Serviio

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I'm getting about 4mbps across my network using powerline adapters. Do you believe this is causing the buffering?

That would be my guess. My DVD rips average between 6-8 Mbps, with some occasionally topping 10. My Blu-Ray rips can exceed 40Mbps. This is based on the bitrate display in my Sony players. However, streaming from an online source such as Crackle I usually see a bitrate no higher than 2 Mbps.

I've heard of other powerline adapters with much better bandwidth than that. If stringing CAT5 cable is not practical, and WiFi isn't an option, you might try some different adapters.

It is of course possible to adjust your settings in the profiles file to reduce your max bitrate, but that will affect picture quality as well.

Okay, I finally got a wire long enough to reach my living room. It turns out that the problem really is the powerline adapters. Now, I need to figure out how to setup a real home network. Going to try and fish hook new wires through the walls. I hope all goes well.

Have you played around with your powerline adaptors - 4Mbps is abysmal for them. Make sure you have no power boards, surge protectors or the like.

Otherwise, yes, run Cat 5/6 cable (I did and although it was a pain, never looked back. Didn't have powerline adaptors back then though....)

Yeah, running Cat5 isn't fun, but sure worth it in the end!

Before you try that, I agree with DenyAll that something doesn't seem right with the powerline adapters. Even the older ones (I thought) were good for 15-20Mbps. They claim the newest versions are good for well over 100Mbps. That's more than enough for HD video.

The modem and the powerline adapters are on opposite ends of the house. I believe that is the main issue. When i run speedtest.com, I get 25 mb download but when i run a software network test i'm actually getting 4mb. So i'm pretty sure the 4mb is the one since i get buffering in some videos. There must be something in the powerlines that's causing the buffering.

I hired an electrician. He's going to setup a network for me, 300$ for four rooms.

That's not a bad price, especially if it includes the wall jacks in each room, and not just a wire poking out of the wall. Don't forget the other end of the cables have to be terminated somewhere. Two options: the cables are connected to a patch board, and you use short jumper cables to connect to the switch/router, or all four wires are just hanging loose with an RJ45 plug on the end, and just plug them directly into the switch. For that price, it's likely option two. Nothing wrong with it. A patch panel makes a neater installation, but that's all. Doesn't make anything work better.

Although you seem well down the path to resolve your issue (and for $300 go for it, you can never really go past cable), thought I'd comment on a few things both fyi and for others:

What you are seeing is actually (roughly) both the same thing and is often an area of confusion:

• Your modem (and speedtest.com default setting) will provide you a line rate, in megabits per second (in your case 25 Mbps);
• Software applications (like the one that produced your charts) measures in megabytes per second (in your case 4 MBps - note the capital "B")

One byte = 8 bits, so these two numbers are roughly the same (allowing for some rounding and some overheads which I won't go into here). So, you are in fact getting 25Mbps which is more than sufficient to carry video traffic .... but wait there's more...

Having said all that, this isn't relevant to Serviio for streaming of local content. The 25Mbps you are seeing is your rate to the internet. Unless you are streaming online content Serviio doesn't use internet bandwidth for video streaming. So while your issue may have been related to powerline adaptors (as evident by the fact it works when replaced by an ethernet cable), you needed to look at the actual speed you are getting between those adaptors, not to the internet (appreciate you may have moved on to the cable solution already, more for others...)

Seems a reasonable price. I would insist on the cables being terminated properly to wall plates at each end - at the modem end he/she should provide a 4-way ganged RJ45 plate. You will need to provide patch leads, but you likely have them anyway. I'm not keen on cables just coming out the wall for various reasons (eg if the tab snaps on the ethernet plug - you need a specialist back in to terminate the cable again... plus it is neater).

What do you guys mean by terminate? I'll describe the process that he used to setup the network for you as best as I can. House is already wired with cat5e cables but the cat5e cables are setup for using telephones. Walking around outside of the house, we found the cat5e cables just hanging out a wall. It's a somewhat new home so we figured that a telephone box was never setup.


The setup he did was to connect three rooms straight to the living room. The living room has the modem. He changed the telephone wall plate in the living room with three keystone jacks to a new ethernet wall plate. Then he he only had to fish hook one new wire and that was for the master bed room. For the two guest rooms, he reused the previously installed cat5e. He didn't change all of the telephone keystones as there are two left but I don't plan on plugging anything into those.

By termination, we mean something attached to the end of the cable.

One termination is the normal RJ45 that plugs into your network device. I agree completely with DenyAll about not just having the loose cables coming out of the wall with RJ45s on the end.

The other termination would be to a jack that you can plug a patch cable into and run it to the device. This can be as I mentioned a patch panel, although those are usually used with far more than four cables. I like DenyAll's suggestion of a 4 gang plate. It sounds like he did it this way.

Based on the cables you already had in the house, it sounds like it was done well. I am assuming the wall plate in the living room has 4 jacks. That's the termination we referred to. Appears your electrician knew his stuff. Not sure what you are referring to as a Keystone jack, unless you mean a normal RJ-11 telephone jack.