Streaming video from PC to TV

Even my wired connection would go to crap, and I have a 50mbps connection which is fairly beefy compared to most peoples home connecton. It almost seems like the actual bandwith being used never really matter, it was more about the number of connections, if 5+ things were actively downloading/seeding, even if each one was only 10kbs, my whole internet would go to total shit.

I use whatbox.ca and it runs me $15 a month, which I think is pretty reasonable. The speed is amazing, I get my full 50mbps when I FTP files from the whatbox server, and the whatbox server itself is nuts, I don't know its max speed but it'll regularly snag 2-3GB video files in like 20-30 seconds, and then being able to FTP at full speed, I can get files to my PC a lot faster than using a torrent program on my home PC(which would usually max out on most connections around 3-4Mbps.

I also justified the cost by dropping all my movie channels off of my DirecTV, that saved me well more than $15 a month, and I can still snag all the shows I watch within minutes of the broadcast completing.

Now, I will say that FTPing files from my seedbox to my PC at 50mbps totally shits up my home internet as well, but thats so blazingly fast that it's only for a few minutes at a time until the file completes.

Just recently got into torrents, as I'm a usenets guy, and I've yet to have any issue with internet connections while using torrents.

Funny Deathwing, our shit is almost exact. Running a DIR-655 router, with a Boxee downstairs. Granted, I stopped using my Xbox, and swapped the wire to the Boxee so i didn't have to go wireless anymore. I also noticed that placement of the router made a huge difference. Obviously signal strength makes a difference, but I was finding some dead spots downstairs, from my router broadcasting from upstairs, and so moving my router closer to the top of the stairs, giving a more clear shot to the downstairs made a huge difference.

I've done nothing to my router to configure anything for traffic, and usually have 3-4 torrents going at any given moment. I know you are doing a lot more torrents, and as said, that may be your issue. Could it be pipe size? I'm on 150mb/s down, 30up?

there is no point in limiting download speed in torrent apps, unless you have a very elaborate QoS priority system in your router. because the other side is gonna blast you at full speed, and limiting download just means your client is throwing away data since it can't actually tell the other client "hey only send me XYZ kb/s thats all I want!". test this out sometime, set the download limit to like 50k, start a massive torrent, then increase the cap by 1mb every minute and you'll notice it instantly jumps up to your new limit. your download cap basically is just screwing you, and not doing anything else.

you can try playing around with QoS on your router, to prioritize http and video streaming over BitTorrent. I never really had any luck with it. Based on lots of experiments I found setting a global max upload of 1/10th or less of my max upload works well, and only downloading in BT when I am not doing other shit. Basically no matter what, if I am downloading something on BT everything else is gonna lag, so I'll pause any downloads if I wanna play BF4 or whatever. Uploads don't really seem to affect it as long as I keep it at 40-50 kb/s (I don't use ratio trackers so I don't really care about hitting 1:1, I've had some IPT seeds now for 1+ year).

also segment your network properly. my PC is hooked into the router wired, so even when its downloading at full stream it doesnt impact the wireless internal network, I can play 720p files on the living room boxee no problem. The boxee would lag/buffer if I was downloading and I tried to netflix though. Anything that is going to pump a lot of data through (torrents, downloading) should be wired if at all possible, so the wireless spectrum is kept free.

I leave my computer on 24/7. I only turn it off if I'm going to be travelling away from home for multiple days. All of my upkeep shit runs at night. I have my Avast antivirus, Malwarebytes, and Windows update all run from like 3-5am everyday. Hell, PCs use such little energy anymroe when idling, it really doesn't matter. Just make sure to turn your monitor off. My 2 monitors use WAY more juice than my idling PC.

I have a UPS that displays the wattage being used at any given time on a display, and I figured up the cost of my PC idling would cost me about $10 if it idled for 365 straight days, so the actual cost is even lower than that, since I'm not leaving it on for an extra 24 hours a day, I'm using it part of the day when it would have been on anyways. By that same token, I also figured up what it would cost me to do some bitcoin mining last year, and it wasn't worth it at all at that point when the electricity cost of running at 100% load was figured. But back then, bitcoins were like $12 apiece. Should have done it.

Yeah your idle wattage is going to almost completely be based on what CPU you have, the newer the better. My i5 3570K idles at like 90w, but a newer i5 4670k idles at 79, and an older i5 2500k is up at like 110. Video cards draw next to nothing at idle, like 10-20w.

My results were probably a bit skewed since at the time I was running 2 28" LCD monitors, they pulled like 180W combined with both of them turned on, and I think my PC was idling around 120.

And for those of your that turn your computer off, just use sleep mode instead. That puts you at single-digit wattage, everything is effectively off, you just have the benefit of getting up and started faster since your RAM is written to the hard drive upon sleep, for quick recovery when it wakes up(rather than a generally slower cold boot up)

A computer could stay in sleep mode for a week and probably not use more power than 1-2 hours of gaming uses.

Yeah, I reboot probably half a dozen times a year, at most, since Windows 7/8

joeboo_sl said:

I figured up the cost of my PC idling would cost me about$10 if it idled for 365 straight days

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Not sure how that is possible. Maybe your cost per kilowatt is way less than mine?

0.09 Watts ? 24 hours = 2.16 kWh
2.16 kWh ? $0.11 kWh = $0.24
$0.24 x 30 days = $7.20 per month
$7.20 x 12 = $86.40 per year

That's just PC at idle, with my monitors on I'm pulling somewhere closer to 140w and while gaming closer to 400w so the actual cost of running the PC is a bit higher.