Placeshifter picture quality

[dtshedd]

After some dramatic fits and starts I have SageTV v6 working reliably. My college age child is using the Placeshiter client to watch TV some 700 miles away. However, her picture quality is grainy (her words I have not seen it, and efforts at screen capture by her were unsuccessful).

I do not think it is a Sage issue, as her dorm mate watches TV over same distance using parents Slingbox with same degradation in picture quality.

Are there any settings in the Placeshifter client that can improve picture quality? A user of an older version of Sage recommended some changes but they were already the default for Placeshifter.

[walter scott]

The picture quality is directly related to the speed of your upload and her download of the video. Placeshifter (and Slingbox) will adjust the bit rate of the streaming video to compensate for the speed. the slower the connection the more grainy the picture. What is really irritating is that most ISPs (Cox, Comcast, et al) intentionally reduce upload speed, so even if your d/load speed is very fast the video is still going to be grainy.

[sainswor99]

She could try manually setting the bitrate, rather than using the dynamic settings. In my experience, the dynamic settings tend to improve/degrade the video as you watch it, which is even more annoying than moderate graininess.

I have mine set for 400kbps, and have a 512k upload. It works OK; not a crystal picture, but OK for reruns of M*A*S*H.

Stu

[MattHelm]

Or, you could do like I did, and set up a simple FTP server, download the files, and then watch them in almost any MM viewier. I just used the placeshifter to setup recoding, and delete old shows. No viewing. (I had a VERY slow connection)

I just downloaded a free FTP server (zFTPserver for Windows). Would suggest using SFTP for safty. It was VERY easy to set up, tough I do know a lot about computers.