Yeah. In about a year, that'll hopefully be down to a price tag that's affordable for the casual enthusiast.

Even though i have ethernet access in my living room, I played xbox via the HD bridge for months and it is solid, I can't tell the difference. My internet pipe is only 20mbps, so even if the speed dropped from the max, it was fine.
playing with other xboxes on the same LAN worked just as well.

Just run the damn Cat6 and save yourself the $200 - seriously, for $200 you could hire someone to do it professionally. Bonus: it's still faster to run cables for HD and media streaming.

@Mr Torben: Your internet pipe might be only 20mbps but there is no reason your home network needs to be limited to that speed. I have FiOS 20/20 for internet but my entire home network if gigabit lan with cat6 wiring. So streaming from my PC to my 360 is well above 20mbps.

Also, from the review this thing is only N. Supposedly one of the limitations of N routers is that the compatibility mode to b/g really hurts the N side...So keeping this N only would theoretically help it out.

@Lizard_King: no doubt! or piece together a junk pc to hook up to your flat panel tv and connect it to your network.....

Junk. I've gone through an unusual amount of netgear products lately (3 N-Routers, 2 Mimi Routers, and two faulty USB adaptors).

@SigmundTheSeaMonster: I've been using some Netgear stuff for a couple of years, never had a problem. I guess it all depends.
The item at hand, however, fixes a problem I don't have at the moment.

@Lizard_King: So where does one find someone to do that? Seriously, I'd love to get that done for a reasonable price.

Generally, I'm the guy that does it for my friends and relatives, workplaces, etc. Any general handyman with experience running cable lines, plumbing, or installing antennas (or IDEALLY phone lines) should have an idea of how to do it, and be able to do it quickly, with little damage, and cheaply. You may have to do some drywall patching though.

It honestly is not that hard. You get the wires into the walls, then snake them up or down a level. In a rough basement, you can drill straight up into the floor, unfinsihed attics have a similar access to the tops of walls. I first start by connecting the basement to the attic in the setups, with a nice FAT channel, and running multiple CAT6 lines. I do branching from the attic, making drops into different rooms. Fishing the wire is the easy part, once you know you are into the right wall channel (hole in the wall in the same space beteen joists as hole in the wall cap/floor). If dropping a line down to a hole, a beaded chain like used on a ceiling fan pull is GREAT. Avoid power lines, but you can use their general layout an as example.

In smaller apartements, you want to try to tuck the wires into the baseboards and run them around walls. Do not cross doorways with the wires. Plenum rated cabling can be used in duct-work, but I don't recommmend it.

Don't get me wrong, I like wireless for portable devices, but even A,G and even N is too slow (even at close ranges) for media streaming. While Gigbit wiring won't give you 1000Mbps, you are going to be beating wireless speeds for quite a few more years.

Wow. Soon microwave ovens will be superfluous. Just leave your food in front of your media server, wait 5 minutes and enjoy.

@Lizard_King: I have a long narrow condo with a lot of doors and other interruptions. I want to get a cable from the den at one end to the master bedroom at the other end - about 60 feet in a straight line. I know that going vertically in a house is pretty easy, but this looks to be tougher. Also, there are too many gaps in the basboards to make this practical - I'm thinking the ceiling would be the best bet.

@Canoehead: Drop ceilings are a breeze, however, condos usually are drywall. Do you have baseboard mouldings? If so, getting them into a wall is a start. Often if a room is divided, i will get the wires into a wall and then out the opposite wall, down to the baseboard moulding, then run around the perimeter of the walls. You have about 150ft to work with.

regular celings are often a mess. I ran a wired switch to my own ceiling fan (previous one was an RF switch....seriously, how lazy must an electrician be to install a stationary RF switch for something as immobile as a ceiling fan). Up the walls is no problem - across the ceiling? BIG problem. I replaced a LOT of drywall (The joists were against me, running parallel to the joists would have been cake)

Here's some random hints for you. Drilling/Cutting a large hole (3-4") in the wall near the baseboard and up near the ceiling will help you run from the ground up. Circular holes are easy to patch because there is never a "right side up", otherwise mark "up" on the area you wish to cut, before you cut. Learn to patch drywall, you will be doing a lot of it, it is not hard. If you do drill through Joists, get a right angle drill, far less damage. Take pictures of measurements of where stuff is run so you can redo this if necessary (fiber, home-automation, etc. Run more cables than necessary (wire is cheaper than labor, and always pull a cable with an extra string attached (to pull more cable in the future).

I'd shoot for baseboard removal. If you can find a run that works from one end of the house to the other, wrapping around doorways, you may be able to so this with minimal effort.

When I started doing this, I didn't know shit. I wish there was a comprehensive site offering details, but honestly, I'm far too lazy to put one up. I think you can pvt msg through this interface. If you pvt msg me, you can email me a rough drawing of the floorplan and I'd be glad to give you pointers!