[mythtv-users] Building a Basic MythTV box

Nick knowledgejunkie at gmail.com
Fri Dec 9 17:21:29 EST 2005


On 09/12/05, Steve Adeff <adeffs at gmail.com> wrote:

> transfer speeds are more dependant on harddrive speeds. 802.11b is faster than
> your average harddrive (raid withstanding).

I'd venture this is untrue for both 11b and 11g wireless devices and
average drives from the past couple of years. 802.11b is 11Mbit/s <
1.5MByte/s, and 802.11g is 54MBit/s < 7MByte/s, though in practice
this may not be achieved.

For a test, I just transferred a file from a PVR to my Win2K box (2
year drivers, over a 100M switched network whilst a recording was in
progress on the PVR) and managed the following:

f:\76_20051204215900_20051204223000.nuv 943,579,332 bytes, 10880.9 kbytes/s

Use of 802.11b for MythTV is IMO a bit unrealisted, as it is entirely
likely the bandwidth of a recording may occupy 6MBit/s if using a
hardware MPEG2 card, which is more than half the theoretical bandwidth
of the connection. Add in overheads, and you maybe be pushing things
even trying to play one stream. I've just order a RT2500 based
wireless card to experiment with a wireless SBE box, so I'll post
results on this when I've got some. I'm hoping with a 802.11g system,
playing a stream over the network in both directions may be possible.

Try transferring a large file between two machines and the current
differences between wired and wireless networks become obvious quickly
(assuming the networks are configured normally).

Nick


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