Wi-fi isn't good enough. I can barely get AirPlay to stream music reliably ten feet away for half an hour (oh no! somebody in the next apartment turned on their microwave!), I can't imagine video being even remotely reliable, and certainly not at decent quality.
However, Netflix etc. work fine over wi-fi, because they're downloading and buffering the compressed stream itself, and then feeding that via the HDMI port to the TV.
Chromecast appears to be able to download the queued content over wi-fi, and then transmit via HDMI, which is a much more reliable way to go, given the state of wi-fi.
Sounds like you need a new router with a 5ghz channel.
That said, I don't know what's going on with your Airplay's music streaming, but the bitrate of music is far below Netflix's. It shouldn't matter much though, I stream my desktop in nearly lagless 1080p to my MBP via Splashtop. The compression isn't really that bad.
Sounds like you need a new router with a 5ghz channel.
According to this review[1] it won't be useful for the Google Chromecast:
"Internally, the hardware supports 2.4GHz Wi-Fi 802.11, which isn't quite as nice as the dual-band Wi-Fi offered on Roku's Streaming Stick."
Well, I'm talking about compressed Netflix bitrate, vs. only losslessly compressed AirPlay audio. The Netflix stream is bigger, but the bitrate of music isn't tiny.
But it's not the bitrate that matters so much -- it'll work perfect for 20 minutes, and then completely fail for 2, then come back perfectly again.
I think the issue with my wireless is I'm in the middle of Manhattan and there are 40 wi-fi networks I can see, so it's already a little tricky. But whenever I turn on my microwave, transmission completely drops. So it's basically anytime I or any neighbor in five directions turns on their microwave.
5ghz channel sounds like a great idea, unfortunately I can't figure out from any manuals or docs whether my Zeppelin Air supports 5ghz or not -- the official specifications and manual just say "supports Wi-Fi". [Edit: Googling forums suggests it only supports "g", not "n". So, no dice. Oh well.]
I have an 802.11n router using 5Ghz. When streams are over 10Mbps (common for 1080p streams) I run into problems all the time over WiFi from my computer to my Apple TV. It's not even interference (the channel is pretty clean). It's prefab concrete walls – they don't like WiFi.
It would seem that you, like me, have a shit airplay receiver. Airplay should have nothing to do with distance, if you have a wifi connection, you're fine. And if you can stream hd video from the internet over wifi (ie: youtube), then you can stream it to another device on your network using the same connection.
Now if that device habitually drops the connections, or doesn't support video, it's a problem with the device, not the technology.
However, Netflix etc. work fine over wi-fi, because they're downloading and buffering the compressed stream itself, and then feeding that via the HDMI port to the TV.
Chromecast appears to be able to download the queued content over wi-fi, and then transmit via HDMI, which is a much more reliable way to go, given the state of wi-fi.