Alice Posted August 20, 2011 Hi everyone, Hoping someone might know a bit about this, I've been doing a bit of research but don't fully understand the ins and outs of the technology. PS3 media server runs fine and is great for watching wireless tv show files etc on the tv with the ps3, but not so great for movies (pauses, goes, pauses goes....). Thing is it doesn't seem to be related to the quality of the vid, rather the length. Even very average quality movie files seem to lag from the start, just because they are over an hour long. So it would seem. I don't understand this. I would think that as long as the movies aren't hi def etc and are the same quality as the shorter tv episodes then it should make no difference. Maybe someone can explain this to me please? So I'm trying to figure out how to make it run better wirelessly. Ideally I'd just cable computers--modem/router--ps3 and be done with it. But given the layout of the house this will be extremely difficult to achieve. Access under the house is very difficult as is through the roof, for where the cables would need to run. Everything runs off wireless, phone connection is only in the kitchen which is in the middle of the house. Office with computers is at one end, lounge room with PS2 and tv is at the other end. Signal strength appears to be good. Computer to router distance is maybe 8m through some walls, then router to ps3 is about 8m too. On the wireless netwok we run 3 laptops and the ps3. Most files we are trying to stream are avi's. What other info do you need to know? So... How do I know: * if I'm being limited by my computers brain (I could run media server from a faster computer but would rather not if it doesn't matter) * I'm being limited by our router (router is 802.11b, 802.11g. PS3 is the same. So spec'ing up the router won't help as the ps3 is still limited?) * other? Can I change ps3 media server setting to make it faster by lowering the quality or something? But like I said above it seems size related, not quality. The reason I still have hope that wireless can be made to work properly is that in searching for answers, lot's of people said they can stream wireless no problems... so I guess it can be done? Maybe they are only streaming a few metres and line of sight? Other things that I don't understand is that I read that simply because I have 4 devices running wirelessly, the my home wireless network bandwidth is being shared between the 4 and so slows it down... Fair enough, but if the computers are on but idle (i.e. not downloading stuff), how are they still using bandwidth? Shouldn't it all go to the PS3 that we are trying stream with in that case as it's the only one "doing stuff"? I know wireless is not ideal but cabling will be very, very difficult. Any suggestion or advice would be very much appreciated. So, is there hope for good wireless streaming at Alice's house or should I just chuck it all doen the rabbit hole and go read a book instead? Thanks! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
qualia Posted August 20, 2011 is there a buffer size you can increase? might help. what sort of files are you playing (is tv the same as movie)? mkv? avi? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quarterflesh Posted August 20, 2011 iv had this problem ever since iv have had my ps3. from what i have read it does not matter how fast your pc is it will happen. i started off with tversity full version which failed miserably then went to the free version which was a lil better for some reason, finally ending up with ps3 media server all with the same problem you are having. if you open your task manager when you are watching a movie you will see the cpu usage meter spike up to 99-100% while the movie is skipping,no matter how many programs you stop from running( i turned off all antivirus and any major ram eater and it still happened . i still cant get a definite answer from all the trolling of the faq sites. simplest answer i came up with for watching my avi movies on the ps3 was copying them to the hard drive by wireless then watching them later. good luck Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Alice Posted August 20, 2011 is there a buffer size you can increase? might help. what sort of files are you playing (is tv the same as movie)? mkv? avi? Ah ok I'll look into the buffer thing, that makes sense. Pretty much all avi's, actually I think everything I've watched so far has been avi's. It's all regular internet avi's, ie 350 mb for a tv episode or 700 mb for a movie thereabouts. I think that's just standard definition? iv had this problem ever since iv have had my ps3. from what i have read it does not matter how fast your pc is it will happen. i started off with tversity full version which failed miserably then went to the free version which was a lil better for some reason, finally ending up with ps3 media server all with the same problem you are having. if you open your task manager when you are watching a movie you will see the cpu usage meter spike up to 99-100% while the movie is skipping,no matter how many programs you stop from running( i turned off all antivirus and any major ram eater and it still happened . i still cant get a definite answer from all the trolling of the faq sites. simplest answer i came up with for watching my avi movies on the ps3 was copying them to the hard drive by wireless then watching them later. good luck Yeah I was afraid that is probably the case. Interesting about the task manager, cpu maxing out implies that the pc is the limiting factor rather than speed at which the router sends the data over to the ps3 then? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Alice Posted August 20, 2011 It's just weird that tv episodes all stream perfectly, it's just the longer movies which are glitchy... It's not long pauses for 10 seconds or anything, they are really short, a second or less, but frequent. Just enough to be really fucking annoying. I can't keep watching. Because they are so short I though maybe it's almost working well, and a little tweaking might just fix it up...? Just not sure of how to go about it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quarterflesh Posted August 20, 2011 yeah i changed to a better router and same thing still happens,i thought i could fix it by pausing at the start of the movie hoping it would buffer, but nope. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
AndyAmine. Posted August 20, 2011 (edited) /have you checked for sources of interference, sometimes your own house antenna or a signal booster from your neighbors etc can really mess with a signal. What about solid objects between the signals, or power cables running across your data cables, At the end of the day the most common cause is that you have too many devices running on the 2.4ghz band, this would be ok for small files but once you start getting lost packets of data etc you get problems with your playback etc. What happens when you run a data cable (cat5/6) directly instead of using wireless? Edited August 20, 2011 by AndyAmine. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
lhb2444 Posted August 21, 2011 I had similar problems streaming movies from a networked hard drive through my wireless router (which was only 1 room away from my ps3 and the router was supporting 2 other PC's) and tried most of things stated above. Updated the router and still got skips, tried changing various settings on my ps3 with no success and finally ended up running a cable which solved the problem for all of one day until my ps3 died Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Alice Posted August 21, 2011 /have you checked for sources of interference, sometimes your own house antenna or a signal booster from your neighbors etc can really mess with a signal. What about solid objects between the signals, or power cables running across your data cables, At the end of the day the most common cause is that you have too many devices running on the 2.4ghz band, this would be ok for small files but once you start getting lost packets of data etc you get problems with your playback etc. What happens when you run a data cable (cat5/6) directly instead of using wireless? I haven't checked for interference Andy, not really sure how I would check? I don't think anyone around us is running boosters, we are on top of a hill and tv signal etc is perfect. Plus all our neighbours are old (how good are old neighbours! They're like our own free personal security system hehe), they probably don't even have computers. Only one other wireless network we sometimes pick up and it has no signal strength. There are walls between signals but they're just gyprock, not very thick. Our cables are all over the place so they may cross but they aren't bundled together so I think the interference should be minimal? I think you're right about too many devices, I think our cordless home phone runs on 2.4 too. I haven't plugged it all together directly, I don't even own cables to do so as we've always just run the computers wirelessly becuase there isn't anywhere really we can run cable unless on the floor, which is messy and potentially dangerous. We can't even have the modem/router in the same room as the computers because there's no phone plug. So nothing at all is connected by cable. Thanks heaps for all the suggestions and comments guys, it's given us a lot to think about. cheers Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Symbiate Posted August 22, 2011 (edited) I've had this problem ever since I started streaming content wirelessly to my PS3, with multiple routers. I tried increasing the buffer size in PS3 Media Server, however it didn't help. The greatest bottleneck in my system is probably the computer that holds all my media files and runs the PMS, as it is very old and has quite a low amount of memory. I find that when I run the media server off of my laptop instead, it hardly ever skips. So one option is to make sure the computer that is streaming the files is relatively new. Another option is to buy an external hard drive for all your media, and just plug it into your PS3. If you want to do this, make sure the drive is formatted correctly. If I remember correctly, the PS3 doesn't like certain formats. Edited August 22, 2011 by Symbiate Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Slybacon Posted August 22, 2011 TVersity worked fine for me? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Alice Posted August 22, 2011 Slybacon, I haven't used TVersity a go, but will definately look into it. Symbiate, thanks for the info re memory. I'm thinking more and more that it may be a computer power/memory issue rather than a router issue. Which is good as it's solvable, whereas cabling isn't really an option. We have a newer laptop with more memory that I will try the media servers on and see how we go. Just been too busy with work to give it a go yet, hopefully on the weekend or early next week. Many thanks again everyone, you're all awesome! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
