# DIRECTV2PC works when wired, not wireless



## stlmike (Aug 24, 2007)

I have an Acer laptop that will play sd and hd content perfectly when hard wired to my home network. When using the laptop's wireless or my USB adapter (Zonet ZEW2546) it will stutter horribly. I have a DIR-655 wireless N router. The wireless is connecting with "excellent" signal strength at 300Mbps and I have no issues when surfing the web, watching youtube, or streaming off of sites like espn360.com. Is there a setting on my router or wireless adapter that could be effecting my ability to stream via wireless?


----------



## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

The bitrate for DIRECTV2PC is quite a bit higher than online streaming. It can be 15Mbps or more. Common sense would tell you that a wireless-N connection could easily handle that and you're right, but there may be too much latency, too many errors, or your laptop may not have the processing power to handle receiving the data wirelessly and decoding it. These are all possibilities.


----------



## gregjones (Sep 20, 2007)

Wireless signals are also susceptible from interference (neighbor's wifi signals, a microwave, etc.).


----------



## stlmike (Aug 24, 2007)

I was watching the Colbert Report in HD on a wired connection and it was ranging from 8-15 Mbps (1-2 MBps). Surely I should be able to operate reliably at 5% of my theoretical link speed... I can do file transfers and achieve much higher than 5% link utilization. I'll move the USB stick to other PC's to try to further troubleshoot the issue. Thanks!


----------



## CCarncross (Jul 19, 2005)

stlmike said:


> I was watching the Colbert Report in HD on a wired connection and it was ranging from 8-15 Mbps (1-2 MBps). Surely I should be able to operate reliably at 5% of my theoretical link speed... I can do file transfers and achieve much higher than 5% link utilization. I'll move the USB stick to other PC's to try to further troubleshoot the issue. Thanks!


File transfers and streaming content at high bitrates are 2 completely different things. In streaming, the data transfer rate has to be sustained literally 100% of the time in the case of little to no buffering which is what many of us believe to be the current case.


----------



## timmmaaayyy2003 (Jan 27, 2008)

Okay, I've looked and looked and can't find an answer to my problem.

I'm running a mixed network of wired and wireless as well. My 2 HR2X DVR's are hardwired and all PC's are running Windows 7 in one form or another. The problem is that none of the machines on wireless can see the media servers for the DTV boxes. I can ping them, but DirecTV2PC won't list them and they are not on the network screen. The wired machines can see them and the wireless machines and the wireless machines can see the wired machines, but not the DTV boxes.

I'm running WPA2 on the wireless G setup through a Qwest Actiontec PK5000 gateway. I'm assuming it's got to be something to do with the settings in the gateway, but I'm lost at this point. I also understand that the machine I was hoping to use may be a bit underpowered for the task, but it did work before I changed it to wireless.

Any ideas?

Thanks guys.


----------



## stlmike (Aug 24, 2007)

CCarncross said:


> File transfers and streaming content at high bitrates are 2 completely different things. In streaming, the data transfer rate has to be sustained literally 100% of the time in the case of little to no buffering which is what many of us believe to be the current case.


This makes sense. It would be nice if as opposed to a true stream, Directv2PC would load and buffer the entire program, so that way it would essentially download the show from your DVR, and Direct2PC would just play it. I suppose this opens up some issues for those with minimal free space on the hard drive, but since only one program at a time would be "loaded", I can't see a huge problem for most people.


----------



## Buluga55 (Nov 10, 2007)

I have the exact same problem (great connection while wired, no connection while wireless) and was wondering if there was any other information. My situation is virtually identical to that of timmmaaayyy2003. Any help is appreciated.


----------



## morbid_fun (Jan 16, 2007)

I have been experiencing similar stutters, mainly with HD programming. I was able to resolve most of the stutters by increasing the process priority. While not the best resolution, this may be something to try.
A product named WLAN optimizer has helped the stutters on my laptop as well.


----------



## Buluga55 (Nov 10, 2007)

Thanks. I gave it a try. No luck. My problem is not that the picture stutters, but that I can't even find a receiver when I am wireless.


----------



## leww37334 (Sep 19, 2005)

here is something you may want to try, http into your router, go to applications and gaming tab, then the qos tab, and enable DMM. I seemed to have some success with this using a linksys 310.


----------



## Buluga55 (Nov 10, 2007)

leww37334 said:


> here is something you may want to try, http into your router, go to applications and gaming tab, then the qos tab, and enable DMM. I seemed to have some success with this using a linksys 310.


Thanks for the suggestion, but there is no gaming tab or DMM setting on my router (Actiontec, from my ISP). I tried calling Actiontec, but they were useless. Their suggestion was to call DirecTV technical support. Does anyone know of a number for DirecTV Tech support that would help with this?


----------



## stlmike (Aug 24, 2007)

Buluga55 said:


> Thanks for the suggestion, but there is no gaming tab or DMM setting on my router (Actiontec, from my ISP). I tried calling Actiontec, but they were useless. Their suggestion was to call DirecTV technical support. Does anyone know of a number for DirecTV Tech support that would help with this?


My DIR-655 doesn't have a DMM setting either on the QoS tab as far as I could tell.


----------



## timmmaaayyy2003 (Jan 27, 2008)

Buluga55 said:


> Thanks for the suggestion, but there is no gaming tab or DMM setting on my router (Actiontec, from my ISP). I tried calling Actiontec, but they were useless. Their suggestion was to call DirecTV technical support. Does anyone know of a number for DirecTV Tech support that would help with this?


Try WMM in the wireless section. It didn't work for me on the PK5000 from Actiontec, but they also have issues with media streaming wirelessly on PS3.


----------



## Buluga55 (Nov 10, 2007)

timmmaaayyy2003 said:


> Try WMM in the wireless section. It didn't work for me on the PK5000 from Actiontec, but they also have issues with media streaming wirelessly on PS3.


Thanks. I don't have anything like WMM or a gaming tab setting in the router (GT724WT). When I spoke with Actiontec, they told me that the default settings would work for gaming, which I found hard to believe, but I am not a techie. They told me that I should talk to DirecTV to get info on a port to open or re port forwarding. I called DTV yestereday, got shuffled around for a while before getting disconnected without actually speaking to anyone who had any idea about what I was talking to. Incredibly frustration.


----------



## veryoldschool (Dec 10, 2006)

Buluga55 said:


> Thanks. I don't have anything like WMM or a gaming tab setting in the router (GT724WT). When I spoke with Actiontec, they told me that the default settings would work for gaming, which I found hard to believe, but I am not a techie. They told me that I should talk to DirecTV to get info on a port to open or re port forwarding. I called DTV yestereday, got shuffled around for a while before getting disconnected without actually speaking to anyone who had any idea about what I was talking to. Incredibly frustration.


If you "weed through" the DirecTV2PC thread above, you should find something about which ports this uses.


----------



## Buluga55 (Nov 10, 2007)

Thanks. I found the information on the ports (49152 and some mention 445). But it doesn't seem to have helped. This is very puzzling.


----------

