Very dissatisfied

[bclenney]

Originally Posted by vikingisson

Go with the simple test. Lay down a cable temporarily to see if it is the network or something else. If network then try to make wireless better, move the box upstairs or just closer to see what happens. You can easily find out where the problem is before jumping on fixes that might not help. I would think that N is fast enough but who knows about your combination.

I dont have any cables laying around long enough, but I'll see what I can come up with.

[bclenney]

They are about 45' apart with 2 interior walls separating them. There are some other wireless in the area but they are very low signal. I've been logging into my router and watching the speed/signal however I havent been watching the channel and what it is doing.

Originally Posted by Lucas

How far have you gone into troubleshooting the wireless connection?

Have you tried monitoring what other nearby wireless networks are on air to see if there could be interference and thus switch to a different frequency?

How far is the HD200 from the Router and what type of walls are in between? From your msgs it seems your server/router are in the basement and the HD200 is at least a couple of floors up. It could be as simple as moving your router around the basement.

Are you getting the same problems if the HD200 is within the same room as the router?

[davephan]

Originally Posted by bclenney

I dont have any cables laying around long enough, but I'll see what I can come up with.

If you don't have a long Eithernet cable, you could try moving a TV and the extender to the SageTV computer's location to test the setup without wireless. Or you would move the SageTV computer to the HD-200 location to test it in that room. Some people might be getting wireless to work, but generally using wireless is asking for trouble.

When you are able to test your system without using wireless, then you will know for certain if it is a wireless problem, or some other problem.

Dave

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by davephan

If you don't have a long Eithernet cable, you could try moving a TV and the extender to the SageTV computer's location to test the setup without wireless. Or you would move the SageTV computer to the HD-200 location to test it in that room. Some people might be getting wireless to work, but generally using wireless is asking for trouble.

When you are able to test your system without using wireless, then you will know for certain if it is a wireless problem, or some other problem.

Dave

Yeah, do you have another TV or even a computer monitor that you could hook up right next to your router/switch temporarily for testing?

I've got the same situation (SagePC and Router in the basement, finished basement, cathedral ceiling in the living room where my TV is, so no easy way to route a cable). Anyway, I tested my extender with a 13" portable TV before I went to the trouble of stinging Ethernet cable. Once I was sure it would work, I figured out a way to route the cable that wouldn't require major drywall work (cable goes across the basement, up through the garage, across the attic, down a support column... 100+ feet of cable when the TV is less than 25 feet from the router).

I never tested with Wireless-N, but I had previously tried the old MediaMVP (which was only SD, not HD) with Wireless-G and it was hit or miss. Some days I could watch a whole 2-hour movie with no problems, other times I couldn't go more than a minute without pausing, freezing, stuttering. Wireless is affected not only by distance and objects (like walls), but also by interference from other wireless networks (including Bluetooth devices and cordless phones) and also microwave ovens. This type of video streaming is not tolerant of packet loss, so any glitches in the network will be seen during playback.

[bclenney]

Ok, I got a 50' Ethernet cable and directly attached the HD200 to the router. I had to upgrade the HD200 to beta firmware again in order to be able to play Youtube videos. The 2nd video I was playing the HD200 locked up. I noticed that the "active" indicator on the front of the HD200 went out at this time. (not the "net" indicator). About 30 seconds later the active indicator came back on, but the HD200 is non-responsive now. I'll had to unplug it to reboot it and get it to respond again. (If I hit power on the HD200 remote it would turn off, but when I turned it back on it would still be on the same video frame that it was when it had been last on)

Maybe I have a bad extender?

[bclenney]

What bit rate is required for sustained 1080p content? Does anyone on here know?

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by bclenney

What bit rate is required for sustained 1080p content?

There is no fixed answer to that question, because it depends on the degree of compression used during encoding. Your best bet is to look at how big the file is for a one-hour recording and do the math. So for instance an 8GB file times 8 bits per byte divided by 3600 second per hour works out to about 18 Mbit/s.

