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HD Should Be Wired, For Now

AcidAUS writes "Current wireless networking standards aren't fit for streaming high-definition (HD) content between a media centre PC and multiple extender devices, according to Intel and Microsoft." From the article: "'You've also got to remember though that wired connectivity is a lot more efficient than when you start putting it [HD content] over wireless,' said O'Shea, adding that the real-world bandwidth of 802.11g would 'probably top out around 22Mbps'. Intel's Gurgen added that in addition to efficiency differences, one must also consider other network traffic when weighing up a move to wireless. 'Remember that at that one time when you're streaming content it's probably not the only thing that's happening. You could be sending e-mails, you could be downloading some sort of update,' said Gurgen. Both O'Shea and Gurgen declined to comment on whether or not the upcoming 802.11n Wi-Fi standard would make wireless streaming of HD content throughout the home viable."

119 comments

  1. Refused to comment, eh? by VTMarik · · Score: 0

    Sounds more like they don't want to contradict themselves by saying that it is a possibility.

    1. Re:Refused to comment, eh? by Eideewt · · Score: 1

      There would have been no contradiction, since it's the *current* standards that they deem inadequate.

  2. EM Pollution by saskboy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Another benefit in going with wires, is that you could potentially power some devices with Power over Ethernet, right?

    And there's less interference for everything else wireless we'll want to run. And less EM radiation in the neighbourhood could have health benefits we can't quantify yet.

    --
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    1. Re:EM Pollution by novus+ordo · · Score: 1

      I thought you meant Ethernet over Power(notice the overwhelming demand bit). Ethernet doesn't have any inherent powering, although it has some unused wires you could in theory use to power a device, but you would need to some funky stuff. Probably a bit ambitious ;) But anyway, I'm looking forward to devices that use EoP since most electronic devices in your home--tv, vcr, dvd player--already need a power plug so might was well piggy back off of that to feed HD. Also some great home-automation features seem really practical with that setup. My whole point is that wireless is most practical for mobile devices and what's the point of watching HD on a 2 inch screen? HD stays wired.

      --
      "You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
    2. Re:EM Pollution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      You are wrong. However IEEE 802.3af only provides max 19.2 watts of power, that is too little for many applications.

    3. Re:EM Pollution by Takumi2501 · · Score: 1

      I could be wrong here, but I was of the impression that ethernet over power had speed issues because of the amount of lost packets caused by line noise.

      Perhaps not the wisest choice for streaming a high-def signal?

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    4. Re:EM Pollution by interiot · · Score: 1

      Power over Ethernet is standard, not all that ambitious.

      I'm not even sure 2 inch HD screens exist or are physically possible. Wireless HD is for media extender devices... eg. say you live in an apartment, and have an HD HTPC in your living room. If you want to watch HD in your bedroom using the same recorded content, you could potentially link two HTPC's with wireless so you don't have to drill any holes or run any wires down halls and through doorways.

    5. Re:EM Pollution by KDR_11k · · Score: 1

      Wait, what? Okay, that explains why it started smoking when I plugged this in.

      --
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    6. Re:EM Pollution by Fordiman · · Score: 1

      Not the issue. The issue is the low maximum power (around 19 watts).

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    7. Re:EM Pollution by smenor · · Score: 1

      I'm not so convinced about the health benefits, but I'd like to see less EM pollution just so that my wireless network isn't disrupted by my 12 neighbors who are downloading movies, talking on their 2.4 GHz phones and running their jury-rigged microwaves with the door open.

    8. Re:EM Pollution by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      That's Power over Ethernet (when you send power over your data link). I think he is talking about Ethernet over Power, when you send data over your home's electrical system.

      --
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    9. Re:EM Pollution by novus+ordo · · Score: 1

      Maybe, but there are 85Mbps adapters nowadays. A couple of years ago at a trade show I was looking at specs of 200Mbps. HD signal needs about 20Mbps so you can have 4 simultaneous HD streams, and that's now. It might have line noise, but its a hell of a lot less than you would get on wireless.

      --
      "You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
  3. welcome to... by jigjigga · · Score: 0

    welcome to reality. wireless works for current trivial tasks, but it can't stalk up to wired- it incrementally tries to match it. Gigabit wired is what we should be using (as scaled in time and in bandwidth demand), not 10/100 thats been around forever.

    1. Re:welcome to... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gigabit wired is what we should be using (as scaled in time and in bandwidth demand), not 10/100 thats been around forever.

      That is a strange comment. Who is we? You use what you need, what you have, or what you can afford. I have had a home network at my house since the mid 90's so various forms of the home network have been in heavy use for years. Although GB would be nice, my current 100mbit is working fine. I may not get any geek points with 100mbit but I'm not having any problems either so I'll upgrade when the time comes or through attrition of old equipment over time.

    2. Re:welcome to... by jigjigga · · Score: 0

      hey man, i dont think it strange at all. I wish i was on gigabit. I wish my school was on gigabit. I wish instead of looking to achieve what people have had (100mbit) for nearly a decade, we try to move up. Computers and disk space and everything else has improved by leaps and bounds while networking is so relatively slow (even though it is increasingly important in the way computers are used). Hope that explains what i was going after a bit ;)

    3. Re:welcome to... by megaditto · · Score: 3, Informative

      Well, 100 baseT is inadequate for streaming good video.

      Assume no compression (i.e. good video) 800x600 pixels, 32 bits/pxl, 30 fps

      Moving that data alone requires 500 Mbps, not counting protocol overhead. Of course, with compression you can easily cut that down by a factor of 10, but that will be lossy.

      --
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    4. Re:welcome to... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      55, not 500...?

    5. Re:welcome to... by eipgam · · Score: 1

      55 MiB per second, 460.8 Mbps.

    6. Re:welcome to... by kryptkpr · · Score: 2, Informative

      Video is due to it's very nature very redunant. The majority of the content which was in frame X is still there in frame X+1 and frame X+2, it may have just moved a little. Good compression (MPEG4 at a high data rate) simply takes advantage of this, and will not be noticable to the viewer while still reducing the data rate 3-5x.

      Now as to your assumptions. First, why 32bpp? You don't broadcast an alpha channel. 24bpp is enough for RGB, and 16bpp is enough for YCbCr (using 422 sampling, which is fine for video but not so great for computer images).

      Second, 800x600 isn't HD. The minimum resolution to be called HD is 720p, which is 1280x720 (roughly a 1 megapixel image). Some folks will try to pass 480p off as HD, but it's not, it's ED.

      So taking a typical movie in HD, that's 1280 * 720 * 16 bpp * 30 fps * 1/4 (compression gains) = 110 Mbps. Still a little too much for fast ethernet, but GigE could support several such streams without a problem.

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    7. Re:welcome to... by LocalH · · Score: 1

      Who in the hell is streaming uncompressed video around their house?

      --
      FC Closer
    8. Re:welcome to... by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      I know of no good quality video that does not use compression, for that reason. DVD uses lossy compression. Blu-Ray uses lossy compression. Certainly anything you download from the Internet uses lossy compression. The idea is that if most people won't notice the drop in quality, and it buys you a factor of 10 at least, it's a practical necessity.

      --
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    9. Re:welcome to... by rwa2 · · Score: 1

      HD is usually at 60fps ... 720p60 or 1080i60 . The numbers I usually see for uncompressed bandwidth reqs are 1.5Gbps (3.0 Gbps for 1080p60, which is why there isn't much that supports that yet unfortunately)

      Also don't forget audio, though usually I guess you only have a few tracks of AC3 audio that add another 512kbps max each.

      Anyway, at work I use VideoLAN to compress a 1280x720p30 video feed to a 4Mbps stream using MPEG4 without too much quantization during high-motion sequences.

  4. We're talking about MS here right? by joey_knisch · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Cause if MS is involved, you will be downloading some sort of update.

    1. Re:We're talking about MS here right? by msloan · · Score: 0, Troll

      Least its not apple, or else you'd be paying for the update

    2. Re:We're talking about MS here right? by buswolley · · Score: 1

      More like: Wireless HD content shall not impede the Microsoft Genuine Advantage Spy Network.

      --

      A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.

    3. Re:We're talking about MS here right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At least fucking mod me down correctly. Offtopic? I don't think so. I was responding to the summary's statement "you could be downloading some sort of update." Maybe the comment was not funny or possibly flame bait, but it was on fucking topic.

  5. The census on 802.11n by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...is yes: it should alleviate current problems with distributing HD content, and would most likely be backed by these two companies. Not because they like it so much, but because of other companies in the electronics world that would like to see it used.

  6. What a load of crap... by dmayle · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I live in France, where I have Free as an ISP. The ADSL service is 24Mbps and comes with an ADSL Wifi-MIMO equipped modem (built-in 5 port switch as well), and a Wifi "Television box", that streams MP4-Encrypted HD content over the Wifi without problems. And the content is drop-dead beautiful. In addition, I can receive a second HD stream to my computer while one is playing on the TV, though my Athlon 64 3000+ sometimes struggles with the HD content...

    (For those that want to be jealous, I pay 29.99 for this service, which includes a fixed IP, 100 Channels of mixed HDTV and standard digital TV, and unlimited calling to everywhere in 40 some countries, including the US.)

    1. Re:What a load of crap... by subxero37 · · Score: 1

      Wow... in the US, at least here, I pay $30/month for DSL internet -- it's the fastest speed available here, at 1.5 Mbits. In addition to that, the phone bill is also $30/month, with very expensive long distance calling. And on top of that, standard low-res cable TV (61 channels) is $45/month.

      I hate America.

    2. Re:What a load of crap... by Lehk228 · · Score: 2, Funny

      i am going to invest in french lessons

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    3. Re:What a load of crap... by Kadin2048 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Just out of curiosity (and yes, I am very jealous), do you have any idea what the bit rate is of those MPEG-4 HD streams?

      It would be interesting to see how many the WL network would be capable of handling at once.

      I'm not sure how many video streams the network has to be able to carry for people to consider it practical. Obviously, if the network can handle one stream, it's not going to work well for most households, who have more than one TV. And when you get into TIVO-type DVR boxes, then you might need more than one stream per viewing device, if your DVR boxes have multiple "tuners"...the number of simultaneous streams could get pretty large quickly, I think. All depends on your viewing habits, I guess.

      --
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    4. Re:What a load of crap... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yeah but I have cable TV with HBO and high speed internet for about $130 a month combined, no HD content included. No phone service but that's only an additional $50 a month with $.10 a minute long distance, non US is of course is more. It may not be as good in the US but at least it costs more!

    5. Re:What a load of crap... by julesh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I suspect your video is rather more highly compressed than HD-DVD quality videos will be. 1920x1080p has ten times as many pixels per frame as standard DVD (720x576i) which is usually encoded at around the 9Mb/s range. The encoding of HD-DVD is better, and higher resolutions normally compress slightly better than lower ones, so I wouldn't expect to have to use 90Mb/s to reach the same quality levels... but I'd estimate 30Mb/s is necessary[1]. Sure, you can drop that to 15Mb/s for less quality loss than you get dropping DVD to 4.5Mb/s, which isn't startlingly bad. I regularly take my home-prepared DVDs lower than that, in fact. But the fact is that there is a quality loss for doing it.

      [1] - it seems that the designers of HD-DVD probably agree with this estimate: the capacity of HD-DVD is 30Gb, compared with the 9Gb capacity of DVD, so if they wanted it to support the same length video of DVD just at a higher resolution, this is what they'd have been aiming for. Blu-ray is, of course, larger still. HD-DVD is designed to cope with a maximum bitrate of 36.55Mb/s; blu-ray, again, is designed for a higher bitrate.

    6. Re:What a load of crap... by zbaron · · Score: 1

      Have a look at some of the videos at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/ as well as the other H.264 encoded trailers that are available. Admittedly, H.264 at 1920x1080p requires some serious hardware to decode smoothly, but the bit rates are not much higher than current DVD.

    7. Re:What a load of crap... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's more than just the claim of how much bandwidth is needed that's crap, it's also the claim that 802.11g networks will only get 22mbps. I still don't really understand where this BS came from. I've never seen performance that horrible unless I'm so far away (say, clear across a house from the AP) that it's hard to maintain a reliable signal at all. From reasonable distances (2-3 rooms away), getting anything less than 40mbps means I need to switch the channel.

      I have to assume somebody came up with the 22mbps estimate for a corporate or campus WLAN and clueless twits have just parroted it blissfully ignorant of the truth in SOHO environments.

      (The above also applies to the perinnial statements about "real-world" performance of wired ethernet. I have to assume they applied to the dark ages of non-switched LANs, 'cause I'm a sysadmin at a company with a small but busy -- and fully switched -- LAN, and routinely see full utilization of 100mbit links, and on gigabit links we hit disk and CPU speed caps long before network limits.)

    8. Re:What a load of crap... by julesh · · Score: 1

      I would if I had hardware that could play 'em. :(

    9. Re:What a load of crap... by alexhs · · Score: 3, Informative

      Your parent post lacked that detail, but Freebox uses MiMo technology, an implementation of draft 802.11n. So it has more bandwith that regular 802.11g.
      AFAIK they're also using MPEG4, which is more space efficient than MPEG2 (and I get a little less than 4Mb/s for non HDTV streams - currently no idea for HDTV streams, I lack an HDMI wire)

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    10. Re:What a load of crap... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      What company are you a sysadmin at? "My Mom's Basement Incorporated"?

      That 22mbps number is based on real world testing. I personally have never seen 802.11g go above 25mbps - and that was with a Cisco AP and an Intel wireles adapter two feet from eachother. I'd sure like to know what kind of 802.11g AP and wireless card you are using to get 40mbps throughput.

      As for wired, it impossible to get 100bits of throughput on a 100mbit link due to overhead. Under optimal conditions, you can get 85-90mbps.

    11. Re:What a load of crap... by Gobelet · · Score: 4, Informative

      In France, but in Europe globally, transmission of HDTV is made in H.264. And it's mandatory. So Free is streaming MPEG-4 HDTV content over Wi-Fi, at something like 5 or 6 Mbps. And the quality is just... wow.

    12. Re:What a load of crap... by Xugumad · · Score: 1

      Can I just point out, you said MIMO. I'm assuming 802.11n draft compliant then, at about 540Mb/s, or about 10 times the speeds Microsoft were talking about?

    13. Re:What a load of crap... by donatzsky · · Score: 1

      I couldn't find anything at Free's site, but for the Neuf offering you'll need at least 5mbps. And the two services seems to be mostly similar.
      http://offres.neuf.fr/offres/television/Questions- reponses.html

    14. Re:What a load of crap... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But if the Freebox is using a draft 802.11 spec, would the laptop not need some sort of modified WLAN card?

    15. Re:What a load of crap... by alexhs · · Score: 1

      But if the Freebox is using a draft 802.11 spec, would the laptop not need some sort of modified WLAN card?

      MiMo is backward compatible with 802.11b and g. But if you want full MiMo bandwidth you're right, you will need a special card like that one. BTW, they claim it's the only one, and it's also available with PCMCIA.
      Based around Ralink RA2661 chipset.

      --
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    16. Re:What a load of crap... by Ilgaz · · Score: 1

      On a bit unrelated note, when will your ISPs start to fight against at least open proxies?

      With such speed we are even more doomed (as spam receiving people).

      Top senders there will look familiar to you:

      http://www.senderbase.org/

      Either France became completely nuts about e-mail communication or they are spamming.

      BTW it includes my own country and ISP too and I am ashamed, no "freedom fries" attitude in my post.

    17. Re:What a load of crap... by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      and don't forget his gigabit claims...

    18. Re:What a load of crap... by Fred_A · · Score: 2, Informative

      I use Free as an ISP too (although I have the previous generation of their Freebox modem which is just a single box). FWIW though, the HD TV content is roughly of DVD resolution. You can play it either through your TV or with VLC (or both). So it's not TVHD in the usual commercial sense although it's much better than "regular" PAL/SECAM TV. And the compression quality is quite good.

      Oh and the "modem" actually is a little Linux embedded computer. :)

      The way the local market works is that Free often is the one that innovates with the other ISPs quickly offering similar packages. In the end everybody wins I guess. So ADSL 2+ broadband is roughly 30€ whatever your ISP is. Including TV and international phone.

      --

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    19. Re:What a load of crap... by Fred_A · · Score: 1

      The MiMo bit is mostly used to talk to the TV STB to stream video to it. One of the problems with the previous models was that the phone line wasn't next to the TV so you had to have either a long phone cable, or a long SCART cable, and then Ethernet cables running to wherever the box was. The MiMo solution solves that.

      --

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    20. Re:What a load of crap... by dhoffman · · Score: 1

      IIRC, MPEG-4 Part 10 HD would be about 10Mbps.

    21. Re:What a load of crap... by slide-rule · · Score: 1
      I live in France ... I pay 29.99 for this service, which includes ...

      Okay, we're back to calling them "freedom fries" again. Why? Because thin strips of fried potato[e], much like low priced super-DSL service, wants to be free. ;-)


    22. Re:What a load of crap... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You pay 29.99 for a service that calls itself "Free"...

      Nelson: ha hah!

    23. Re:What a load of crap... by jambarama · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Parent poster said he/she got HD. They didn't say 1080p, 720p still counts as HD. 720X1280 really does look pretty good, and it is about half the bitrate of 1080p. I know 1080p is the holy grail (currently) of an HD system, but 720 will stream across a 802.11g network.

      Another option, 1080i, uses less bandwidth without a huge quality loss. 1080i is 1080p interpolated: basically even rows refresh, then odd rows, alternating. This way you only have to send about half the signal and the quality is pretty close to as good.

      So again, if you use a good codec, and use 1080i or 720p, you can get pretty good HD for under 20Mb/s. Of course when the 802.11n standard comes out (if ever), aside from the increased reach, it is supposed to offer roughly 10x the bandwidth currently offered by 802.11g.

    24. Re:What a load of crap... by Gulthek · · Score: 1

      Unless he doesn't give a crap about open plains and spaces and low gas prices. It's possible that the GP is more interested in communication and entertainment services, eh?

    25. Re:What a load of crap... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We tried, but I'm afraid we just couldn't fit 20 geeks in my mom's basement. The fact that it's 700 miles away from where we wanted to be doesn't help.

      We don't run a serious WLAN at work, it's 802.11b with a single AP and just exists for when we it's too hard to run a cable to random spot X (and it's a PITA to use it even then with our network architecture; the VLAN the WAP is connected to can't access anything but the public internet, for anything internal you have to fire up a VPN tunnel). I was referring to my position only in the context of wired ethernet. My 802.11g experience is limited to a SOHO environment, which is what's most applicable to the topic at hand -- HD video delivery. My 40mbps speeds are with consumer equipment. Usually a Linksys AP and Asus or Edimax NICs. Lots of other random crap thrown into the mixes, though. I don't know what to tell you other than "it works for me". That and link quality actually tends to go down for me when I'm closer than 3 feet or so.

      And as for 100mbit wired ethernet, if the traffic isn't crossing several switches or a router or two, the performance I see comes out to near-theoretical. I routinely see 95-96% true throughput for efficient file transfer protocols (meaning not SMB and not even NFS if you're after that last bit of speed; if you're on a properly isolated network, plain ol' FTP is your friend), which fits nicely with the true TCP/IP+ethernet overhead of 3-4% (as opposed to the 10% or more I see people who clearly have never even glanced at the specs quoting). Even with ssh-encrypted links the true throughput consistently comes out to a little better than 90%.

    26. Re:What a load of crap... by jasonjacks0n · · Score: 1
      I live in France, where I have Free as an ISP. The ADSL service is 24Mbps

      Yep, I'm jealous. I remember thinking minitel was pretty cool too, back when I was just dialing into local BBSes here in America.. You lucky French bastards! ;-)

      But I'm actually replying because I'm curious about your ISP's name. I would have expected "libre" instead of "free"..

      First I thought it might be a UK company that crossed the channel, but the site is all in French, and the contact page lists Paris numbers and says that service is only available in France, so that shoots down that idea.

      And while it might be a marking thing to call something free "libre" here in America, I had the impression that in France it would rather be common to view the English language as .. er, common, not exotic or literate.

      So I thought I'd just ask and see if you had any ideas. =)

      Thanks,
      -A curious American

      --
      This space intentionally left blank.
  7. Call me old-fashioned... by Chaffar · · Score: 1

    I still prefer having Cat-6 cables running all over the house :)

    1. Re:Call me old-fashioned... by JayAEU · · Score: 1

      Indeed, running proper Cat6 wires is a good investment if you're serious about having multiple networked devices.

      Another problem with wireless networks is that all of the clients share the available bandwith most of the time. This means that you'll find yourself running a number of wireless accesspoints, which all have to be connected somehow to a switch, most probably using conventional wires.

      The way I see it, there's no way around having a wired "backbone", considering the rising bandwith demands of future wireless clients.

    2. Re:Call me old-fashioned... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ethernet Drops in the bathroom?, yeah I went there....

    3. Re:Call me old-fashioned... by ClamIAm · · Score: 1

      After I read your post, I got an image in my head of little kittens delivering packets to different rooms.

      Of course, the latency would be horrible, but it would be the most adorable topography ever :P

  8. Too bad...... by r4d1x · · Score: 1

    It would be nice to leech the HD from your . I think at that point, I'd only be paying for basic utilities.

    1. Re:Too bad...... by Kadin2048 · · Score: 1

      You are aware you can "leech" quite a bit of HD just by sticking up a VHF antenna, right?

      --
      "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
    2. Re:Too bad...... by booch · · Score: 1

      Actually, almost all HDTV (digital ATSC) broadcasts are via UHF. See this AntennaWeb FAQ.

      --
      Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
  9. No problem... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... in the future,we could power wireless devices by small-beams of highly effective microwave radiation.
    Don't walk through the beam now, not unless you like to "cook yourself".

  10. DRM? by eliot1785 · · Score: 1

    Could DRM have anything to do with this? Is wireless content harder for them to control?

    PS: Sometimes I am lucky if I get 22 kBps on Wireless. I would love to get "only" 22 mBps...

    1. Re:DRM? by Firehed · · Score: 1

      Well of course wireless content is harder to control. It's, uhh, not wired. Anyone in proximity to the AP could get the content. As to wireless speeds... while I don't get speeds THAT bad, it's rarely enough to stream standard def video, let alone high def. And while I've got mine encoded to about as high quality as possible, it's still a good bit less than the bitrate of a DVD, which should be easily streamable (is that a word?) over wireless. I cringe at the thought of streaming HD over wireless, at least as far as the stuttering goes - the concept is awesome.

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    2. Re:DRM? by eliot1785 · · Score: 1

      Regarding speeds - the reason I get bad speeds isn't because of wireless speeds per se, but wireless range. I don't know why, but even with Draft N I seem to be unable to cover the 2 floors of our apartment, and we don't have much in the walls. Overall it's been a big disappointment. I'm lucky if I can browse the internet on one side of my apartment on the 2nd floor if the router is on the other side on the first floor - usually I can't.

  11. Any chance... by corychristison · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... of your ISP expanding over to North America? -- especially in Saskatchewan, Canada. Our current offerings are very limited.

    Pretty please?

  12. Well, yeah. by julesh · · Score: 1

    I have enough trouble streaming DVD-resolution content across my 802.11g network.

    Could be something to do with using SMB as the protocol to stream it across, though. When I test my bandwidth I get a good 15Mb/s, usually, with only 3ms ping times. Dunno why everything's so slow, but it is.

    1. Re:Well, yeah. by Pike · · Score: 1

      This is consistent with typical 802.11g performance. "Nameplate" bandwidth is 54mbps but the medium is half-duplex - only one side can transmit at a time - so this effectively halves your bandwidth to 27mbps. Then you have wireless overhead: frame headers, retries, and encryption, which can drop your effective bandwidth by 20% to 50%, the biggest factors there being your signal-to-noise ratio and the number of other users.

      If you place a laptop within a foot of your AP and run some active testing, you will find that you are able to get 22mbps of throughput...if you are the only one using the network and if the RF interference in your area is not very bad.

    2. Re:Well, yeah. by Tatsh · · Score: 1

      I play movies all the time on my TV (these are XviD rips which look just as good as DVD, and at a 10th of the bitrate of DVD). I do this wirelessly with my D-Link DI-524G router ($20 router after rebate), and I'm talking about 20-35 feet away. No lag, no skips (except under serious congestion, only has happened once). I do not know what these guys are talking about regarding 22Mbps. I get 36-48Mbps in my living room about 35 feet away from the router, enough to stream XviD. I have not tested out any other video formats really, but I'm happy with XviD working this way. And I read some people mentioning even if you're close it's a bad connection. My room is where the router is and I sit right next to it within 5 feet (so I plug in when I'm close enough, much faster than wireless). In the end wireless sucks but it's better than not having any.

    3. Re:Well, yeah. by julesh · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but what gets me is the fact that despite my ability to get 15Mb/s from the hardware, which ought to be adequate, the software in my environment (Either WinXP-WinXP or WinXP-Linux/Samba) fails to deliver more than about 5Mb/s when I'm trying to access files over this damned thing. It's like the protocol's deliberately crippled or something.

  13. Sigh by tigersha · · Score: 2, Funny

    The really heartbreaking thing is that I live 5 km from the French border...

    So near and yet so far.

    --
    The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
    1. Re:Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you German? If so, there is, um, another way to get around this...

    2. Re:Sigh by smenor · · Score: 1

      Shame I don't have any mod points - that that made me laugh my ass off.

    3. Re:Sigh by smenor · · Score: 1

      Also a shame I can't edit and didn't hit the preview button before submitting that.

    4. Re:Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perhaps if you agree to call and warn them of any approaching Germans, something could be worked out.

    5. Re:Sigh by tigersha · · Score: 1

      No I am not a German. I just have to live here!

      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
  14. FUD FUD FUD fud FuD FUD fud fUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Replace "EM raditation" in your last sentence with anything else - water, sunlight, exercise, and you'll see that you're just slinging FUD you Micro$oftie.

  15. Why not say the truth. by kinglink · · Score: 1

    Because of overhead (read copy protection) you can't use wireless. If they had found a good copy protection or at least imagined the possibility someone will crack even this one then maybe they could make a good image for wireless.

    It's definatly possible, you can get full HD Broadcasts over antenna, but because there's not Copy protection on that I guess it's ok. The fact is that it's not that HD or blue ray are going to be inferior technology, it's the fact both of them are going to be so overladen with copyprotection that neither will even gather acceptance. At least for a long while.

    1. Re:Why not say the truth. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Full HD content broadcast by a television station is possible not because of the lack of DRM, but because the station "owns" the frequencies used for transmission. Further, a television broadcast (digital or otherwise) isn't broken down into ethernet frames which need to be acknowledged by the receiving device(s). Interference on the shared frequencies used for WiFi, and the need to acknowledge the receipt of ethernet frames are the real barriers to full-HD content over WiFi

  16. Update, indeed by nsayer · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    you could be downloading some sort of update

    Makes sense. If you're running Windows, the likelihood that your bandwidth is being used for updates is certainly higher.

    1. Re:Update, indeed by JoeCoder7 · · Score: 0

      Actually, I probably spend 10x the bandwidth per month updating Kubuntu than I do Windows XP. But that's only because Windows refuses to update anything besides itself, IE, and Outlook express. I even have to go out and find newer versions of my drivers all by myself. How retro!

  17. 802.11n by legoburner · · Score: 1

    Well 802.11n promises a typical data rate of 200Mbit/s (max 500Mbit/s), but the actual standard is not expected to be approved until July 2007, so it will be at least another year before it is feasible to start integrating into mainstream technologies. 802.11g would probably be alright with heavily compressed HD content, but if you have more than 1 box trying to watch different content from the same source, then it will probably break down quite quickly.

  18. H.264 by porneL · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can stream full HD content wirelessly - if it's compressed.

    1. Re:H.264 by Controlio · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well no one can stream uncompressed HD... it's 1.5G/sec. And it's a world of difference from what you see at home. You'd swear you were staring out a window.

      It amazes me how much compression is involved. Even the transmission lines from the TV truck to the station compress the signal down to 270M/sec. Bounce it off a few satellites, hand it over to your cable provider, and you're staring at about 11M/sec or less by the time it gets to your house.

      So by the time you're staring at that "beautiful" signal on your new $6,000 HDTV... think about the fact that the quality you're actually seeing is 1% of the original signal.

    2. Re:H.264 by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      Wait -- are you telling me they are recompressing it? For shame!

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  19. Something strange in the article by bomanbot · · Score: 1

    According to TFA, they streamed five HD files to five different XBox 360 extenders, but the entire network load is only around 20-25 Mbps? Which means one of those HD streams is only around 4-5 Mbps? Seems a bit low for me....

    Anyway, if one HD stream is around 20 Mbps (sounds more realistically), it would still be feasible to stream it wirelessly, although I would agree that depending on the quality of your wireless connection it could be a bit shaky, so that a wired connection is preferable.

    But I think Intel and Microsoft saying "HD should be wired" has more to do with the mandatory HDCP copy protection if you use HDMI cables....

  20. Wireless sucks by CarpetShark · · Score: 1

    That's because wireless sucks. The latency is horrible, the frequent, short dropouts aren't really catered for by TCP/IP, the bandwidth, as others mentioned, isn't anywhere near what it's touted as, and the security, most of the time, is dire.

  21. Well.. considering ms's "other" restrictions... by plasmacutter · · Score: 1

    Considering M$'s other restrictions, what's buying a new modem.

    I don't think M$ should be as worried about pleasing hollywood as they should be about pleasing their consumers.. because as it is now it's looking like m$ will be the worst platform for HD/HTPC for the forseeable future.

    --
    VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
  22. Tough one by suv4x4 · · Score: 1

    We have to decide whether to keep the cable spaghetti so we can watch movies with highly detailed film noise.

    Or we can dump the cables and watch cleaner, cheaper transfer.

    I'll take my time on this one.

  23. Microsoft Knows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    'Remember that at that one time when you're streaming content it's probably not the only thing that's happening. You could be sending e-mails...

    Yeah, Microsoft ought to know... without knowing it you could be sending out hundreds of thousands of them.

  24. What about compression? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It has been demonstrated that you can compress a PAL resolution signal with nearby DVD quality to about 1 MBps with H.264. Full quality at HD resolution would be 10 MBps at best.

    But of course, if you want to save an additional 10$ dollars for the required chips, and like to still with good but old MPEG2, you'll need your 50 MPbs.

  25. On sucking bowling balls through garden hoses by postbigbang · · Score: 1

    Or elephants through keyholes. Even with tasty, high-efficiency/low-loss codecs, you cannot do 802.11g distribution of HD. Part of it has to do with QoS and the rest with the time domain of the duty cycle of the raster generation. In English: it's a shared space, like the 'collision detecting' part of Ethernet's CSMA/CD media access later. Only one device talks to the AP at a time successfully, unless you use two cards and two non-inteferring channels (which does happen if purposefully constructed in real life, but not from Best Buy or Fry's on a good day). Add into the mix, someone who's also sharing that AP (or random noise confusing the situation). Then the effective throughput goes down further. 802.11n uses two antennae for differential signal addition to improve speed. It's subject to the same problems, although it does potentially go faster-- except that it's not even a 1.0 standard until perhaps 2008-- despite all the equipment arriving into the big box stores that's non-standard and worse, having compatibility issues. Don't think that muni-WiFi, home WiFi, or any other WiFi or even whymax will work for you in HD distribution. Not yet, and not in this decade. Use fiber where you can; copper after that; the air after that for your MAC layer fun.

    --
    ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  26. Perspective by dino213b · · Score: 1

    Here are some real questions for/about the original poster.. essentially, boils down to "How much money does this guy make in comparison to someone in the USA?"

    • If the OP pays 29.99 for this great service, is this in Euros or Dollars?
    • What is their occupation?
    • What is their monthly income?
    • How does this scale to someone doing a similar job in the U.S. ?

    I am curious to know how exactly this great service measures up to something equivalent in the USA. If the price was in Euros, that comes to about 38 bucks. If not, sounds like a decent deal, IF it is comparable.

    In Maryland, for approximately $70 I get HD digital cable, sticky ip (not fixed, though has not changed in six months), a free digital video recorder, HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, 40 various channels and a bunch of music channels I don't care much for.

    Download speeds:

    • Measured: 819 kb/s (www.pcpitstop.com)
    • Measured: 1020 kb/s (www.bandwidthplace.com)
    • Measured: 471 kb/s from San Francisco (www.dslreports.com)
    • Measured: 722 kb/s from Miami (www.dslreports.com)
    • Measured: 2234 kb/s (www.speakeasy.net)

    Upload speeds:

    • Measured: 44.5 kb/s to San Francisco (www.dslreports.com)
    • Measured: 44.5 kb/s to Miami (www.dslreports.com)
    • Measured: 45.0 kb/s (www.speakeasy.net)

    Download speeds obviously vary based on sources but the upstream seems fairly consistent when measured. Now, lets see how this compares to the French deal. If I make $50,000 / year as a crummy webmaster, and my cable/internet comes to about $840 / year, that means that I spend 1.68% of my income on the service. How would this French service scale to a typical French citizen/resident income?

    1. Re:Perspective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Internet acces not being an essential service, let's compare the price one pays after having paid the mortgage or rent, electricity, food, and all essentials instead of net income.

      Having relatives in Maryland, I know that houses aren't as expensive as in California. In California, a starter house at $500,000 isn't uncommon and, as you may already know, their electricity costs are higher than yours. Let's take what's left from $80,000 per year and I'm sure the cost of 25 Mbps Internet + HD TV + unlimited long distance phone calls would be high compared to it.

  27. Wait a minute... by Zadaz · · Score: 1

    Isn't HD content... broadcast... wirelessly... already?

    (Just busted by elipsis quota for the year.)

    1. Re:Wait a minute... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shatner called, he wants his delivery back.

  28. I don't think 802.11g is too bad for this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I downloaded a 1080i version of Star Trek The Motion Picture the other day (alt.binaries.hdtv rocks!) and streamed it over the network, it played perfectly over wireless except for a couple of sections where there was some jerking, caused by all the motion on screen (V'ger's lightning attacks on ships).

  29. Who wants to use a Media Centr PC to stream video? by cyclocommuter · · Score: 1

    It makes more sense and is much cheaper to stream video (HD or otherwise) from the source (Set Top Box, HD or DVD player, etc.) to a PC, video phone, pocket computer, etc. I currently use a Slingbox (cost: ~ $199) to stream SD TV to all my PCs at home and I could stream content over the internet too. I think this "other way around" (Streaming device such as the cheapo Slingbox to PCs) is the common sense way to go but I suspect Hollywood, Cable and DSL ISPs, and the PC OS manufacturers would try and restrict this via DRM such as HDCP, etc.

    Hollywood obviously would be concerned about consumers place shifting their content. Cable and DSL ISPs would prefer that consumers not stream content and that they buy/rent multiple Set Top Boxes instead. PC OS manufacturers would prefer consumers buy overpriced and overcomplicated hardware and use these as "media centers".

    The consumers end up getting screwed yet again.

  30. I've got your crap right here.., by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but you have to live around French people. I don't think it's worth living over there and dating chicks with hairy armpits just to get good Internet access. I mean this with all due respect.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:I've got your crap right here.., by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      dude, if you got your behind on a plane and in France you'd see that your idea of France and the real thing are ... umm .. rather uncorrelated. The "From my mom's basement I know all the world" stanza is not as true as you'd like, you know.

  31. No, I'm old fashioned by Lordpidey · · Score: 1

    I prefer cat-5 wires running all over the house. How is THAT for old fashioned?

    --
    Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
    1. Re:No, I'm old fashioned by WhiteWolf666 · · Score: 1

      Real men network with token ring.

      --
      WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
  32. Re:Who wants to use a Media Centr PC to stream vid by majortom1981 · · Score: 1

    ONe problem. Verizon has a setop box that fstreams to other tvs as part of there fios network. Cablevision also tried doing this with a network pvr but they immediately got sued by the tv and movie studios when the announced they were testing it. So its not the cable and dsl ips thast are stopping it. Its the tv and movie studios that are stopping it.

