I am wondering if anyone is aware of changes under Leopard which would reduce the throughput of an airport connection for streaming video. Note, I have concluded that the problem is due to Leopard, because when I roll back from Leopard to 10.4.10 the problem disappears.
First, some background on where I see the issue. Specifically, I use ethernet over power to connect to Airport expresses in various rooms in my home. In those rooms, I then use an airport express to connect via WiFi to an early Mac Book Pro 17". By mounting a specific volume from a server on my network and placing an alias in the Movies directory I am able to view movies which are stored on the central server on the laptop either with QuickTime or Front Row. This setup worked "flawlessly" that is no stuttering or hesitation in the playback of videos where the laptops initial hop is to an airport express 802.11g connection which is in the same room.
When I upgraded to 10.5 from 10.4.10, I am experiencing stuttering or hesitation in the playback of video via the above setup. Both in FrontRow or with QuickTime. However, if I bypass the airport connection and use an ethernet connection in the local room rather than airport then everything plays back just fine.
To convince myself that the problem was with Leopard, I rolled back to 10.4.10, and then everything works just fine with an airport connection for the streaming video.
I would like to use Leopard. Does anyone know if there are any settings which I could change to correct for this? I am guessing that Leopard has some block size or buffer setting which is smaller than the prior version of OS X. By the way, I actually bought a new Airport Extreme 802.11n, only to discover the fine print of my MacBook Pro being that it as an early version does not support activation for 802.11n. So going to a faster wireless connection is not a simple solution for me. Lastly, the airport express access point is less than fifteen feet away from the laptop so it is almost certainly running at full bandwidth and I can not improve on the quality of that connection.
My experiments are with the same video, all machines are idle other than for the playing back of the video, and the laptop and airport express box are located in identical physical locations for both tests.
Also note I am generally happy with Leopard and other readers should not take this as a recommendation to not upgrade to Leopard. I am actually sticking with the upgrade but using a cable in the local rooms in the interim. However, I would like to return to my wireless streaming video setup as soon as possible. I am hoping that I can change some setting to improve the playback of movies via my preferred setup.
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