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For the past year, I've been trying to convince my grandparents to ditch cable for internet TV, and the transition has been surprisingly difficult. After two at
by dgzl 8y ago
For the past year, I've been trying to convince my grandparents to ditch cable for internet TV, and the transition has been surprisingly difficult. After two attempts (I don't live near them), I am still not successful, however I did reduce the TV/phone/internet bundle from $250 to $200. Next time I see them, I'm coming prepared with the items that prevented me from succeeding before, and hopefully I'll be reducing them down to antennae/phone/internet.
The biggest problem I've found is that the cable company installed their cable modem on the entirely opposite side of the house from where the living room is (where the office is), and the wifi signal is too week to stream video. My general options are either a) get a repeater, or b) try setting up a second internet source from the living room cable (not sure if it's internet ready).
- radicalbyte 8y agoIs running an Ethernet cable not an option?
- scrooched_moose 8y agoUnless both rooms are on the first floor above an unfinished basement it usually isn't.
- rootw0rm 8y agopulling wire isn't rocket surgery.
- mywittyname 8y agoIt's a pain if you're going down multiple floors. But if you have an attic or basement, it's generally straight-forward.
- rb808 8y agopowerline networking is your friend.
- gjvc 8y agoYes it is and while not the fastest, it works surprisingly well. I tried a couple of units several years ago and it was a bust. Some guy locally was giving away two TP-link 1000 plugs and they worked first time and I'm now a believer. Give it a shot.
- gjvc 8y agoJust missed the edit window. https://www.tp-link.com/uk/download/TL-PA211_V1.html https://www.tp-link.com/uk/download/TL-PA211_V1.html is the device
- k3oni 8y agoThis, they have some nice ones with over 900Mbps now out pretty cheap and they work as expected.
- rasz 8y agolast time I checked the "900Mbps" topped out at 200mbit real data
- BrandoElFollito 8y agoI had the same experience but I did not expect much more from my power installation (a mixture of old and new cabling). This is still 200 Mbps, better than the Wi-Fi the device could get.
- rasz 8y agocabling is not the limiting factor, you can link them using plain cable (outside power installation) https://forum.openrov.com/t/teardown-of-a-homeplug-adapter/305/32 https://forum.openrov.com/t/teardown-of-a-homeplug-adapter/3... 200Mbps is their real PHY speed, 900Mbps is just a Scam
- BrandoElFollito 8y ago
- drwagner 8y agoYou can also try a MoCA adapter. I've three Motorola 2.0 MoCA devices and they work great; much better speeds than WiFi albeit not as fast as Ethernet (but also without having to run Cat6 throughout the house).
- dgzl 8y agoI looked into this, but I don't understand what is different between this anda regular modem/router?
- mcpherrinm 8y agoMoca is like short range, high speed cable LAN. My parents house is wired for cable TV but not Ethernet. So the modem is in the basement, and a pair of moca adapters get internet up to the 2nd floor bedroom where there's a wireless access point.
- Serow225 8y agoMOCA 2.0 via a Motorola adapter works great for me.
- cstejerean 8y agoGet a mesh wifi solution like Google WiFi, and spread the other access points around. Much easier than the alternatives and you'll have fast internet throughout the whole house so you can stream video in any room.
- wil421 8y agoMesh WiFi is costly and probably hard to maintain for elderly people. A cheap Ethernet cord would fix the problem. Move the router closer to the office.
- tomasz207 8y agoI've set my parents up with a Fire Stick with Netflix, Sling, Prime, etc.. But the internet in their area isn't that good and the streams cut out frequently. I live 3 hours away and have FIOS, so I typically don't run into issues on my end and can't easily drop by to troubleshoot. It's a hard sell when they are used to always being able to turn on the TV and have something to watch without the frustrations of network issues.