Windows Media Center (WMC) advertises they can work with wireless networks. WMC extenders come with big antennas. Is it really feasible to plan on having a whole house WMC feeding multiple extenders?

The answer is no. The problems are bandwidth and freedom from interference. Using a Silicondust HDHR3 device provides two streams of encoded HD media signal. Each stream measures about 14 Mbps in my Task Manager Network Performance screen. WMC allows for four tuners. That means with all four tuners active that the stream over the network can be as much is 56 Mbps. And that’s just the stream to the HTPC (Home Theater Personal Computer).  If the HTPC is feeding another couple of extenders in the house that puts the network traffic at the HTPC at over 70 Mbps.

Since the extenders only operate at G wireless speeds (54Mbps max), that puts wireless network completely out of the question. In practice, using one dual tuner Silicondust device with the HTPC feeding one extender, the network was adequate to provide a stream to the extender for standard definition programming only. The stream was not even adequate for HD programming to one extender.  In attempting to communicate with two extenders, WMC’s built-in network tuner advised that there was too much interference to send a signal to any extenders at that point.

However, it looks like the entire network traffic is still under the hundred Mbps of Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps), right?

My experience was that the performance of the HTPC was very good with the wired Fast Ethernet network as long as there weren’t more than two tuners being used. At three tuners I started seeing pixelation on my 47 inch Visio HDTV, if only in faster motion video. At first I wasn’t sure what the problem was. Perhaps my CPU was too slow, or my a SATA three hard drive couldn’t process all the data processing?

A Google search of the problem led me to some AVS forums where network bandwidth was cited as a possible culprit. Different members advised using gigabit Ethernet and also turning off any green features.

Once I swapped out my one fast Ethernet switch for a gigabit switch and turned off the green features of the built-in NIC card on my HTPC the problem was solved.

I found out in practice that the best performance was only found with a gigabit Ethernet (1000 Mbps) wired network.  In my network with 4 tuners active going through a Fast Ethernet switch the signal never went to 56 Mbps.  But with all switches being Gigabit Ethernet, the stream with 4 tuners active ran at almost 56 Mbps constantly,  That says to me that the Fast Ethernet switch in my network caused either WMC or Silicondust HDHR3 to throttle back the network stream causing some pixelation.

Part of the problem, I think, may also be that there is always going to be other traffic on the network.  While it may be small, there is network traffic between switches and the router.  If you have a house like mine, with smart phones, tablet’s, and other users perhaps on the Internet your network traffic at times could be well over 100 Mbps.

Using gigabit Ethernet switches with WMC might require some fine tuning of other settings including flow control, but I didn’t have this problem.  If you do set up a gigabit Ethernet network and you do have some problems with slow video just be aware that you might need to change some other settings.

Happy DVRing

© copyright 2013 Mark W Smith, all rights reserved.