Laptop help

[SageGk]

Just got a Toshiba Portege R705. I am running trial versions of Placeshifter and client. I am unimpressed...HD channels just lock up, and SD plays ok, but stutters a little here and there. My wifi router is a linksys wrt54g running tomato firmware (G router). Any recommendations on how I can improve the experience?

SERVER: Dual COre Intel E4500,4gb Ram, win 7 64-bit.

[OneOfMany]

I run an older ASUS Notebook w/ Intel Dual Core 2Ghz w/nVidia 8400GS graphics. Runs PS fine with SD and Client well with HD and SD using wireless N router. Wife's Celeron 1400 w/Radeon crap graphics runs SD Client fine after bumping internal wireless card from G to N. HD is non-existent (not that I'm surprised with that )

[gplasky]

Wireless G is really not going to get you a good experience with HD. (As you have found out.) I would recommend N as a minimum if I had to do wireless. Wired is your best choice for HD followed by Ethernet over powerline.

Gerry

[SageGk]

Thanks guys, I don't care about HD so much as i care about being able to view the recordings that just happen to be HD. Is there any way to have the server transcode the HD recordings so I can view them easier over wifi?

[wayner]

Are your HD recording H.264 or MPEG? There appear to be issues playing H.264, especially if they are 1080i files. See the "poll" thread in this forum.

[SageGk]

I record h.264 in 720p and also record QAM channels. I tried it with an wireless N AP and it played better than when connected to my G router, but not acceptble enough for me to purchase either PS or Client. I tried it with a hardwired connection and got decent results with client, wasn't thrilled with PS. So I still have some testing to do. Thanks for everyones input so far.

[wayner]

I fint it useful to have at least one PS license for your server. That way you can easily schedule recordings, etc from any PC in your house or evern over the net. You can do most things via the web plugin but it is still nice to occasionally be able to use the full Sage client.

I am also able to use it to watch TV from my server over the net to my laptop while travelling. This works best with SD channels and the quality isn't great but it is occasionally useful and certainly worth a one-time fee of $30.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by wayner

Are your HD recording H.264 or MPEG? There appear to be issues playing H.264, especially if they are 1080i files. See the "poll" thread in this forum.

The HDPVR 1080i bug has been taken care of in V7, these now transcode correctly.

Originally Posted by SageGk

I record h.264 in 720p and also record QAM channels. I tried it with an wireless N AP and it played better than when connected to my G router, but not acceptble enough for me to purchase either PS or Client. I tried it with a hardwired connection and got decent results with client, wasn't thrilled with PS. So I still have some testing to do. Thanks for everyones input so far.

Is your wireless N running at 150 Mbps (2.4 GHz) or 300 Mbps (5.8 GHz)? Even at 150 Mbps, I am able to get HD Mpeg2 playback to work reliably with Placeshifter. You may be in an area that has a lot of traffic in the 2.4 GHz band, and if so, switching the channel on the router may make things better.

If you are using 2.4 GHz and find that congestion is a problem and have the option of using 5.8GHz, you may want to give that a try. It's faster and in a less congested spectrum, but suffers quite a bit of degradation when going through walls. It may or may not work for your situation.

As for playing back anything encoded by the HDPVR, the way the backend handles the decoding process, playback without transcoding is very problematic regarding timeline and A/V sync and is not related to bandwidth. I cannot get solid playback on a 480i file encoded by the HDPVR over a wired Gb connection. I bugged this during the V7 beta and was told Sage is aware of the issue (that's where I got the info RE the backend decoding process) and it will probably not be fixed for V7.0 but it's something they may take a look at in the future. The official stance I got was either enable transcoding, which works fine for me, or use Sage client which is designed for local network speeds. Using client on a 150Mbps wireless N connection worked fine for me using the trial, but I opted to just enable transcoding if I want to watch something locally via Placeshifter.

[sharky905]

Here's what I've done.
Instead of pointing to the Internal IP address, open up placeshifter to the Internet through your router, then point to the external IP address (or setup a dynamic DNS and just use the name). This allows the bandwidth to be modified and you no longer get the stuttering in poor network situations. It's just easier.

[SageGk]

Thanks everyone, I ended up hardwiring it, too much interference messing with my wifi.