Powerline adaptors

Wireless.

I was in similar situation to yours, and ended up connecting the TV to the router using the wirless connection (set it up from the Network settings on your TV. I am assuming your router has wireless, and it is enabled).

Never noticed any problem with streaming, but expect some latency, especially when you first switch the TV on.

Is the iPlayer or red button message coming from the Humax or the TV? Presumably the Humax is connected to your aerial, from where it gets live TV it can record, but any time you want to use internet services it has no connection. Perhaps you need to give your wifi password to the Humax rather than the TV? Are they showing a lack of wifi signal?

If they can't hear the wifi, is it feasible to run an ethernet cable? If so, it's cheaper, faster and more reliable than any wireless solution. Flat cables can run under carpets and across doorways easily.

If not, I would investigate wifi mesh solutions before powerline. You typically get much higher speeds from wifi than you do from powerline, which can struggle based on the exact setup of your mains wiring. Typically powerline will get you tens of Mbps while good wifi will get you hundreds of Mbps.

The wifi mesh units typically plug into spare mains sockets around the house, strategically placed to get good coverage throughout the whole house, not just for the TV.

Theo

The other option might be to extend the incoming fibre and put the router where you want it. There are suitable kits available on eBay which have a fibre with an optical connector at each end. John

Or run an ethernet cable from the router to the TV/Humax box

Slightly off the original topic but I am interested for other reasons; is it 'allowed' to do that? I have been reading up about what getting full fibre installed means (yes, behind the times, I know). I was presuming that much like the situation with an NTE5 Master socket, fiddling with anything upstream and including the ONT would be heavily frowned upon. Or am I misunderstanding?

J^n

If you can plug an S/PDIF fibre between a CD player and an AV amp, that's about the level of extending the external fibre from where it comes in to where you want it, just don't kink or bend it too tight and keep it clean.

Hi Andy - thanks; it was not so much 'whether I have the skills to do it', but the 'legalities' etc. I appreciate that one reason for the original regulations was the risk of voltage injection on the phone lines, and of course that doesn't apply to fibre.

What is the (approx) bend radius of the incoming fibre, OOI? I am wondering where an engineer might want to fit an ONT unit...

Thanks J^n

I’ve experimented with TPLink power line adaptors and, used as per the instructions, I was quite impressed. While I didn’t try video, the speeds I saw ( several hundred MBits) should support it.

One issue, which to be fair the was outside the spec of the ones I tried, they must be used directly into the wall socket. Using them that way, even between different ring mains, they worked.

I wanted to use them with one on a ring main and the other on the end of a radial circuit ( twin and earth) with an extension lead to a motorhome, then the other unit plugged into the Motorhome ( which has a consumer unit, its own wiring etc). That was WAY outside their design spec and they didn’t work.

Eldest now has them and is using them happily.

Sound advice, but is it just in this house that the idea of a "spare mains socket" only exists in theory, not practice?

The internal "wiring" is done with "bend insensitive fibre". This can be bent with a ridiculously small bend radius of a few mm without excessive attenuation. It is very hard to break optical fibre.

A couple of years ago I needed to install a temporary network connection where the only reasonable route was outside and through a couple of sliding sash windows. I chose 30m long optical fibre patch cables (not bend insensitive) because they were much thinner than ethernet cable and they survived a bend radius of perhaps

Thanks, that is useful.

J^n

You can often <ahem>obtain</ahem> EZ-bend fibre from eBay.

It's certainly what I would do. The problem is the first and last few feet. How to get the Cat 5 up the wall and through a hole in the ceiling into the loft (that part of our house is single storey) and how to get it back down from the loft to the router in the lounge - without it looking unsightly (I suppose that's what trunking is for).

Sadly in our house, almost the whole route from the front door area (if that's where they installed the fibre termination) to the lounge is along tiled floors, so there's no carpet edge where the Cat 5 can be tucked to keep it out of sight.

If you run Cat 5 from the "fibre modem" to the router, make sure it is very well labelled as being "unsafe" (not behind the router's NAT and firewall) so it doesn't ever get plugged into a network switch which would mean a WAN (unfiltered) signal was fed to/from all your PCs.

Thanks, seen - useful info to mull over...

I think that depends on the rings. If they are on a "high integrity" board with two RCDs and there are RCDs between the rings they may not work...

.. the latest boards have an RCBO a combined MCB and RCD which probably mean they no longer work between any two circuits.

Dave

Or leave the ONT where it is and connect to the router via a longer ethernet lead, so the router can be somewhere more useful.

Mots of this is arse covering.

'Don't blame us if you do unauthorised s*it' etc etc

Mots OR engineers I have come across have turned aw blind eye yo, or 'correcte' my extensions to BT standards...

In effect OR sort of told me that the responsibility ends at the external fibre point. The fibre througfh the wall and into the ONT are sort of 'my problem'

There is no especial reason that they would ever know what you did.They would test to the external point and tell you 'its your problem'. My ISP was able to tell me that 'I can see your ONT' - some sort of optical ping I suppose - when the ethernet cable fell out of the router...

in a downstairs room with an outside wall and a power point inside and near. Assuming we are not talking about a flat.

The problems I got were with unreliability., Sometimes, depending on what was going on on the mains, they simply didn't work...

I ditched them in favour of direct Ethernet where possible, and wifi where not...

When they did work I got 40-50 Mbps . Older tech as this was some years ago now