Distributed gateway for reliable multicast wireless video

Techniques are provided to reduce or restrict the bandwidth consumed by multicast video streams on wireless links, such as wireless IEEE 802.11 links. At a central multicast video transcoder apparatus configured to communicate with one or more access point devices operating in a wireless local area network, one or more multicast video streams are re-encoded the one or more multicast video streams to produce a corresponding one or more wireless-friendly multicast video streams that have a reduced bandwidth from a bandwidth of the received multicast video streams. The one or more wireless-friendly multicast video streams are thus adapted for wireless transmission by access point devices to wireless client devices in the wireless local area network. The one or more access point devices receive the one or more wireless-friendly multicast video streams and process the one or more wireless-friendly multicast video streams depending on conditions in a radio channel used by the access point device. The access point devices then wirelessly transmit the one or more wireless-friendly multicast video streams to one or more client devices in a corresponding multicast group.