Wireless network and the Playstation 3: Stutter City!

Tom,

See if your router has QoS (Quality of Service) settings. If yes, see if you can add entries for the MAC addresses of your PC and PS3 and set them to “High”. No guarantees, but it might be that your router is not fully utilizing bandwidth “just in case” some other machine on the network needs it.

Run a wire. I also had numerious problems with wifi that were solved with the running of a cable.

Two foozle entries that might help:

  1. Set your router to channel either 1 or 11. There may seem like 11 channels for 802.11b/g, but really there are three: 1, 7, and 11. 1 and 11 have the least chance of being interfered with by other networks and stuff.

  2. Turn off the “n” networking and force 802.11g instead. Some routers don’t gracefully let all devices work at 802.11g speeds when you have the g-and-n mode selected, and you end up getting really bad 802.11b bandwidth or something. It’s a bit of a crapshoot.

Also, of course, make sure you update your router’s firmware.

But streaming video is one of those things that just doesn’t work well over wireless. Usually when a video is meant to stream well over wireless, a device that does a good job of it will have video playback software that knows this and buffers up some extra data to smooth things out. Devices like the PS3 or 360 really just don’t do what they need to to make local network media streaming smooth on a sub-optimal connection.

Ah, did not know that.

I have had flawless success streaming DivX and Xvid to my PS3 over wireless. (that is - from the router to the PS3 over wireless - my computer is hooked to the router via std RJ45 jacked ethernet cable). I’m using a std WRT54G Linksys wireless router.

I know it’s not terribly helpful to give a shout out of “works fine here” - but it does. Is your computer at least hardwired to your router?

This is why the Xbox 360 Wi-Fi adapter supports 802.11a. That’s the only current wireless standard that really supports high-bitrate streaming in a reliable manner. (802.11n is decent as well, though not as good as a for streaming, but the PS3 doesn’t support it.)

I had to hardwire my PS3 to the network.

Now I have to figure out how to turn off the PS3’s built-in PSP router function. I tried the useless Remote Play feature a year or so ago and never touched it again. Now the PS3’s broadcasting as an access point unnecessarily.

Yeah, I’ve been sort of skimming this thread in perplexity, I’ve never had problems streaming media wirelessly to my PS3.

Just in case you are still following this thread, Tom. I managed to improve my PS3’s wireless performance a lot by setting my wireless channel to 1 and setting the connection mode to g (instead of mixed b/g). My wireless router also had a g+ option that seemed to speed it up even more.

And when I say the performance improved a lot, I mean a 10x or higher increase in bandwidth. Now I can finally get something downloaded from the PSN store.

Add me to the not-really-helpful chorus of no problemos. I have my PC wired to a bog-standard router, and the PS3 connected wirelessly, and I regularly stream media from the PC to the PS3 without issue. I get very occasional connection drops - maybe one in every 4 films I watch, or so. That said, my flat is kind of, er, bijou, so there’s only a distance of a couple of meters between the kit, which probably helps.

That said, the PS3’s wireless network performance isn’t exactly stellar - the internet browser takes what seems like an age to load even simple pages, and my ping is consistently 100-150% higher than on my PC if I’m playing online. So if there is a magical foozle tip, it’d be cool to know. Just wish I could supply one myself.

I have a PS3 using wifi and don’t have any major issues. Netflix can stutter if i don’t let it buffer for a bit but everything else works fine (including Hulu).

Sadly, none of the suggestions helped. I tried switching my router to B&G only, and specifying channel 11, but it still stutters when streaming media. :(

-Tom