Got some old 85Mbps powerline adapters running through my house and now I've started using them to transfer media I think they are starting to let me down. I also use them for hard wire internet to the PS3 and gaming PC (internet speed is poor in my area with a range of 1.5 – 2meg)
Question is will an upgrade to 200Mbps powerlines which are now at good price be enough to do the job or do I need to go faster say 500?

Thoughts please

Cheers
Rich

I've got powerline AV ones (200mb/s rated) and they're fast enough for most things, although obviously you can't stream a high bandwidth HD movie over them. From what I've heard the actual transfer rate really falls off as the claimed transfer rate improves. The '500Mb/s' ones get between 250 and 300mb/s and the '1Gb' claimed ones get... around 300mb/s...

Course if you've got new and perfectly installed wiring, you might do better. Any of the newer standards will certainly do better than the stuff you've got, but I wouldn't pay much more for the 500mb/s's over the 200mb/s ones and I wouldn't bother with the 1Gb/s ones at all.

Jon

I thought the speed drop was because they 'rate' them at full duplex speed, so the most on the 1Mb would be 512Mb before any other considerations

I currently use old 85Mbp Solwise (Clicky) their faster Systems are getting expensive so as an alternative I was looking at -

Ebuyer - Extra Value 200Mbps Pass-through Powerline Adapter Twin Pack (I like the pass through idea)

or

Ebuyer - Extra Value 200Mbps Pass-through Powerline Adapter Twin Pack

Or fast

Ebuyer - Extra Value 1000Mbps Powerline Adapter Twin Pack

Solwise offer better future proofing as you never know if you can get hold of the Ebuyer ones in a year or two or whether they are compatible with other units like the three I list.

Buy some cat5 cable. Power-line adapters are evil.

Explain please jj?

I believe JJ is referring to the reports that powerline stuff gives off a lot of radio-frequency interference.

Jon

Mains cabling is not designed for high speed data at frequencies of many MHz - it's designed for mains power at a frequency of 50Hz. If you send high frequencies through it, they radiate for miles in every direction using your house wiring as one huge aerial.

This radiation is at a vastly higher level than that produced by wireless routers, and can cause havoc with amateur radio amongst other things. I've posted about this before: viewtopic.php?f=26&t=4463

If anyone complains about the interference, you'll have to switch them off. They're illegal to operate if they're causing a nuisance.

Cat5 on the other hand is capable of 1gig data transfers (which HomePlug would probably advertise as up-to 5gig) with absolute consistency and minimal EMI pollution.

The main reason I use powerlines is the location of my hub on the ground floor and my PS3 and PC are on the 3rd floor, dont really fancy trying to hide new cabling up two floors but I understand your point jj.