Anyone tried Streaming live TV (TVCatchup) with Bluetooth enabled

[Lunar]

Bluetooth stereo Headphones kills Wireless connection

Just noticed something this evening, When I came to stream a TV drama program I had missed earlier in the week.

The TV channel, and indeed any other channel streams fine with no buffering or pause at all.. so no problem, however.. as soon as I pair up my Bluetooth headphones so I can hear it in private, the net streaming always fails after a few seconds, and will start to buffer badly .. usually ending in a network failure message. (Nets speeds here are 19Mbps download and 1Mbps upload so should be fine)

After 2hrs playing around I've now concluded it's something really quarky with my Bluetooth Headphones, as the above behavour also occurs on my wifes iPad 1 when I tried it.
I have noticed I only have the problem with this particular pair of Bluetooth stereo headphones, even if Bluetooth is left enabled in the iPad 3's settings, as soon as I turn off the Headphones the problem clears and within a few seconds everything works fine again.

These are the only stereo Bluetooth headphones I currently have so cannot try any more at the moment, but I did try the official Sony PS3 mono single ear bluetooth headset, which paired up okay with the iPad 3, and although the mic seemed to work I did'nt get any sound from them, however they didn't affect my wireless connection either. IOW with the PS3 bluetooth headset connected the iPad's wireless speeds were normal, problem only seems to occur with these stereo BT headphones, ie. as soon as they pair with the iPads bluetooth my wireless speed goes down to almost nil. :-( Love to know why?

What I find strange is the fact that when using these same bluetooth headphones to say listen to a film or music on the iPad3 or iPad1 they work fine, infact they work fine with everyting except when streaming video as they seem to kill my wireless for some unknown reason.

I've tried switching router channels, and even changed the routers modes to just use 802g instead of 802N ect, as I thought it was likely something like this causing the issue, but surprisingly that did'nt offer a solution either. Though I'm fairly sure the issue I'm getting is due to the fact that both my wifi and bluetooth both use the 2.4ghz range, and I can't see a setting mentioned for 5Ghz on my TalkTalk router so I suspect even the N mode is still in the 2.4 frequency spectrum. Strange that having Bluetooth enabled does't have any detremental effect, until the headphones are paired.

It's no real big deal as I can work around it now I know, but would love to know why these bluetooth headphones are killing my wireless connection. I'm thinking about ordering another pair but a different make, as these were quite cheap, but until I discovered this abnomally had been working fine for playing films and music that was already installed on my iPad, and still do of course.. I just can't use them when streaming TV ect.

Anyone else ever come across anything like this..?

 

[Lunar]

Further update to the above.

I'm now a little wiser to this problem, having done much research. I did indeed buy another pricey pair of bluetooth stereo headphones (£175), and the results are exactly the same, fantastic quality for listening to music or to anything installed on my iPad and phones, but am still unable to effectively use wifi and bluetooth at the same time on the same device.

What may surprise some people is the fact most devices such as the iPad use 1 chip which handles both the wifi and bluetooth with a common antenna.. yes they both use the same antenna too.
The problem does not occur on BT mono headsets, otherwise handsfree car kits would never work, they work 100% because BT does not affect 3G or mobile data connections.
However, if you intend to listen to stereo BT headphones with anything being streamed from the net using wifi, then you will likely have major problems.

Manufacturers advise that users should not actively use Bluetooth while streaming from Wifi at the same time, how stupid is that. I should add that this compability problem is caused by BT and Wifi being on the same chip and using the same antenna and plus using the same frequencies doesn't help either, so easy answer is to use wired h/phones while streaming from wifi.

I've tried streaming over wifi while listening on 2 brands of BT headphones on 3 iPads, and 4 of different makes of phones.. including iPhones, and all of them are unable to stream properly over wifi while stereo BT is paired and connected to the device. These 2nd pair BT stereo heaphone were quite expensive, and they do sound fantastic.. just a shame I cannot ever use them when streaming TV programs or anything from the net using Wifi. (They do work BTW when streaming using 3G) But not wifi and BT at the same time... how stupid is that.

I've found I get exactly the same issue when trying at other peoples homes.. very strange.

 

[iDuffer]

I used to experience this bluetooth/wifi interference at my old flat, but only at the limit of wifi reception. I would have thought the closer to your router the better, maybe get a wifi repeater to improve the reception at your listening location. At the moment I use Nokia BH-905s they work fine, but my router is only through one wall.

