Wireless streaming constraints...

Hi all,

 

I’m new to this AppleTV discussion, however quite old with regards to computers, networks and all…One thing that puzzles me with this streaming bonanza has to do with the wireless streaming constraints when it comes to playing back wireless video material. So bare with me while i take you through a pretty simple example…

 

So my home setup comprises an “active” 65Mbps Thomson TG585v8 wireless-N modem/router (1to1 wireless N - theoretical peak sustained ~ 8MBytes/sec), a 65Mbps “active” MacBookPro2,2 (802.11n enabled and capable) serves the content off the internal 5400rpm HD that was recently upgraded to 320GB capacity up from the 120GB that it came factory-fitted with and a newly acquired AppleTV2 which connects to the network no issues whatsoever, as does my laptop. Firing up the latest built-in media player that comes bundled with aTV Flash (black) that I purchased not long ago, everything spot on, a happy camper overall…

 

Now moving onto to a 2.7GB Xvid 2-channel mp3 672*282 pixel .avi of 2,577.23kbit/sec ~ 322kB/sec…Built-in media player initiates wireless traffic via AppleTV to my MacBookPro of around 1.3-1.5MB/sec for about 10 sec then displays message that it is unable to playback the content. Moving on to selecting alternative XBMC (version that comes in extras of the aTV Flash (black) installation) upon arranging sources and the likes, selecting the same file yields wireless traffic once again upto 1.3-1.5MB/sec for around 5 sec then movie starts playing as I’d expect…BUT a few moments into the movie traffic slows down to a few kB/sec (depending on complexity of the scene displayed i persume) then xbmc pauses playback and REBUFFERS, a pattern that repeats every few seconds while playing back the content (which is unwatchable by definition)…

 

I suppose this must somehow be attributed to a wireless network constraint somewhere along this setup, HOWEVER i fail to understand the mechanics of it. In actual fact my wireless setup can and does happily stream more than 2-3MB/sec, so why on earth is simple .avi content of 0.35MB/sec suffering such hiccups? Video stream specs are far below what the AppleTV2 can handle, audio stream couldn’t be easier to decode, yet several files of similar bitrate appear to give both the built-in aTV Flash and XBMC playback woes…

 

Anyone can shed some light into this, I’d greatly appreciate…

If you’re able to submit a bug report as described in the link below we can try and track down what’s going on.