Aaron Ledger
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Aaron Ledger
I only have experience with the NetGear MoCA bridges. Take a look at the attached and you can see their performance during a file transfer. Unfortunately, I believe the NetGear MoCA products are discontinued. In theory, all MoCA bridges should be interoperable. I suggest getting MoCA v1.1 bridges due to their increased performance.
Just place MoCA bridges wherever you have coax and want Ethernet. You need a minimum of two. They will simply use the coax wiring to extend your Ethernet network.
One thing to understand about MoCA products is that they typically operate in the frequency range over 1GHz. Some, like my NetGear MoCA bridges can operate down to 850MHz. Most cable companies transmit their programming at 800MHz and below. Some may be using transmissions above 800MHz for VOD services. The MoCA products available should be “plug and play”, figure this out and configure themselves automatically.
That’s all well and good, but there are a some potential pitfalls that can easily be avoided. Note, you may not have any of these issues, I just want to bring them up in case you do or anyone else does. Cable installers and technicians also are not that aware of these issues because MoCA is so new.
First, some cable equipment (cable modems, STB, etc) may not perform optimally in the presence of a MoCA bridge because the nature of MoCA is to send a powerful signal. A lot of RF front-ends were not designed for this and thus, may not perform as well as they could.
Second, at least with my NetGear MoCA bridges (maybe this is why they discontinued…), they broadcast some spurious emissions intermittently in the CATV band (less than 800MHz). This ends up causing additional noise that can potentially be strong enough to disrupt the CATV brodcast causing video and audio issues to present.
Third, MoCA signals above 1GHz are typically filtered out by signal amplifiers (not splitters).
Fourth, if your neighbor has MoCA, you can potentially join their network and vice-versa.
The solution I advise for avoiding problems 1, 2 and 3 is to purchase a diplexer (such as this) for each MoCA product and place the “SAT” side on the MoCA product. The “VHF/UHF” side should go to your normal Cable products. “IN/OUT” goes to the wall. What this will do is separate the MoCA signal from the CATV signal so they do not interfere with each other. The filtering frequencies of the particular product I linked is between 5 – 806MHz on the “VHF/UHF” side and 950MHz+ on the “SAT” side. Ideally, it would be 1GHz and lower on one port and 1GHz and higher on the other for CATV and MoCA co-existence. All signal amplifiers should be behind the “VHF/UHF” port on the diplexer, otherwise, they are likely to filter out the MoCA signal.
Note: if your cable company happens to utilize frequencies above 800MHz (and you utilize the stuff that uses those frequencies), you may need to place that equipment in front of the diplexer. For example, a two-way splitter that places CATV equipment using above 800MHz on one port and the “IN/OUT” of the diplexer on the other port. For bonus points, you can place a 1GHz RF filter (AKA POE filter) on any cable equipment outside of the diplexer filtering.
Finally, to avoid issue 4, you should make sure to select MoCA v1.1 bridges that can be configured to encrypt the transmissions. For additional security, isolation and bonus points, you can add a 1GHz filter at the POE (Point of Entry of the Cable service to your home).
Again, these issues I have raised may not be valid for you or the majority of users, but if they do present themselves, they can be rectified using the methods I described.
I do not wholeheartedly recommend the NetGear MoCA bridges for the RF issue that I identified with mine. In my case, I rectified my issues with the diplexer solution and all is well. Perhaps I simply have a faulty set of units.
I recommend that you proceed with MoCA seeing as it is the only reliable alternative to Ethernet that I have found that can sustain the types of bandwidth required for Blu-ray quality video.
Right. Sorry for the misinformation. I was thinking of the non-T i3 variants. I should have brought that up considering I have two i3-2100t myself!
It won’t be cheap, but the i7-3770T is only 45W TDP w/HD4000 and there’s also the i7-3770S which is 65W TDP. Pretty amazing parts for TDP considering they match i3 SNB and beat i3 Clarkdale though they are more expensive.
You are correct. The feature was added to the driver package only about a year ago. If you re-install your tuners on a fresh system, you should have no problem adding your tuners when just using the current driver package.
[quote=osburnfamily]
If you have 2 Cetons (8 tuners) installed on a single MediaCenter, you would need TunerSalad.
[/quote]
Actually, when using Ceton products, the tuner allowance is set to 30 in WMC and up to 12 are officially supported by Ceton. There is not a requirement for any additional software when adding a 2nd (or 3rd) InfiniTV 4.
Your best bet is to convert files to dvrms. You can automate the process with DVRMSToolbox if it would help. Also, have you considered purchasing a Win7 upgrade license?
Yes.
You definitely get more raw performance/dollar by stepping up to the $100 – $150 range, it’s just that it’s wasted for many HTPC-only applictions.
Any reason you are looking into cards in the $100 range? If all you need is WMC and Blu-ray playback with a commercial software player then the 6570 or GT 430 will be plenty adequate for 1080p display. You’ll save some money too both in terms of initial purchase and power use. For HTPC, I only recommend considering the more powerful cards for gaming, display resolution larger than 1080p, compute performance for transcoding/other application or a higher-end NVIDIA card for certain types of MadVR usage.
Probably not. 7xxx brings support for 4096×2160 @ 24p which is in HDMI 1.4a spec, but I am assuming you don’t have a display or content for that.
Another consideration is MadVR renderer, if you plan to use. You’ll be better off with NVIDIA on that front. If you can wait, maybe see what NVIDIA rolls out in the 6xx series for the lower end. The GT 430 is a pretty good card for MadVR and 1080p/24 content and display.
Are you building from scratch or just looking for a GPU upgrade? For just a GPU upgrade, you could start by looking at NVidia GT 430 or AMD 6570.
Regarding HomePlug AV, this solution is also prone to interference. I have been testing an item (review forthcoming) and the technology is unfortunately subject to problems when you begin dealing with bandwidth requirements over ~10 mbps. Like wireless, it can potentially be viable in the correct environment. With Powerline, you can have problems especially if you have a plasma TV. You also need to worry about other possible offenders (hair dryers, large appliances, etc.). With HomePlug, you must also be sure to have a free outlet to plug the equipment into as surge protectors will also decimate performance.
I advise extreme caution when considering wireless for video applications, particularly HDTV. It can often be problematic especially if there are other sources of interference and/or attenuation (barriers such as walls, cabinets, etc).
A reliable alternative worthy of consideration is MoCA. MoCA is a wired solution that utilizes coaxial cable wiring and can simultaneously operate with cable TV without creating an issue. I have been using a couple of NetGear MoCA bridges which easily transport Blu-ray video bitrates. The bridge will convert between the MoCA network and an Ethernet network.
No problem. There is an option in that dialog to not ask you again for permission, IIRC. I don’t get the prompt and I know that I did something to disable the prompt.
I just drop the shortcut to Standby Helper into Windows Start Menu “Startup” folder.
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