 

[Lunar]

My router is on my desk. 18inches away..lol I should add.. when I turn on BT say on my Ipad.. it only stops data from being streamed on that particular device, it does not stop other devices from connecting to my wifi they still carry on streaming normally.. so it's not crippling my wifi at all..(at least not much) it's just crippling wifi on the device that is using Bluetooth and wifi at the same time.

I have tried doing the same at my 2 sons homes and exactly the same thing happens. It only affects the actual device that's trying to stream from the net through wifi while BT stero headphones are actively connected. If you turn the headphones off the Streaming then picks up again, and is then perfect.

This is not a issue of BT affecting general reception of wifi in a room, as other devices in the same room can connect ok to the wifi and indeed they can stream exactly the same program over wifi as long as they don't connect a pair BT headphones...lol.

This is where devices cannot watch a streamed TV program and listen to it with a pair of BT stereo headphones at the same time, as the wifi throughput on that device falls to near zero, yet other devices also connected to the same wifi at the same time continue to stream okay, they only fail when you connect BT headphones to them too.

This is an issue where the 1 chip they use for both Wifi and BT cannot do both at once. It appears to be a limitation of the hardware used.

A email from Apple said that its not advisable to use both at the same time..as it can cause conflicts..lol.. ridiculous.

I suspect it's more to do with limitations in the A2DP protocols that most of them use, otherwise people who have a BT keyboard connected to their device whether its an iPad or anything else would never be able to stream anything across their wifi, and that works okay.. with no problems at all, but keyboards use a totally different BT protocol, but I would think they still use the same 1 chip and same antenna.. yet it works... Totally baffled..lol

 

[iDuffer]

How often does this happen? I just watched a few minutes of Netflix, listening on the Nokia headphones, everything was fine? You could have a defective iPad?

Edit tvcatchup appears fine as well... I'm on a sky router if that's of interest. I suspect your iPad.

 

[Lunar]

How often does this happen? I just watched a few minutes of Netflix, listening on the Nokia headphones, everything was fine? You could have a defective iPad?

Edit tvcatchup appears fine as well... I'm on a sky router if that's of interest. I suspect your iPad.

It does it within 5 or 10 seconds of turning on the BT headphones and you hearing the connect beep.. every single time.. it's not a intermittent thing.

I suspected the iPad3 as a possibility too, but whats got me baffled is that I get the same happen on my wifes iPad 1, the same thing also happens on my iphone and the wife's galaxy s2 phone, and I can't see 4 items being faulty. This is my second iPad, 1st was returned for dust under screen, but I'm almost sure I managed to stream from the wifi with BT heaphone on that 1st one, but I figured I must be mistaken, as I get same issue on the other devices. If they had worked fine I would definately agree.. it has to be the iPad.

I don't get stumped very often.. but this one really does have me baffled. I initially thought it was probably the BT headphones, but this different pair sorta rules that out. Funny enough.. it works fine with mono BT headsets, but they use a different protocol standard to the stereo ones, but intriguing nonetheless.
I just can't see 2 different iPads being faulty.. 2 different phones, with the result exactly the same.. are those Nokia headphones of your's proper over the head full stereo headphones.. if so..could you send me the details of them.. model ect.

It should work, It streams great. my net speed is quite good at 19MB downoad and 0.9mb upload and those speeds was when I ran speedtest on my iPad not the PC... I can stream something from iPlayer or TVcatchup, and I never get any buffering or delays at all, but as soon as I put either of these 2 sets of BT headphones on my head and turn them on, within 10 seconds streaming video it comes to a dead stop, yet the other iPad or phone carries on streaming perfectly so the router is still streaming the program okay... IOW signal strength and speed has not dropped much.. if any.

It only affects the device which have the BT headphones connected, if I leave it frozen for a while it will sometime carry on for a few more seconds and then start buffering again, sometimes it will pop up a network connection error message, but as soon as I turn off the BT headphones it continues as normal.
Or if I'm in TV catchup or iPlayer I can switch how the sound is heard, so if I switch back to speaker it's okay then too, and don't forget at this point the headphones are still connected to Bluetooth, IOW it only happens when its streaming sound to the Bluetooth headphones.

Can you please let me know the model of those BT Nokia stereo h/phones your using, so I can check them out, as I can always return these last expensive Sennheiser ones back to Amazon.

