Sir_Siddy Posted June 2, 2006 Report Share Posted June 2, 2006 Ok if i build a small oh lets say 200-400 PC with wifi and put it in my basement next to my soon to be home entertainment system. Would I be able to stream video and music at GOOD quality over my wifi network. Its 802.11 b. The system is capable of using HD quality video but is my wifi fast enough? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
iccaros Posted June 2, 2006 Report Share Posted June 2, 2006 when you say 200-400 you mean mhz?? as a server that is ok (mmm maybe not runiing windows) with a really compact OS.. but you need good wireless suport. vlc (videolan.org) can stream any video, but I have not tested it on lower end systems. you can stream video over wireless. I do it with mythtv with soem xbox's runing gentoo and mythFrontend. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Sir_Siddy Posted June 2, 2006 Author Report Share Posted June 2, 2006 no sorry I meant dollars. thats my budget. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
iccaros Posted June 3, 2006 Report Share Posted June 3, 2006 miniitx $89 (has video,1 gig processor built on it.. 4"x4")case $45harddrive $60 (on sale)memory (265 megs $50)wifi card (pci) $40 - $60shure Quote Link to post Share on other sites
qwertyuiop Posted June 4, 2006 Report Share Posted June 4, 2006 Over a reasonable distance, you certainly could. 802.11b has a maximum theoretical throughput of 11Mbps but degrades as distance from the source increases.For video, you'll most likely have to reencode the videos into a format that supports streaming such as VP7 http://www.on2.com/downloads/vp7-personal/ or WMV 9.Depending on your source video, you can probably encode up to 2Mbps over a fair distance, which is still quite good qualitywise.For audio, pretty much any codec that you can stream from, you can use. My favorite is AACPlus which sounds great even at low bitrates (as low as 40-50Kbps) and can be played with Winamp (haven't tried other players though) but MP3s at any bitrate will be fine.Also keep in mind that the higher the quality of the video, the more the PC will have to work to decode it so a 1GHz mini-itx board may not cut it especially if it is a VIA system.Finally, if the only output from your system is S-Video, coaxial, or composite, don't even bother encoding at above 640x480 since the cable will then be limiting you. You need to make sure that you can get VGA,HDMI,DVI, or component from your receiving computer to your TV for best quality.Good luck on your setup! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
iccaros Posted June 4, 2006 Report Share Posted June 4, 2006 hmm..the via's video card has mpeg decoding and mpeg 4 decoding seams to work wiht zero problems. but I don't run windows on the box... I built gentoo to just do video.. not anything else.I would stay away from wmv or any propritary video wrapping, and stick with avi transport and mpeg 4 encodeing (ffmpeg does a great fast job), this way if you change the way you recive video you don't have to worry about what the format is.also for notes.. I use a via mini-itx as my mythtv box. captures, unencodes and steams video just fine. encoding should be 720X480 (480i)--defult setting for pvr_250 IMHO or use 320x280 and scale.VLC (www.videolan.org) will let you encode on the fly, so you can record in mpeg2 and stream it at mpg4 and you can change the transport on the fly. letting you pick wmv,mp4,raw,divix ect. and let you pick encoding width from .25 meg to 4 megit will also let you multicast.. great for wireless where you may have more than one reciver Quote Link to post Share on other sites
qwertyuiop Posted June 4, 2006 Report Share Posted June 4, 2006 (edited) iccaros: I'm curious as to which VIA system(s) have hardware mpeg4 decoding. I used a M10000 with a 1GHz chip for a while. It played DVDs great but stuttered on most mpeg4 video. I've also tried VLC's "on the fly" encoding, but it seemed very slow, and had poor quality, being barely watchable on a standard def TV...I speak only from my own experiences with this but if iccaros could get it working with that kind of a system, I've no doubt that it's possible. You'd still want to encode at a rate below your maximum throughput at whatever range your going for. You could transfer a large file from one computer to the other over the wireless network, find your transfer rate at that distance, and set your encode rate somewhere below that, though I do think that 4Mbps is still pushing it for 802.11b at any reasonable distance. Edited June 4, 2006 by qwertyuiop Quote Link to post Share on other sites
iccaros Posted June 5, 2006 Report Share Posted June 5, 2006 sorry jumbled the words too close.. it has mpeg decodeing. mpeg4 decoding is doen in software. but as I said.. I use Linux for this.. with evilWM.. no bloted windows manager as evilWM is 320k. and my entire os takes 32 megs ram, mythtv is another 105 megsthe only thing I think we disagree with is processor speed. but the VBRICK we use at work is a mini-itx 800mhz (via) http://www.vbrick.com/datasheets/datasheet...-mp2_030806.pdfrunning red Hat 6.2 (I believe that is the version may be 7.2) I've also tried VLC's "on the fly" encoding, but it seemed very slow, and had poor quality, being barely watchable on a standard def TV... I am curious as how you did this that is was poor, but quality is subjective, I can say we use VLC to pull video from global hawks and encode on the fly. but agian I have found problems with other OS's getting in the way so to say.. I agree that 4Mbs is too big 802.11b or g for that matter with latency, it just the max I belive vlc does.. I set it for 3Mbs and multicast. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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