I just did a search on BlueRay based on your comments. Does it access wireless over your router? I’m looking at a Samsung BlueRay from Sears (we have a local Sears store here in the boonies) that says it will Internet stream Netflix or Blockbuster, TV shows from Hulu Plus, videos from YouTube, music from Pandora. How good is the streaming quality?
Samsung is the best in that arena, from my research. I have a Samsung BRD Player, and I love the built-in extras. My model only came with NetFlix, Pandora, and YouTube, but subsequent firmware updates have given me Blockbuster as well.
The streaming quality is great! I spent $200 on a Linksys E3000 gigabit router with Wireless N, and it’s def. worth the money. I changed my firmware to open source stuff for more customization, but the stock Linksys firmware does a great job prioritizing traffic to your streaming devices.
The Samsung BRD players come with built-in wireless that’s very easy to configure, and once you’re setup, you can stream high def video from your player without any issue, provided the video you’re watching IS in HD. A lot of NetFlix’ streaming media isn’t in HD to prevent streaming bottlenecks, but the stuff that is shows up real nice on a well-configured home theater. Of course, a wired connection is best for high-throughput, and if you have that ability, I would recommend you connect your player directly to your router. Otherwise, wireless works great.
We stream from Netflix with our Samsung BlueRay and have never had any streaming issue whatsoever. I highly recommend the Samsung.
Go wired if you can. Network cables almost always give you faster cleaner throughput than wireless. I’ve got the Samsung BD-C6500. My only complaint about the unit is that sometimes when it turns on it gets “confused” and you have to turn it back off and on. Luckily it only does that on bootup. Oh and updates only ever seem to show up at inconvenient time (”ooh I’ve got an hour to kill let’s watch this thing that’s 56 minutes... crap updates that take 10 minutes so much for that”), but that’s just a universal truth for everything these days.