How bad is Xbox Media Center on wireless?

[keylimesoda]

I'm about to embark on a new whole-home WMC system, with a beefy HP Proliant+Ceton InfiniTV 4 acting as headless server, with two Xbox 360 extenders.

One of the extenders (EXT1) will be hard-wired on my gigabit network (yes, yes, enable "flow control" on my Intel NIC). The network path for EXT1 will be:
Server-->D-Link switch-->D-Link switch-->xbox.

The current plan is to have the 2nd extender (EXT2) on my 'N' network very near my wireless access point. The network path for EXT 2 will be:
Server-->D-Link switch-->Netgear switch-->D-Link DAP 2553--<wireless>-->xbox.

My WAP gives me the option of running a dedicated SSID just for 5GHz devices. This would limit wireless interference, but I would have to shell out another $50 on an Xbox dual-band wireless adapter to see the 5GHz on the EXT2 xbox.

So, my question is, how bad is the Xbox Media Center on wireless N? Is it okay if I have a strong signal, or is interference going to kill responsiveness (and more importantly, impact WAF)?

[bobbob]

i use mine on wireless, its fine. other people will tell you this is the first step to hell

[adam1991]

Everything is situational. Your wireless may be excellent, and you may be streaming things that don't stress a network.

What are you streaming? That's the important thing.

[foxwood]

How long is a piece of string? It's impossible to predict in advance what sort of performance you'll get over wifi. The best anyone can offer is that you can try it, and it might work OK today, but if and when you encounter problems later, there's not much anyone can do to help.

[keylimesoda]

Primary use will be for streaming HDTV, live and recordings.

I know that it's impossible to know perfectly how something will work before you try it, but I'd like to get some sense of how feasible my setup will be before I plunk down money for all the parts.

[slowbiscuit]

Might work well, might not. Wireless is always a dice roll, no matter what anyone says about how well it works for them - the buffering implementations on extenders are not very tolerant of hiccups of any sort, and wireless just gives you more of a chance that it will happen at some point.

Worst case you might have to get some Powerline or MoCA adapters if you can't run cat5/6 Ethernet.

[barnabas1969]

In order of best, most reliable connection to worst:

1) Wired Ethernet
2) MoCa
3) Powerline networking
4) WiFi

[elgordo123]

I use wireless N on mine and I am able to watch HD recordings and most HD movies with no buffering. Sometimes when I watch a high setting HD movie, (WMV, MP4) it does have some lag if I skip or sometimes on fast forward, and once in a while it might jump out to the WMC menu. But I dont have that problem with HD TV recordings so I can skip commercials, etc. I play BF3 and other games over it too and dont have any lag. (I'm using the N router Verizon sent me, was using a netgear with same results).
All that said, your best bet is to just try it as wireless is completely different in every scenario. Try playing some files, especially HD ones and see what you get. Good luck!

[nuclearxp]

I also have a proliant headless setup and used wireless 5ghz for a short time. The lag when initially loading wmc, media browser, and also inability to stream bluray made me go hard wired. As long as you have good 5ghz signal it'll work pretty reliably. 2.4ghz I suggest you avoid. If you can go 20/40 channel width that'll help but could degrade your signal strength.

Lastly a word of advice, my G6 will only do s4 sleep, so it'll take some time to wake up if you have it sleep when not in use. For me the startup noise is almost a deal breaker but outweighs the constant power usage.

[mdavej]

Wireless on mine is pretty bad, but I only have 30% signal strength since it's pretty far away from my router. Powerline ethernet works beautifully though. I would just go powerline (or moca) rather than replace a perfectly good router. Media Center on the Xbox has a signal strength app that will show you exactly what you've got and can be used to find the optimum placement of router/xbox/antenna.

[Beerman]

More than half the time via wireless, mine sucked. And with my router downstaris and the Xbox upstairs, other devices actually worked better. So, instead of trying to run cat 5 in a w story, I spent $100 and went the Powerline route. I don't have any problem at all.
I got a switch from the powerline and now have the Xbox, the TV and a computer all in the switch and all work fine together. Some house wiring may not be as suitable for Powerline but I guess I got lucky.