Thanks for your patience matey.. it's usually a case of me helping others as I have a fairly technical background but this really has got me beat...lol.. as it doesn't make sense at all.

 

[awboxster]

Hi, I have the new iPad, 32g with 3G and do not have the problem you have spoken about. I regularly watch bbc and itv catchup using my '7dayshop' Bluetooth headphones. I have a 3 year old talktalk router and 4 dec phones in the house.

Cheers

Adrian

 

[AQ_OC]

Over the past weekend I bought an app called Conference Pad. It lets you use one iOS device to control another when doing presentations. For example, I can connect my iPad to an overhead projector. Then I open Conference Pad on my iPhone and call up a presenations. With Conference Pad open on the iPad, the presentation will trasnfer from the phone to the iPad and then project onto the screen. I can then walk around the room and control the presenation from my phone.

In the help of this app, there is this statement (which think may apply to your situation):

"2. Conference Pad can use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to communicate between devices. Due to a long-standing bug in Apple's networking code, having both enabled causes both to work much more slowly, so we recommend enabling one or the other (but not both) on each device prior to your presentation. You'll want to use all Wi-Fi or all-Bluetooth. Wi-Fi is significantlly faster, so it's preferred if you have access to a network."

The app does work over both Wifi and bluetooth, but is indeed much slower over bluetooth.

I cannot vouch for his claim about the bug...only note what others, such as you, report. I don't really know if this should apply to your situaton either.

 

[Lunar]

Thats pretty much what Apple said to me in their reply to my email, basically saying that it may work at reduced performance, but we advise they are not used at the same time.

As you know I've written much on this subject, it's pretty common knowledge that Bluetooth may and will likely reduce the performance of wifi, but I am surprised in my case anyway.. it pretty much doesn't work at all... it's no big deal.. I can always use my wired headphones when streaming TV from the net ect... but it has got me baffled and intrigued.

What makes me more determined to get to the bottom of this, is the fact it seems to work with some users, as the earlier posters have stated... so whats different here (don't answer that...lol)

I would have instantly blamed the iPad, but how can I blame the iPad when the issue occurs on both our iPad 1 and my iPad 3 including my iphone and a galaxy S2, it just doesn't make sense. Apple say its caused because almost all current devices use the same chip for both Bluetooth and for Wifi, with a common antenna, even stated Wifi and Bluetooth were not designed to be used at the same time, (what piffle) and they don't recommend it as it may cause conflicts... I'll say it does..lol on my devices anyway. and why do mono bluetooth headsets work okay for voice chat etc on all my devices, but none at all when streaming from Net on stereo ones.

However, that poses the question, how come it works on some other users iPads apparently without problems. From what I've read its very common to find users with a drop of upto 80 or 90% in wifi throughput while the Bluetooth was enabled, but mine virtually stops.. if I immediately run a wifi speedtest it takes ages to just find a server to do the test on, yet as soon as I turn off the BT headphones it springs to life.. this is the same behavour on all these 4 devices. Yet I can still access my router in the same room normally by our laptop or any of the other devices that are not streaming Bluetooth at the same time as wifi. Funny enough wifi works okay if the BT heaphones are paired and connected as long as they are not streaming anything... as soon as something is being streamed across to the bluetooth headphones the net grinds to a halt.. but ONLY on that device.

The router is TalkTalks latest ADSL2+ N Duel channel 300mbps router, it's just a shame it does'nt have the option to work at 5Ghz as some of the newer ones do, so it has to work at 2.4Ghz, same as bluetooth. Netspeed is generally reasonable at 19mbps, and that does'nt seem to be affected by the Bluetooth.. it only affects the device thats using the Bluetooth, other devices carry on working normally. Only thing I haven't tried is another router, so I'm getting my old Sky router out of the attic later and will turn off the wireless on this one and plug the 2nd router into it and try the wifi on that.. just for curiousity... I've run out of idea's, AIS 4 different devices can't be faulty, and it's unlikely 2 different BT headphones are faulty either.

I don't give up easy, but AIS this one does have me beat...lol (At least my iPad3 has been fine since I swapped charger and cable.. thats something...lol)

 

[Lunar]

Hi, I have the new iPad, 32g with 3G and do not have the problem you have spoken about. I regularly watch bbc and itv catchup using my '7dayshop' Bluetooth headphones. I have a 3 year old talktalk router and 4 dec phones in the house.

