# What is the best possible picture quality for in-home streaming?



## srauly (Apr 26, 2000)

For some reason, I couldn't find an existing thread that covers this. I'm looking for some detailed info / screenshots of the streaming picture quality at the best setting. I'm a TiVo old-timer who switched to using Windows Media Center (w/SiliconDust HDHomeRun PRIME cablecard tuner) a while ago, but I'm thinking about switching back for a few reasons, which I won't go into now.

On my WMC server, I've played around with both AirVideo and Plex, which allow me to stream my TV shows to my iOS devices. The picture quality is excellent and they even support AirPlay, but the PQ / smoothness AirPlayed to my Apple TV isn't as good as what I can get using my XBox 360 as a media center extender. While the PQ when streaming to an iOS device is excellent, neither the AirVideo nor Plex natively support reading the WMC TV show metadata or allow for playing live TV or what I call pseudo-live TV (start a recording and immediately start watching it on the iOS app). The latter issue seems like it would be an easy fix (when you start watching a show, it thinks the show is only as long as what has already been recorded, so once you hit the end of that, it stops playing, even if the show is still in the progress of being recorded).

FWIW, I also supplement all of this with the Ceton iOS app for scheduling recordings.

In any case, with the TiVo Stream and now Roamio products, it seems like TiVo offers a better all-in-one solution for TV show streaming (aside from lacking AirPlay support). But I can't find any detailed info on just how good the PQ is when streaming in best quality mode. I'm probably asking too much to expect that any/many of you have first-hand experience using Plex or AirVideo, but hopefully I'll get lucky. But even if you don't, hopefully some of the more discerning PQ-focused people out there can provide some useful insight.

So, when watching a streamed show at best quality on an retina iPad, for example, just how good is the PQ? And not only how sharp is it, but how smooth is the playback? Bonus points for anyone who can provide me with (or link me to) some actual screenshots somewhere (obviously, that won't answer how smooth the playback is).


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

See More detailed HLS statistics thread for details. High quality downloads are currently only 1280x720p resolution @ 2.24 Mbps H.264 video. For HIGH quality on my iPad Air there is minimal artifacts I've noticed. For MEDIUM artifacts become quite noticeable and for BASIC quality it's pretty much worthless IMO.


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