Movies: TiVo to Mac to Apple TV & iPhone (Part II)

In Movies: TiVo to Mac to Apple TV & iPhone (Part I) I show how I move old movies cablecast on Turner Classic Movies HD from my TiVo Premiere to my Mac, via my home WiFi network, and then convert them to a video format which can be used by iTunes in order to feed my Apple TV.

What happens if I want instead to feed the movie to an iPhone?

In Movies: TiVo to Mac to Apple TV & iPhone (Part I), software called ImTOO HD Video Converter 6 (HDVC) converted my Gigi MPG.mpg movie file — the original TiVo recording, moved to my Mac and no longer DRM-protected — from its original MPEG-2 digital video format to the MPEG-4/H.264 digital video format. The output file was made by HDVC in a manner suited to an Apple TV — including the use of honest-to-goodness high-definition (HD) video in the output file.

But an iPhone can't and won't use the same MPEG-4/H.264 video output file as is appropriate for the Apple TV. The iPhone's small touchscreen is incapable of all that wonderful video resolution, and its onboard processor can't keep up with decoding an HD file's high bitrate. In fact, iTunes will simply refuse to sync the HDVC HD output file to an iPhone.

To get an output file that will sync to an iPhone, I need to use a different HDVC profile and make a second MPEG-4/H.264 copy of the movie:

Selecting iPhone - H.264 Video Profile

I select HDVC's built-in iPhone - H.264 Video profile in the graphic above to get:

HDVC Set Up for Converting for iPhone

That profile would make the output video use Zoom: Letterbox — see the setting just above the little Preview window — which is not ideal. Better I should use:

Using Zoom: Full Instead

Zoom: Full (Keep aspect ratio), which is now the Zoom: setting shown just above the small Preview window in the graphic above, is a better choice because the movie as originally recorded in my Gigi MPG.mpg movie file has a widescreen Cinemascope image. The film frame's aspect ratio is wider than that implied by Video Size: 480x320.

Below, I show how HDVC can actually Preview its output image and thereby see what Zoom: Full (Keep aspect ratio) does:

Preview shows black bars at top and bottom

The black bars at top and bottom in the little image Preview window just below the Zoom: Full (Keep aspect ratio) selection are actually encoded into the output file — a waste of precious Bitrate.

If Zoom: Letterbox is used, the black bars get yet bigger:

Letterbox bars bigger with Zoom: Letterbox

So with Zoom: Full (Keep aspect ratio), there are fewer "black bar bits" cutting into the useful Bitrate of the video in the output file.

Unfortunately, the "image itself" as recorded from the TCM HD cable channel already contains the vertical black bars seen at left and right of the film frame in the Preview. They can't be removed. Also, even with Zoom: Full (Keep aspect ratio) there are some "black bar bits" above and below the image in the Preview. I don't yet know how to get HDVC to eliminate those entirely.

I can at least, though, save a new, user-defined profile that in the future I can use to automatically select Zoom: Full (Keep aspect ratio) for iPhone - H.264 Video output:

Saving an HDVC Profile

I simply click on Save As... and enter the profile name iPhone - H.264 Zoom Full, then click OK. After I do that, I can ...

Selecting the new Profile

... select my new Profile whenever I want to use it. Now the main HDVC window becomes:

New Main HDVC Window

Profile: iPhone - H.264 Video Zoom Full confirms that the new profile is is use. This profile employs Zoom: (Keep aspect ratio), exactly as intended.

Keep in mind that my going to all this trouble to remove a few "black bar bits" from iPhone-compatible output video is strictly optional on my part. You do not have to follow suit, if all you want is to get usable iPhone-compatible output.

Here is QuickTime Player's rendition of the Zoom: Letterbox video output with the extra "black bar bits" in it:

"Letterbox" Version of the Gigi Image in QuickTime

Below, the extra "black bar bits" have been avoided by means of using Zoom: (Keep aspect ratio):

"Widescreen" Version of the Gigi Image in QuickTime

Not only are the top and bottom bars smaller, the image itself shows up as wider. This is so despite the fact that both images have a nominal Video Size of 480x320 pixels!

How does this magic happen? The pixels in the "widescreen" version have been "squeezed" horizontally by HDVC, and QuickTime simply expands the pixels' width to make the image seem wider. And so does the iPhone, which, after all, uses QuickTime.

