Is it a good idea to stream HD netflix over wifi?

Netflix HD uses relatively low bitrate (I think it uses around the same bitrate as DVD, ~10Mbps tops). While Blu-ray HD streaming is darned near impossible to do via wifi, Netflix HD should be much easier to accomplish. Besides, Netflix was designed with streaming in mind so there are buffers, etc to keep video playback fluid. That's something you normally don't get with most software players.

If she is not an HD hound, as you put it.... then wifi should be ok. Netflix will buffer. In addition during the buffering period, it scales the movie according to your available bandwidth. I have streamed netflix over the Nintendo wii (wifi) and it worked just fine. Not HD quality but, again... it worked just fine.

If it was me, I would hardwire via 100/1000 but, that's me. Hardwiring is solid, fast and reliable. I've never been FULLY satisfied with wifi connections. Again, that's me.

Just a word of advise, NEVER trust what the Best Buy staff has to say. They don't know geek squat. I have never met more incompetent idiots in my life. Let them sell you a $200 HDMI cable while they are talking to you. Sorry if I seem foul toward Best Buy staff but, I have never had a good experience.

I guess overall this comes down to your personal preference. If you don't want to crawl though the attic, the go wifi. It WILL work and video will be good.

If you want total performance available, then hardwire it.

My other thought is many more devices in the home theater are using internet service now days. Example; my home theater uses internet connection for the BluRay, Audio Receiver (streaming audio), Sat receivers (pay per view), xbox, nintendo wii. So right there I have 5 devices requiring a connection. I have an 8 port ethernet switch behind my gear for connections. I would not trust 5 streaming devices to wifi. If you looking to protect her future interests then hardwiring is a must.

As far as a router... Anything in the last couple years will work ok. Linksys, Netgear...etc.

Personally, I would just go wireless, for streaming across the internet your bottleneck is going to be the internet 90% of the time and I don't think Netflix takes much bandwidth at all. It is compressed and low bit rate.

I do agree with the other poster that Best Buy is not the best place to get tech advice nor IMO is it a good place to buy stuff. Personally I use Newegg to research and Amazon to purchase since I have a prime account. Free 2 day shipping from them is amazing.

If you have a choice, get a wireless N card/router, dual-band if possible. This gives you the choice of either 2.4ghz or 5ghz. 2.4ghz is where just about every wireless device known to man resides, so the 5ghz band is cleaner and you will get better signal quality normally.

First, Netflix over wifi works just fine.

That said, there's a big difference between wifi bandwidth and real-world data rates. Latency and other issues can cause real issues when streaming BD, etc., so although yoy may have a faster wireless data rate than your internet connection, the wifi can still cause havok.

Like I said at the beginning though, I streamed Netflix HD over even 802.11g with no issues before I got my cabling done.

I'm using a Linksys WRT320N because it has Wireless N, a gigabit switch, is compatible with DD-WRT, and was inexpensive. It has worked great for me for over a year.

jedd,

I have successfully streamed blu-ray from my media server wirelessly, it actually wasn't too hard to pull off. blu-rays use about 40mbps, if your wifi is 300mbps you can do it.

It's heavily dependent on the environment, though. I live in an apartment where there's like 10 different wifi networks and even if I'm on 5GHz, I still experience stuttering. Wired ethernet is just more reliable.

If you go with a 802.11n router, then I'm sure you will be fine and somewhat future proof as the tech advances ..

Personally, I prefer a CAT5 connection, but that's just me .. it's the most secure and will always run the fastest with the least amount of drop offs, interference from other devices such as phones, etc ..

Some of us rip our Blu-ray discs to a file server/HTPC and stream the Blu-ray rips to other TVs in the house either through an extender or another HTPC. As for the why, for me, it was convenience. I've got way too many discs around the house. Consolidating the media on the file server makes organization much easier. Now, whenever I buy a Blu-ray or DVD, they get ripped directly to the file server and the physical discs gets put in storage. *sigh* If only I could do the same with my books...

Yep, backup and on-demand video library. Being able to choose movies to watch via remote is much easier than rummaging through a bunch of discs. I guess you could call it poor man's Kaleidescape.

802.11g is the standard, there are the following commonly used standards:

802.11a
802.11b
802.11g
802.11n

Then you have the range, meaning the RF range, 802.11a is 5ghz, 802.11b/g/n are 2.4ghz but 802.11n and maybe 802.11g can be on the 5ghz band also. The benefit of this is that almost every wireless device uses the 2.4ghz band, e.g. Bluetooth uses 2.4ghz band, so you end up with a lot of traffic. The more traffic, the worse it will perform.

The 300MB reference is to the speed the connection is able to peak at under perfect conditions.

This page has more on these standards:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11

The latter. It's a sucker thing. I would go ahead and spring a little more for an 802.11n dual band if you are buying new, but that's about it.

Look for the best router you can afford, use SMM as a reference : http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/

I have a Cisco 610N and i get a constant 10MB/s output rate, enough for Blu Ray streaming to my HTPC. Dual Radio / Dual Band is a must.

I have a Cisco 610N and i get a constant 10MB/s output rate, enough for Blu Ray streaming to my HTPC. Dual Radio / Dual Band is a must.[/quote]

Anyone have a good recomendation for a dual band router using Time Warner with Road Runner turbo? So many choices out there! Thanks.

The router and cable/dsl modem should be separate, so any router that is dual band N should be ok. If possible get gigabit lan also if the price isn't too much different.

Here are some decent choices:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833122378
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833127258

These both had USB ports which would be nice because you could plug a USB HDD in and stream videos off that in the future.

Thanks Taylorjonl! Are both of these compatible with any modem or should I be looking for a specific modem that will work with either or?

They should both work, you may have to do some configuration. If you have DSL it uses something called PPPoE which takes a username/password, so you would have to get that and configure it. But if you use cable normally you can just plug in the output from the cable modem to the WAN or INTERNET port on the router and away you go. Very seldomly you have to clone the MAC address of a computer but I think that was mostly for very old cable modems.

Depends on the router. If there is a limit, it is usually only on the dhcp with how many devices the router will assign addresses to. May be able to do more with static addressing. Otherwise, the limit will be 254 devices