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4K streaming from Readynas 316 possible?
Happy Netgear user now for several years, have no complains at all. Though 4K streaming to my 4K tv over WIFI AC using Kodi or VLC (Android TV) is just lagging as hell, tried new router, did not ...
BaJohn wrote:
By implication, you were implying that "Netflix quality" was inferior to Ultra HD 4k streaming.
Not at all. I said Netflix UltraHD streaming is inferior to full BluRay UltraHD streaming. Which it (intentionally) is, since there aren't a lot of customers for 100 mbit streaming over the internet. And it would be challenging to deliver 100 mbit streaming to a large subscriber base - Netflix already consumes a staggering percentage of US internet bandwidth.
Similarly, Netflix 1080p streaming quality is inferior to full BluRay 1080p streaming.
Personally I'm fine with the lower bitrates, but some people do want the best quality possible for their home theater setups.
This lower quality, highly compressed streaming is needed because there's only so much bandwidth people have, and with CAP's, streaming better 4K would eat that up pretty fast. Really, why people find it perfectly acceptable is because most people have to small of a HDTV, let alone a 4K TV which needs to be even larger. Really the only thing most people may notice on a 4K TV is HDR which is part of the 4K spec, or "High Dynamic Range" for colors. But to really see the better detail, you need the correct size screen. It's really larger then you think it is. 4K is what you're watching at a movie theater. Now that's blown up. Do you see the pixels? Shrink that screen way, way down in size, how could you remotly see the pixels?
Since most people's TV's are to small, Video streaming quality can be reduced quite a bit because people won't notice. For many, they can't tell a DVD from a Blu-Ray movie on their 1080P HDTV.
The 316 should be able to stream a 4K movie as long as it doesn't have to do any on the fly transcoding. So if it's the correct resolution 4K movie, playing on a 4K TV, it should play OK. If you try watching that movie on another TV in your house that may be only 1080P, not it has to transcode 4K down to 1080P which requires a lot of horsepower of the CPU. My Upgraded 516 can now do it. When it was stock, it should choke on it with buffering, stop, buffering stop, over and over, pretty much unwatchable. a 1080P HDTV doesn't know what 4K even is. So the NAS would have to transcode. On the other hand Direct Play of a 1080P movie to a 4K TV, the 4K TV will transcode on it's own that Movie to 4K because the TV can only show a video in it's Native Resolution. Just like a HDTV trying to play a DVD that's 480 on a 720P or 1080i(p) HDTV. The TV's all Upconvert the video to that TV's Native Resolution.
Streaming from Netflix, a 4K Movie will be better then their 1080P HD version, but that's already not much better then a 480P (DVD) version. The Audio is even worse. Already watching a HD 1080P Movie streaming on Netflix, you're only getting maybe Dolby Digital 5.1 Audio at best. You're not getting the better Dolby True HD, or DTS Master Audio of a Blu-Ray Movie that may be even 7.1 You outright lose the better quality audio, and get highly compressed video, and for most people, it looks perfectly fine on their to small of a HDTV or 4K TV.
Really, 4K has more to do with trying to get people to buy a new TV since 3D has failed. You don't see much of them anymore. I'm laughing at those that just can't wait for 8K. Are you kidding me.
As you already know, I'm not quite as down on 4K as you are, though it is clear that 4K (like 3D) was introduced to try to sell more TVs. BTW, our main TV is only 32 inch, and for that 720p is certainly enough.
JBDragon1 wrote:
This lower quality, highly compressed streaming is needed because there's only so much bandwidth people have, and with CAP's, streaming better 4K would eat that up pretty fast.
...
Already watching a HD 1080P Movie streaming on Netflix, you're only getting maybe Dolby Digital 5.1 Audio at best. You're not getting the better Dolby True HD, or DTS Master Audio of a Blu-Ray Movie that may be even 7.1
The 316 should be able to stream a 4K movie as long as it doesn't have to do any on the fly transcoding.
All correct.
On video bitrates - an 18 mpbs 4K H.265 video stream will have about the same quality level as an 8-9 mbit 1080p H.264 stream. There is a clear quality loss between full BluRay and ~8 mbits 1080p stream (or ~18 mbits 4K). But I think you are perhaps overstating it a bit. For almost all material H.264 1080p and (H.265 4K) become transparent well below the full-BluRay ceilings (transparent means that normal users see no difference between the original and the compressed video). So many BluRay disks are using higher bitrates than needed (and most aren't encoded at the highest bitrates allowed). Plus half the video bits on an H.264 BluRay disk are devoted to I-frames, which provide good indexing/random access, but which aren't needed in streaming. Just replacing those frames with P and B frames reduces the video bitrate a lot,with no quality impact.
As far as audio goes, of course you are only getting one language. Quite a bit of the space used on a BluRay disk goes to the audio tracks. You can save quite a bit of space on the NAS just by removing the tracks you don't care about. Dolby Digital 5.1 generally takes 640 kbs, and that is a lot lower than any of the lossless audio modes (TrueHD, DTS-MA, or PCM).
I think the net here is that while there is a clear quality drop-off, there's also broad consumer acceptance of this quality level.I find that if I am focussed on the story the quality level doesn't get in the way.
JBDragon1 wrote:
Really the only thing most people may notice on a 4K TV is HDR which is part of the 4K spec, or "High Dynamic Range" for colors.
We agree that HDR is a bigger deal than the resolution itself. No TV (or camera) can produce all the colors that the eye can see, but technology has improved over the years, and a modern TV can reproduce more colors than the older ones. HDR expands the color palette of the signal to match what the TVs can do. It also allows for more dynamic range between the darkest and brightest scenes - again taking advantage of technology improvements. HDR helps at any resolution, but is built into the 4K specs.
Studios of course take the display technology into account when they master their video, so there isn't that much content yet that can take full advantage of HDR.
Sorry about joining in again after a gap of a few months ..... busy busy.
It MAY be sensible if transcoding is required to send a signal via a 4K DVD instead of straight to the SMart TV.
I only mention this as the DVD will upscale for you (if necessary).
It then is potentially possible that the 'workload' is done in the DVD not on the RN316.
Obviously this totally depends on your setup, hardware etc, BUT I just throw it out there as this can be an alternative.
BaJohn wrote:
It MAY be sensible if transcoding is required to send a signal via a 4K DVD instead of straight to the SMart TV.
I only mention this as the DVD will upscale for you (if necessary).
Well, I don't see any reason at all to upscale 4K to a higher resolution. Perhaps you meant downscale?
More broadly, getting a player that natively supports the media in your library is often a practical way to avoid transcoding. It can't work around network bandwidth constraints, but it does avoid transcoding due to audio/video codec problems.
On upscaling - the TV should be able upscale/downscale on its own. However, sometimes an player or AV receiver will have better scaling hardware, so that something to try.
I was just trying to say that it MAY be worth cosidering sending signal from NAS via network to the DVD and thus to the TV, rather than direct to the TV.
Whether this is better than the starightforward way depends on all sorts of variables.
Regardless of wheher it is upscaling/downscaling is irrelevant as long as it provides the result that works for you with the equipment you have.
Most modern DVDs are internet connected, as the internet of things is now getting rather silly.
My daughter has a bedroom light that is controllable via the internet ... modern kids for you eh?
BaJohn wrote:
Most modern DVDs are internet connected, as the internet of things is now getting rather silly.
The original idea on BluRay (and HDDVD for that matter) was to enable interactive features on the disk (BD-Live). Since it was there, most players also added streaming and perhaps other apps.
FWIW the internet of things is just getting started.
BaJohn wrote:
My daughter has a bedroom light that is controllable via the internet ... modern kids for you eh?
An opportunity for parental controls to force lights-out and no more internet at the same time?
StephenB wrote:
BaJohn wrote:My daughter has a bedroom light that is controllable via the internet ... modern kids for you eh?
An opportunity for parental controls to force lights-out and no more internet at the same time?
You must be joking .....
1. She is 28
2. She is stroppy
3. The light can be off AND play music from the internet or her phone.
4. She is often up later than me in her bedroom.
So I lose all round ...........
There is good news .... I do not have a Internet fridge, so no automatic ordering food etc without me knowing.
BUT I am trying to embrace the technology with the Smart TV and Internet connected speakers.
Your 28 year old daughter lives at home? Ummmmmm,.... I won't go negative with that one.
As for 4K. You can direct play 4K as your 4K knows what 4K is. The TV no matter what will scale to it's Native Resolution. So if you feed it 720P or 1080P content, the TV will still scale it up to 4K. So the NAS isn't doing any hard work. On the other hand if you have a 4K Video on your NAS and you try to play it on a 1080P HDTV, the HDTV has no idea what 4K is and won't play it. It can't scale down 4K to 1080P. This is where the NAS can come in and Transcode 4K down to 1080P that your TV can then play. Or because I have a outside person watching my video and my Upload speed is limited. All my 1080P videos are Transcoded down to 720P at 3Mbps. Where as a Original 1080P could be 20Mbps. So it still looks great to them, but I'm saving a lot of data by not sending it and my Upload speed is capped I believe at 8Mbps. If I did 8Mbps which is the lowest for 1080P, they would suck up every last bit of my Upload speed and I'd have nothing for myself. They would also have pausing issues during playback as the buffer runs out.
So as long as you can direct play in PLEX, you'll be good. If you have to transcode 4K down to 1080P on a 1080P HDTV, you're 316 would choke. My 516 choked until I upgraded to a faster CPU and added more ram. It's the CPU that really makes the difference. If you just direct play, which is what a DVD or Blu-Ray is doing, the the TV will scale it up to it's Native Resolution to be shown on it's screen. If you're adding to the Video like subtitles, they have to get added to the video and so PLEX would need to transcode. I also think it has to on some audio formats. All you can do is try it and see if it works OK for you.
JBDragon1 wrote:
Your 28 year old daughter lives at home? Ummmmmm,.... I won't go negative with that one.
I've lived this one with my own kids.
It's not unusual in the US, especially in areas where housing is very expensive. Housing prices in my area (greater Boston) have reached the point where they are out of reach for most first-time buyers, and many entry-level salaries are barely able to cover rent. Living at home often works out better than sharing a small apartment. And it can give your child a chance to build some savings (depending on what rent you charge).
JBDragon1 wrote:
As for 4K...-If you want to transcode 4K, another option is to run plex on a PC with a good GPU (mapping the NAS share to a drive letter), to allow more hardware assist. There are some NAS that also support GPU acceleration, unfortunately no ReadyNAS has that feature.
-On scaling, I'd add that the TV advertises the resolutions it can handle via HDMI, and will rescale whatever the sender chooses to send to the native resolution. For example, my 720p set advertises 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. There's no way for an external device to detect that the native resolution is only 720p. It does know that it can't send 4K.
You don't want to scale twice if you can avoid it. So if you have a player with a built-in scaler, you should either configure it to match the native resolution of the TV or disable the scaler in the player.
Going back to that 720p set, I have an EVA9000 media player connected to it (which can access content from my ReadyNAS using SMB). The EVA9000 has a decent scaler, so I have it set to 720p instead of using the scaler in the TV.
-On quality, I'd add that reducing the resolution can improve the quality at lower data rates. All things being equal, I'd rather watch 720p at 5 mbps than 1080p at 8 mbps.
StephenB wrote:
JBDragon1 wrote:Your 28 year old daughter lives at home? Ummmmmm,.... I won't go negative with that one.
I've lived this one with my own kids.
It's not unusual in the US, especially in areas where housing is very expensive. Housing prices in my area (greater Boston) have reached the point where they are out of reach for most first-time buyers, and many entry-level salaries are barely able to cover rent. Living at home often works out better than sharing a small apartment. And it can give your child a chance to build some savings (depending on what rent you charge).
OMG .... and I live on the outscirts of London ... I think I win that one, especially as she lives 'rent free'.
BaJohn wrote: she lives 'rent free'.We charged approximate cost - fair share of utilities and food.
When I moved back home after school out of state, I was paying Rent. Not right away, but I did. Which is why I wasn't going to attack, though 28 is starting to get up there. I'd hope she's not working at McDonalds or something, should be advancing in her job and making more and more money. Is she at least putting money away and saving to get a house or something? Or is she out partying all the time?
So just 28, kind of hard to judge all the reasons why over very little info. Maybe it's living at home to take of of MOM who has trouble taking care of herself? You really just don't know. I moved in a single Wide crappy trailer for many years. I now now have my house. My Dad lost his when he lost his job, is now retired and lives at my house. He just turned 70. It's been over 4 years now.
