XBOX 360 Extender for streaming Live TV wirelessly?

[hokuto]

Hey everyone,

I have a media centre PC and am debating on getting an XBOX 360.  Both will connect to my network wirelessly on G or possibly N.  I know that using the XBOX extender you can watch live TV and recorded shows, but how well does this work on wireless?  What I'm looking to do is move my satellite to the media centre PC upstairs, then connect the XBOX 360 to the TV in the living room and have it stream live TV.  I just want to know if I press live TV does it take several minutes to start, or because it's wireless would it freeze up part way through and so on?

[Miller]

I don't have a wireless setup running, but based on bandwidth I would say you could expect 1 maybe 2 good SD streams on 802.11g. That still depends on distance, walls, etc. With 802.11n you would have much better results. Personally, I don't think I would try either with HD though. Even if you don't want to do it yourself, it's usually not that expensive to run a Cat5e cable and then you shouldn't have any problems.

[The Dude]

I know that Microsoft does not recommend using the xbox 360 extender over a wireless network. 802.11n might be able to handle it. There are a ton of articles on their site for optimizing or using the 360 extender over a wireless network. I don't know if that means that it can be done and be reasonably acceptable or if that just means that they recognize that so many people have wireless networks now that they have to come up with some solution. Here are a few of the articles I could find. Some of these are kind of old though so keep that in mind.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/mediacenter/extender/setup/homenet.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/mce/expert/bowman_extenders.mspx

The green button is a good place to look for information on this too.

http://www.thegreenbutton.com/

[hokuto]

Thanks for the help.  I was thinking about it while I was driving to work today and it's true there would be no comparison between 54Mbps and gigabit ethernet, if the 360 has that.  It's just an awkward setup, the media loft is right on top of the living room it's just running the cable is going to be tricky.  I'm going to see when I get home tonight what I can do.

I guess my main thing then is lets say I use wireless, how well does the live tv and so on streaming work?  Like, lets say the 360 is off, I press the green button it comes on, I click live TV, is it basically instant?  I don't mind personally, it's more I just don't want other people in the house getting annoyed if it takes awhile to put the TV on.  Again this is because 95% of the TV watching we do would be recorded or live TV but on the 360 with the satellite receiver on the media centre PC upstairs.  Thanks!

[Miller]

I don't think the arguments would be any different for Live tv. I know people do it, but it really depends on what kind of signal strength you can get for your specific location. You would just have to try it and see. Sorry.

[hokuto]

Thanks I'll try to figure this out.  My issue is I don't have a capture card or Xbox 360 yet but would get one for this, so just hate to spend the money if it's horrible.  Thakns!