We have a brand new xbox 360 hooked to a sanyo hd flat screen TV that is 1 year old. We dont have an xbox HDMI cable. We have the cable that it came with hooked up to the tv. We are using a DLink WBR 2310 router.
We have 2 problems:
1. Gears of War is lagging bad.
2. Unable to connect to certain friends via xbox live. Can always connect to others. This has been going on for awhile, thats why we bought the new xbox but it hasnt helped. no firewalls on

make sure you dont have any thing else runnin through ur server while playin online