Just wondering really, as I was talking to an Openreach engineer earlier on who was looking at my Sky Fibre installation and he seemed to be slightly bemused that I was hard wired with all my gadgets.

He said he always had his sky box on wifi.

My router is no more than a couple of feet away from my sky box, as well as my nas drive and android media centre so i've got no real reason not to use wifi other than force of habit.

So do you use WiFi or are you plugged in ? And am I weird for not using WiFi ?

The Sky box in my bedroom has the Wi-Fi built in but the sky box in the living room has a small black box which plugs into the back of the sky box to gives us Wi-Fi.

So do you use the box on wifi then ?. If you're using catch-up television do you download the shows over wifi ?

There is no advantage in using wifi in your situation. Some modern computers such as the MAC Book pro don't have an ethernet I/P (I think it is an add on option) so it's easier for me to use wifi for it and its printer. The same printer uses USB to an xp machine that was hard wired but is no longer on line. My smart TV is wifi, a Talktalk box is hard wired and a Humax hard wired via a power line extender. What ever is easiest, in theory hard wired is faster easier and more reliable but I doubt you would notice any difference using wifi in your circumstances.

I don't think I would. I briefly had a roku streaming stick and streamed a LOT of content from my NAS drive, both in SD and HD and didn't suffer a single issue.

I think my Android Media Box would be more useful as well as the catchup services on that only work through WiFi.

Both boxes are always connected via Wi-Fi & yes,if i want to download a programme it's all done via Wi-Fi.

The little black box for the Sky box in the living room was sent out to us free from Sky.

You will always get most reliable signal using a cable compared with WiFi depending on distance. Close up doesn't make any real difference,but WiFi can be more affected by external influence.

Stay as you are and save WiFi bandwidth for when you need it.

Only if you also wear a tinfoil hat to keep the evil rays out.

Seriously - we just had our house rewired, and I took the opportunity to lay proper Ethernet cabling around. Speeds and reliability at any moderate distance from the hub is far better; wifi speed really suffers as the signal drops, so the wifi speed cannot match what is being delivered by the Sky Fibre (right next to the cabinet, and on Pro, so we get the full 79Mb.)

My stuff is mixed, my DVR connects to my router via ethernet, my android box next to it needs to connect via wifi, as if i connect using ethernet, BBC iplayer wont work, it says im not in the right region or something, everything else is via wifi.

You're certainly not weird - you're sensible, and the OpenReach guy was an idiot

An Ethernet lead is far better than WiFi - WiFi is doing it's best to pretend to be an Ethernet lead, but can never manage it.

WiFi obviously has it's uses, but for fixed installations wired is always best.

I went to great lengths to run Ethernet cables to where my Sky box and TV are, involving floorboards up on two floors and working on four floors. I ran extra wires while I was doing as well

Surely you just need to run one long cable and use a switch? Tiz what I do. Even recording two HD internet channels and watching a third it is hardly going to break sweat.

Yeah the engineer is an idiot, I'd always trust the reliability of ethernet over Wifi in every possible situation.

Well i'm in idiot in many other things

I'm impressed with your dedication to wiring up your stuff though - i should probably do that to try and tidy up the mass of cables behind my TV!

I can see the advantages of using WiFi in certain situations though but it's good to know that hard-wiring certainly has it's place

It's very simple. If you can use a network cable then do so. If you can't then don't. If it's not convenient to use a cable then use wifi.

Wifi reliability depends on many factors - distance from hub / router, number of other wifi hotspots around, interference (microwaves)....

Do you want to come and cable in my house?

I've always worked on the principle that anything near my Router gets wired. My Tv and TiVo box are wired. I recently got Sky and initially had it wireless but then I wired it and it made a difference. Shows that took up to 15 minutes before they could start now take less than a few minutes at most.