I wasn't going to prolong the 'off topic' social conversation, but thought you might want to hear the latest in the story, and answer some of the questions raised. I have just come back from a 2 day trip taking my daughter to another country (second nearest to London) where she is renting a small flat, as she starts a new permanent job, reasonably well paid and hopefully fullfilling. interesting etc. My wife and I are very happy for her, although already missing her at home.
This is a big step in her life with so many changes going on at once. The future is ahead of her as they say.Back on the technology front, I had considered using my RN516 for streaming, BUT went a different route by buying a smart TV and using Netflix and Amazon (paid for by our daughter, before she left home) to view films, series etc. There seems to be enough to see on these which will take a lifetime to view anyway, without struggling with streaming from the ReadyNAS.
I have Netflix and Amazon also. But they don't have everything I want to see. I can buy the movies I like on Disc, Rip them, put the disc away and watch the movie anywhere now at any time. PLEX is really like my own personal Netflix type service. You set it up to have a different log in for each person just like Netflix, You can watch anywhere in the world if you have a Internet Connection, just like Netflix. My content though is all stuff I like, and it also doesn't come and go like it does on Netflix.
You're not going to find the latest Star Wars on Netflix, but it's on PLEX on my NAS. Ripped from a Blu-Ray copy. The disc put away in a disc binder as a last resort backup. I have a huge Disc Spinner filled with DVD's, HD DVD's and Blu-Ray's. It's 5 feet or so tall and storage on all 4 sides, top to bottom full. It takes up a lot of space. Hard to find what I want to see. Now I don't even have to get off the Sofa to find something. I can be at my brothers house and play a movie at my house on his TV.
It's not a Netflix Replacement, or Amazon which I rarely watch anything there. I don't have the time either these days. I do love all the Original Netflix content. That's been great. If I want to watch Star Wars, Star Trek, or a James Bond movie. I have every single one in HD, 5.1 on my NAS ready to go at a moments notice for example.
As for your daughter, moving to and living in London, WOW, sounds like she's pretty smart and doing well. Got to be a proud Dad. It gives you a excuse to visit over there when you can. A year from now, she can give you a better tour around the area personally.
JBDragon1 wrote:
I have Netflix and Amazon also. But they don't have everything I want to see. I can buy the movies I like on Disc, Rip them, put the disc away and watch the movie anywhere now at any time. PLEX is really like my own personal Netflix type service. You set it up to have a different log in for each person just like Netflix, You can watch anywhere in the world if you have a Internet Connection, just like Netflix. My content though is all stuff I like, and it also doesn't come and go like it does on Netflix.
A good summary.
Plex complements NetFlix/Amazon - hosting content you own (including personal videos and photos). FWIW there might be an app for it on your Smart TV.
BaJohn wrote:
...My wife and I are very happy for her, although already missing her at home..
One of mine is moving back into the area next month, and will stay with us (at least temporarily) :smileyhappy:
Thanks for the update.
JBDragon1 wrote:As for your daughter, moving to and living in London, WOW, sounds like she's pretty smart and doing well. Got to be a proud Dad. It gives you a excuse to visit over there when you can. A year from now, she can give you a better tour around the area personally.
I hope I didn't mislead you, as we (wife and I) live in North London, just inside the M25 (that large car park they built round London a few years ago).
Our daughter moved to another country that I listed as the second nearest foreign country. It is in fact Wales ...... true but possible misleading.
Yep Proud.
I have my Music on Plex and so that's a good way to stream my music away from home, in my car for example. But ya, throw on Pictures and Home Videos, etc and it's a one stop place for all of your content and you have access to it anywhere with a Internet connection. Your own personal CLOUD service.
Well not quite as far away as I thought, but still glad things are really working out for her well.
JBDragon1 wrote:I have my Music on Plex and so that's a good way to stream my music away from home, in my car for example.
I am not sure I could do that as I use Virgin Media, and I believe that they are not fixed IP addresses for my internet connection.
Presumable you are using your smart phone as part of the process to get the music in the car?
