I’m experiencing a lot of trouble getting large MKV files to play smoothly. I keep getting a lot of stuttering after a few minutes, or after 20 minutes or at random times it seems…
In my living room, I have the following:
WD TV LIVE Gen 2 - 2.5 TB USB drive attached and shared on my network
(Attached to WD LiveWire)
Wired to a 100 mb/sec Netgear n150 router
Between my living room and bedroom I’m using the WD LiveWire Powerline adapter. My wifi is really weak in my apartment even though it’s not a long distance.
In my bedroom I have the following (where I want to stream to):
WD TV LIVE STREAMING
(Attached to WD LiveWire)
Attempting to stream content from my living room WD’s attached HDD…
Like I said, I’m seeing a lot of stuttering when watching Movies in my bedroom. I decided to do a network speed test, so I plugged my laptop into a port on my living room LiveWire switch and initiated a copy of a movie stored on my laptop to a hdd I temporarily connected to my WD in my bedroom. I wanted to see what sort of speed I was really getting using the LiveWire. The movie transferred at about 4.00 - 4.20 mb/sec and took about 60 or 70 minutes to copy 15 GB. Looking at task manager in Windows, my network leveled out at about 36% on 100 mb/sec connection.
Could this BE the real reason why I was seeing the stuttering and not a firmware issue, buffer issue, etc…? Do I just need more bandwidth? I wish the WD TV LIVE Streaming would look at the file before starting to stream and either buffer, or notify you it must reduce the quality based on the connection. Instead it just stutters, audio cuts out, video pauses, speeds up, then returns to normal. The issue sometimes doensn’t stop even after a few minutes and I need to stop the movie, then “resume” it. Most movies large, and even fairly large are basically unwatchable.
4.2 MB might too slow, you should get higher transfer speed in a 100 mb/s network, at least 8 MB/s. You can confirm if the issue is within your network by trying to playback the files from a USB drive directly attached to the WD TV.
you could verify this by doing a little test, and connecting a long network cable between the 2 rooms, or moving some of your equipment close enough together to try streaming directly connected without the powerline networking.
if it’s still slow, it could be your router, or a network cable that is bad, but i would put money on your powerline networking connections.
I’m going to do a little more troubleshooting. I’ll run a cable down my hall to see If things change. But yes, things place perfectly with locally attached storage. I’m surprised the livewire gives such poor performance. I’m going to attempt to get my wireless working a bit better. I think things aren’t registering at N speeds. Possibly if I can get N to work right I’ll have better range and signal strength and can forget about the livewire. Or possibly get a new, better dual band router.
i have an n router ( d-link 655) in my basement, and my smp is about 40ft away in my bedroom. I can stream wirelessly SD movies no problem, and usually 720p as well. 1080p requires a hard connection.
if you have an android phone, down load a free program called wifi analyzer, it will help you find where your signal is best for the WD SMP.
N speeds should be faster then then 100mbs wired connection (in theory). Hmmmm. For now I just have my favorite stuff on a smaller drive in my bedroom which is full now and have avoided streaming all together. The worst part is, my laptop right next to the smp on my bedroom can play these super big mkvs without skipping a best. The smp seems to extra sensitive to any network slowdown or latency.
What is the speed of powerline adaptors? 200mbps? I wouldn’t use anything other than 500mbps for 1080p. I have a Viera TV beside smp. Viera has twice as good wireless signal as the smp.
Transfer rates between my Living room and bedroom network is 3.6 mb/sec.
I disconnected the WD Livewire and ran Wireless… (I have a $39.99 Netgear N 150 router)
With my WD TV LIVE Streaming in it’s normal place in the bedroom, copying files between it and my media drive in the living room only transfers at 700 KB/sec . It’s getting two bars but the signal is obviously pretty terrible.
Moving the SMP from my bedroom within a couple feet of the router I acheived 8.75 mb/sec. I think this would be good enough to stream 1080p if I could get a decient signal in my bedroom. The worst part is it’s only 40 feet from my router. I can’t believe the signal is this crappy.
The next step is run a long cable (if I can find one) to see what the wired connection will do and if a 1080p movie plays without issue. I wonder if possibly a higher quality Wireless Router with a better range would be enough to boost the single and give it the speed it needs. Another opition would be a better powerline adapter. Netgear has a 500 mbps powerline kit which is obviously advertised to be 2.5 x faster. If I can improve my single by only 2.5x I think i’d be in good shape.
nyjz1298 wrote:
It’s the standard 200mbps. Getting closer to 35 Mbps… What power line do you recommend?
500Mbps. The more the better because porerlnines are not guaranteed to work as they should. Usually, they do but there are cases that powerlines can work worse than decent wifi.
I ran some tests and figured out what my problem is. It seems the outlet were my Livewire in my living room has been plugged into was the issue. It may have too much stuff running from it that caused some slowness.
It’s a 4 plug outet that has the following plugged into it via surge proector:
42 inch LED TV
Cable box
2.5 TB USB Hard drive
Bluray player
Cable modem
Onkyo tx-sr609 surround sound receiver
300 watt sub
WD TV Live
Livewire Adapter
I moved the Livewire to a different outet on a different wall in my livingroom where I only have my cellphones charnging. Good thing I had a long cable and was able to hide the wire well. I was plesently suprised that my performance boosted by 45%! I was able to do a file copy to my bedroom at a speed of 6.35 mbps which utilized about 59% of my 100 mbps connection from what I saw via task manager. Things have been much better so far!
I ran some tests and figured out what my problem is. It seems the outlet were my Livewire in my living room has been plugged into was the issue. It may have too much stuff running from it that caused some slowness.
It’s a 4 plug outet that has the following plugged into it via surge proector:
42 inch LED TV
Cable box
2.5 TB USB Hard drive
Bluray player
Cable modem
Onkyo tx-sr609 surround sound receiver
300 watt sub
WD TV Live
Livewire Adapter
I moved the Livewire to a different outet on a different wall in my livingroom where I only have my cellphones charnging. Good thing I had a long cable and was able to hide the wire well. I was plesently suprised that my performance boosted by 45%! I was able to do a file copy to my bedroom at a speed of 6.35 mbps which utilized about 59% of my 100 mbps connection from what I saw via task manager. Things have been much better so far!
You are supposed to plug the livewire adaptor directly into the wall socket and nothing else plugged with it, that’s how all these adaptors are supposed to work. No wonder you were getting rubbish throughput.
Sorry… Correction… All of those devices were plugged into the surge protector and the Livewire was plugged directly into one of the free sockets within that four socket outet.
It’s odd… where I ended up finding the best performance was with it plugged into a really cheap surge proector / power strip. With it plugged directly into the wall I got about 5-10% lower speeds. That seems really odd as it cleary states it needs to be plugged directly into the socket.
Hmm. My router only has built in antennas. Errr antenna. Slow **bleep**. I would like an upgrade but I’m sitting pretty good so far with the livewire adapter. 6gb movies play without issues. One movie I have that is 15 gb must have been encoded poorly because it hopes and skips even when watching from my computer on a wired connection and make the CPU go through the roof. Obviously the wd doesn’t care for it much either. Play fine locally or direct attached USB which is odd. I’ll just watch that one off USB and move on with my life.
