Sponsored Links

Extending network with powerplugs

We bought a Smart TV yesterday which has an ethernet input and can also connect via Wi-Fi with an optional accessory which we didn't buy at the time.

The house is a stone built cottage and there are Wi-Fi deadspots downstairs in the house.

The router has to live upstairs, that's as far as the cable from the antenna on the roof will reach (it's an HSPA connection which is perfectly quick enough for SD streaming and used to be quick enough for HD too @ 6Meg but these days it doesn't always hit that speed, either way, where we live for the moment, we're not going to need something with great speed capabilities)

What I'd like to do is to extend the Wi-Fi and plug in the TV.

Running an ethernet cable up the side of the house inside/outside isn't really an option.

This thing seems to do the job:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/netgear-200...-built-in-wireless-n300-range-extender-587580

Any other points I should note/recommendations? Thanks.
 
Homeplugs like you have mentioned will probably be the best solution for you. If you still wanted to go the wifi route and expand coverage around the house and avoid buying what i assume is an expensive dongle for your TV, then you could scatter something like this around the house...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-...1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1341765139&sr=1-3
or
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Edimax-EW-7...31?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1341765818&sr=1-31

Scatter 2 or 3 of them around the home where all your equipment is and that should solve any "dead" spots you have entirely, and give you a nice strong signal within a 20-40M radius of the house.

The real best solution though is what you dont want to do and thats wire the home up. If your house isnt that big its worth considering doing while the summer is here (far more fun climbing any ladders in the sun than the snow) you can buy a reel of 100M CAT5 cable for less than any decent homeplug or wireless bridge/adapter, it will perform the best and be the cheapest, you just need to convince yourself the effort is worth it. I could never go back to using wireless for anything... Its the devils invention.
 
Thanks...

The TV is this one:
http://www.comet.co.uk/p/LED-TVs/buy-PANASONIC-TX-L42E5B-LED-TV/791466

We originally bought a Samsung one but we took it back for a refund a week later because the build quality was appalling; the plastic fascia rattled, or rather, resonated in tune with certain low frequencies at all volumes. So if someone with a deep voice was speaking, the TV itself began "speaking" as well.

This one is, to my untrained eye, quite incredible - no motion blur at all that I can make out, I even found myself watching the tennis practically picking out individual blades of grass on the court. It does look huge in our tiny living room.

It has an ethernet input built in but to use WiFi you have to buy an optional accessory - I don't think I can just plug any WiFi adapter into the USB sockets. (Edit - since you asked and I went and found the link on the website I can see the "optional accessory" on there - it's a whopping £54.99)

So for the TV we only need the cheap option (just ethernet) but was thinking about one with WiFi too as my mobile phone has an absolutely dreadful WiFi range and that would be able to work downstairs too.

On the other hand we're moving in the near future to somewhere cabled so I might just go for the cheap option for now.
 
Sponsored Links
Any of the options butler and myself mentioned will work fine. You dont have to buy the TVs dongle to use wireless, the adapters/bridges i pointed to will also work and use the ethernet port meaning it leaves the USB port free for a USB stick or similar with some photos, music etc on to play back on your nice new telly :)
 
Do be aware that Ethernet Powerline adapters aren't perfect and how they perform will depend upon a number of factors, not least how your home is wired up. If you have a house then you're probably fine but some homes can have odd power cabling that separate out for different parts of the house, meaning that some plugs may not link to other rooms.

Most of the adapters can also cause interference, especially to short wave radio reception, so it's a good idea to position them away from any other electrical devices.. especially TV's (e.g. interference might be heard through the speakers). In some cases this has been known to affect FM/DAB radio services too.
 
Do be aware that Ethernet Powerline adapters aren't perfect and how they perform will depend upon a number of factors, not least how your home is wired up. If you have a house then you're probably fine but some homes can have odd power cabling that separate out for different parts of the house, meaning that some plugs may not link to other rooms.

Most of the adapters can also cause interference, especially to short wave radio reception, so it's a good idea to position them away from any other electrical devices.. especially TV's (e.g. interference might be heard through the speakers). In some cases this has been known to affect FM/DAB radio services too.

Never thought about those points :-)

I know that if we connect the TV with WiFi, start streaming something, and then use the microwave which is only about seven feet from the TV separated by the wall between the living room and kitchen, there's a fair chance the WiFi will drop.

It's a 200 year old cottage but I'm assuming the wiring was completely redone at some point in the past. The sockets in the living room are about 5 feet from the TV (the supplied power cable only just reaches) and the TV can't go anywhere else because there's a huge hearth at one end of the room that means the room can only go one way around.

Whether those sockets are on the same "ring" (?) as the ones upstairs is a very good point though. I guess I won't know until I try.
 
It would be nice if somebody ran some latency tests since I'd like to see how the new powerline kit compares with wifi. I try to avoid wifi because it adds too much latency/spikes/instability and that makes multiplayer gaming a bit frusrating. I intend to find out whether or not the new 802.11ac wifi spec improves upon this in the future.

But I'm not sure how the homeplug/powerline style kit does on this front? I know older devices did add some latency but that's from quite a few years back and the tech has changed.
 
Sponsored Links
TBB recently done this review Mark on what i think is some recent powerline kit...
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/hardware/reviews/70-devolo-dlan-500-avtriple-starter-kit-review.html

No idea how realistic it is though or if the "results" can be trusted. In general though my limited experience with them does also see with regards to latency compared to wireless they are leaps and bounds better. Me personally id still sooner spend less on a reel of CAT5 cable and do the job properly.
 
Yes the latency looks miles more stable than wifi, though the addition of +29ms in some places might cause problems. Definitely better for gaming then but I'd agree that a good lan cable is still hard to beat.
 
Hardwiring up your home is not as hard as many think it will be either, especially if you do it while the weather is at its best and assuming you dont live in a 30 bedroom mansion. Will perform infinitely better than wireless/powerline and often works out cheaper than scattering powerline adapters of wireless bridges throughout the home.

All the tech we have today and an old LAN cable invented years ago is still the best, quite ironic if you think about it
 
Well, I got the powerplug things on the way home. Does do what it says on the tin really, you just plug them in and it just works.

Never had a TV that could bring up iPlayer and play stuff on demand without cable. It seems really odd. As it looks quite a lot like the cable TV interface. Yet there's no fixed line to the house at all.

It does stutter on playback now and again. This was worse until I put the plug thing at the router end into the socket directly not through the extension, that cleared it up a lot, but the one downstairs is still on a double plug as we don't have enough sockets.

It says it only needs 1.5Meg for SD playback and that should be fine - the connection is slow but it's never that slow. I'll have a fiddle with the settings in case it's trying for HD which needs 6Meg - though the connection can do that, these days, it tends not to - not constantly, anyway. I'll see if I can dig out an extension lead to swap the downstairs ones around.

It even detects my PC as a Media server so I wonder if I can watch our recorded TV downstairs (my PC has a video capture card and acts as a recorder, it has its own aerial)

I'm sure the novelty will wear off :-)
 
Sponsored Links
If you mean your TV sees you PC as a media server then yep you should be able to play files back on it which are on your PC over that powerline adapter.

Check what formats are supported on your TV when using DLNA, if all your files meet the specification it may be as simple as ensuring uPNP is enabled and setting a folder in windows to share the recorded and media files.

If they are in a different format to what your DLNA TV supports install something like PS3 Media Server on your PC and that will transcode the files on the fly to a format your TV recognises without altering the file saved on your computer.
 
It does work :) You can see the files on the PC upstairs (this one) including Recorded TV.

There's a funky Panasonic home cinema kit for £399 which would pair with it (Blu-Ray player and speakers) but I think that's enough spent for now :)

Our house move has fallen through so we're stuck here for the moment until we find somewhere else, so will need to watch how much data the TV pulls down. Very impressed with it though.
 
The only significant data the TV will pull down over the internet is anything you tell it to (IE using iplayer, youtube etc) and it probably automatically checks each night or every other night for firmware updates and automatically downloads and applies them (those files are normally only something like 5ish Mb) The rest of the time its connected if its monthly internet use (IE you have a monthly cap) that you are worried about, then dont be, apart from that it will basically contibute nothing to any download limits you have.
 
All working now - after swapping the plugs around it streams fine now. Does say in the instructions - don't put it on extensions or double-plugs.

One thing this TV seems very good at it upscaling stuff, it does seem well able to get the most from SD recordings and it handles the occasional missing frame from the Windows media centre recordings very well (if you try and write the same to a DVD it tends not to handle that so well)

Have put lots of stuff on series record now. It's like having cable back again. Except that I never wanted the TV, just the broadband ;)

Thanks all - the kit really is 'plug and play'.
 
Good to see your positive experience with those, guess I'll use the same thing when we move next year.

As a side note we got a Samsung LCD TV last year and that also does top quality SD video upscaling, which is important since most channels won't go completely HD for a few years and Sky still charges extra for it.
 
Sponsored Links
These particular ones were the TP-Link AV200 set if that helps anyone looking for one of these - about £25 in Maplin I think (I was going past there anyway and dropped in) - there is also a dearer option with Wi-Fi built in.
 
Yeah it does because I plan to get a TP-Link router next too :) .
 
Yeah it does because I plan to get a TP-Link router next too :) .

Keep an eye on ebuyer, throughout the year they have had the odd weekend offer on and off saving a few quid on homeplugs running. I think hotukdeals, similarly have spotted the odd temp offer on them including a couple of versions made by TPLink.
Wont be massive savings but even pound helps :)
 
I just thought I'd plug in the wireless keyboard I use with our laptop not really expecting it to work.

And it does. So we now have a keyboard that controls the TV. Amazing what they can do these days ;)

Question for those of you with these TVs: if I go into Internet then YouTube, then Sign In, I get a screen that tells me to go to www.google.com/device and key in the code shown on the TV screen.

If I do just that from my mobile, it just goes to the standard user/password Google accounts log in screen. Nowhere to type a code in.

I thought that was because my phone won't pick up Wi-Fi downstairs and so was using its own HSPA connection, and that it had to be over the same network. So tried partners phone which does pick up the Wi-Fi downstairs (the TV has an ethernet connection) and it did exactly the same.

So

TV > Ethernet > Powerplug > Powerplug > Ethernet > HSPA router > Internet

and

Phone > Wi-Fi > HSPA Router > Internet

Am I missing something or does this login bit just not really work?

YouTube itself works fine especially with the keyboard :) Just that log in bit that's puzzling me. As I wanted to see if I could bring up my playlists.
 
Top
Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £24.00 - 26.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
NOW UK ISP Logo
NOW £24.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £25.99
145Mbps
Gift: £50 Reward Card
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £17.00
200Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £23.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Sponsored Links
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (6024)
  2. BT (3639)
  3. Politics (2720)
  4. Business (2439)
  5. Openreach (2405)
  6. Building Digital UK (2330)
  7. Mobile Broadband (2144)
  8. FTTC (2083)
  9. Statistics (1899)
  10. 4G (1814)
  11. Virgin Media (1763)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1582)
  13. Fibre Optic (1467)
  14. Wireless Internet (1462)
  15. 5G (1405)
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms  ,  Privacy and Cookie Policy  ,  Links  ,  Website Rules