SD speed between 3 - 4.4 MBps
HD between 8 - 11.5 MBps
Yes, that makes the network ok (or at least better) and one can probably look elsewhere. Got some other laptop (or borrow one) to see how it fares in comparision? As for the laptop graphics not coping, the stream from the stb is not that heavy vs a dvd or a videofile from hd, does it glitch while reading these as well ?
edit, just a note about using 'High Performance' power scheme, but probably tried that already.
Edit 2, recommended MPC HC, a lot less processor use than vlc
Home · MPC-HC
This topic made me spending some time testing streaming and transfers. Setting the network card at different speeds, even at 10Mbps it copes 99% with the quite low bitrate of BBC HD's, stays under 10 Mbps most of the time, just a few random glitches now and then.
Many German 19.2 HD's are stremaing at around 10 to 16 Mbps, the 10Mbps was failing constantly, setting network to 100 Mbps all was fine.
Conclusion, anything above around 20 Mbps (ethernet or wifi) safe for sat streaming (until 4k arrives :O).
A 1000 Mbps network is of no practical use for streaming, but definitely comes into use for file transfer, notice the real life conversion of Mb to MB. see attach.