[mythtv-users] VMWare and MythTV

Charles H. Chapman ccmail at bellsouth.net
Wed Feb 8 20:38:21 UTC 2006


> Here is advice I offer to people trying to run wireless frontends who
> *refuse* to run an ethernet cable to said machine:
> - don't waste your time with anything slower than 802.11g
> - make sure your wireless driver is *WELL SUPPORTED*
> - make sure your signal strength is *EXCELLENT*
> - reduce your recording quality settings *WAY DOWN* so that
> recordings and livetv use less than 1gb/hour
> - adjust time stretch down until stuttering stops to help you
> figure out how much more you need to reduce recording quality
> for regular playback (or get used to watching recordings
> veerryy sllooww)
> - transcode your recordings to lower quality and bitrate
> before you attempt to watch them over wireless
> - use MythStreamTV to stream low(er) quality bitrate streams
> to a wireless machine and just use any old media player
> - after much frustration... give up and run an ethernet cable.

I also have to strongly disagree with the above.  I didn't have to do any of
those things to achieve flawless stutter-free playback via 802.11g.  The
only thing I had to do was to configure the Linksys wireless router (which
serves as the access point) to force it to use a bit rate less than the
default 54 MB/sec maximum.  MythTV can't tolerate the time it takes to do a
TCP retry/resend if a packet gets dropped or corrupted in transit.  Limiting
the maximum data rate to something lower (I think I use 36 MB/sec at home --
plenty fast enough for transmitting video) eliminates dropped/corrupted
packets.

Chuck





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