Goodbye, Wireless!

I’m going to talk about a product today, and no, this post is not sponsored. This is just something I recently started using and it really worked out for me.

When we moved into our current home, I knew I wanted to setup a media center on our TV. It would incorporate Windows Media Center with the MediaBrowser plugin, an array of disks storing all of our house’s media (all legal of course!), a remote control, the NetFlix plugin, etc. The only weakness in the whole system was the network. I went through a couple of wireless card and antenna solutions, even upgrading our router to one that could do 5 ghz and dedicated that to just the Media Center.

It worked ok, but there were some downsides:

  • The wireless speed never quite lived up to what was advertised. Partly this is because of the configuration and placement of the TV/computer—5 ghz is far more directional than the standard 2.4 ghz–but I was also probably expecting too much.
  • Because of this, the disk array had to be physically plugged into the media center computer to be reliable. This increased the clutter of the living room–one more ugly box that wouldn’t fit inside the media cabinet—and made managing that storage space a pain.

I was starting to consider wiring our house for Ethernet when a friend mentioned this: the D-Link PowerLine AV 500. Power-line networking. The last I had heard about this was probably 10 years ago when it was first being introduced, and I haven’t given it a thought since. These adaptors are the epitome of ease. One of them goes into a socket near my router, with a network cable going from router to adapter. The other adapter goes next to my media center, with another connecting ethernet cable. There’s a simple software utility (or just push-button) to secure them to prevent others from leaching your Internet (if you have shared wiring).

It has made all of the difference. No more unsightly wireless antenna, the disk array has been moved upstairs to the office, and the speeds are MUCH faster than before. There is no issues whatsoever streaming high-def over this network. If you’ve got a media center that needs to be far away from your router, then this is the thing to get.

1 thought on “Goodbye, Wireless!

  1. wislam

    Good move.

    I did the same thing several years back when the wireless “g” devices started production. Wireless (particularly using the Linksys router) was always a pain, even if I was right next to the AP.

    Found out about the Homeplug alliance and haven’t looked back since.
    …Well sort-of. Wireless has matured since then, so it’s usefull for mobile devices, otherwise powerline networking for fixed devices.

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