Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

TimSS

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 4, 2009
45
0
OK, this is probably a basic networking question, but as I'm trying to test this on my MBP, I figured I'd start here.

I recently bought a Buffalo Linkstation 1 TB NAS to use as a Time Machine backup disk, as well as a repository for videos to be streamed wirelessly throughout the house in the future. I'm running some tests and having difficulty.

The NAS is plugged into a Verizon Actiontec MI424WR wireless router via ethernet (I have FIOS).

The MBP is connected to the network wirelessly. It's a base 13" w/4GB RAM.

I have had no issues with my Time Machine backups to the NAS; after configuring the NAS, the inital one was done via wired connection to the MBP--all subsequent ones have been done wirelessly.

To test my plan, I put a movie that I've previously played on the MBP onto the NAS. I then went into Finder on the MBP, found the movie on the NAS, and launched it. Playback was horrible; a couple of frames played, then stalled, then played, etc.

So, is the issue a data transfer one from the NAS through the router wirelessly to the MBP? Or is it a memory issue on the MBP end? Or was I supposed to configure the NAS and/or the MBP differently to optimize video playback wirelessly? Or am I just going about this all wrong with my hardware choices? As you can tell, I'm kinda lost with what is probably a basic understanding of wireless network configurations.

Thanks for any assistance anyone can offer!
 

Detrius

macrumors 68000
Sep 10, 2008
1,623
19
Apex, NC
I don't have any experience directly related to your setup, but I did have similar issues trying to play a video from one Mac to another over AFP w/VLC. I got around my issue by setting up a Plex media server, which will actually stream the video. It's not the same as trying to play a video from a file server, apparently. The file itself probably needs to be optimized for streaming, where all the data is in the file in precisely the order it's needed, which isn't always the case, and it's not particularly important when you're reading from a high-speed random-access device like an internal hard drive.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.