@ toddincharlotte
I agree with what my fellow forum members said above, and when I responded last night, I only had time to give you the “short answer”, AND I wanted to check out in the morning, the efficacy of a new Trendnet TPL-402E2K 500mbps Powerline AV adapter Kit w/Bonus Outlet. I have had it for a couple of months sitting sealed in the box, unused. So, thanks for nudging me to check the darn things out.
I don’t actually need it – I have gigabit wired ethernet throughout the house that came pre-wired for ethernet. I have it because I had bought the 200mbps version for my daughter; I tested it out, it worked (not so well for streaming video, but it did work in many instances) so when I knew it worked, I gave it to her. Later on, when I saw Newegg had the 500mbps kit on sale, I bought it.
OK so first of all, the new units (there are 2 in the box) are not DOA; first test passed! (Whew, I was past the return period.) Secondly, they do work a bit better than the 200mbps model.
Now, for the “real world” test results just completed. (BTW, right now I am connected to them while writing this message).
1. How good is the connection?
It depends upon the outlet the receiver unit is plugged into. The house wiring and it’s multi-circuitry affect the quality of the connection. The “best” (but impractical connection is to connect one unit into the other unit – or second wall outlet) to totally eliminate house wiring for testing purposes. The speed of my connection was super – same as plugging into my ethernet. Using speedtest.net I got over 60-70mbps either way. I changed to another outlet in the same room and results are same. I tried two adjacent rooms and in one, the speed reduced to 35mbps, and in the other it was down to 11mbps. As the saying goes, “Your results will vary”.
2. How well did they stream videos from the WDTV’s drive?
They did not do so well except at the best connection. Regular DVD ISO files streamed/played just fine to the PC. MKV files made from blu-ray discs had stutter and pausing, so unuseable. These same MKV files streamed well when I reconnected the PC to the router’s ethernet.
Bottom line: Anyone who wants to stream 1080p videos of high quality bit rates should use wired ethernet, or at the least, a very high quality wireless signal from a modern N router of gigabit speed, preferably at the 5Ghz connection, although a good 2.4Ghz signal works ok, too. This is how we successfully stream wirelessly to the iPads, iPhones and Kindles in our house. Powerline AV Adapters are best reserved for a last resort situation.
OK, that covers it, unless I forgot to mention something. I am going to disconnect from these plugs and reconnect back to my router’s ethernet directly; soon as I hit send for this message!