Cheers

Adrian

Thanks Adrian.. probably same as the cheap one I first bought,(Black ones) I had those from 7dayshop.. sound pretty good too for their low price...as you can see it is rather baffling.. I'm trying my old router later, just to see if it makes any difference, I've only been with talktalk a couple of months and the router seems fine..but you never know.... but nice to know it's not affecting everyone...the fact it works for you and some others...means it's possible.

Do you know if your router runs on 2.4ghz or not, I know some older routers used to use a different frequency I think.. whats the model of the router..I can probably find out..... btw Dec phones don't use 2.4Ghz band too do they..lol I need to check that...I know our wireless front door bell is on 2.4ghz... cheers mate.

 

[AQ_OC]

I don't know...I would not spend too much of my time hunting around at this issue. The main thing is the isolation designed in for wifi and bluetooth. The more isolation you have, the greater the data-rates and distance you obtain. The limits are going to be imposed by the design of the iPad...and then beyond that, it's a matter of what you are actually trying to transmit over the two antennas..so performance could indeed be fine in one situation and not in another. In the case of my presentation, I've sending video information (mostly static, but there are changes happening on screen if you use a cursor and change slides rapidly) between the phone and iPad, and all of that depends on what's on the slides and how fast I move though the pages, and also what's being seen on the wifi side. There will be inference between the two. Electromagnetically speaking, your environment could be very different than someone elses. I know that in my office I sometimes have trouble getting my BT speaker to connect to my ipad or even my BT keyboard. If I go downstairs, a bit further from my router, I can get them to connect and then come back upstairs and they remain connected.

IME, BT is much more rarely used than wifi, and wifi is much faster. I've used BT for a wireless link between a gps receiver and my ipad in my car, and it works great. But there is usually no wifi signal to contend with in the car....and BT info for GPS is minimal in terms of data rate.....now that I have 4G, the issue is probably even less since they are more separated in frequency.

There are ways to increase isolation beyond just where you locate the antennas in the device. You can use polarization control, or include lossy materials, or even employ artificial magnetic conductors. The latter works extremely well, but you need space inside the device to put those AMCs. I have no idea if Apple is using such tech, but I doubt it. As you know, iPad are devices where space is at a premium. This has to have an impact on the amount of isolation that can be achieved and the the cost to improve it significantly might be deemed of little value, given that BT is rarely used. Based on what you say Apple has told you, it sounds as if they have made engineering decisions and you are just unfortunate enough to be hitting up upon them. It seems like the conference pad app bumps into them as well. As secretive as Apple is, it is no wonder that this is a bit of a mystery. But I've seen these trade offs made in laptops and they are fundamentally the same ones that need to be made for an iPad.

Boy...there must be a better way to type a long message. I can only see about 1.5 inches of what I'm typing, so getting the typos out is a bit of a bother. Anyway, good luck hunting!

 

[Lunar]

Found out what the problem was.. unbelievable.. it's my soddin new Talktalk adsl2+ superdupa router..lol. I disabled the wifi on my curent router, and connected my old Sky router to it just for the wifi.. and it works perfectly. No buffering or freezing while streaming live TV while listening at the same time with my bluetooth headphones.. it works great.

I only connected it up really for elimination purposes.. I trully didn't expect it to be any different... One pair of expensive BT headphones being returned to Amazon now...lol not that they helped.. though TBH they do sound rather good... so may have a wee think on those before I decide to send them back.

So I need now to discover what so different between these 2 routers.. the problem one is a new N model router running at 300mbps, but I've already tried the lower backward modes and different channels and that didn't make a scrap of difference. So I think I'll stick with this old Sky router for time being, but will probably have to reflash firmware to be able to enter details for my current provider, I dont really fancy having 2 routers running side by side.... well chuffed anyway, as I tend to watch a lot of streamed TV usually while the wifes watching something else, otherwise I have to go into the study to watch the other TV, so the BT headphones come in useful.

So.. It's the end of the Bluetooth/ wifi mystery.. though I still dont know whats wrong with this new router, but lifes too short to worry about it, I'll see what the net provider has to say, they may send another router out.

Thanks everyone for all your suggestions and feedback while I was trying to resolve this issue... I just would not have suspected the router.. cheers guys.