Rarely do we get a new, non-TiVo product that we consider to be worthy of a litany of superlatives. The new HomePlug adapters we just received are definitely amazing, fantastic and all of that.
What is this thing? Basically, these adapters enable you to network two rooms in your house without wires and without a wireless adapter. These adapters use your existing electrical lines to connect the two rooms, and get this: They are plug-and-play. They work as though you have strung a long cable from one room to another, but instead of using a long cable, you are using the same wires that carry your electricity.
To be honest, the HomePlug technology has been around for a bit, but these adapters are incredibly fast compared to the earlier products. The new adapters are a turbo-fast 85Mbps, while the older generation is a mere 14Mbps. This may not mean much, but when you’re streaming audio and video from TiVo to TiVo, or if you are trying to move content from your TiVo to a PC (or back), speed is everything.
For more info about these amazing adapters, see here.
One reply on “HomePlug 85Mbps Adapters Now Available”
These new adapters might be faster than the previous generation, but data throughput won’t be any higher for these two reasons. First, if the TiVo has a USB connection, it is USB 1.1, which is limited to 12Mbps. Second, even if your network adapters and router support Fast Ethernet at 100Mbps, the TiVo negotiates a standard Ethernet connection speed of 10Mbps. Also, the rated speeds are for full duplex operation, with data flowing in both directions at the same time. When transferring a file to the PC, it will go across at half the full duplex rate, or 5Mbps. Lastly, these are absolute design maximums, and real-world throughput will always be less. You can verify the numbers yourself using the performance measurement tools in the WinXP Task Manager.