Help with streaming

After reading a few post here it seems that my G router is out of date to be streaming HD movies from my laptop as it stutters and usually does not play period.  I am going to go buy a new router but do not know what I should be looking for in terms of specs.  I am trying not go over a hundred bucks on a router.  I see that I need to upgrade to a N router but does it have to be dual band or 5ghz?  I have two laptops, xbox and phone going through the router but 90 percent of the time when I am watching a movie all the other devices are not in use.  I need pretty good range as well.  Again I am not that knowledgible when it comes to networking so any advice would be appreciated.

I would STRONGLY recommend a simultaneous Dual Band 5 GHz router. Put N ONLY on the 5 GHz band, and use that for streaming. Keep your other WiFi devices on the B/G 2.4 GHz band.

First I like to terminate a genaral missunderstanding:

A router is a connection between two different networks so you DON’T need a router to stream movies from a local computer to your WDTV Live / Plus. You need a switch and - in case you like to stream wireless - a wifi access point.

Now I like to answer the question:

My WDTV live was delivered with firmware v1.02.21 and playing movies from a shared windows folder worked fine (full HD as well as SD). After updating the firmware to v1.03.49 playback of HD movies was not longer possible (lagged). And finally after update to v1.04.22 the network playback of SD movies disappeared…

After talking to WDC support the only solution was to roll back the firmware to an older version. I turned back to v1.02.21 and all is working fine now.

Maybe it is the same problem with your box?

You can find the fw files for roll back here: http://wdc-de.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5800