I happily stream dvd over 10/100 lan and 200mbps power line adapters.
even though my server has gigabit conections my laptop, bluray player (with love film) are 10/100 so anything more than cat5e is overkill. no need to get stp or ftp either for a home network just get cat5e UTP from a reasonable brand. no 22p ebay jobies
all streaming works just fine, but if i try that over wireless its all very hit and miss.
fwiw my setup doesnt achieve super high speeds either, i do lan transfers at about 10MB/s about 80mbit?
over wireless i can do lan transfers at about 3MB/s 24mbit
if everything on your lan is gigabit then you will achieve much higher transfers over cable, but wireless remains the same
what this means in practice is that if you transfer home movies and large pictures from pc to pc or nas/server etc then wireless is going to be a lot slower than powerline or cat5e….
i think you will need a 24mbit dsl conection before your wireless starts to limit your internet downloads and pron streaming by my rough calculations.