Playing movies over my network is very jittery

[Matty0500]

Hey everyone,

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, mods please feel free to move it if it is.

So i'm having a bit of an issue when i'm trying to play movies over my network. Here is my setup:

Apple Extreme Base Station with 1TB LaCie external HDD connected over USB 2.0

Mac Mini 2.0GHz, 2GB, 120GB HDD, wireless N

Unibody Macbook 2.0GHz, 4GB, 160GB HDD, wireless N

Roommate's old POS XP box with wireless G

Now my network speeds are generally quite good with this setup. I can transfer a 700mb movie from machine to machine in about 3 minutes. All of the macs are connected to the AEBS on the 5GHz band. But, for some reason, if i'm trying to watch a movie on the macbook or mac mini that's stored on the external HDD, it won't do it smoothly, i have to transfer the movie to that machine first and then watch it, which is quite frustrating considering the limited storage i have on each machine. If anyone has any recommendations on how i might be able to fix this issue i'm all ears. Thanks for any help!

 

[calderone]

My guess is that the USB external running over the Airport is what is causing the jitters.

Try sharing it off the Mini and see what happens.

 

[myjay610]

There's a lot of things that could cause it to be jittery...if the router is handling other traffic at the same time it has to split time to stream the movie which could cause a flux in bitrate and cause the jitter. Streaming movies wirelessly for me has never worked that great...there's always some jitter because 802.11 in short sucks...IMHO. You never get near the "max" bandwidth possible.

Sometimes I notice that some software stream better than others...VLC steams a lot better than QT for me.

 

[Rhalliwell1]

Try it over ethernet, my guess is its the wireless. Especially if your room mate is on G.

 

[Doctor Doom]

Your friends PC does stand out as the most likely cause (The slowest machine will bring your overall speed down). If your network is "n" only you shouldn't have any problems streaming films. I run an "n" only network with 3-4 macs on it and have no problems (stuttering, jittering etc) streaming multiple blueray-rips to the same mac, at the same time: