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HD Should Be Wired, For Now

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the down-with-wires dept.

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."

8 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. 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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  2. 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 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.

    2. 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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    3. 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.

    4. 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.

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

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

  4. 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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