  33. B.E.T. by aplusjimages · · Score: 1

    I've found a source that would allow wi-fi users to power all the appliances in their home. It is called the Broadcast Energy Transmitter. It takes energy and allows you to transmit it through the air without affecting anything in its path. Now if we can only take it from the Joes.

    --
    Can I bum a sig?
  34. All my HD content is wireless... by Junta · · Score: 1

    I get my HD content with rabbit ears.

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  35. First Lesson by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Quelle charge de merde...

  36. No problem since you'll be saving... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...so much money on soap and water after you move to France.

  37. Move along... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...nothing to see here.

    This discussion has been hashed, rehashed and then thrown into a hookah for good measure on the mythtv-users list where folks routinely stream content of every size/bitrate/flavour since 2001. HD as we know it _now_ will work over 11g. Just be sure to have your home exorcised and have a shaman with a bag of cornmeal stop by first. When HD content moves to 1080P, we're gonna need a much fatter wireless pipe.

    Fer sure, dude.

  38. One Exception! by deathcow · · Score: 1


    Lightning. I live next to a cell tower that "brings" lightning in and this last strike (250 ft away) induced enough voltage on my cat-5 cables (in wall) to blow up 4 ethernet ports (including a switch and an intel motherboard with onboard ethernet.)

    All my wireless gear is OK :)

    1. Re:One Exception! by JayAEU · · Score: 1

      Were you able to determine where the power surge entered your wired network? I use online UPS units to filter my voltage, so I've never had such problems.

    2. Re:One Exception! by Your+Pal+Dave · · Score: 1

      The cables themselves act as an antenna and will pick up the EMP from a nearby lightning strike. Years ago I worked as an alarm technician, and faced this sort of problem regularly.

  39. Re:welcome to the Network Render Farm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    [wiki:cinelerra]
    Network Render Farm. (Gigabit network Required)

    100MBps is good for an Audio network.
    But not video work.

    Buy yourself a MiniDV on 1394 Firewire!
    You'll be wanting SCSI or SATA
    However on lower end system.
    Your better off with an extra IDE drive than an 10/100MB Ethernet only NAS.
    I ain't tried the USB NAS's. Blagh.. fsck NAS.

    Numbers ripped from:
    Bits on the Move
    (by S. D. Katz)

    10BaseT 10Mbps 1.25MBs
    USB 12Mbps 1.4 MBs
    SCSI 40Mbps 5.0 MBs
    Fast SCSI 80Mbps 10.0 MBs
    100BaseT 100Mbps 12.5 MBs
    Ultra SCSI 160Mbps 20.0 MBs
    Wide Ultra SCSI 320Mbps 40.0 MBs
    Ultra 2 SCSI 320Mbps 40.0 MBs
    FireWire 400Mbps 50.0 MBs
    USB 2.0 480Mbps 60.0 MBs
    Wide Ultra 2 SCSI 640Mbps 80.0 MBs
    Fibre Channel 100MBps
    FireWireB* 800Mbps 100.0 MBs
    Ultra 3 SCSI 1280Mbps 160.0 MBs
    FireWire (final top speed)* 1600Mbps 200.0 MBs

  40. They didn't mention a pretty improtant factor... by ChoppedBroccoli · · Score: 1

    what codecs are being used to compress the stream.

    Using MPEG-2 vs a higher compression codec like H.264 or WMV-HD will definitely have some impact on bandwidth requirements.

  41. Dumb faggots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you'd consider some fundamental mathmatics and the truth about wireless you'd realize this is no news at all. Fuck this noise, get that dick out your faggot ass and you won't need slashdot to tel you this shit.

  42. OT Q: Digital Cable bandwidth? by xjerky · · Score: 1

    I've always wondered about this, and while it's a bit OT, I figured this is a good place to ask:

    Does watching an "on-demand" program over digital cable take away from your available cable modem bandwidth? Considering it's all coming over the same pipe, and the shows you watch are technically "data", I would assume that to be the case, but I don't know for sure.

    --
    A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
    1. Re:OT Q: Digital Cable bandwidth? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Video on Demand operates as a data stream but it's typically using a different set of frequencies than your cable modem. On top of that, there is more than enough room in that pipe for your cable modem to operate, it's more than likely operating at a capped speed anyway.

  43. wait until you see real HD... by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 1

    You remind me of the people who download the "HD" torrents of the internet and think they're seeing the real thing.

    Yeah, good compression can deliver a pretty good picture. It's a stretch to get a single real HD stream over wireless today, let alone two.

    As to being jealous, I think I have 100 channels each of shopping networks, audio stations, pay per view and about 50 movie channels. I get 10 HD channels just with my antenna, and if I paid for the HD pack on DVT I'd get 10 more on satellite. I suppose I could get by with only 100 channels, if I got to pick exactly the ones I wanted.

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  44. 1080i @ 60 fields/sec 1080p @ 24 frames/sec by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

    If you're talking HD movies, they're recorded at only 24 frames/sec. For broadcast in NTSC-standard interlaced video (and for its HD equivalent) at 60 fields/sec, every 5th field is duplicated. Thus, 1080i broadcast HD movies usually take more bandwidth than the original 1080p signal (which can be reconstructed with no loss in quality).

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?