HD200 in a remote locale = soft image...

[tvmaster2]

I've got my HD200 with me away from home.
I'm accessing my Sage server via a DNS server, NO-IP.org
The HD200 is linked via a USB wireless dongle, approved by Sage.

I get a picture without disruptions, but the picture's quite soft, as if the connection is at a very low bit rate.

Is there anyway to manually increase the rate? I have a reasonable cable connection, so speed shouldn't be a concern.

any other reason why the image quality would be so poor ( it stops and starts

[stanger89]

Well first, unless you've got something like 20Mbps+ upload, that's going to be a (quality) bottleneck.

Second, Sage is transcoding, and using a rather old encoder to do it, so any time it transcodes the quality isn't that great.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

I've got my HD200 with me away from home.
I'm accessing my Sage server via a DNS server, NO-IP.org
The HD200 is linked via a USB wireless dongle, approved by Sage.

I get a picture without disruptions, but the picture's quite soft, as if the connection is at a very low bit rate.

Is there anyway to manually increase the rate? I have a reasonable cable connection, so speed shouldn't be a concern.

any other reason why the image quality would be so poor ( it stops and starts

This is the limitation of placeshifter right now. It uses rather poor MPEG4 compression (which a the time it was developed was pretty good and about the best you could get on most server CPU's at the time). Hopefully, some improvements can be made to bring in newer tech when we get a hand on the code, but until then, what you get is what you get. There are ways, I think, to manually set the bandwidth used on the placeshifter software, not sure about the HD200/300 placeshifter mode, but they mostly introduce buffering to maintain that bandwidth. (bufffer fill is what is used in placeshifter to determine encoded bitrate).

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

This is the limitation of placeshifter right now. It uses rather poor MPEG4 compression (which a the time it was developed was pretty good and about the best you could get on most server CPU's at the time). Hopefully, some improvements can be made to bring in newer tech when we get a hand on the code, but until then, what you get is what you get. There are ways, I think, to manually set the bandwidth used on the placeshifter software, not sure about the HD200/300 placeshifter mode, but they mostly introduce buffering to maintain that bandwidth. (bufffer fill is what is used in placeshifter to determine encoded bitrate).

If I hooked up via a cat5 connection would it improve any - aka is the wireless USB the biggest culprit?

[Dargason]

What is the upload rate of your internet at home? I know mine is capped at about 4 Mb/s, which is much slower than WiFi.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by Dargason

What is the upload rate of your internet at home? I know mine is capped at about 4 Mb/s, which is much slower than WiFi.

hmmm....think it's 8 or 10. point taken.