HD movie streaming - is it possible with my connection?

WD Legacy Products My Book Live
1

Hi!

I have not yet finally decided to invest my money in the WD My Book Live, but I hope to do just that in the very near future if it meets my expectations. I hope you here on the forums can help me answer these questions:

  1. Can you stream 1080p content to your devices from the MBL? If so, what is your download/upload rate?

  2. Do you think I will be able to do it with a 2,13 MB upload connection connected to the MBL and a 10 MB download connection on my iPad/iPhone/iMac?

  3. Can you stream 320 kb/s music to your devices from the MBL? If so, what is your download/upload rate?

  4. if you can answer 1) and 3) with a yes, does it then play flawlessly? Does it take a long time to get it started?

thank you all in advance! 

Update: Btw. this is all connections from my house with the MBL to my devices out of my house.

2

Hi, you can definitely do all those things with a wired connection, I regularly watch 1080p mkv’s streamed through a LAN to my wd live tv, might struggle on a wireless network though…

3

Okay, great. What is your upload connection for you MBL and your download for your unit then?

4

Hi, sorry, never measured it, just know it streams everything I have, and I have 1080p mkv’s and some HD xvids, and tons of 320kps mp3 files which my denon network amp plays absolutely fine, and for the iPhone, the wd2go app will stream mp3’s through the wifi great too :slight_smile:

5

Okay, but is this in your home or out of your home? :slight_smile:

6

2mbit/sec isn’t sufficient for much SD content, let alone HD…

7

Hi,

Compressing using x264, a “typical” file ends up somewhere around 8GB for 100 minutes of movie. To stream this without problems, you need a speed of 8GB/100 minutes ~= 1.3MB/s ~= 10Mb/s.

your getitng near 2.5MB/ps (25mb/ps)  you should in an ideal world be ok, but in realistic terms you might get stutter “sometimes” if the signal gets weak at any point.

streaming through LAN yeilds far better speads on gigabit connections, this gives me through my lan avg of 70MB from the mbl, and 40+MB to my mbl so there will never be any problems with that speed it will stream virtaully anything with no stutter.

you have to remember though that different setups of network equipment give different results, just look through the forum its littered with speed related questions.

my setup is 100mbit home hub, wirelessN 5k range, into 10/100/1000mbit switch (cheap tp-link) my mbl and all wired network pcs plugged into my switch, i also have a second passthrough router connected to the switch which i use as a wireless extender which i ONLY connect my streaming device(s) (smp) to this router via wireless it is also wireless N 5k range, i get 6MB transferre rate from this 2nd router to my smp because its closer to the smp than my internet hub, any pc connected to the switch gets the transferre rates stated above, but like i say different equipment yeilds different results on different networks.

:slight_smile: