Pictures and Home Network ??'s

[vanaya]

Calling all networking and file sharing gurus!!

I need some help to set-up/optimize viewing pictures on other computers on home network. This past weekend I bought an S-Video cable to connect R32 to HDTV so family can see the pictures on TV to enjoy.

My current setup location of computers:
R32 (XP Pro SP2) in living room where HDTV is.
HP Pavillion ZD7000 (XP Home) on desk in office. This computer has a desktop drive attached via ide/usb cable where all my pictures are stored (Backup Drive). This is temporary as my main R40 is on jamiphar's operating table and will house these files upon completion.
Sony Motion Picture Browser was loaded on both computers.

I was able to show some of the pictures on the TV, but transfer rate was horribly slow. When I would click to view the next picture it would take up to 10 seconds to retrieve the file and display. I could see the thumbnail images on the computer, but once I selected it it would not open to full screen. Sometimes I would get a message stating the information could not be found in the software database. When I displayed pictures stored on the local machine it was gravy. Even the slide show was too fast for me to describe to the family who all was in the picture.

Any recommendations on how to setup differently?

[basketb]

What size are the pictures you want to display? There is no need to open a 5+ megapixel image over the network if your HDTV can only display 2 megapixel; i.e., down convert the pics to the actual resolution of the TV and only display those down smaller images.
Also, if your wireless connection is currently 11MBit/s (802.11b) upgrade it to 802.11g or 11n. This should speed up things by a factor of 5+.

[vanaya]

Thanks basketb for the quick reply. The size of the pictures vary. I remember some of the older pictures were from my old piece of poo Toshiba. I think it was a 2.1 or 3.2mp camera. My new DSLR is a 10mp. The difference from the old to the new pictures was none.

The R32 has a "b" card and the HP has a "g". I do have a spare "g" card but will need to do the "no-1802 hack". I will work on it as soon as I get home, and report back. But any more suggestions are welcomed. Willing to experiment with a spare R31.

Also edited original post with OS info.

[msb0b]

The S-video cable can only carry a 480i signal, or only about 350k pixels per frame. That is way below what a typical HDTV can do. I reckon that is why you aren't seeing the quality difference between pictures from your old and new cameras.

Check if your HDTV has a VGA D-Sub input. Most of them should. If so then you will be able to drive the TV with 720p or 1080p signal, with 1 or 2 megapixel resolution respectively. The R32's video card may become the limiting factor in this setup.

[vanaya]

I haven't had a chance to do the "no-1802" hack (12mo and 7yr old fininishing school are consuming my "computer time"). I did copy my pictures folder to c: drive on zd7000 and it did speed up accessing time to about 3 seconds to change pictures using M$ picture manager.

msb0b thanks for your reply, I didn't know the facts you gave about S-video cable. Very helpful! I think I've seen an DVI-usb cable, would that be a bit better? The manuals to the TV are in my backpack for the morning commute read. So I will check on the available ports on the TV.