Recently I moved our Windows Media Center into a nice cool cupboard in the office, with the Xbox 360 in the living room taking over as an extender for TV/Media duties. For the most part this works very well but had one problem – our wireless network wasn’t fast enough to reliably stream HDTV.
We have a wireless bridge (two routers connected wirelessly with physical clients) between the office and living room. While Wireless-N clients can expect speeds of 70-80mbps a bridge will only see half of that. This is fine for streaming photos/music/videos/SDTV but borderline for HDTV and any interference or other wireless activity would cause the picture to breakup. Laying Ethernet isn’t an option so instead I decided to give Powerline Adapters a try.
There’s a variety of options on the market and I decided on the Netgear HDXB111 Kit
The kit comes with two adapters and setting them up is about as easy as it gets. You just plug them in and they’ll magically find each other, then you hold down on the security buttons and they’ll pair for data encryption. There’s a CD with some software to configure QoS but I didn’t bother with this.
So how’s performance? Pretty outstanding as it happens.
After plugging in the adapters and receiving the green (80-100mbps) status light I ran some benchmarks and found the average speed was around 94mbps which is just shy of the 100mbps maximum. Fantastic! At times the status light will turn orange (50-80mbps) which I assume is due to interference from something, but even here the speed stays around the 65mbps range which is way better than a wireless bridge and more than enough for HDTV.
A+
2009/02/04, 15:30
Don’t they both have to be on the same phase of you electrical circuit. I know I have to use a phase coupler to get x-10 to work on all outlets.
2009/02/06, 11:50
Hi Robert,
Not too sure what you mean here. I thought most household power was single-phase?
To get the full speed (100mbps) of the adapters they need to be on the same physical circuit. If they’re not then it’s hard to say what the performance will be – it could still be better than you would see with a wireless-G connection for example.
I’ve discovered that running my microwave creates some form of interference that causes the speed-indicator on the adaptors to turn red (< 50mbps). What’s interesting is that they still perform more than fast enough to stream 720p HDTV.
At the end of the day the problem with powerline adapters is that the results are highly variable. If you’re going to try them, find somewhere that has a good return policy
2009/02/06, 12:36
No, I believe most houses are two phase. That’s how you get 220 for your dryer and range. Look in your Circuit breaker box. There should be two large cables coming in at the top. I use several x10 controllers to turn lamps off and on. I had to install a phase coupler before I could get them all to work.
If the x10 signal were strong enough you might be able to go through the outside transformer to get from one phase to another. In fact, I seem to remember reading somewhere when powerline adapters first came out that if your outside transformer fed more than one house you could have security issues.
2009/02/06, 13:54
Interesting. Perhaps I’m just lucky then and the outlets I’m using all fall on the same phase. We’re in an apartment rather than a house so the wiring is probably a lot simpler.
2009/02/12, 08:27
I’m curious if the powerline adapter must be plugged into a wall socket or can it be plugged into a surge protector?
2009/03/06, 02:14
@Ben, no these sorts of adaptors cannot be plugged into surge protectors normally so if you’re in a high-strike area for lightning you might be better off with something else.
2009/03/14, 03:53
It may be getting late to comment on this piece, but I just purchased a set of these, and they easily outperform my wireless-G network. I can now use my XBOX 360/Media Center Extender to stream HD content without any issues. With wireless-G, this was basically impossible — at least in the room where the XBOX was located.
Phenomenal throughput, well-made and well-priced. Tiger Direct recently had a $40 off coupon for this specific model, so I was able to pick the pair up for $79.
Netgear recommends that you do not plug them into a power bar or surge protector.