Going Wireless with Media Center ... Again

This is for anyone wondering if they should be buying a Wireless N router that is 2.4 GHz only or if buying one on the Dual Band (2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz) routers is worth the extra cost.

Before the Dual Band routers became easily available, I purchased a Linksys WRT330N.  It worked great for me, until recently.  The way I have my network setup I plugged my Xbox 360 directly into the router, and had my Vista machine wireless in another part of the house.  When I first got everything setup I was able to stream both SD and HD content from my PC to the 360 with no hiccups.  Then one day the signal was so bogged done by everything else on the 2.4 spectrum that I was no longer able to stream video at all (no SD and definitely not HD).

I decided that I would give the new Dual Band routers a go, and the one that I chose was the D-Link DIR-628.  I also purchased a new wireless adapter for my PC that would also be able to take advantage of the Dual Bands, and for that I chose the Linksys WUSB600N.  As with most of us, my decision to get these 2 specific devices boiled down to the price.

I did the standard setup of the router and adapter, and after that I made only one change and that was to change the setting on the router so that it would only use the 5 GHz band.  The real eye opener for me came when I first fired up the 360 and went into the Network Tuning inside of Media Center.  I prefer the use the Graph view as opposed to the Bar view, and when I viewed the graph it stayed at the max for the 10-15 seconds I sat there and watched it.  After using it all weekend, I will have to say that I have had no hiccups using my 360 as a Media Center Extender.

I will have to say in my opinion that for me the difference in performance was well worth the little bit extra cost for the Dual Band router.