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messing around with tversity

Yesterday Fai & I messed around a bit with TVersity streaming to the PS3. We followed a particularly long thread on TVersity’s support forums on the proper installation sequence of ffdshow and other relavant codecs.

Playback of the usual divx videos, like the TV series we usually download, worked well without any problems at all. Only problems we had were selecting audio tracks on VOB files, some clipping when playing a particular packaged AVI (FF7 AC with stereo/5.1 tracks), and stuttering when streaming that particular 5.1 track.

For the stuttering part, the bitrate display on the PS3 went up to about 6-8MB/s (can’t recall if it was bits or bytes). I’m guessing the wireless 11g network is the bottleneck, and my crappy Linksys router isn’t helping either. Tonight, we’ll continue testing using wired Ethernet for confirmation, and I even downloaded a full HD trailer of Watchmen for this purpose. 😀 If there are no hiccups, then it’s confirmed to be a wireless issue, and maybe that’ll push me to pick up an 11n router (or I could go back and grab the 3com router from my mom’s home).

Worst case scenario, short of breaking down the walls to lay cable, is to buy two 11n routers and WDS them together.

PS: Another alternative to TVersity is the PS3 Media Server, which is especially made for the PS3. Might give it a go as well.

my theory on my wifi disconnection problems

My 3Com 11g AP is on auto CTS Protection Mode. CTS Protection Mode is used to keep 11b connections alive when there are tons of 11g clients connected as well. This also works across different wireless networks, with the mode kicking off if any other AP within the same channel has the mode turned on.

My Linksys WMP54G (Ralink) adaptor connects to the AP as an 11b station. It’s Wifi mode shows only two choices: 11B ONLY and 11B/G Mixed. Since my AP has protection mode on, my connection should be OK.

However, what if there’s another AP in my apartment block that has CTS Protection Mode off? Maybe this AP has tons of 11g clients too. So maybe somehow this makes my own Protection Mode useless, making my 11b connection unstable.

So now I’ve turned off CTS Protection Mode on both the AP and the client (two can play that game!), and connection has been steady so far. If it solves my connection, then yay. Otherwise, sorry neighbors. 😛

dying hardware

If you’ve noticed, my photo gallery is offline with a whole bunch of freaky PHP errors. Tis mainly due to me having to unplug my two 250GB drives from the server as they were constantly crashing the system every time fsck’ed. Thing is I’m not sure whether it’s one or the other or both that’s causing the problems. If I have time, I’ll probably mount it on my Windows machine to transfer the stuff out before the drives die for real.

But before that, I should probably buy some new hard drives to store said data. Fai-chan needs one herself, having only 1GB left on her machine. 😛

Another problem I have is with my stupid wireless Linksys PCI adaptor. There came a point where my PC just couldn’t start due to BSODs originating from RT2500.sys (a Ralink driver used by this card). Updating the driver to generic Ralink ones would cause erratic connections instead. Updating to SP3 didn’t help. Windows File Protection scans didn’t help either.

Once I’m settled down, I’ll probably make the switch to N. And it damned well won’t be Linksys.