HDTV Over WiFi: Any Hope?

generally, you need both a specialized client and server to transcode on the fly with any type of success.

for readynas, plex server is probably the best (along with the android/ios plex app), but I think there is also 'airserver' or something like that provides similar function.

readydlna can stream content as well, but does not do any transcoding, meaning the client must be able to handle the content directly.

Max touched on something, that you could test wifi thoroughput.

You can also use some programs to check the video files bit rates and such, which will tell you how much bandwidth you need to stream a particular file.

Sometimes changing your wifi channel, or using the 5ghz "N" bands (instead of the more typical 2.4ghz "G" bands) will improve wireless throughput sufficiently to stream whatever particular files you want to stream.

Something else to consider, given a file plays perfectly on a tablets local storage vs stream wifi, is that local storage requires less cpu overhead, and that trying to stream a huge hd file over wifi could tax the processors more than it can handle to play it acceptably.

Yet another thing to understand about WIFI, is that throughput is never static, meaning it varies over time and even between packets dependent upon how much other wireless traffic is in the airspace.

Just because you may have a '54gbs' connection showing, doesn't mean anything to actual throughput, in most ideal situations you will get half that, and more often 1/4 to 1/3 that.