Blu-ray disk rips and performance

You could connect your laptop via an ethernet cable to your modem / router and then everything would be wired. As has been said your weak point is the Wifi connection.

There is nothing wrong with the WDTV.  You are trying to share blu ray rips which are huge files off of your notebook wirelessly.  Your wireless connection at its max is 54 Mbps or 300 mbps depending on the router you have.  This rate is not the actual speed that you can move data across the link at!  This measurement is a specification.

Here are a few examples of typical max advertised speeds and actual TCP performance (from wifihowto.net) d:
802.11b Advertised: 11Mbps | Actual: 5-6Mbps
802.11g or 802.11a Advertised: 54Mbps | Actual: 25-30Mbps
802.11n (dual-stream) Advertised: 300Mbps | Actual: 150-160Mbps 

…and these are the absolute best you can expect-as you move around the house away from the router your rates are dropping.  Blu-Ray often requires as much as 40Mbps so if you have the best wireless connection possible, you would always have lag unless you have an 802.11n router.  What you should do is either hook up your notebook to your network via ethernet (most likely you have a 100Mbps connection) or buy a network attached storage drive and connect that to the ethernet network.

OMG, anyone else feel a massive facepalm about now? If any link in the chain is using wireless, forget about streaming BD rips. The only way to stream them remotely is via a totally WIRED connection. That mean the laptop where the rips are has to be connected via cat cable to your network and so does the Hub. We told you early on that only wired will do what you want. Do you get it now?

crastan wrote:

There is nothing wrong with the WDTV.  You are trying to share blu ray rips which are huge files off of your notebook wirelessly.  Your wireless connection at its max is 54 Mbps or 300 mbps depending on the router you have.  This rate is not the actual speed that you can move data across the link at!  This measurement is a specification.

 

Here are a few examples of typical max advertised speeds and actual TCP performance (from wifihowto.net) d:
802.11b Advertised: 11Mbps | Actual: 5-6Mbps
802.11g or 802.11a Advertised: 54Mbps | Actual: 25-30Mbps
802.11n (dual-stream) Advertised: 300Mbps | Actual: 150-160Mbps 

 

…and these are the absolute best you can expect-as you move around the house away from the router your rates are dropping.  Blu-Ray often requires as much as 40Mbps so if you have the best wireless connection possible, you would always have lag unless you have an 802.11n router.  What you should do is either hook up your notebook to your network via ethernet (most likely you have a 100Mbps connection) or buy a network attached storage drive and connect that to the ethernet network.

Gotcha, so basically it has to be ‘wired’. I never tried streaming anything at home until I got the player, and I assume the source must be on, or at least on standby?

Well if your movie source is on the notebook, then yes it has to be on.  If the movie source is the WDTV Hub, then it doesn’t have to be on as it is always sharing even when “off.”  Now if you want to use wireless, you’d be much better off trying to stream ripped DVDs and for the most part you should be able to stream with much less lag.

crastan wrote:

Well if your movie source is on the notebook, then yes it has to be on.  If the movie source is the WDTV Hub, then it doesn’t have to be on as it is always sharing even when “off.”  Now if you want to use wireless, you’d be much better off trying to stream ripped DVDs and for the most part you should be able to stream with much less lag.

I tried DVDs and it still lags. I don’t plan on streaming within the house but just curious about the feature. The only thing I stream is Netflix movies 98% of the time, or, if I wanted I’ll just plug a little 2.5" external drive to view some home made movies (ACVHD vacation materials rendered with Sony Vegas to DVD format) and occasionally some old VHS titles transfered to DVDs. I’ll probably going to move some files to the external 2.5" drive then into the internal 1TB drive and use it as a ‘jukebox’ for both movies and music.

hazmat96 wrote:

I have a few blue ray disks I would like to have on my server.  Will the WDTV Live Hub (running FW 2.07.17) run these and “keep up” to the resolution needs?  My WD hub already “stutters” occasionally with “normal DVD” playback, so I am concerned it doesn’t have the “guts” to run blu-ray.

 

Thanks for any ideas or suggestions,

Mike

If your WD Live Hub currently “stutters” occasionally with “normal DVD” playback (from a DVD ISO on the hard drive of the server), then you would probably experience issues with a Blu-Ray as well. 

The WD Live Hub has the capability to play native Blu-Ray, and DVD.  MKV x264 rips, trans/reencodes of BR and DVDs are supported as well.  However, there are some other factors to consider. 

  • Try MakeMKV with your DVD and see if you still experience any stuttering.
  • Try running the DVD through Handbrake (or similar) to transcode/reencode to x264.  See how it performs.
  • Some audio types, stream better than others. 
  • MKVs can be optimized (with WDClean or similar) to stream better.
  • Try playback via share and not through DLNA

 I have no problems  playing to or from the hub with these formats  BluRay m2ts, MKV transcode, DVD ISOs, …

The other option to improve streaming is to get a good dual band N router like the Cisco WES610N.

crastan wrote:

The other option to improve streaming is to get a good dual band N router like the Cisco WES610N.

This will do nothing as far as streaming BD rips go. They are just too large to stream reliably via wireless. This has been said over and over in this (and other) thread, yet people are still trying to give contrary advice. once more: WIRELESS STREAMING WILL NOT WORK WITH BLU-RAY RIPS IN ANY FORMAT. PERIOD. End of discussion.

Well, the last post he had was discussing streaming DVD and from what I’ve read trhat is possible using a dual band router.

Miami_Son wrote:


crastan wrote:

The other option to improve streaming is to get a good dual band N router like the Cisco WES610N.


This will do nothing as far as streaming BD rips go…

…once more: WIRELESS STREAMING WILL NOT WORK WITH BLU-RAY RIPS IN ANY FORMAT. PERIOD. End of discussion.

They don’t even work for DVD format.

It is POSSIBLE to do BOTH with WiFi … DVD and BluRay. 

You just have to know how to make your WiFi network dead-on fast.

But there’s nothing inherent to WiFi that makes it impossible.

I have one of my Hub’s WiFi attached – no problem with DVDs, and no problem with most of the BluRays.  

As I said if you have a sufficiently fast wireless network it should be possible to stream DVD with no problems as the maximum bitrate of DVD is less than the throughput of a good dual band wifi router/network.

TonyPh12345 wrote:

It is POSSIBLE to do BOTH with WiFi … DVD and BluRay. When my router was less than 10 feet from the Live Hub, this was true, but only on its 5ghz band. Now that it is where it needs to be, only DVD rips will stream, but even they have a hiccup or two and on any band.

 

You just have to know how to make your WiFi network dead-on fast. Do tell, Tony.

 

But there’s nothing inherent to WiFi that makes it impossible. It’s inherent to the bandwidth needed by a full-rez BD rip and the fact that it needs to be constant and wifi rarely is. The fact that the Hub plays these files locally without issue tells me it is indeed a problem on the wireless end.

 

I have one of my Hub’s WiFi attached – no problem with DVDs, and no problem with most of the BluRays. This statement puzzles me as I’ve seen you agree with me on this in other threads.

80sGuy wrote:

They don’t even work for DVD format.

Then there is indeed an issue with your wireless network. I can stream a regular DVD rip with almost no issues from either my desktop or laptop to the Hub. How about posting a list of your equipment and PC specs? Streaming will only be as good as the equipment you’re streaming from, to and on.

When my router was less than 10 feet from the Live Hub, this was true, but only on its 5ghz band.

Now that it is where it needs to be, only DVD rips will stream, but even they have a hiccup or two and on any band.

My Hub is about 40 feet away from one of my 5.8 GHz APs, and about 25 feet away from the other, but it prefers the one furthest away because it has less attenuation from walls.

>>>  Do tell, Tony.

Both of the APs are set for auto-channel selection to avoid (not prevent) co-channel interference, and I ONLY have media players on that network.  I do NOT allow PCs, mobile devices, or servers of any sort on the 5.8GHz band, which reduces congestion and “coexistance” issues.  (Except, of course, for my iPad, which can’t really do enough data transfer to interfere, anyway…)

>>>  It’s inherent to the bandwidth needed by a full-rez BD rip…

A full BD rip needs only 40-50 megabits per second.

Both 2.4 and 5 GHz 802.11n is, indeed, capable of 250 to 300 megabits per second under the right conditions.  I measured as much as 240 megabits per second once in a blue moon, but I consistently get 120-180 megabits per second.

It’s darn near impossible to achieve 240 meg on 2.4 GHz N unless you’re in a radio isolation chamber… the spectrum is just waaaay too crowded.

…and the fact that it needs to be constant and wifi rarely is.

Not sure that constant throughput has anything to do with it…  The WDs DO have buffers, and minor variances in bandwidth are not going to cause problems if your “nominal” bandwidth leaves headroom.  As long as available bandwidth is always greater than bandwidth demand, variations will have no impact at all.

 This statement puzzles me as I’ve seen you agree with me on this in other threads.

I’d have to see what you’re referring to in order to determine the context of the discussion… 

Miami_Son wrote:


80sGuy wrote:



They don’t even work for DVD format.


Then there is indeed an issue with your wireless network…

 

                                            …How about posting a list of your equipment and PC specs? Streaming will only be as good as the equipment you’re streaming from, to and on.

