Just helped a mate choose one of these however his router is in a different room to the satellite box so will have to go wireless . Which USB adaptor is recommended for this and are they readily available ?

Have you thought about Home Plugs as another option?

Not very technical have heard of them but never used them . Are they cheap and how many would I need and is setting them up easy ?

You need two, setting up couldn't be simpler. Plug one in by your hdr and connect it to the box lan port with supplied (usually) patch lead.

Plug the other in by your router and connect to a spare socket on the router.

That's it.

I had a BT box from years ago, with a couple of these plugs that carry signal over the mains. My daughter has a panasonic freeview, which uses Internet for players and other on-line services, I literally plugged one end to the panasonic box, the other to my BT box and uereka, worked without having to do anything.

Do the latest homeplugs now work OK when plugged into things like extension leads? ISTR that that was bugbear when they first surfaced. There were also issues as I recall if your house wiring had radial spurs rather than a ring main.


Clem

None will work through a extention lead with built in surge protection.

They will work but more slowly if forced to signal through a consumer unit.

Even with ring mains most properties have two, so it's entirely possible they will finish up connected to different rings.

Just to add that homeplugs are in use in many different countries - Not many countries have ring mains - Most are radial.

Never had any problems with ring-to-ring, extension leads, coiled up extension leads, etc. The only failure was with a Homeplug inserted into one of a twin socket where the the other half has a surge protector feeding the PC and peripherals and another twin socket backing onto it through the wall feeding all my AV gear. I moved the Homeplug to a socket 8 feet away with a longer CAT5 cable and all was well. They won't go through the meter (although I suspect that they may well work through the new digital meters). Cheapest source that I've found is Solwise.

When I spoke to the Humax guy at IBC in September he said that you can purchase a Humax WiFi dongle (available on their website for £ 29 - lot cheaper than a Homeplug) but that reception wasn't restricted to their own dongle and therefore "in theory" any such dongle should work. They had tested loads of different brands but couldn't guarantee that every type would work. Why not give them a ring?

Others would work as long as the box had the driver, so as long as it used the same chip they should (in theory) work!

Homeplugs very reasonable here:

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Netwo...k+Accessories/

Or you can get something like a wireless adapter, along with a cheap router - and connect more than just the PVR up.

I tried two seperate pairs of these over to Christmas/New Year break and had to give up on them and get a refund! Thay would not 'pair' even when plugged into adjacent or seperate sockets in the same room/ring main.