Extender in placeshifter mode.. who does this?

[Gustovier]

Hello all,

It seems not many people have tried using their extenders in placeshifter mode. I want to do this when i travel to places that have highspeed internet access. At my house i have about a 9mbs uplink so I'm thinking I should get good almost HD quality on my HD(720p .mkv) content.

What i'm worried about is unlike the placeshifter software, there seems to be no way to set the transcoding quality that the sageserver back at the house will use when sending the content via internet to my extender. My guess is it always uses the "adaptive" bit-rate, that is always analyzing the network connection and adjusting accordingly. Has anybody tried this with good upload(sage server) and download (extender) speeds and can comment on the quality? And what you might have done to improve quality? I feel like i'm breaking new ground here...based off what I've been able to dig up around these forums. Thanks again!

[Fuzzy]

I'm guessing most don't have that high of an upload speed, so the adaptive has always worked just fine. The settings MAY be in there somewhere, but I wouldn't know where to look.

[PiX64]

you can set the extender conversion quality in the detailed setup screen.

[EDIT]
Exact location is:

setup -> detailed setup -> Server -> Media Extender Conversion Quality

[/EDIT]

[stanger89]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that setting is for the MVP conversion quality, not placeshifter (extender or not).

[PiX64]

could be, but im pretty sure thatll do it...

You'd know better than me :-D

[Fuzzy]

Yeah, that's for mvp's. It has nothing to do with placeshifter. Placeshifter conversion quality is controlled by the buffer status on the client end. If the buffer is low, it reduces the bitrate. If the buffer is full, it raises it. The Placeshifter software has the ability to disable this, and manually enter some conversion properties. The extender software apparently does not (I'm sure it's in the code somewhere, but not exposed to the user). Have you contacted Sage about it? (This forum is not REALLY an official sagetv support means - it's here for user-to-user support).

[Gustovier]

Yup, already contacted them, and they have verified, that there's no way to adjust the bit rate used by extenders in placeshifter mode. Always seems like something comes so close to everything you need, but there's those 1 or 2 things that holds it back. (The other is the fact that the extender won't recognize adhoc wifi networks only networks in infrastructure mode)

[paulbeers]

Here's the deal though, it is actually more difficult for Sage to use adaptive. It would be easier for Sage to require a speed, but in most cases you don't know what your download/upload speed will be. Heck I have a 12mb/1mb (down/up) here but it can very from 8mb-15mb down and .5 to 1.25 Up.

Further, the real problem is that the placeshifter is designed for on-the-go usage where you have NO idea what speed your destination speed will be (or how many users will be sharing that bandwidth). I can't use Placeshifter at my office due to blocked ports; however, I have been able to use Netflix and depending on the time of day even Netflix reports it has to reduce my bit rate (mostly around the lunch hour) due to reduced network throughput and we have a DS3!

[Gustovier]

I can understand that it's more difficult to use adaptive and it makes sense to use it for those reasons you state. What's awesome about sage though is that almost anything can be configured how u want. I'm hoping they somehow add this flexibility to the extenders. It just seems that it wouldn't be that it wouldnt be that hard especially since the placeshifter software can do it.