The experts call this kind of "squeezed-pixel" encoding of the video image "anamorphic." When the image is instead enclosed in a "letterbox," the pixels are not "squeezed" horizontally, and the player won't "unsqueeze" them for a wider aspect ratio.

One advantage of using anamorphic encoding rather than  letterbox is that the playback image on an iPhone can be expanded slightly by double-tapping it — albeit with the sides of the image being cropped. A letterbox image cannot be so expanded on an iPhone.

Whether or not you use anamorphic encoding in your iPhone-compatible output from HDVC, the file that HDVC creates is quite small. My high-definition input file for Gigi was 8.42 gigabytes in size. The iPhone-compatible anamorphic output file used only 968 megabytes. The output file is only 11.5 percent of the size of the original file! I can get over eight of those iPhone-compatible output files in the same hard drive space as the original file takes up!

Movies: TiVo to Mac to Apple TV & iPhone (Part I)

I like to use my TiVo Premiere DVR to record old movies shown on Turner Movie Classics HD. Then I like to transfer the recordings from the TiVo to my Mac to be kept forever. Once they are on my Mac, I like to to add them to my iTunes library, then stream them from iTunes to my Apple TV. I like to be able to watch them on my iPhone as well.

There are ways (often, multiple ones) to accomplish each step. That's the good news. The bad news is that in the past I've run into some pretty hefty stumbling blocks in trying to accomplish one step or another.

One of the main sources of difficulty is that the TiVo records programs in one digital video format, while the Apple suite of products (iTunes, Apple TV, iPhone) prefers another.

The TiVo records programs in a format called MPEG-2, which is indeed the video format that is used by digital cable channels, TCM-HD included. It doesn't matter whether the channel is standard definition or high definition; the digital video is MPEG-2.

Apple products for the most part insist on a different digital video format, MPEG-4, and in particular a variety of that format called H.264. MPEG-4/H.264 can store video using far fewer megabytes than MPEG-2.

In theory, it's easy enough to convert MPEG-2 video to MPEG-4/H.264. In the past, though, my efforts to do so have yielded displeasing results. The tools I've used have tended to be way, way too slow to suit me; or they haven't worked at all; or they've produced output video that's missing audio; or the output was flawed in some other way, such as having the wrong aspect ratio. ("Aspect ratio" is the ratio of image width to image height.)

I think I've finally found a tool to do the MPEG-2-to-MPEG-4/H.264 transcoding swiftly and properly, ImTOO HD Video Converter 6. I'll give a rundown on it later.


TiVo to Mac (and Back to TiVo)

To move TiVo recordings to my Mac I use kmttg. It's a Java-based application that harnesses so-called "TiVo To Go," a capability that's been built into TiVo's operating software for years now. Using kmttg is pretty easy to master, though initial setup is a bit of a pain and then there is a subsequent learning curve. I go into detail about kmttg in Archive HDTV Recordings to Your Mac, Then Stream Them Back to Your TiVo!.

Once you have transferred TiVo programs to your Mac, you can (optionally) delete them from the TiVo itself, then watch them at your leisure by streaming them back to the TiVo. In Viva pyTivo! I detailed how to use the freeware pyTivoX app to send media content back from a Mac to TiVo units.

To use kmttg and pyTivoX you need a home WiFi network (unless you want to run Ethernet cable twixt Mac and TiVo!). To get suitably high WiFi speeds, you need the TiVo to be one of the recently introduced TiVo Premiere models, and it should be using TiVo's new wireless-N network adapter. See TiVo Premiere Is Here! and TiVo Wireless-N Adapter: First Impressions. Your home network should likewise be capable of 802.11n wireless speeds.

Additionally, your home WiFi router should be "dual mode" — capable of running at slower 802-11g speeds, since an iPhone will not connect at "n" speeds, and neither will an Apple TV. (At least, my iPhone 3GS and my first generation Apple TV are not "n"-capable.)

Keep in mind, moreover, that archiving TiVo recordings on a Mac requires a lot of hard drive space, particularly if you, like me, want to archive high-definition 1080i or 720p recordings. For purposes of testing out the capabilities of ImTOO HD Video Converter 6, I've been working with an HD copy of the 1958 musical film Gigi that is about 1 hr. 55 min. long and takes 8.42 gigabytes on my (external USB) hard drive. That's over 4 GB per hour of movie!


Into the iTunes/Apple TV/iPhone World

Just being able to archive TiVo recordings on the Mac and stream them back to the TiVo is a nice thing. But I'm greedy; I want to be able to move those recordings into Apple's iTunes/Apple TV/iPhone suite. That means converting them from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4/H.264.

Before I can hope to convert them, DRM must be stripped from the Mac-archived version. "DRM" refers to "digital rights management," a euphemism for copy protection. Everything a TiVo records is copy protected. TiVo To Go as used by kmttg honors the copy protection, so the first copy made on the Mac, though in the MPEG-2 format, is DRM'ed and supposedly cannot be used by software that TiVo Inc. doesn't authorize.

However, kmttg gets around the DRM problem by then making a second copy of the video that is in the unprotected MPEG-2 format. The first, DRM-protected version of the file has a filename with a .TiVo extension. The second, unprotected version has a filename with a .mpg extension. (kmttg optionally deletes the .TiVo file, leaving just the .mpg file.)

For example, if I record Gigi from TCM HD on my TiVo and use kmttg to archive it to my Mac, I wind up with a file on my Mac's USB hard drive called Gigi.mpg. (The actual filename can be kmttg- amplified by appending, for instance, the date and time of the original TiVo recording, but I'll skip over such niceties here.)

Once I had Gigi.mpg — actually, the file wound up with the redundant name Gigi MPG.mpg — I could use ImTOO HD Video Converter 6 on it. I'll refer to that software as HDVC for short. HDVC costs $49.95. You can download it and try it for free, but the free version will encode only three minutes' worth of a movie.

HDVC installs in your Applications folder and, when launched, puts up a window like this:

HDVC Converter Window

When you are just starting out with HDVC, you'll first want to focus on the Browse... button next to the Destination: file path. That's how you'll select the folder to put the output of your movie file conversions into.

Then you'll want to click on the Add Files icon:

It will bring up a dialog in which to choose the (in my case) Gigi MPG.mpg file. The file will show up in the main part of the window, and it should have a check mark at it's left. (If not, manually click on the check box.)

Next, you'll want to select a profile by clicking on the blue up/down arrows for Profile:. In the image above, I've already selected the Apple TV - H.264 HD Video profile. Here's how I did it:

HDVC Profile Chooser

What's a profile? See all the items listed in the column at the right of the first image above — items such as Video Codec, Video Size, Bitrate, Frame Rate, Level, and Zoom? Taken together, they and several more that would be rendered visible by scrolling the column down serve to determine what kind of output HDVC will make.

For instance, Video Codec = H.264/MPEG-4 AVC determines that the output will be in that particular digital video format and not, say, another well known digital video codec, WMV. ("Codec" is short for "coder-decoder" and refers to the specific way in which the pixels of video information are stuffed into a computer data file and then expanded again when the video is played.)

When, in the Profile Chooser image, I select Apple TV in the left column and then Apple TV - H.264 HD Video in the right, I'm choosing the profile items shown in the Converter Window image. Simple as that!

If I want, I can then override any of the items. Here's what happens to the Converter Window if I manually change the Zoom: item from Letterbox to Full: (Keep aspect ratio):

HDVC Converter Window with Zoom: Full

The following paragraph talks about why I originally did that ...

The default value, Letterbox, means HDVC will take the ultra-wide Cinemascope image of the Gigi MPG.mpg file and add black letterbox bars at top and bottom. In other words, a lot of useless black pixels will be forced into the video. To avoid that, I change the Zoom: item from Letterbox to Full: (Keep aspect ratio). Once I do that, HDVC is smart enough to just encode the actual image itself, and to do so in such a way that the playback device (such as an iPhone or Apple TV) will add the letterbox bars only at playback time. This means that HDVC's output can devote all of its Bitrate: to giving the highest-quality picture possible in terms of how the image looks on a big TV screen.

... but my experiments showed that changing Zoom: for the Apple TV - H.264 HD Video profile made no difference to the output file created by HDVC! In Part II of this series I'll talk about creating HDVC output for the iPhone, and in that case changing Zoom: does make a difference. But for Apple TV - H.264 HD Video, changes to Zoom: are useless. Which is good, because it means you can just "set it and forget it," if you are creating output for the Apple TV. Just select Apple TV - H.264 HD Video and then ...

... once you have everything set up to your satisfaction, just click on the Convert Checked Items icon:

Now the Converter Window looks like this:

HDVC Converter Window During Conversion

The bottom line of the window tells how much of the conversion has been completed, how much time remains, how much time has elapsed, etc. In my testing, converting the Gigi MPG.mpg file takes less than four hours, depending on the profile used. That's lightning fast, compared with other converters I've tried!

Stream iTunes Movies from Mac to iPhone Safari

Don't want to sync iTunes movies to your iPhone? You can stream them from your Mac's iTunes movie library to your iPhone and play them right in Safari!

I cribbed the way to do it from here and here. Both of those web pages copied the procedure from an Embraceware blog post that is apparently now gone. I'll modify the procedure to fix typos, make it easier to use, make it clearer, and make it current:

Step 1: Open Sharing in System Preferences on your Mac and enable Web Sharing. This will turn on the built-in web server that comes in Mac OS X. Under Your computer's website in the Sharing Preferences panel you will now see a URL containing an IP address. Mine is as of this writing http://10.0.1.12/. Later on in this post, I'm going to change that ... but never mind for now. Whatever your computer's URL is, make a note of it now.

This IP address (in my case, 10.0.1.12) is known only on your local home WiFi network. It won't work on your iPhone if you're not at home. (I'll talk about how you can stream your movies from a remote WiFi hotspot later in this post.)

Step 2: On the Mac, open the Terminal application (located in the /Applications/Utilities folder) and type the following:

cd /Library/WebServer/Documents/

and press Enter. (Note the space after cd.)

Step 3: Locate iTunes' Movies folder on your Mac. Mine is /Volumes/Songcatcher 2 2/Users/songster/Music/Main iTunes Library/iTunes Music/Movies. One way to locate yours: select Movies under Library in the main iTunes window, then right-click or control-click on any movie and choose Show in Finder from the pop-up menu. A Finder window will typically open on your entire Movies folder. Leave this window open until you are done with this entire set of steps.

Step 4: In Terminal, type the following:

ln -s [fully specified path to your iTunes Movies folder] Movies

An easy way to do it:

1. In the Terminal window, type ln followed by a space.
2. Type -s followed by a space.
3. Switch to Finder to reveal again the Movies folder window opened in the previous step. Drag the icon at the top of the window (in my case and probably in yours, too, its name is "Movies") and drop it right onto the Terminal window. 
4. Type a space and then type the word Movies.
5. In my case, the text I saw in the terminal window at this point was: ln -s /Volumes/Songcatcher\ 2\ 2/Users/songster/Music/Main\ iTunes\ Library/iTunes\ Music/Movies Movies.
6. Press Enter.

Doing that does not — repeat, does not — produce any output in the Terminal window. What it does, it does behind the scenes.

Notice that there are '\' (backslash) characters in /Volumes/Songcatcher\ 2\ 2/Users/songster/Music/Main\ iTunes\ Library/iTunes\ Music/Movies. They're put there automatically when you drop the "Movies" folder's icon onto the Terminal window, so that Terminal won't be confused by any space characters embedded in the fully specified path to the Movies folder.

The last word in the string


ln -s /Volumes/Songcatcher\ 2\ 2/Users/songster/Music/Main\ iTunes\ Library/iTunes\ Music/Movies Movies

is (that's right, you're not seeing double) Movies. It could just as easily have been something else, like MyMovs. I'll call it an "alias," since what the ln -s command does is create a "symbolic link" between that alias and /Volumes/Songcatcher\ 2\ 2/Users/songster/Music/Main\ iTunes\ Library/iTunes\ Music/Movies. A symbolic link and an alias are roughly the same thing. In this case, the symbolic link or alias will allow a browser such as Safari to substitute in a URL the single word Movies for the humongous string /Volumes/Songcatcher\ 2\ 2/Users/songster/Music/Main\ iTunes\ Library/iTunes\ Music/Movies.

