wireless use?


Thanks much,
Troy

[robk]

I have a client license and a placeshifter license. The client is good for wired 100mbs networks, but stutters BAD on any wireless connection. The placeshifter works great in the house with a 802.11G Dell laptop, using auto-settings. When I go out to the garage (separate building, 120 feet away from access point) which is 802.11B, I have to manually set the speed to about 500kbs, but still get a decent picture with no stuttering. Since the placeshifter can be used with no transcoding on a fast network connection, I'd go for that. Only drawback is you have limited use to some advanced settings available only on the client. I prefer the placeshifter, it's easy, gets the job done.
Good luck!
Rob

[ybrew]

A late response.

I've got the client running on my laptop. 802.11G, using a microsoft router. I record at default (Good) settings. I have zero problems using the client on my laptop. In fact, I ordered the streamzap remote for this laptop so I can use this as my bedroom TV (for the next few months).

I tried a wireless MVP in the bedroom, but the stuttering was unbearable. I think it was better at a lower recording setting, but I didn't want to keep the lower setting, so I moved the wireless MVP to a wired location.

Haven't played with placeshifter enough on my wireless network, but no complaints at all from the client.

[GTwannabe]

Here's my experience with SageTV on a laptop:

SageTV uses the video acceleration features of your laptop's GPU to process video. That's all fine and dandy when you're on AC, but when you unplug, you can run into trouble. The GPU and RAM on many laptops clock down rather severely when running on battery, which can cause severe stuttering. Some drivers allow you to alter the power-save features of the video subsystem, which will help, but really eat into battery life.

What I did with my laptop was to use the Nvidia PureVideo Post Processor. This filter bypasses the GPU and does all video processing on the CPU. The CPU will dynamically increase its clockspeed while on the battery to handle increased load. My laptop has an ATI Radeon 9600 ProTurbo, which is a decent card, but when clocked down to ~100mhz can't keep up with SageTV's default MPEG decoder.

I would suggest using Client instead of Placeshifter for your laptop on your local LAN. Placeshifter cannot handle streaming ripped DVD's. In addition, Placeshifter compresses the video and reduces video quality when it's completely unnecessary (IE, plugged into 100mbit ethernet or 54G wireless)