BaJohn wrote:
I am not sure I could do that as I use Virgin Media, and I believe that they are not fixed IP addresses for my internet connection.That will still work - you just need to forward the plex port in your router to the plex server (which can be running on the NAS or on a PC). You don't need DDNS or a static internet address, as your local server is known by plex.tv. You can access your media remotely using the web browser in your laptop, or using the plex app on your mobile device.
Your daughter would also be able to access the media (including from a SMART tv or media player that has the plex app). You can share your account info with her, or create an account for her.
Of course, anything played is running over your internet uplink. If you have an uplink usage cap, it will apply, and the speed depends on your service level.
Make sure PLEX has a normal IP address. So in the router, you would assign the device PLEX is on with a Static IP address. For example, my PLEX server is on my NAS. My NAS has a static IP number of 10.0.0.100. It never changes. Because otherwise DHCP on your router will Auto assign IP numbers on your local Network to anything in it's range. Yo may be on 192.168.0.1 though 192.168.0.255. I'm on the 10.0.x.x Network. These are IP address reserved for use for interal networks. There's a few others also. 192.168.x.x. is problebly the most common.
So every device that has a Network connection, WIRED or WIRELESS has a MAC address. If it has both, it has one for each. There's not the same. Every device has it's own MAC address. Even if you have 2 of the same of anything, the MAC address is going to be differnt. There's a number of ways to get the MAC address. But you'll want to go into your router settings and Lock a IP address to the MAC address of the device. The MAC address would look something like 34:13:AZ:4E:76:32. This is a pretty basic thing to do. I have most of my network stuff locked to a Static IP number. It makes for a more reliable network. On my ASUS TM-AC1900 (This was a nice free Router from T-Mobile) You would click on LAN on the left then click on DHCP server on the top. Then if you scroll down you see "Manually Assigned IP around the DHCP list (Max Limit : 64)"
So the left colume it shows MAC Address. You can scroll though the devices it currently see's ir enter the MAC address like I have it above in that format. The next colume is IP address. So pick a IP address for that's in the range of IP address your router is setup for. If you're using 192.168.1.1 for your router, You could do something like 192.168.1.10. The Next colume there's a Add/Delete. You want to click on the Plus to Add. Then on the bottom of the Page you want to click on Apply. You've now locked your PC or NAS or whatever to that IP address. You can do this with any router. How exacly depends on the router you have.
Once that is done, This is when you want to Port Forward. See if you were forwarding a port to where your device currently is from what DHCP assigned to it, and then it changes later, the port could be forwarding to some other device or nothing at all. This is why you want to lock down the device to a IP number that never changes.
So to port forward. What IP number is your PLEX Server using? If you go into PLEX then click on server and then on the left Remote Access, You want to click on the Box for "Manually specify public port", I'm using a port number of 32400. If you have nothing there, g use that number and hit apply.
Back in my Router on the left, I want to now click on the WAN box. Then on top there's "Virtual Server / Port Forwarding" Click on that. You scroll down and you get "Port Forwarding List (Max Limit : 32)" You have more columns. First one is "Service Name" That's easy just put PLEX. That way you know what that port forward is for. The Next Column is port range. So enter 32400 or whatever YOU are using. The next Column is Local IP. So you would put 192.168.1.10 or whatever your PLEX server is running on that you created a Static IP number for above. Next Column is Local Port. Again put 32400 or whatever port you're using. The last Column is "Protical" SO it's either TCP, UPD or BOTH. In general unless you're 100% sure, just put BOTH. It' not going to hurt things.
So if PLEX is working connecting correctly, it should look like this.
So if you look Right to left, you start at INTERNET, with a Green arrow going to my current IP address MY ISP game me with the port number, that's Public, with another green arrow, to my Private Network of 10.0.0.100:34200 That's showing that I have a good outside network connection. You also need to have PLEX linked to PLEX service, Up top on the right. So if you go into account, at top for me it shows Plex Pass as I'm a lifetime member. You should be all logged IN. This allows your server to send info to PLEX of what your current IP address your ISP gave you. So if you load up PLEX on your iPhone for example, and logged into your account, PLEX will know what your current IP number. So you'll be sent to your IP number your IPS gave you, using the port number you assigned to get onto your server.
