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Feature request - One step lower cellular bitrate


Melyan
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Melyan

First of all, I like to thank you for this fantastic app.  I just purchased it on amazon and am amazed at the results and so far it is worth every penny.

 

Now, I'm not sure if the request is even feasible but I figured there would be no harm in asking.

 

A little bit of background.  I own a vacation property in the mountains(no internet) and a primary home in the suburbs (Verizon FiOS).  I've been using MB3 for a few months now in my primary home to distribute content throughout multiple rooms in the house.  It works like a champ in that regard.  Recently, I got the hair-brained idea to use my cellphone to stream media to a the TV at my farm property via a Mobile High Defintion Link (MHL) adapter.  I tested the MHL adapter setup with HBO-Go and it works fairly well, but it buffers occasionally (every 15mins or so) and I'm not sure what the bandwidth requirements are for smooth playback with that service.  The problem that I have is that my cellular connection doesn't always maintain 3G.  

 

What I'm getting at is I'm willing to sacrifice quality for content.  Since I'm only playing content on a 32" TV 5-6 days a month, I'd be happy with 480p/i.  This may be outside the scope of your app and may not even be supported on the server side.  Worth asking though.

 

Thanks again for all the hard work you've put into this app.  I've been spreading the word about MB3, and look forward to recommending your app as well.

 

Regards,

Rick

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Redshirt

The lowest cellular setting 250 kb/s is already quite low. any lower and the artifacting will be out of control. 

 

That being said, if you can stream HBO-GO, then you should be able to stream MB as well. What symptoms were you actually seeing?

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trusselo

there are 2 key factors:

your home internet (server) connection upload speed

your cellular connection download speed.

 

if you cannot maintain 3g there is not much else can be done, depending on your network or phone, it may drop to 2g or drop completely out of data coverage.

there are 2 types of 2g (both were the first implementation of digital voice and data signal), 

 

from Wikipedia:

 

2G Data Transmission Capacity:[3]

  • With GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), you have a theoretical transfer speed of max. 50 kbit/s (40 kbit/s in practice).
  • With EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution), you have a theoretical transfer speed of max. 250 kbit/s (150 kbit/s in practice).

 

and those numbers are BITS not BYTES.

you wont get any video on that.

 

at home on your server you can run a speed test at www.speedtest.net  (I usually set options to "kiloBYTES/sec" before test, on "options" page, as it gives numbers better representative of downloading files, rather than bitrate transfer speed, as files download in BYTES not BITS, )

 

@@Redshirt - just to confirm - the settings in the app, are in kbits, not kbytes? following the lower case 'b' for bits rule, right?

Edited by trusselo
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Redshirt

That's correct. it's bits not bytes.

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Melyan

Thanks for the reply.  After you mentioned that the lowest setting was 250 kb/s I went back and rechecked the cellular settings and didn't notice a scroll bar (because it appears and vanishes within 1 sec) indicating the lower bitrates.  Complete oversight on my part.  At the top of the list was 850kb/s so it appeared that was the lowest setting.  I'll be testing it out this weekend and will let you know how everything goes.

 

I appreciate the help and clarification.

 

Rick

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  • 2 weeks later...
Melyan

Just wanted to add an update.

 

Accessing my HTPC server remotely via the Android app and connecting the phone (HTC Evo 3D) to my TV via an MHL adapter worked seamlessly.  As y'all mentioned earlier, at the lower bit-rates there was pixelation and artifacts but that was to be expected with my sporadic 3G connection.  I currently use Virgin Mobile USA which piggy backs off the Sprint Network so buffering is an issue.  One thing to note however is that the web optimization of my movie files is almost non-existent so that's a project for a later date.

 

Thanks again for all the help and information.  Great community here.  Kudos to all the developers.

 

Rick 

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