5 ms·

The current state of Ethernet in 2023 in consumer devices is quite sad. I mean, most TVs and players (and usually not the cheap ones, yes, I'm looking at you, S

The current state of Ethernet in 2023 in consumer devices is quite sad. I mean, most TVs and players (and usually not the cheap ones, yes, I'm looking at you, Sony) come with 10/100 Mbit ethernet adapters. I'd expect gigabit to be standard everywhere by now.

barbazoo 3y ago
Where the data taye requires it. No point in putting a gigabit adapter in a network speaker. TV, maybe, for 4K and beyond.
- gosub100 3y ago
  I can see a point in no longer producing 10mb wired chips anymore, just to take the burden off of production. I cannot picture a situation where you cannot upgrade to 100mb, maybe at the cost of a 48-port 100mb switch, which is essentially free these days. at some point it (must) cost more to produce antiquated technology, even if your equipment (say, a peanut butter factory) doesn't need GigE or 100mb bandwidth..
xxpor 3y ago
Please explain why there needs to be an upgrade. There's no business case. Even a full blu-ray 4k rip is only ~60ish Mbit/sec encoded as HEVC. Netflix and co have been pushing streaming bitrates down to sub 10 mbit.
- toast0 3y ago
  4k uhd blu-ray peak bandwidth is somewhere around 150 mbps. Discs can be encoded in different codecs, but h.265 is common. Maybe you can buffer it, but a lot of players lack the memory to buffer enough to average out a longer scene with intense encoding (such as the parade with confetti in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny). Maybe you can reencode, and AV1 might help a bit, but you're likely going to drop some detail in order to fit in 100 mbps ethernet.
  - pseudosavant 3y ago
    The only reason a disc is authored at that bitrate is to make bit perfect Blu-ray rips impracticably large. There is no visual quality reason to be that high. There is a reason Netflix’s top quality is a fraction of that bitrate and looks excellent.
    - ikiris 3y ago
      The 3 giant blobs of black on the screen disagree strongly.
      - mlyle 3y ago
        Netflix at ~10mbps average, 20mbps peak is sometimes a little insufficient, but enough to make most people happy. But it seems like ~30mbps average, 40mbps peak would be really, really good.
pseudosavant 3y ago
The truth is, you need a fairly powerful client (PC, game console, flagship smart phone) to ever (occasionally) need more than 100mbps Ethernet. There just aren’t use cases for that much bandwidth. HD YouTube is still in the extremely low single digit mbps. Same for TikTok. Netflix 4K HDR with Atmos easily fits within 100mbps. Even 8k streaming will be under 100mbps.
faeriechangling 3y ago
These boxes often couldn’t decode 200mbit of content if they tried, and realistically AV1 support is more important than if it supports gigabit or not. It’s just good economics to use a part that already works fine over one that’s overspecced for the use case. What are you getting out of it? Faster app and update downloads? Those are frills.
- daeros 3y ago
  I think for us, the interest in using Wi-Fi 7 has more to do with WPA3. Honestly, I've spent the last few months learning WiFi Hacking about the 4 way handshake and about DeAuth signals and everything and must say that i'm concerned we're in an arms race with GPU's getting faster and faster along with it hashcat is speeding up and honestly its about to get crazy fast.
mrandish 3y ago
I bought the recently released top of the line Fire TV 4k Max (2nd gen) streaming stick on black friday sale and was surprised to discover the external USB port is USB 2.0 speed micro-USB. My fault I guess for not even looking closely before ordering but I assume these days any brand new, top of the line device with a tiny USB port will be USB-C. Anyway, after disabling the Amazon bloatware and side-loading vanilla android apps, even with a fast USB3-capable ethernet adapter connected to a 1Gbps RJ-45, standard streaming apps wouldn't even stream 4k because the ethernet was too slow. I tested the adapter and connection on my laptop and got >200mbps which is more than sufficient. So I was forced to use 5Ghz wifi for the stick to stream 4k, thus further clogging up and adding to wifi congestion. BTW, I found the same thing to be true with my other streaming stick, a Google TV, despite it having a USB-C port. It could do 4k streams through an ethernet dongle but it was kind of on the edge enough to not always do 4k dependably. But that device was >18mo old. Anyway, it's super annoying that these newish devices are making wifi congestion worse by not properly enabling reasonable wired streaming (yes, I know there are lots of no-name Android TV streaming boxes from Shenzen which have USB-C ports with at least USB3.0 support but this new Fire TV stick actually has a pretty performant CPU and is otherwise well-implemented).
- doublepg23 3y ago
  If you're trying to stream UHD Blu-ray remuxes, you'll have best luck with a Shield TV.
  - mrandish 3y ago
    Yes, you're correct but I was actually just referring to streaming Netflix and/or Prime Video 4k content within the official Netflix/Prime apps. These streams have much lower sustained bit rate requirements than UHD BD remuxes but were auto-falling back to HD due to insufficient bit rate (as reported by the official streaming service app's own network diagnostics). I was surprised and disappointed because this is such a low bar to clear. The issue may not be entirely due to the USB 2.0 interface since, in theory, that's 480 Mbps which should translate to peak throughput close to 40 MBps but according to the network speed test in the official Amazon Prime app their own brand new flagship 4k streaming stick couldn't sustain 30 MBps for 4k HDR10 and would thus fall back to HD. I suspect Amazon didn't bother optimizing the USB driver stack to maximize the bandwidth available from the hardware. Maybe they just assume that no one uses 'old fashioned' 1 gigabit ethernet anymore (sigh). It's double annoying because my home theater gear is all neatly rack mounted in a metal frame that just happens to be a pretty good EM shield. So I have to hang the damn stick out of the rack on a USB extension cable so it can get decent 5Ghz wifi throughput. All when I have a perfectly capable gigabit switch plumbed right into the rack. Excuse me while I step outside to yell at some clouds....

