Media Streaming

So, here's the deal. I have two HTPC's in my house; one upstairs, one down. Both are running Windows 7 RC 32-bit. I have no problems with networking or accessing files and folders from one Win7 machine to another. When i want to stream media from one to the other [recorded TV in Media Center in particular] it takes 5-10 minutes to load/buffer/prepare/whatever before it actually plays. Is that normal? Or are there some settings I'm missing, somewhere.

I'm not a fan of waiting

It sounds to me like a network quality issue - i'm willing to bet you use a wireless network - I had problems with mine - even though the signal strength said excellent there was a lot of packet loss (caused by a transformer on a nearby shredder) that dropped my actual transfer speeds from 21mbps on my broadband right down to 8mbps - so very significant.

I found streaming to my xbox360 also suffered occasionally with long buffers (still not worked out why it was only occasional) but it was fixed by converting to homeplug ethernet adapters I went with devolo AV 200 between my server, router and xbox - problem sorted, of course the best solution is always hardwired ethernet cabling