Is it possible? Full HD over wifi?

[aurimas]

Hello RPi community,

i nicely setup this piece of gold into xbian media centre. I get sopcast stream, i can watch youtube, everything is so ok except one problem - full hd (720 runs fine) - they keep stuttering. So my question will be - if it even possible to run full hd over wifi (the same movie runs fine with LAN cable)?

My router config:
Network Authentication: Mixed WPA2/WPA PSK
WPA Encryption: TKIP+AES

Wireless:
No name chinese mini wireless adapter with ralink 5370 chip, however it working with rt2xxx modules

Any ideas?

[aurimas]

In addition, wireless has N standard

[JeremyF]

It's certainly possible in theory, but the buggy Pi firmware is probably being a bottleneck.

(just my thoughts)

[Mr.Dave]

I read someone saying dropping the refresh rate to 24Hz cured the 1080p stuttering

I couldn't seem to set it any lower than 50/50i Hz but maybe because I'm using a 1080p monitor, not a TV

[aurimas]

But the same video over the cable is ok so it should be something wrong with wifi/dongle

[Mr.Dave]

But the same video over the cable is ok so it should be something wrong with wifi/dongle

Even though it is Wireless N standard, I think you`ll see it only connects at 65mbps vs 100mbps via cable

[jamesh]

Yes, Wifi bandwidth problem. If reducing fps fixes it that's almost guaranteed, wired working is also a dead giveaway. Although N is supposed to do 54Mbits/s, in real world use it doesn't usually get near that.

[SirLagz]

N is meant to do 150mbit/300mbit, G is meant to do 54mbit, though those figures are the speed at half duplex.
In reality, speed is halved for WiFi, plus whatever degradation happens between router and NIC.
If you want to find out whether the wifi is being choked, you can use a program called iftop.
It will show bandwidth use per connection, so you can see if the connection really is maxing out.

[Mr.Dave]

Yes, Wifi bandwidth problem. If reducing fps fixes it that's almost guaranteed, wired working is also a dead giveaway. Although N is supposed to do 54Mbits/s, in real world use it doesn't usually get near that.

N is capable of 300mbps if you use channel bonding, G is 54mbps but with the overheads etc you see maybe 20-30mbps real life speeds

[drgeoff]

My car may be capable of doing 150 km/h but that doesn't mean I can get to the shop 5 km away in 2 minutes.

Actual Wi-Fi throughput depends on many factors. And there is no single bit rate which is always used for 'full HD'. So asking if full HD is possible over Wi-Fi is almost as meaningless as asking the length of a piece of string. That person A is able to stream his HD sources in his house does not mean that person B is also able to do that.

Possibly not applicable to the OP but many overlook the fact that if both the source and the sink are Wi-Fi connected then the throughput rate is approximately halved. (1/Rc = 1/Rso + 1/Rsi where Rc is the combined rate and Rso and Rsi are the rates that the source and sink can each achieve to the Wi-Fi access point when there is no other traffic.)

[jinkies]

I'm having issues where 2 different wireless-n usb dongles are getting 150-200kbit down on the raspberry pi - not enough for 720p or above, and it even gets painful sometime for lower resolution videos aswell.

I have a laptop setup streaming to a tv over the same wireless network and it's able to stream 720p fine, and 1080 with only minimal stutter - there is a bottle neck on the device somewhere, not a problem with the network/the standard/whatever.

Does anyone have a working config on a raspberry pi with a wireless dongle or not?