Episode #42
Streaming HDTV

My wife demanded we upgrade to HD satellite TV. If Rome burns it better be in High Def!!! Upstairs bedroom has DVR. Downstairs has Sony MC PC with DVD jukebox (no HD recording thanks Windows!!!). Regular Sling Box upstairs looks like crap on downstairs Big screen…. (we tried) Also wireless G is weak in our 1920 spanish thick walled home. We want to avoid multiple DVR’s upstairs and downstairs. So content does not get stuck downstairs or upstairs. We want one media center that controls dvr’d movies,DVD, and satellite TV .. What is our best options? 1) Sit and wait for HDTV tuner card for DirectTV for downstairs PC 2) Upgrade to new Sling Media Pro? Will Wireless G handle the bandwidth? Will upgrade to Wireless 802.11N help? 3) Dump DirectTV go Dish/ATT Zone or DCable with Tivo? (what a hassle) 4) Downgrade HD short term, to standard Digital and Lose wife… Please help, Leo you are my only hope you virtual guru you. thanks

Chris, Los Angeles, CA



As far as changing up your network goes, my testing of 802.11n networks didn’t show any substantial improvement over 802.11g in terms of range, unfortunately…all you’d get from the change to 11n is a bit more overall bandwidth through the house. What might help in a house with range-impeding architecture is power-line networking…it will use the power outlets in your house to move data from room to room, even across multiple floors. Of course, this only will provide a benefit if you’ve got something at the other end of this powerline connection that’s able to receive the signal in high-definition quality. If you’re sending it across the network in a compressed or lower-quality format, it may not look good even if you’ve got huge amounts of bandwidth…the old garbage-in-garbage-out problem

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