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TV in the home

Posted on 13 Jan 2009 at 12:12

If you can't achieve smooth, TV-like playback, all is not lost. If you've gone down the wireless route, experiment with the position of your router and/or your PC or Extender. Even with a draft-n connection, you can improve throughput by plugging the PC or the Extender into a wired connection. Check you have no 802.11b devices - such as handheld games consoles - connecting while you're trying to watch TV.

If things are really bad, you can try "segmenting". Basically, you buy an additional router. Your primary router handles communications with internet traffic, your media PC and your Extender, and this communicates through an Ethernet link to another router that acts as a wireless hotspot for all the other devices in your home. This allows your media-centre PC and Extender to make the most of the available bandwidth.

Finally, whatever technology you use, check your router's QoS settings. Some can be programmed to prioritise traffic of a particular type (video, for example), or coming to and from a particular IP address (your media PC or Media Center Extender, for example). It's also worth checking that settings such as Dynamic Fragmentation (your router may use different terminology) aren't turned on.

And if all of this sounds like too much hassle, you can always eliminate the network altogether. Some USB hard disk and flash memory-based products can take files directly from a PC then play them back through scart, S-Video, Component or HDMI connections to your TV. SanDisk killed off its innovative, flash-based TakeTV product, but look out for LaCie's LaCinema product line, or Western Digital's new TV HD Player; a device that hooks up to your TV then streams files from a standard external hard disk. It's also possible to go the other way. The Archos 605 WiFi and Archos TV+ can record direct from a satellite or DVB-T source then copy files to your desktop, NAS or home server over USB. Bear in mind, though, that this involves a digital to analogue to digital conversion, and so a minor quality drop.

Finally, if you only want iPlayer on your TV then there might not be any need to involve a PC at all. Owners of the Nintendo Wii should know that it has its own special version of the iPlayer. A PlayStation 3 version that works with a higher-quality stream is apparently on its way.

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Author: Stuart Andrews