USB vs LAN Transfer Rates to BoxeeBox

[JNM]

Trying to optimize the Boxee Box Experience, I'm curious if anybody out there, knows which would be better?

A) A standard 500Gb 7200 rpm USB external hard-drive, always on, connected to the box through the back. Or..
B) Hard-drive on a Windows 7 machine, shared via the LAN.

Bottlenecks are either the USB or 10/100, at the Boxee. I know USB 2.0 has a theoretically higher transfer rate of 480 MBit/s, but in practice, how much overhead is involved in the communication compared to the 100 MBit/s assumed on the Ethernet.

I'm pretty sure, USB is the fastest option. So...

Does anybody know of a technical reason, why the USB would be slower? Or, is anything I'm thinking, wrong? Or, are both so fast, that neither will matter - for instance, if the Boxee Box caches/buffers almost everything it can?

[gmd024]

Trying to optimize the Boxee Box Experience, I'm curious if anybody out there, knows which would be better?

A) A standard 500Gb 7200 rpm USB external hard-drive, always on, connected to the box through the back. Or..
B) Hard-drive on a Windows 7 machine, shared via the LAN.

Bottlenecks are either the USB or 10/100, at the Boxee. I know USB 2.0 has a theoretically higher transfer rate of 480 MBit/s, but in practice, how much overhead is involved in the communication compared to the 100 MBit/s assumed on the Ethernet.

I'm pretty sure, USB is the fastest option. So...

Does anybody know of a technical reason, why the USB would be slower? Or, is anything I'm thinking, wrong? Or, are both so fast, that neither will matter - for instance, if the Boxee Box caches/buffers almost everything it can?

Accessing some HD/BD content may give you issues, even over a wired network - wireless would be even worse

If you connect the HDD via the USB port on the BBox it can still be seen/accessed on the network

I would recommend using the USB connection - the only draw back would be loading content on it from somewhere else on the network - it will be slower than loading it from a direct USB connection - but if you're not in a hurry to get the content loaded, fine - if you are in a hurry, simply disconnect the HDD from Boxee and plug it into your W7 PC and load it