Wireless HD

[Tom Snyder]

NetGear is making some claims about their newest wireless router's abilities to stream HD.

http://www.netgear.com/Products/RoutersandGateways/RangeMaxNEXTWirelessRoutersandGateways/WNR854T.aspx

Anybody here successfully using this technology?

[basshive]

I have this exact router. Lets be clear though, they are saying "stream HD" as if they have some special technology to do so which they do not. It is a lot like all the joe blow antennas you see for sale now that have be reboxed with something about "HD" on it, when it is no different than it was before

Just about any router you can buy now can stream HD, there is nothing special about it you just need a solid connection.  The device you are streaming to should have the ability to buffer as well..  

Using windows media center we had no trouble streaming HD to the xbox 360's media center extender functionality.

This is the best router I have ever owned hands down. I certainly will never buy another Linksys product.  It will help you a great deal if you have "N" products if you are using wireless, our macs are all "N" so we achieve excellent speeds.

A word of caution, do NOT under any circumstances upgrade the firmware on this router with a browser other than IE. Doing so will result in a nice brick which runs but cannot be administered ever again. I am waiting on a replacement. I did a firmware upgrade with Firefox and while it sure seemed to go ok, it most certainly did not....  I found a few posts where people cautioned about not using IE for the firmware upgrades

[kevbeck122]

I can stream HD over 802.11g... full bitrate OTA coming from my networked HDHomeRun (http://www.silicondust.com/wiki/products/hdhomerun).. as long as the signal's good on the wifi connection.  I just have a basic buffalo router/access point running DD-WRT firmware (linux).  Wireless N is just more reliable since it has a bigger pipe.

[basshive]

I can stream HD over 802.11g

yep, we have done it too. So really, just deploy a decent setup and hd streaming is a snap.

[Tom Snyder]

So, then the question is... how does one take a signal from a D* DVR and send it to an HD TV in another room?

[kevbeck122]

Wireless HDMI?  I did a quick Google search and found this: http://www.gefen.com/kvm/product.jsp?prod_id=4318

[Bebop]

Phillips has one for half the price.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Philips_Wireless_HDMI/4660-12760_7-6683992.html

[basshive]

This wireless HDMI looks awesome. I do see some issue which could be bad for Tom in that they seem fairly limited distance wise. Makes sense but still very cool for clean setups!

Doing a little checking it looks like HDMI (1.3 atleast) can pump out 10gbps. What kind of throughput is required on these wireless solutions? If I am watching something in 1080i via HDMI, what is it using bandwidth wise?

[kevbeck122]

The one that I posted can do up to 65Mbps.  Watching Blu Ray movies, I generally see 40-50 Mbps tops.  MPEG2 sources like cable and OTA are probably around 12-19 and MPEG4 sources (u-verse, sat) are pretty low... 8-12, maybe less.

[Tom Snyder]

Actually distance isn't an issue on this one, as the TV I want to power will be downstairs, and directly underneath my upstairs one.

[chadl11]

Why would this be needed?  Would you use the HDMI connection to connect to one TV (the wireless in the basement for example) and the component to go to the other TV?

[Tom Snyder]

Why would this be needed?

I'm already powering my living room TV with HDMI and another TV in my sunroom with Component.

[Greg Oman]

So, what did you end up doing?  If the set was directly below in the basement, I may have thought about a component splitter maybe and drop the cables to the lower set.  HD over Cat5 using one of those baluns?

I'd be curious to know as I've always had the same desire-- multiple TV's off of one tuned source (ie. the DVR), throughout the house.  The challenge I think is that the feed to the box is compressed, and the outputs are not, so the bitrate required is a lot higher, isn't it?

It's been a while since I've thought this through, but I'm thinking of replacing a aging 36" tube with a 37" LCD.  Of course, I'd want HD for it, just not another box...

Greg O.