Boxee over Wifi

[zerodoom]

Does anyone one have any tips for optimizing Boxee over a wifi connection.I'm using Ubuntu 8.04.1 and I can often watch the first 30min of a movie but the it starts to lag and buffer a lot. I also have XBMC installed and that seems to handle the movies better. I was able to run a entire movie over wifi that way.

[vulkan]

hi.
we have done a lot of work on smb for the coming version. i think you will like it. should be available in a few days (once tsella will stop hitting me with bugs...)

-vulkan.

[zerodoom]

Good to hear. New builds make me happy. :)

I was wondering if I was going nuts. Really, I understand Wifi is a awful option when it comes to streaming plus my living room is a good ways away from the AP. I did setup QoS in attempts to give my Boxee-MC priority but that just ended up making things worse for the rest of the network. What it boils down to I really just need to run a cable. I just don't want to do it because I'm renting so it isn't really my house.

Today I'll be silly and make a "windsurfer" wifi parabolic reflector and see if that helps direct the signal a bit better in one direction.

http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html

[vulkan]

actually it should :)

btw - what type of router (g/n)?
and what server do you use (nas/vista/xp/linux)?

[zerodoom]

My router is a Actiontec MI424WR(from Verizon FIOS) with wireless G and my server is currently a Windows XP Pro SP3 machine. I also intend to mount my roommates media too which is on a Vista Home Premium machine. I foresee headaches with that one.

[vulkan]

one of the problems with xp is its connection limit.
if you make sure you have a small (1? :) ) amound of shares then boxee might work ok.

[vulkan]

also - streaming HD (not sure if this is what you are trying to do) over wifi (especially g) is problematic...

[zerodoom]

I can connect to the XP machine no problem. XP pro has a max of 10 connections so I'm good in that reguard. It's just the streaming fails after a little bit. As far as the content I'm not planning on streaming HD. My living room TV is a wonderfull 50inch 480i wide screen. So my usual video is DVDR ISOs or Xvids around 800mb. I just made a parabolic reflector during my lunch today so we'll see if that helps some. Else if, I also can just sync my videos over the network to the systems local drive. It's got a 320GB in it.

The only other thing I can think of do is is maybe change the buffer sizes in Boxee config, is that possible?

[tsella]

i'm streaming 720p @~10mbps just fine over my g network. granted, boxee is a meter away from the ap (the reason i don't use wired despite to proximity is that the mac mini ethernet croaks at prolonged high rate data tx for some reason).

run the file in vlc and see what the file bitrate is (or click Y on the keyboard while under boxee).

[ralph]

has anyone noticed that if they have boxee running for about 15-20 mins that their network connection drops from the machine that they are running boxee from, and are no longer able to access smb shares, and as a result skype will disconnect itself and give me the connecting icon...? I can use the network fine with other devices not running boxee after its caused the connection to drop on the machine i have it running on, and if i dont start boxee i dont have any network issues at all. I'm running ubuntu 8.04, with a 3com OfficeConnect 54mbps 11g adaptor (3CRUSB10075) connected to a bt homehub

[levelup]

I am glad to read it here.