Home Video Networks over Powerline Communication

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swiftideas

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#15516 27-Aug-2007 10:56

"To get a home video network up and running in 20 minutes is easy. Buy an external USB hard drive to put your movies and music on, connect it to a PC in the study, and share it out as a network drive. Buy a PLC starter kit and connect the first electric plug to your home router, and the second into a plug by your TV. Buy a media player of some kind (D-Link, Philips, Netgear, Xbox etc) and connect it to the second PLC plug's Ethernet connection in the lounge. Install TVersity on your media server PC and tweak it to play out the right way for your media player over the power cabling. Nineteen minutes later, you have a home video on-demand network." Source: The Register

So has anyone used PLC equipment?
Any feedback?

sbiddle

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#83936 27-Aug-2007 11:03

The stuff DSE sold worked well (can't remember the brand) however speeds were very poor, typically you'd only get a couple of mbps max out of it which made it worse than using an 802.11g router.

garvani

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#83941 27-Aug-2007 11:45

I use plc equipment at home (live in supervisor at a boarding school).. have 4 power plugs in operation.. The run from the router to my room is about 40 metres, there would be at least 50+ plugs in the place. Im using the older 14mb 1.1 homeplug standard and get a 5mbit connection to the router and a very reasonable ping considering the nightmare wiring that would be running through the place (that and interference). Wireless isn't possible there as the hostel is made out of brick, have no problems recommending plc and have since installed it for a few clients. Streaming video over it would be no problem at all for you, the only thing i recommend doing is having a dedicated powerpoint for the plug to go into, i had it in a 4way board with my computer, tv etc, it didnt like that too much lol..

garvani

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#83942 27-Aug-2007 11:47

ive sold netgear 85mbit power plugs and got 60+mbit out of it on a 20-30 metre run in a home network.. i recommend it over wireless for most situations, rock stable!

richms

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#84034 27-Aug-2007 21:56

I have tried both the 12 and the 85 meg ones, both delivered nowhere near their rated speeds, had huge packet loss issues making playback of media without a massive output buffer always skip.

At the moment have it deployed between the house and shed to get to the backups server in there because I am too lazy to dig a ditch

Richard rich.ms