I bought an Apple TV last week, which is pretty neat. It is my source for Netflix streaming on the TV, since the Xbox 360 only allows for one Netflix account and it is linked to my roommate. I can also legally, easily stream Top Gear episodes from the current series. Those two features alone are worth it to me.
I moved our old Airport Express to my room, intending to use it with my stereo, which is not on the same desk as my computer. I got everything set up pretty easily, but I am running into weird issues streaming music from iTunes to the stereo now. iTunes sees the remote stereo but will only play for a few seconds before skipping a bit of the song, then resuming. It does this without fail when I stream from my computer. However, when I use my iPhone to stream, I have no problems whatsoever. This doesn't seem to make any sense. The Airport Express is merely joining the Wi-Fi network as a client, not a range extender, so its connection to the base station in the main room doesn't seem to be a factor. Something in the way iTunes tries to talk to the stereo seems to fail where the iPhone works.
Thinking about this, I suppose it could be that my laptop has bad wireless signal strength. Suppose I could investigate.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't seem to be signal strength. I configured the Airport Express to set up its own network, then connected to the new network using both my iPhone and my Mac.
ReplyDeleteThe iPhone's signal strength was around -40 dBm while sitting on my desk, playing music without a hitch. It reached a maximum of -14 dBm when I played the phone directly on top of the Airport, as you'd expect.
When I repeated the experiment with my Mac, it too had a signal strength around -40 dBm while playing from the same distance. Moving the laptop as close as possible to the Airport resulted in a peak signal of -29 dBm, well above the level used by the iPhone for playback.
Roommate's Mac has no problem streaming to the Airport. Software issue specific to my configuration? Creating a new user with default preferences in everything to test.
ReplyDeleteThat didn't work either. Out of ideas.
ReplyDeleteFixed this. Turns out that the program I was using to switch some configuration settings depending on which network I was connected to was hosing the WiFi connection by scanning for new networks every few seconds. BOOOOOOOOOOM
ReplyDelete