[mythtv-users] Wifi

[Stephen Worthington]

On Thu, 25 Jan 2018 08:20:07 -0500, you wrote:

>Greetings Mtyhizens, my recent move is requiring using WiFi within a 12
>foot proximity. I use two internal cards and one HDHR. Would a WiFi
>extender kit (ac to cat5) be any better than a 300 mbps dual band USB
>dongle? Hard wiring would create a trip hazard or require fishing thru
>walls and ceiling. How much data is moving when the HDHR is recording two
>HD episodes at the same time?

A basic rule of thumb seems to be that 802.11n is insufficient for
playback of HD recordings.  You want 802.11ac on 5 GHz for it to be
reliable.  Using WiFi for recording from a tuner is not recommended.
Tuners can work by selecting out the streams for a channel at the
tuner and only sending the data for one channel.  I would expect that
networked tuners would normally do that.  But when you are doing
scanning for channels, if the tuner need to send the entire multiplex
at once to the PC, then I would not expect that to work as the
bandwidth on WiFi will be way too small.  Also, WiFi is not reliable -
there are often small disruptions.  When playing back a recording or
playing a video from the Internet, that will normally only cause a
short pause and playback will recover.  But disruptions like that in
the middle of a recording have the potential to completely stop the
recording at that point, or make the rest of the recording into random
data.

Another option you should consider if you really are unable to get
cable connections is using an Ethernet over powerline connection.
Depending on your wiring, these normally (if they work) provide a
rather higher throughput than WiFi and are normally reliable, unless
someone plugs a new device into the wrong plug and causes
interference.

But I really would recommend using cable if at all possible.  See if
you can find a professional to give you an assessment of how much it
would cost - frequently they can see ways of doing things that you
will not.