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[Yimmy]

We had purchased a Roku XD|S and set it up yesterday. Everything seemed fine until we wanted to watch HD content. Everything under Netflix that has HD content (Lost Seasons, for example) would only play in SD. Free TV episodes under Amazon VOD would be spotty, sometimes loading as HD during buffering...other times switching back to SD when it had to rebuffer.

I decided to implement the settings in FurryNutz's Xbox sticky, assigning a static IP for the Roku and applying the gamefuel settings as well. Still, the issues with HD persisted. I even tried the hidden bandwidth setting of the Roku (press Home 5 times, Rewind 3 times and FastForward 2 times) to fool around with debug mode and later, applying bandwidth settings anywhere from 1.5Mbps to x3.5Mbps. The Roku settings helped, but buffering times went from 20-30 seconds to literally 5+ minutes.

So, I left it until this morning to retry, just in case it was related to Comcast cable and possible heavy neighboring traffic (due to the blizzard in our area). Still no HD. So, it was time to do a little more router and Roku editing.

We were running the router on a combo 802.11g and n, at 2.4GHz. I switched this to 802.11n only at 5GHz. I then edited the Roku's hidden bandwidth setting to x3.5. Voila! Every single HD video now loads (and stays) in HD, without the extremely long buffer time from yesterday's settings. It works great in Netflix, Amazon VOD, Vimeo and other channels.

I'll keep testing to make sure it keeps working this way, but I wanted to post this in case others experience similar issues with a Roku and the DGL-4500.

[FurryNutz]

What happens in single N mode at 2.4GHz ? Or G Mode. I presume that G mode might not be fast enough to handle HD streaming.

[Yimmy]

The Roku will show the stream quality during a video buffer. An optimum quality is 4 dots next to the buffer readout. For HD content, the Roku will display HD next to the fourth dot. On a side note, for those who are familiar with Roku, the network setting always reported excellent signal strength even when connected on G/N at 2.4 and single mode N at 2.4.

When running the DGL-4500 on single mode N at 2.4GHz, most of the videos would be at 4 dots, but the HD would seldom (if ever) appear. If HD did appear, the video would play for a few seconds, rebuffer and drop the stream to non-HD and 2-3 dots. Debug mode would report that the Roku was dropping to 1.5MBps connection from our 2.5MBps, then sometimes later say it was dropping to 0.8 from our 1.5MBps connection.

The one very large setback to having the router run only at 5GHz and single mode N is that we can no longer use the Wii online, original iPhones, and even the new iPhone 4 on WiFi, without having to switch back. The Wii and the original iPhones only support G, and the iPhone 4 only supports N at 2.4 GHz.

I never tried to set the D-Link to G mode since I figured if I'm running into trouble with N at 2.4GHz, I'll definitely be experiencing issues with G at 2.4.

Oh, and this is on an A1 DGL-4500 running 1.22NA firmware, for what it's worth.

[FurryNutz]

OK, sounds like the HD streaming needs the the higher bandwidth at 5Ghz.

I would do this, get your self a wireless AP device to connect to the 4500 to service your G mode devices. I have the same here. I have everything connected to the 4500 and I have an additional AP to service other devices that don't support N or 5Ghz range.