Admittedly. I was a bit overly optimistic when I said a G router could handle streaming of MKVs wirelessly, although I did say it did so not very well. I have around a dozen MKV files I have made, and very few streamed well enough to be acceptable when I had a G router. Since I got the gigabit N router and upgraded the nerwork switches to gigabit, the situation is improved both wired and wirelessly.
Here is a discussion about an MKV file that plays perfectly to the WD from it’s attached drive to the TV, but not so well streamed to other devices.
Last night I tried streaming a very demanding MKV music concert to the iPad, and it actually worked great except for one thing – the data came in fine, looked and sounded wonderful, (as it does on the TV) but just not enough data came in quickly enough, and the movie experienced a lot of buffering by the VLC Streamer program unless I let data come in, I “paused it” and did not play it until a few minutes worth of the movie had come in (to minimize buffering delays) so it was not a smooth experience. I believe the bottleneck is caused at this point by the PC, VLC and even VLC Streamer combo; it just can’t crunch data fast enough to send out to match the rate is is being consumed by the act of playing the file on the iPad. It’s not a jitter or jerky issue, it is a pause until more data arrives and playing can resume kind of problem.
Hopefully, the new quad-core laptop I recently ordered from HP will solve this problem once it arrives to me. Meanwhile tonight, I streamed that same MKV movie to my current Win 7 laptop via the wired network… Before my network upgrades it virtually was unplayable this way with fits of starting, stopping and plain giving up. I got past that point tonight, but the picture was jittery although the sound went well.
Now, keep in mind this is the same PC and network that I used last night to stream it more successfully on the iPad. This time I used the wired network to PC, and had less success. Why? I think it is because VLC does not store any of the data it generates, it just sends it out to play it. Whereas, the VLC Streamer program always DOES store up the data it receives from VLC for a while before it makes the movie playable – in other words it buffers (stores) data. So, this is why my wireless playing worked better than my wired playing of the video.
I brought all this up to demonstrate that even though a wireless and wired network is top-notch, streaming can still be problematic. BTW, the PC can play the actual blu-ray disc just fine via an attached outboard PC blu-ray player and blu-ray playing software. So, the current PC has the guts, and the root of the problem may be with VLC; and hey, what can we expect from a free program, anyway! I’m just glad the TV and blu-ray player and the PC can play blu-ray discs directly very well, and the WD can play the MKV files directly from its drive to the TV, too.
It will be interesting to see how well my new laptop does to correct the streaming problems I am having with this particular MKV file, but it can’t “fix” problems that are within VLC which does the actual “playing”.
