Stream Video Wireless LAN?

[forthepeople]

I have a Imac with an external HD in one room and a mac mini connected to my tv in another room.I have FIOS internet and an Airport Extreme router.
I want to stream video wirelessly over my LAN from those drives to the TV, but it stutters when I try and open the video on the mini. Are there some settings on the router that will allow it send data at a higher rate?

While I would love a way to stream the video at its current quality, I wouldn't be opposed to something like stream to me and serve to me through the IPad.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/streamtome/id325327899?mt=8
I think this program decreases the video quality to send it wirelessly and works on an internet connection with almost no hick ups.

It seems like there should be some simple solution to this problem.

 

[waw74]

what type of video are you trying to play, and what's the bit rate?
what kind of wireless are you using? 802.11 a/b/g/n? wide channels?
are both the imac and the mini wireless?
what program are you using to play back the video?

the version of wireless you chose will greatly affect your available bandwidth.wiki
also if your computers have different versions, the lowest one takes presidence, so if the router is in N (b/g compatible), the imac is N, but the mini is B/G, your speeds on the whole network will be slower due to the mini.

also anything using 2.4 GHz (B/G or compatible) will be affected by things like cordless phones, baby monitors, and microwave ovens. as these are close to the same frequency.

you might be able to make up some bandwidth by having one or the other wired. since it can use all wireless bandwidth to talk to one, instead of sharing between the 2.
also if someone on the iMac is surfing the web, that will eat bandwidth and affect the quality of your movie.

you might be able to up the cache on the program and help with the stuttering. this is the ammount of the file that it will read ahead, so if it encounters a network problem, it's got some buffer while things get caught back up.

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there may be nothing you can do, short of hard wiring both devices. for a couple reasons ...
*videos that are higher bit rate than can be handled by wireless. (but the files would be huge, i've got one blu-ray rip thats 35GB)
*wireless interference. either electronic or not. If your house has thick walls, there's not much you can do, or if you're in a noisy wireless area.