BTV Link, Hardware Decoder & Jerky Video

[McDeath]

I've been banging my head against a brick wall with this one and was hoping someone out there can help.

I'm trying to use Beyond TV Link to stream my mpeg files from the main recording PC to my bedroom terminal. When I first tried it, I received an extremely jerky video stream. I assumed it was my 802.11b wireless card (I didn't really expect it to work) until tonight when I've ran a cat5 cable down into my router (the recorder was already connected to the router with a cable) and found the stream is the same.

For reference, I'm using a Hauppauge PVR 350 as my capture card and a Netgear WGT624 router.

Can BTV Link stream mpeg files as there seems to be a mixed opinion throughout the forums? Also, any suggestions where I'm going wrong would be most appreciated.

[frantid]

Link works for me on 801.11a, You'll probably get more replies if you put this in the user-to-user support threads. What are the specs for your link machine?

[null_pointer_us]

First, Link is capable of streaming both MPEG files and live TV.

Second, you may wish to take note of this:

http://www.snapstream.com/Community/articles/btvlink2/

...where it says that "[because] of bandwidth constraints, 802.11b is not fast enough to transmit real-time full screen video." So I think you might have much better luck streaming Windows Media files which have been created using Showsqueeze. They are smaller and therefore use far less bandwidth.

I have seen jerky playback on non-highend machines which is most likely due to the fact that they have mediocre video cards while BTV Link is trying to scale the video up to the LCD resolution (e.g. 720x480 -> 1280x1024). Try running the client in windowed mode by pressing ALT+Enter when in fullscreen mode at the menu (i.e. when not viewing video).

If fullscreen video is jerky but windowed video is not, then we can fix it like so:

1. Right-click on the BTV Link shortcut and select Properties.

2. Select the Shortcut tab and position the cursor at the end of the Target box.

3. Add the following to the end without quotes:

/mode:exclusivefs /width:640 /height:480

4. Launch the software and test it.

5. Repeat step 3 with different values for width and height if the video looks squashed.

[bnflaherty]

Originally Posted by McDeath

For reference, I'm using a Hauppauge PVR 350 as my capture card and a Netgear WGT624 router.

And there we have the issue....

As you mentioned you tried using a wired connection -- the problem is with your router -- we have had many complaints of networking issues relating to that router.

I believe upon replacing it -- you should have no issues...

[pc4ever1]

I'm not sure that is the answer. I use a diffrerent router (Linksys) but I experience the same problem in one of two PC's that I have BTV Link set up on.
They both use the same router and are hardwired (CAT5).

Both of the PC's are identical EXCEPT for the video card. PC1 has a Radeon 9600 and PC2 has a Radeon 9600 clone. Both machines are P4 3.0Ghz , with 1GB Ram running Windows 2K.

FYI... PC1 runs great. No jerky video etc, it repsonds like the server PC.

[McDeath]

Thanks for the replys, guys (and gals if applicable).

My link PC is an Athlon 64 3200, 512MB RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro, 120GB hard drive. I would have assumed this would be good enough by quite a degree.

Video is the same in both full screen and windowed modes.

I'll give it a try with another router that I have lying around. I'll post the results.

[frantid]

How does it work if you just map a drive and play the files with wmp? If you have a cross-over cable you could take the router out of the equation for troubleshooting.