barbazoo 3y ago

Where the data taye requires it. No point in putting a gigabit adapter in a network speaker. TV, maybe, for 4K and beyond.

gosub100 3y ago
I can see a point in no longer producing 10mb wired chips anymore, just to take the burden off of production. I cannot picture a situation where you cannot upgrade to 100mb, maybe at the cost of a 48-port 100mb switch, which is essentially free these days. at some point it (must) cost more to produce antiquated technology, even if your equipment (say, a peanut butter factory) doesn't need GigE or 100mb bandwidth..

xxpor 3y ago

Please explain why there needs to be an upgrade. There's no business case. Even a full blu-ray 4k rip is only ~60ish Mbit/sec encoded as HEVC. Netflix and co have been pushing streaming bitrates down to sub 10 mbit.

toast0 3y ago
4k uhd blu-ray peak bandwidth is somewhere around 150 mbps. Discs can be encoded in different codecs, but h.265 is common. Maybe you can buffer it, but a lot of players lack the memory to buffer enough to average out a longer scene with intense encoding (such as the parade with confetti in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny). Maybe you can reencode, and AV1 might help a bit, but you're likely going to drop some detail in order to fit in 100 mbps ethernet.
- pseudosavant 3y ago
  The only reason a disc is authored at that bitrate is to make bit perfect Blu-ray rips impracticably large. There is no visual quality reason to be that high. There is a reason Netflix’s top quality is a fraction of that bitrate and looks excellent.
  - ikiris 3y ago
    The 3 giant blobs of black on the screen disagree strongly.
    - mlyle 3y ago
      Netflix at ~10mbps average, 20mbps peak is sometimes a little insufficient, but enough to make most people happy. But it seems like ~30mbps average, 40mbps peak would be really, really good.

pseudosavant 3y ago

The truth is, you need a fairly powerful client (PC, game console, flagship smart phone) to ever (occasionally) need more than 100mbps Ethernet. There just aren’t use cases for that much bandwidth. HD YouTube is still in the extremely low single digit mbps. Same for TikTok. Netflix 4K HDR with Atmos easily fits within 100mbps. Even 8k streaming will be under 100mbps.

faeriechangling 3y ago

These boxes often couldn’t decode 200mbit of content if they tried, and realistically AV1 support is more important than if it supports gigabit or not. It’s just good economics to use a part that already works fine over one that’s overspecced for the use case. What are you getting out of it? Faster app and update downloads? Those are frills.

daeros 3y ago
I think for us, the interest in using Wi-Fi 7 has more to do with WPA3. Honestly, I've spent the last few months learning WiFi Hacking about the 4 way handshake and about DeAuth signals and everything and must say that i'm concerned we're in an arms race with GPU's getting faster and faster along with it hashcat is speeding up and honestly its about to get crazy fast.

mrandish 3y ago

I bought the recently released top of the line Fire TV 4k Max (2nd gen) streaming stick on black friday sale and was surprised to discover the external USB port is USB 2.0 speed micro-USB. My fault I guess for not even looking closely before ordering but I assume these days any brand new, top of the line device with a tiny USB port will be USB-C. Anyway, after disabling the Amazon bloatware and side-loading vanilla android apps, even with a fast USB3-capable ethernet adapter connected to a 1Gbps RJ-45, standard streaming apps wouldn't even stream 4k because the ethernet was too slow. I tested the adapter and connection on my laptop and got >200mbps which is more than sufficient. So I was forced to use 5Ghz wifi for the stick to stream 4k, thus further clogging up and adding to wifi congestion. BTW, I found the same thing to be true with my other streaming stick, a Google TV, despite it having a USB-C port. It could do 4k streams through an ethernet dongle but it was kind of on the edge enough to not always do 4k dependably. But that device was >18mo old. Anyway, it's super annoying that these newish devices are making wifi congestion worse by not properly enabling reasonable wired streaming (yes, I know there are lots of no-name Android TV streaming boxes from Shenzen which have USB-C ports with at least USB3.0 support but this new Fire TV stick actually has a pretty performant CPU and is otherwise well-implemented).

doublepg23 3y ago
If you're trying to stream UHD Blu-ray remuxes, you'll have best luck with a Shield TV.
- mrandish 3y ago
  Yes, you're correct but I was actually just referring to streaming Netflix and/or Prime Video 4k content within the official Netflix/Prime apps. These streams have much lower sustained bit rate requirements than UHD BD remuxes but were auto-falling back to HD due to insufficient bit rate (as reported by the official streaming service app's own network diagnostics). I was surprised and disappointed because this is such a low bar to clear. The issue may not be entirely due to the USB 2.0 interface since, in theory, that's 480 Mbps which should translate to peak throughput close to 40 MBps but according to the network speed test in the official Amazon Prime app their own brand new flagship 4k streaming stick couldn't sustain 30 MBps for 4k HDR10 and would thus fall back to HD. I suspect Amazon didn't bother optimizing the USB driver stack to maximize the bandwidth available from the hardware. Maybe they just assume that no one uses 'old fashioned' 1 gigabit ethernet anymore (sigh). It's double annoying because my home theater gear is all neatly rack mounted in a metal frame that just happens to be a pretty good EM shield. So I have to hang the damn stick out of the rack on a USB extension cable so it can get decent 5Ghz wifi throughput. All when I have a perfectly capable gigabit switch plumbed right into the rack. Excuse me while I step outside to yell at some clouds....