* Dell XPS 17 L702X: Core i7 2670QM 2.2ghz, 1GB nVidia GT550, 8GB DDR3, 1TB 7200rpm

* Toshiba Satellite P305-S8997E: Core 2 DUO T8100 2.16GHZ, 4GB DDR2, 320GB 5400rpm,

  • All Windows 7 (Home Premium and Pro) and all wirelessly connected

* HUB: internet connected via cat5 Ethernet,

* HDMI (from HUB) out to Denon AVR-2310,

* HDMI (from Denon) out to 42" Panasonic Plasma (1080p)

* Internet Connection speed: 15mbps

* Linksys WRT54GS b/g router; connect type: ‘g’ (bought this in 2002)
*

80sGuy wrote:

* Linksys WRT54GS b/g router; connect type: ‘g’ (bought this in 2002)
*

Bingo! There’s your problem. Wireless G just won’t cut it. You need to get a wireless N router and network adapter for the Hub. **bleep**, I should have asked this before and this thread would have been dead before page 2.

Miami_Son wrote:


80sGuy wrote:

* Linksys WRT54GS b/g router; connect type: ‘g’ (bought this in 2002)
*


Bingo! There’s your problem. Wireless G just won’t cut it. You need to get a wireless N router and network adapter for the Hub. **bleep**, I should have asked this before and this thread would have been dead before page 2.

Well, I have a feeling that the ‘g’ would be some kind of dilemma but at least the product (WD) should state or recommend at least using the ‘n’ wifi to avoid ‘bottleneck’, something like how they print on outer software boxes, for example: "recommended using Windows Vista or higher, minimum 2GB RAM, witth at least 25GB hard drive space available). Like I mentioned before, I’m not planning on streaming contents within my home, but if I do I’ll probably either going to connect my computers with an ethernet cable, or upgrade to the newer ‘n’ type router.

IamTonyC wrote:


hazmat96 wrote:

I have a few blue ray disks I would like to have on my server.  Will the WDTV Live Hub (running FW 2.07.17) run these and “keep up” to the resolution needs?  My WD hub already “stutters” occasionally with “normal DVD” playback, so I am concerned it doesn’t have the “guts” to run blu-ray.

 

Thanks for any ideas or suggestions,

Mike


 

If your WD Live Hub currently “stutters” occasionally with “normal DVD” playback (from a DVD ISO on the hard drive of the server), then you would probably experience issues with a Blu-Ray as well. 

 

The WD Live Hub has the capability to play native Blu-Ray, and DVD.  MKV x264 rips, trans/reencodes of BR and DVDs are supported as well.  However, there are some other factors to consider. 

 

  • Try MakeMKV with your DVD and see if you still experience any stuttering.
  • Try running the DVD through Handbrake (or similar) to transcode/reencode to x264.  See how it performs.
  • Some audio types, stream better than others. 
  • MKVs can be optimized (with WDClean or similar) to stream better.
  • Try playback via share and not through DLNA

 

 I have no problems  playing to or from the hub with these formats  BluRay m2ts, MKV transcode, DVD ISOs, …

 

Like many people, I havent had problems streaming various content (DVD and Bluray) in my environment.  Not to say that I can stream everything with absolutely no problems.  I have also experienced issues in limit/load testing such as while testing mulitple devices simultaneously, or via older generation powerline products, or a limited processor computer , 802.11b, etc…  DVD and BluRay streaming is possible and obtainable , but works best, like anything else, when certain factors are fulfilled.  A car is capable to go 0-60 in less than 5 seconds, but is more like under certain circumstances (air temp, altitude, fuel level, tires, tire pressure, the ground, pavement, dirt road,etc…)

In any case, this thread reinitiated my curiosity and I wanted to do some minor testing regard streaming of various media in various combinations of formats and containers.   Maybe, we could find a general set of specifications, guidelines, etc… that could help other people achieve the same.

For one specific video, if I play the video from the hub directly (via explorer, mpc-hc, mplayer2, etc…), it had an average speed of 3MB/s.  Playing the same file, but different audio track, the average transfer rate rose to 3.5MB/s.  I also noticed there were significantly different initial peak speeds and latency.  Different file types have different layouts, cues, etc…  A file optimized for live streaming would have a different transfer profile than one that isnt.  In some cases a video is not watchable, because of the type of container and format of the file, not because of speed.

Also, DLNA may provide a better performance depending on the method.  In some cases playing a file via Twonky, speeds were significantly different (some almost twice as fast), but some formats played better than others. 

I can say that I have less issues with the MKV container and varios audio formats such as DTS, AC3, AAC, …