Quality of Streamed Movies

[dglenn9000]

I'm planning on buy an ATV, I wanted to know if there were any issues with streaming divx movies from a mac? A co-worker said when he does it the streamed video is often choppy and makes watching streamed movies a pain.

Before I buy this I just want to know if this happens a lot when streaming movies via wireless network?

 

[d.baker]

Well I stream all my content including HD Tv shows from my macbook and have no problems. I'm also only using 802.11G and I haven't noticed any stuttering or stopping. It's trial and error though, other people streaming over wireless G have encountered the problems you mentioned.

If you have a Wireless N router then you shouldn't have any probs, just place the AppleTV where it has good signal with the router.

 

[leandroc76]

I'm planning on buy an ATV, I wanted to know if there were any issues with streaming divx movies from a mac? A co-worker said when he does it the streamed video is often choppy and makes watching streamed movies a pain.

Before I buy this I just want to know if this happens a lot when streaming movies via wireless network?

B, G or an N router makes no difference. A B router can handle 11 Mbps, more than any ISP is offering right now!

Right now as it stands... IT IS YOUR ISP, that makes or breaks your internet speed.

don't jump on me yet!

With that said...

When streaming from either an external firewire drive attached to your computer or your internal drive...RIGHT NOW...AS IT STANDS... IT IS YOUR Drive's speed that makes or breaks AppleTV's performance. BELIEVE ME!!!. Find a way to convert the DIVX to mp4... I think toast or even handbrake does it.


with that said...

Stream using a RAID 0. Nothing is faster. The AppleTV is flawless when streaming movies encoded in .mp4 format from a external FW RAID 0. I've been doing it since 2.3 came out. And love every minute of it. With a baby in the house, I don't have to worry about scratched discs or tore-up tapes, and absolutely NO time buffering.

 

[mastershakess]

G router streaming from a USB 2.0 external HDD without any problems

Computer on one floor and the ATV on another

Your Divx files will have to be converted to mp4, you do know that right?

 

[itickings]

B, G or an N router makes no difference. A B router can handle 11 Mbps, more than any ISP is offering right now!

You only get about half of 11 Mbit/s from B in real transfer due to the communication protocol, and that is if there is no wireless interference from cordless phones, other networks or household machines. And regarding ISP:s, I for one have 100Mbit/s from mine, about twenty times faster than B.

When streaming from either an external firewire drive attached to your computer or your internal drive...RIGHT NOW...AS IT STANDS... IT IS YOUR Drive's speed that makes or breaks AppleTV's performance. BELIEVE ME!!!

If you say so... I'm really trying, but I find that very hard to believe. Unless something is seriously wrong with your setup, neither 11b nor 11g will keep up with a standard mordern harddrive even in optimal wireless environments. 11g is generally fast enough to be used for most things though.

Do the math, 11g is 54Mbit/s, of which roughly half is realistic throughput, and there are 8 bits per 1 byte. If a drive can't sustain 3-4MB/s, something is seriously wrong.