But the main point about wireless is that bitrate doesn't tell the whole story. Intermittent noise that doesn't affect your average throughput much can still cause dropouts that manifest as playback hiccups.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by bclenney

They are about 45' apart with 2 interior walls separating them. There are some other wireless in the area but they are very low signal. I've been logging into my router and watching the speed/signal however I havent been watching the channel and what it is doing.

Your router isn't going to be able to tell you what your actual wireless connection speed is. Your router will report some type of theoretical maximum connection speed that isn't going to be very close to your actual connection speed. It's actually relatively hard to benchmark your actual wifi performance. Sage was kind enough to provide a version of iPerf that will run on the extender, but it would be a moderately involved process to get that up and running.

But, you earlier said you thought you were getting 108mbits/sec, presumably using the connection speed on your router. That's actually not a great sign. If you had a good signal, that should be 300mbits/sec. In my case, a 300mbits/sec connection speed on the router corresponds to about 85mbits/sec of actual performance.

If you really want to try to get wireless to work, is there any way you can put your HD200 in the same room as your 802.11n, just for testing purposes?

[joe123]

Originally Posted by bclenney

Ok, I got a 50' Ethernet cable and directly attached the HD200 to the router. I had to upgrade the HD200 to beta firmware again in order to be able to play Youtube videos.

Could it be a problem with your Internet bandwith? The real test would be to watch a HD 1080i recorded show from your SageTV server on your HD200 (or any local recorded 1080i show), but not a streamed recording.

A while back, I too was looking into the wireless option, but a few simple wireless tests showed that no way in hell would I be able to watch 1080i over the air without hicups and pauses.

I have 2 HD200 watching 1080i just fine and dandy - all hard wired.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by bclenney

Maybe I have a bad extender?

If wired connection is still causing problems then it could very well be bad hardware, whether its the extender, your newotrk router, switch, or bad network cable.

Time to connact SageTV support, give them as much info as possible.

[autoboy]

Yes, it's time to contact support. Sounds like something is wrong with the HD200.

[bclenney]

I'll keep you up to date on what happens. I still have the cable run across my house for testing. In general it seems to work most of the time, much better than with the wireless. I think the lock up on youtube videos may be a separate issue from what I was experiencing before. The only stuttering I've gotten in the last day and a half appears to be when the internet connection can't keep up with the requirements. I can't blame Sage for that one. That doesn't explain the freezing on Youtube videos, so I still have to look into that.

Thanks for listening to my whining session and helping me out.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by bclenney

I think the lock up on youtube videos may be a separate issue from what I was experiencing before.

That's what I was saying back in post #29.

[koan00]

Originally Posted by bclenney

. I think the lock up on youtube videos may be a separate issue from what I was experiencing before.

Do you have the latest STV Updates installed?

[wrems]

Originally Posted by bclenney

I think the lock up on youtube videos may be a separate issue from what I was experiencing before. The only stuttering I've gotten in the last day and a half appears to be when the internet connection can't keep up with the requirements.

It sounds trivial, but have you powered down your server and power cycled routers, switches and modems? Whenever I have issues of or relating to YouTube stuttering etc it seems to be the magic pill...

[bclenney]

Yes, I've power cycled all of the different pieces of equipment (many times) and I have all of the STV updates. Yeah Joe, your post is why I mentioned the bandwidth

Hulu performed perfectly tonight, by the way.

[bluenote]

You seem to now have confirmed that it IS the wireless thats giving you grief (congratulations on having some certainty) and since you have an alternate method to compare to continuously, I'd say you have a decent chance of being able to tweak the wireless to work. I'm good with networks but never liked wireless, and recently I discovered exactly how many configurations can work, but not work *well*.

I'd probably give the wireless tweaking a try and then run cable.
(use different ciphers, use different modes, use different channels) as a start.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

If wired connection is still causing problems then it could very well be bad hardware, whether its the extender, your newotrk router, switch, or bad network cable.

Time to connact SageTV support, give them as much info as possible.

I agree it would be worth a try to try swapping out your router or switch with another one or a cross-over cable to rule out the router or switch problem. My routers usually start going bad after a few years of service. Fortunately, they aren't very expensive to replace.

Dave