Step 5: In Safari on your iPhone, manually type into the Web address field the URL for your Mac's shared website. Mine is http://10.0.1.12/. Then type in (without an intervening space) your alias from above. Mine is Movies. Result, in my case: http://10.0.1.12/Movies. (This is where using an alias really comes in handy.) Now hit "Go" on the iPhone's on-screen keyboard. If all goes well, you'll soon see on the iPhone screen something like:

Notice that there is a folder icon shown in the list just depicted. It happens to contain several "little movies" or clips under the umbrella title "All You Have To Do Is Listen." I can access all those little movies in iPhone Safari simply by tapping on the folder icon shown above. Folders and subfolders (and sub-subfolders, etc.) work just fine in this methodology.

So ...  still in Safari on my iPhone, I now just have to tap a listed movie — I'll choose Milk (2008).m4v — and I'll see something like this on my iPhone's screen:

It's playing in Safari on my iPhone, using the iPhone's copy of QuickTime! (This fact, by the way, tells you that only movies that are in a QuickTime-playable format will work when you are using this method.)

If the QuickTime controls don't vanish in a few seconds, by the way, tap the iPhone's screen to make them vanish (after hitting the Play button if the movie is paused). When you are done watching the movie, tap the screen again to bring up the controls, then tap "Done" at upper left.

This works, as far as I know, for any QuickTime-playable movie that will play successfully in iTunes on the Mac ... including those video files shown as "Protected" in iTunes, meaning that they use DRM (digital rights management) to prevent unauthorized copying.

Cool, no?

What about TV Shows?

If you have TV shows in your iTunes library, as I do, they're not in Movies but in the TV Shows porton of iTunes. Here's how I set up to stream those:

• My Mac's URL was, of course, still the same: http://10.0.1.12/.
• In Terminal, I typed cd /Library/WebServer/Documents/.
• I used the iTunes "Show in Finder" trick to open a Finder window for one of the items in the TV Shows folder within, in my case, my iTunes Library/iTunes Music folder. (Make sure you are looking at TV Shows and not Movies this time.)
• In Terminal, I typed in ln -s (note the embedded and trailing spaces).
• I dragged the TV Shows icon from the top of the Finder window opened two steps ago and dropped it into the Terminal window, and then (this is important!) I typed another space.
• I typed TVShows (without an embedded space!) into the Terminal window, and pressed Enter.
• In Safari on the iPhone, I entered the URL http://10.0.1.12/TVShows to bring up a list of files and folders representing, this time, my iTunes TV Shows collection.

Now I had two different 10.0.1.12-based URLs  to remember in Safari on the iPhone, so I bookmarked them both in a Bookmarks folder.

I could have repeated the entire procedure above with any other folders on my Mac that contain QuickTime-playable videos, simply by changing the alias from Movies or TVShows to something unique, such as MoreMovies. Unfortunately, though I have a large collection of movies that I can play (with on-the-fly format conversion) on my iPhone using the Air Video app, few if any of them are QuickTime-compatible. They can't be streamed to my iPhone using the Safari/QuickTime method documented here. (But they can be streamed by the method I talked about in The Marvelous Air Video App: It Streams Videos from Your Mac or PC to iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch.)

This method also works, as far as I know, on an iPod Touch or an iPad.

What about Connecting Remotely?

If you are near a WiFi hotspot away from home, this method will work just as it does when you are near your home WiFi router. It may not, depending on speed limitations imposed by the hotspot in question, work as reliably and smoothly as it does in your house. But it does work.

To get this all to work when I'm out and about, I created a free account at DynDNS.com. Then I created a DynDNS "hostname" via visiting this page.

I chose dalekhound as my hostname, since I'm a Doctor Who fan. (The Daleks are one of the Doctor's most grievous enemies, and the "hound" part refers to an early Doctor's canine helper, the robotic "K-9.")

As I was setting up the dalekhound hostname at DynDNS, I made sure to click on Your current location's IP address is ... in order to make sure DynDNS had fetched and was using the current IP address of my router — not that of my computer. I also visited the DynDNS Support page and clicked on the button allowing me to download the DynDNS Updater software. Once installed and set up on my Mac, DynDNS Updater keeps track of my router's IP address and notifies the DynDNS site if it changes.

After setting things up in DynDNS, I was able to browse in Safari on my iPhone to the URL http://dalekhound.webhop.biz/Movies/ to see my iTunes Movies list, or to the URL http://dalekhound.webhop.biz/TVShows/ to see my iTunes TV Shows list. I could do this from any browser on any platform in any location that has a usable WiFi hotspot ... including Safari on my iPhone at, say, my local Panera.

