Per recommendations found here, I put my WDTVLIVEPLUS on the N band of my router, and everything else on the B/G. I have a challenging physical setup, as my router is about 120 feet from my WD Player, through two finished floors and a wall. Signal strength at the WD player was adequate for music, music videos and streaming trailers from Blockbuster. However a 15 minute movie I made using Windows Live Movie Maker choked the network. So I installed a Hawking 300 N repeater mid way between the router and WD player. Signal strength went way up and the movie played without a glitch.
Once I was able to “re activate” my player with Blockbuster (another story entirely), I “rented” a recent release and the download began. Since we use our brick and mortar store a LOT, my purpose was just to see if Blockbuster On Demand would be a good backup due to snow, sloth, whatever. I knew I wouldn’t get the streaming that Netflix offers, but that was OK. Blockbuster On Demand chat told me that I should be able to take advantage of “progressive download” which allows you to begin watching the movie prior to completing the download.
I successfully downloaded the movie, but it took 37 minutes. Although the Blockbuster menu provides an option for notification on completion of successful download, AND a notification when you can begin watching the movie (progressive download), neither of these functions worked for me.
The next step is to somehow determine whether Blockbuster actually supports progressive download on the WDTVLIVE+; my guess is they don’t. If by some miracle they do, I may try a powerline network next.