Doing port forwarding is something that you need to really do if you do Online gaming, or you Torrent and want it to work correctly, you want to forward the needed port. For example the port I use for UTorrent is 50722. SP you would do the same thing you did for PLEX. For whatever you have UTorrent running on. You can find the port UTorrent is using in the settings.
So I can star t PLEX onmy iPhone, I'm all setup on my phone, do i just lick on Music and then I cna browse around, basically get around just like I would if I was on my computer. I can pick what I want to play and it plays. it's really SIMPLE!!! Or I can play a movie, or view a picture. Though I would do those things while driving a car. It ALL works just like if you were using PLEX on your computer. I have a Friend account setup for friend of mine and she can log onto my PLEX whenever she likes and watch something or play the music. Whatever I give her account access to. She watches on your HDTV using a ROKU. I can go to my brothers house and Airplay onto his AppleTV. Theses are the things you cna do with PLEX. You can go anywhere in the world with a Internet connection and get onto PLEX at home EASY!!! I stream video at work all the time when I'm on my lunch break, I put on my Bluetooth Headphones and play Plex on my iPad at work. Works great and I connect easily. I don't have to know what my home IP number is. That's taken care of automatically.
No fixed IP address is needed!!! Few Home Users have a fixed IP address. There are services that you can use for other things if you have a IP address that's always changing. Again, Yes, Using my iPhone to get my PLEX Music in my Car. It'll work the same way with Android. There's a App!!!
My Internet Speed was 100/6 so 100 Mbps Download and 6Mbps Upload from Comcast. So I limited Remote PLEX access to 3Mbps 720P service. This is where you need Transcoding capabilites. You can't do that with Direct Play. So I have a friend account setup for Her where she can watch at her house on her ROKU. Logs into my PLEX using her Friend account and has access to what I gave her.
So 3Mbps looks good to her on her HDTV. That leaves 3Mbps for my needs and most of my needs are on the Download side. What she watches isn't using a wholr lot of my Data to worry about. I also use PlexPL to keep track of what everyone is watch. There's a lot of great Data it can show you. My Comcast bill just shot up this month after my 1 year promo deal ended. So I called them up, got the same Promo deal to drop it right back down, but I did get faster internet for $10 more a month, So it's about $80 a month now. But Now it's 200Mbps Download and 12 Mbps Upload. I don't know if I'm going to keep it or not. I may just drop it back down and save the $120 for the year. Faster speed just means you can hit the cap all that much faster.
JBDragon1 wrote:My Internet Speed was 100/6 so 100 Mbps Download and 6Mbps Upload from Comcast. So I limited Remote PLEX access to 3Mbps 720P service. This is where you need Transcoding capabilites. You can't do that with Direct Play. So I have a friend account setup for Her where she can watch at her house on her ROKU. Logs into my PLEX using her Friend account and has access to what I gave her.
So 3Mbps looks good to her on her HDTV. That leaves 3Mbps for my needs and most of my needs are on the Download side. What she watches isn't using a wholr lot of my Data to worry about. I also use PlexPL to keep track of what everyone is watch. There's a lot of great Data it can show you. My Comcast bill just shot up this month after my 1 year promo deal ended. So I called them up, got the same Promo deal to drop it right back down, but I did get faster internet for $10 more a month, So it's about $80 a month now. But Now it's 200Mbps Download and 12 Mbps Upload. I don't know if I'm going to keep it or not. I may just drop it back down and save the $120 for the year. Faster speed just means you can hit the cap all that much faster.
Interesting .... My speeds (I'm in the UK) are 50/5 but in practice 20-30/2-3, and variable as hell depending on the 22 or so nearby networks.
This morning first thing I got the full 50/5, but only because no one esle was up and using their systems. My major problem is the interference that I am having on my LAN thorugh my house, and yes I bought the things that plug in the mains (Netgear actually). That was a waste of money. Yes I have an extender and yes I try and use the 2.4 and 5 GHz . Since I cannot get consistent Netfix within the house using my ReadyNAS to 'broadcast' elsewhere is a no no.
I try to keep an eye on who is using what channel and move mine to minimize their impact.
It is unfortunate that I CANNOT get cable sorted for direct connections as it is almost impossible without ripping up (expensive) flooring etc.
