Router for Video Streaming

[Orange Goblin]

Hi all

I'm hoping you might provide some advice.

My Current Set Up
My internet connection runs into my lounge room. I have an old DLink router that is hard wired to my Xbox360, internet radio through a Yamaha Amplifier, and a TiVo STB. The network is in effect controlled from wireless connection to a laptop in my study. I also have a couple of other laptops floating around the house that others use, all connected wirelessly.

The network is currently quite slow and its almost impossible to stream video from the laptop through the Xbox. Certainly not HD anyway.

What I'd like
I figure I can speed up the process by purchasing a new N gigabit router. Would this solve my video streaming problem? Sadly I can't hard wire the computer as I don't really want a computer in the lounge room, so my solution needs to be a wireless one.

I also looking at buying some additional storage. Not sure whether NAS or simple external drives are the way to go.

If I bought a NAS and wired it to the router, it's not clear to me whether vidoe/photos/music would need to pass from the NAS to the router and then wirelessly to the Laptop and then back again all the way through to the Xbox? Or does the laptop simply provide an instruction but the "streaming" is in effect done through the wires??!?!

Alternatively, can I have storage in the study with the laptop and a new faster router solve my problem?!?!

As you can tell, I'm a bit confused.

But in summary, I simply want to stream media that would move along wires except for the all imporant part of the controlling computer which is a wireless connection. I hope that makes sense!

I'd appreciate advice on the best way to achieve this goal and secondly the best equipment to do it. I've looked at what seems like a million routers and NAS, but it looks like I'm leaning towards a D-link DIR655 and probably the D-Link NAS.

Thanks.

 

[thiggins]

Using wireless to stream HD video usually does not produce trouble-free viewing. There are too many things to go wrong and getting enough steady bandwidth from even a draft 11n connection is iffy. So good HD streaming to any of your wireless laptops might not be possible. At any rate, you would need to upgrade the laptops with a draft 11n adapter to go along with a draft 11n router to get any speed boost.

To answer your other question, a stream passes from the source to the receiver directly. So if you start a stream on the Xbox that is originating on the NAS and both are connected via Ethernet, then your wireless notebook isn't involved.