Once a list was visible in iPhone Safari by means of linking to my Mac via this dynamic DNS name, dalekhound.webhop.biz, I could tap any video to play it or tap any folder to open it.

In Safari on the iPhone I also bookmarked, in addition to the two URLs I set up earlier for use at home, these two URLs to be used remotely: http://dalekhound.webhop.biz/Movies/ and http://dalekhound.webhop.biz/TVShows/.

There's no law against using the same remote URLs while in range of your home WiFi network, by the way.

Connection Problems

After I filed the above, I tried using the remote URLs from Safari on my iPhone once again and found to my surprise that those URLs had stopped working! To get them working again, I found I had to use "port forwarding," a.k.a. "port mapping," on my router.

If you have connection problems, you may need to do the same.

To diagnose my own connection problem, I first went to Why can't I connect? at the DynDNS website. It had me run some tests, which were all successful, then led me to the Loopback Connections page, where I was given a brief rundown on how computers behind a router might have trouble using a DynDNS "webhop" URL. It then urged me to use information given in Routers and Port Forwarding to configure my router to "forward" one of its so-called "ports" to my iMac.

So ... port forwarding is a thing that is done by means of configuring your router. My router is an Apple AirPort Base Station. Every router model has a different way to set up port forwarding, so the way I did it with mine would not necessarily work for yours, and I won't go into any more detail about that. You may need to visit PortForward.com for a detailed guide on how to configure your router's port forwarding features.

Speaking very generally, then, I set my router up to forward the public TCP port whose number is 80 (this is the default port number for the Personal Web Sharing service) to the computer whose private IP address is 10.0.1.201, using the private TCP port whose number is also 80.

I also had to tell Network Preferences on my iMac itself to configure my iMac's network connection Using DHCP with manual address. The manual IP address I chose was 10.0.1.201, to match that which I specified in setting up port forwarding on my router.

Once I did all that, my DynDNS URLs began working again in iPhone Safari!

I have no idea why those URLs worked at first and then stopped working. I don't really understand why port forwarding fixed the problem. But it did ..

By the way, I did not have any connection problem when using the local IP address 10.0.1.12, but after I started doing port forwarding, I had to change the local IP address to 10.0.1.201 in the relevant bookmarks in Safari on my iPhone to get them to work. This was because I had intentionally changed the IP address of my computer from 10.0.1.12 to 10.0.1.201.

Poor Remote Performance

A few days after I filed this post, I got my first chance to try streaming iTunes movies to Safari/QuickTime on my iPhone when I was logged in via remote WiFi hotspots. It was a big bust! Remote performance was terrible!

I tried two hotspots, one in a nearby Panera and one in a local public library. Neither hotspot would stream movies to Safari on my iPhone in any kind of playable fashion.

I have two types of movies in my iTunes library: DRM-protected and non-protected. The non-protected movie I tried was "Harvey," starring James Stewart, a rip of a DVD (which I own) that I made using HandBrake and then converted to iTunes-playable format. It wouldn't start playing over either remote WiFi connection.

Nor would a DRM-protected copy of "Secretariat," purchased from the iTunes store.

Both these movies play just fine in iPhone Safari when I'm connected to my home WiFi setup.

Moral of the story: Some remote WiFi connections appear to be too slow to stream iTunes movies to an iPhone.


More about Remote Performance


It's been a couple of weeks since I wrote the above about "poor remote performance," and I need to amend it. I have changed the way my Mac connects to my home router. Now I'm using just an Ethernet connection from Mac to router, where before I had both that and an 802.11 wireless connection active on my Mac. I changed my connection setup in my Mac's Network Preferences to see whether it would speed up movie streaming to my iPhone, and it did.



Now I can go to (say) Panera or my public library or even my barber shop (where there is no accessible WiFi hotspot) and stream video remotely to my iPhone. I can do it the way I described in this post, or I can do it the way I talked about in The Marvelous Air Video App: It Streams Videos from Your Mac or PC to iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch. I can use a WiFi or 3G connection. I'm not saying the video never freezes, waiting for more data to be buffered from afar. But that's ultra-rare with WiFi, and it happens very seldom with 3G, as long as I have enough "bars" and not too weak a signal.


The lesson here is that remote playback success depends on the end-to-end connection speed and will profit by your eliminating any roadblocks and bottlenecks in your local network at home.