Frequent stops/freezes streaming HD XVid Video to Samsung BD-P4600 Blu-ray Player

[AJenry]

hello all,
Completely new to this forum, but hope I will catch up fast enough for you guys!
I have an issue concerning streaming from my PC (XP) via wireless network to my BD4600 and the standard SAMSUNG Dongle (should be same principle as for the BD-1250.
It works great when I am relatively close distance and use only "low Q" Xvid (i.e. not HD 720p Xvid)). However when the 4600 is 2 rooms away using 720p Xvid the streaming makes very annoying stops/freezes during the movie as if the bandwith on the wireless/connection is not sufficient. I had an old 54mbps router and rather low coverage in that room. Now I bough a new router with 300mbps router with excellent coverage. If I view the signal quality with my PC in the room where I ´have issues it states excellent coverage and 54mbps signal speed, but the streaming still makes freezes as if the coverage is bad. When I look at the 720p movie size/data speed it state roughly 2500kb/s which should be much lower than the 54mbps by far.
Any thoughts here would be greatly appreciated !!

PS My 4600 has always worked with the "automatic" connection to PC but it does not remember the connection after shutting off;-(
Many thanks!

[MrBoylan]

hello all,
Completely new to this forum, but hope I will catch up fast enough for you guys!

Welcome to the forum!

I have an issue concerning streaming from my PC (XP) via wireless network to my BD4600 and the standard SAMSUNG Dongle (should be same principle as for the BD-1250.
It works great when I am relatively close distance and use only "low Q" Xvid (i.e. not HD 720p Xvid)). However when the 4600 is 2 rooms away using 720p Xvid the streaming makes very annoying stops/freezes during the movie as if the bandwith on the wireless/connection is not sufficient. I had an old 54mbps router and rather low coverage in that room. Now I bough a new router with 300mbps router with excellent coverage. If I view the signal quality with my PC in the room where I ´have issues it states excellent coverage and 54mbps signal speed, but the streaming still makes freezes as if the coverage is bad. When I look at the 720p movie size/data speed it state roughly 2500kb/s which should be much lower than the 54mbps by far.
Any thoughts here would be greatly appreciated !!

This sounds like a reception problem between the router and the WiFi antenna which is built into the WiFi dongle. A "300 MBPS router" doesn't really get that kind of throughput over WiFi, and particularly not when you get to the edges of reception. Are you using a dual-band wireless 802.11n router? These typically have the best range and throughput (in my experience). The Linksys WRT400N is a good one but it isn't terribly cheap (around $125). Here's a link:

Linksys WRT400N on Amazon

The other place you can improve a reception problem is at the receiver itself, which in your case is the Samsung USB/WiFi dongle. If the dongle is buried behind some gear or enclosed in a cabinet, then you can try getting a USB extension cord (male USB on one end, female on the other) and bring the dongle out into a higher, more open position in the room - like the top of an A/V cabinet - so it has less blockage between it and the router. And, if you can, bring your router itself out to a higher/more open position that is closer to the player. Here's a USB extension cable on Amazon (under $5) that will allow you to move the WiFi dongle up to 10 feet away from your Blu-ray player for better reception:

Amazon Basics 3-meter USB extension cable

Also, keep in mind that you can have additional reception issues if your videos are on a laptop which is connected to your router wirelessly - in that case you have two links in the chain that are wireless, and reception/throughput can be compromised on both legs. If your computer is close to the router, then consider using a hard-wired network cable between computer and router so you can eliminate part of the problem.

The way to verify that you are having a WiFi reception problem would be to test the same videos using a long Ethernet cable between router and player (instead of WiFi). Kinda silly to buy a long network cable just to do some testing but this would be a way of confirming that the wireless reception is what's causing the problem. Here's a 50-foot network cable for a little over $7:

50-foot RiteAV Network cable

Anyway... I hope some of these suggestions help. The easiest/cheapest thing to do is to try to move the USB/WiFi dongle out to a better reception area by using that 3-meter USB extension cable I linked and mentioned above.

Good luck!

-Chris

[AJenry]

Hello Chris,

First of all many thanks for the swift + proffesional help here. This is absolutely greatly appreciated !

I had the USB extention cable in mind aswell - I will will test it asap and give you an update!
My PC is a desktop directly hardwired to the router.
My Router which i just bought is D-Link DIR-655. According to spec IEEE 802.11n2/g/b. My old one was a Netgear WGR614.

According to my reading the new one should be much higher speed (300MBPS) + coverage. To test with a cable isn't nessesary since when I move the BD player closer to the router (say one wall in between) it works fine.

My really lack of understanding is that when I test the coverage with my laptop in the room/location with coverage problem, the laptop reception quality states Speed : 54MBPS and Signal "excellent". If that is true how is it that it cannot transfer the 720p quality of merely 2500kbps .

I hope I will solve the issue with the extention but it would be uinteresting to understand the above question as a principle.
Concerning using DNLA I also have a samsung HDTV with DNLA and this one works fine. Only real annoyce is to update the server with the Samsung sharing tool. If I add a new movie it can take more than a hour to update the network - here the file sharing is instant and much better in my view. If you have a trick here that would be great also.

Enough from me now. Again many thanks for your support !

[AJenry]

Allright, USB extention cord tested (1m) and it worked execellent (at least the 30minutes I tested). What is interesting is that as soon a the dongle is more than 10 cm away from the Player it works. The issue seems to be due to the disturbance and correlation to the proximity of the player and not the actual position of the dongle. I tested to put the dongle in an even "darker/remote" corner and it still worked as long as it is more than ~10 cm from the player.
Most likely my old 54mbps router would have worked also due the fact it seems connected to the reception/disturbance of the dongle/player but still now it works and I am a happy man
Cheers again for the hint+help!

[MrBoylan]

Allright, USB extention cord tested (1m) and it worked execellent (at least the 30minutes I tested). What is interesting is that as soon a the dongle is more than 10 cm away from the Player it works. The issue seems to be due to the disturbance and correlation to the proximity of the player and not the actual position of the dongle. I tested to put the dongle in an even "darker/remote" corner and it still worked as long as it is more than ~10 cm from the player.
Most likely my old 54mbps router would have worked also due the fact it seems connected to the reception/disturbance of the dongle/player but still now it works and I am a happy man
Cheers again for the hint+help!

Very interesting and I'm glad it worked out for you. Cheap/simple solutions are always best!

I guess this potential interference with the player is why Panasonic actually includes a 1-meter extension cable in the box with their WiFi adapter for the DMP-BD85, DMP-BDT300 and DMP-BDT350.

Sorry, no suggestions or tricks on how to get DLNA to find your media faster. The "PC Sharing" in the 2009 players can work well but I think Samsung was sick of handling so many support calls about it so they switched over to DLNA in 2010 in the Blu-ray players as well.

Good luck!

-Chris