Ok so Im running cable internet, into a wireless router that is attached to my 360 and my computer.
dual core duo processor
over a gig of ram...etc (not a crappy comp is all im saying)

So the 360 recognizes the comp and I can pull music from it. But when listening to it, there seems to be a buffering problem every once in a while it pauses. Now I want to start ripping some of my collection onto the comp so I can watch them through the xbox...but if it cant handle music its sure not going to be able to handle movies...any ideas suggestions...comments?

Short answer is that you will need to run a cable and not use wireless.

The other option is to somehow get a better wireless signal between the router and xbox.

I have/had media streaming issues and running a cable is not currently an option. I purchased one of those Netgear Powerline Ethernet kits (the new "HD" one) and it was very unreliable and performed worse than my wireless setup so I returned it.

Last week I purchased a Buffalo 54gs wireless router and installed Tomato firmware and gave Xbox high priority QoS and boosted the antenna power to 84mW. This seems to have improved my signal and reliability a lot compared to my older D-Link DI624 wireless G router. The signal went from "Low" to "Very Good" on my wife's laptop which is used in the same room as the Xbox.

One thing that you can do if you have a computer with a wireless network card is to install a program such as Netstumbler. Put the computer near your Xbox and have it scan all the wireless networks that it can pick up. Use this information to pick a vacant channel for your router and also to check the strength of your signal instead of using the strength graph on your Xbox.

Another thing that may help is to install TVersity on your computer and choose to downgrade the streamed signal to help it work within your network's limitations.

Hope something there helped.

sorry i did not mention it, both the xbox and computer run with cable...nothing is going to this router as far as my ht goes is wireless.

Thanks for your help though, got anything for me with this new info?

i recently switched to tomato on my wrt54gs and it blows. cant stream any video without huge network congestion, i'm switching back to DD-WRT.

bryansj, can you pm me with your QoS settings? to me it feels like qos isnt working for me with tomato, a vid can be playing fairly smooth, and i can refresh a webpage on my network and get network congestion.

ok so no one knows...

is your router xboxlive certified? have you tried putting the xbox ip in the DMZ?

is your router xboxlive certified? have you tried putting the xbox ip in the DMZ?
Both his Xbox360 and computer are directly connected into the WAP's LAN ports. He's trying to stream music from that PC to the Xbox360 with cabled connections. I'd first try directly connecting the computer and the Xbox 360. If it stops, it's probably the router. If not, try running perfmon on the PC , or even open task manager and eyeball the performance tab while the hiccup occurs.