News HomePlug announces AV2 standard

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/10/18/homeplug-announces-av2-standard/1

 

LOL just remember that it all depends on the quality of your home wiring. Yes i'm looking at you +50 year old houses with hair think cabling.

 

I'm still using an old homeplug socket in the one room I've not installed CA5e cable into yet, and it works adequately for everything except high def video streaming, where it starts to really struggle on fast moving content.

We had to have our house rewired as we only had a single wire, as the return leg forming the loop had been broken by an over zealous DIY enthuiast-prior-owner who fitted countless junction boxes. The outbound leg eventually failed and we lost power, and had to call in the sparky. The degraded wire was replaced, the wiring brought up to scratch and the loop restored. The effect on the performance of our homeplug network? it became negligibly better.

This, if it lives up to the promise, would be a great product. Far more secure than wireless and no problems with signal drop.

Great concept but lets see how it's implemented...

 

So what actually are the speeds?

 

We have a pair of PLT units supplied with the BT Vision box at home, probably Comtrend brand. I can hear these things over unshielded audio lines as high pitched squeals when both idling and transmitting data.

 

With these things, how do you stop the signal going down the mains supply to your house and into your neighbours house? Can you password protect the network like wifi?

 

You can protect your signal with a password exactly as wifi.

 

I use Devolo set and the best thing is you can have one end a wireless access point. So when ever I want wlan i just pop the sucker in where I need it, even in the back garden.

 

I had the Comtrend suckers that came with Bt Vision too, as did my father. Both sets developed the same problem, his almost straight away and mine after a couple of years - they just couldn't maintain a stable connection. I think it may have been an overheating problem as they'd work fine from a cold start for about 15 minutes and then go screwy. It's annoying, I have to share my media off my Mac Mini via wifi now :/

 

I believe the signal gets filtered out by circuit breakers (which are ultimately just inductors anyway so will block high frequency AC) so the signal won't escape your house. In fact the signal won't even get to other parts of your house if you have them on different CBs (as is standard for modern houses).

 

Were they the white ones? Call BT support. We had the original ones which died a few weeks ago. The BT guy told us to unplug them immediately and that they would send out new ones.

 

A further possible issue with BT comtrend powerline adapters

Comtrend BT safety notice

 

I picked up a pair of those CommTrend adapaters from my Mum when she didnt want her BT Vision box any more. Been using them to stream HD content to my PS3 as the wireless wasnt good enough as the PS3 is in a AV Cabinetm but last night one of them stopped working!

Took one apart and something had burnt out causing the PCB to blacken and that awful smell of melt electricals. Now in the market for some new ones

 

These things are a god send for rented accomodation. I've been using 200Mbps and get a transfer speed of 6Mb/s, I believe this new standard takes it up to 1000Mbps but I think transfer speeds are around 50% of the theoretical maximum (~125Mb/s).

 

Thanks for the heads-up, looking into that now

 

other problems caused by this system may be mains born Emc issues

 

unshielded wires = huge transmitting ariel...

 

Logitech speakers had this problem -.-