Having replaced my NAS with an upgraded machine and my network switch with a GigaBit capable unit I was more than slightly dischuffed to find that network playback was actually degraded over the old 100Mb network, even SD media gave occasional chops

I'm running Vista Ultmate on the HTPC (Intel core 2 Duo E6550 @ 2.33GHz with 4G RAM) and UnRAID 4.5 Beta7 on the NAS (Intel® Pentium® D CPU 2.80GHz with 2G RAM).

Mr Google found this page http://www.tomstricks.com/how-to-improve-w...media-programs/

The gist:-

Windows Vista is throttling down the network interface to 10 packets per second to prevent choppy audio playback.

This is supposed to help with multimedia performance but of course it is very counterproductive when your audio/video files are streamed over the network.

How to fix it:-

* Make sure that you have installed Windows Vista SP1.

* Start the Windows Vista registry editor by clicking Start, then, Run, and then entering regedit.

* You’ll need to provide administrative confirmation if User Account Control(UAC) is turned on(If you are using Windows Vista).

* Navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile

Name : NetworkThrottlingIndex

Value type : DWORD

Value data : From integer 1 through integer 70 (Decimal) (Decimal)

* By default, the value for the NetworkThrottlingIndex registry entry is set to 10.For better performance,you can try the values 50 to 70.

I set mine to 70 (the machine only plays multimedia).

Problem solved

If yours is a HTPC for sole media duty.. The Win7 upgrade is really worth it..

Win7 media center much nicer all round.