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BzowKFlag for United States of America

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Best Method to Get Fastest Speed to My Media Center

Good Evening All -

I've got a media center in a room with my TV which consists of a Boxee Box, XBox 360, Dish VIP-622 (DVR), and PS3.  In my "office", I have my servers including my media server with about 6tb of high def video.  Obviously, I'm trying to find the best method (besides CAT6) for these two networks to talk.

The reason I ask this is that first, there's no way for me to run a cable to this room and have my wife happy with me :) and also, I've tried a few things that don't seem to work the way I intended,

Why
My Boxee Box does a pretty good job at videos up to 720p, but would skip on anything bigger like 1080p.  The network just wasn't fast enough.  The box died a week ago so I've been using my XBox, but it skips like crazy.  I bought an AppleTV, but it's v3 so there's no jailbreak for it so Plex is out.  Therefore, I've been using Airplay and the quality stinks -but - it's the only way I can get video that doesn't bunny hop

What I've Tried So Far & Results
- Netgear AV500 Powerline adapters (current solution) - They advertise up to 1gbps speed through your home's power lines.  My house is about 5 years old, but the utility says I get about 25mb TX and 50mb RX.  I'm running the latest firmware.

- My router is a DIR-855 so has simultanious dual band 2.4 & 5.0ghz.  I live by apartments so the 2.4 channels are packed.  I thought of getting a 5ghz adapter for the XBox, but can't decide if it would make a difference.

Questions
1. Advertised speeds are quite different than actual speeds.  Would the 5ghz wifi be faster than the powerline I use now or not?

2. What other methods could I use that may be better?

Thanks!
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Lee W, MVP
Lee W, MVP
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Yes, I have - but - when I add all of my media to Windows Media Center, it freezes and is incredably slow to load.  I'm using PS3 Media Server now which transcodes it, but still the network is just a touch too slow as it stops to buffer every minute.
Not sure then... I use my Windows media center to record 4 HD channels at once and playback another on a 64 bit Win7 system with 4 GB of RAM and a ceton tuner.  Worked great for well over a year.  I use the XBox as an extender.  There is no freezing.  Don't have a playstation so I can't say what's going on with that.  I prefer having one device that covers me on everything - the Win7 Media Center.  

Off hand, I would suggest you make sure you're using a good Wireless N router and network adapters.  If the playstation doesn't support N at atleast 300 Mbit then I'd say that's your first problem.