Inkless

Recently, I have been undergoing the trials and tribulations associated with setting up an effecting home theatre PC (HTPC) and the network to go along with it. Using XMBC, the setup for the software was actually pretty smooth, after some tinkering with DXVA (GPU decoding). However, the most irksome element of the whole set-up was how to effectively stream the 1080p content from my hard drive located in my bedroom through a wall and about 30 feet to the HTPC linked up to my television.

Reading up on the topic on the interwebs indicated that some had success with N wireless, which theoretically offers up to 300 Mbps of transfer speed. Of course, considering the real life issues with wireless data, the speed would be dramatically cut down.

So, after endless issues and frustrations here’s the need-to-do list for streaming success:

Router Configuration (this is the router setup page, sometimes at 192.168.1.1 – check manual for instructions)

1. If your wireless card or adapter cannot receive 5 ghz, don’t broadcast in 5 ghz . Although this will cut down your effecting transfer speed to 150 Mbps max, it will still be enough to stream them movies. Broadcast at 2.4 ghz @ 40mhz band.

2. Set the wireless security to WPA2-Personal, AES. I don’t know why this must be the security type, but for some reason, my wireless adapter would not even receive an N signal without it selected.

3. Select channel 6 to broadcast. I don’t know if other channels work, but for me, the adapter would be maxed out at 65 Mbps unless channel 6 was chosen.

Wireless Card or Adapter Configuration

1. Make sure your card can receive 5 ghz signal if you are going to use that signal.

2. Make sure your drivers are updated, and if it still doesn’t work, ensure the driver update isn’t a bad one. (Use Google!)

That should do it. I could stream a 16 GB mkv in H.264 pretty well after the set-up. The connection in Windows 7 read about 144 Mbps. I haven’t tried anything more demanding, but for my purposes, it seems to work fine.

Good Luck!