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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."

3 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. 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 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.