Ryan writes, "OK, so I'm going to buy an Xbox pretty soon but I do not want to spend $100 dollars connecting it to Xbox Live, so my question is, can I hook up my Ethernet cable to a normal router, then connect the router to my my cable Internet source through just a normal cable wall outlet?"
I'm going to assume the $100 you want to avoid spending is for the Xbox 360 Wireless Network Adapter. If you want the Xbox Live Gold membership, you still need to pay the required subscription fee regardless of what type of connection you use. You do not need to connect your Xbox 360 using a wireless connection. In general, I recommend using a wired connection either by simply connecting your Xbox 360 directly to a router using an Ethernet cable or by using Ethernet over Powerline adapters. In my experience, things like streaming audio and video wirelessly to your Xbox 360 work just fine, but online gaming is very likely to lag using wireless and you get a far better experience with a wired connection.