I do keep wondering whether a more mordern router would have a stronger signal and help solve the problem, but suspect that would also be wasted money.
My router is a few years old (WNDR4500), and I am not sure whether signal strength is limited by law, in which case it would no difference whatsoever.
BaJohn wrote:
My major problem is the interference that I am having on my LAN thorugh my house, and yes I bought the things that plug in the mains (Netgear actually). That was a waste of money.Powerline is hit-or-miss - it depends on the details of the house wiring (how many breaker panels, distance to the breaker panels). I'm not sure what you bought, but sometimes using power filters will help. I believe some of the Netgear modules have them built in, but not all.
Also, the advertised link speeds are much much higher than real-world throughput. That's also the case with WiFi, but with powerline the gap is even bigger.
BaJohn wrote:
I do keep wondering whether a more mordern router would have a stronger signal and help solve the problem, but suspect that would also be wasted money. My router is a few years old (WNDR4500), and I am not sure whether signal strength is limited by law, in which case it would no difference whatsoever.
Router signal strength is limited by law, and the allowed signal strength is lower in Europe than it is in the US. However, signal strength is a mixed blessing - higher signal strength also means more interference from your neighbor's signals.
Though it is expensive, you might consider getting an Orbi system. An Orbi router with two satellites gives me nearly 300 mbits throughput thoughout my house (3 floors), using my Galaxy S8 as the test client (testing with iperf from the S8 to my ReadyNAS). That is more even coverage than I had before with my R8500 router (and faster in most rooms) - and it is much easier to manage than a wifi+extender.
Getting these speeds will require 5 Ghz 802.11ac clients, but even with 802.11n Orbi should deliver stable whole-house wifi.
I just upped my Internet speeds so now I have 200Mbps Download and 12Mbps Upload. Pretty nice. A extra $10 a month to double what I had. You will always get best top speed with a Wired Connection. This is my Desktop PC running Speed Test with a WIRED Connection.
So I'm getting 223.81 Mbps Download and 12.07 Mbps Upload Speeds on my Desktop. Now my iPhone over my Wifi Network. I'm not that far from my Router. Same Speed Test running on both.
Upload speed is the SAME, but Download speed took a HUGE hit!!! About 1/4 of the speed of my Wired Connection. I don't have Wifi on my Desktop so I can't do a comparision that way which would be more fair, But it gives you a idea. Wired is always going to be better. A wired network is always going to be faster then Wifi. There's just more bandwidth. Wifi has it's place. It's great ofr my iPhone and iPad, or things you move around from place to place. But for things that sit there and never move, Xbox, Paystation, ROKU, AppleTV, Computer, etc, Wired is going to be better. It's more stable. There's no interferance and slow down because of going through walls and interferance from other things.
It's also more secure and reliable.
A MESH type network may help. If you live in a Apartment with all these other Wifi Networks from others, it can be a big issue. This is where a MESH network really helps. Especally if you can get on the 5Ghz network. It's even better if you can wire all your Mesh Routers in your network for best results, but even wireless, 5Ghz doesn't have as good of a range. Things block the signal much easier then the 2.4Ghz band, which is good, means less interferance from others, but you need a Mesh Network around your house or apartment to get the signal around everywhere.
Powerline kind of works, but there's a lot of things that can cause issues. It's hit or miss. If you don't own the place you live, you're options can be limited.
Both DragonB and StephenB make me jealous.
I can only manage 50Mbps early in morning when other LANs nearby haven't woken up.
The quoted max is 50Mbps so it delivers okay down the fibre to the Modem and Router.
The LAN speed drops significantl in the early evenings, sometimes to as low as 10Mbps.
I own the house but do not want to take the floors up (Amtico floor in lounge and hall).
Also the router was put (by me) in the garage and the signal has to go through a thick cavity wall
to my main PC in front room. It is acceptable, except with the new Smart TV when drop outs occur,
and the Samsung Multiroom does not seem happy with driving soundbar and 2 rear speakers over the LAN.
I thought about having a dedicated router for the TV and speakers in the same room,
but then I would not get Internet access for it without connecting the new router to the old, and I
suspect that the signal would go back to the old router through the new.
It all seems a lot of bother just to get surround sound without cables.
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