So now that I have the portable TV downstairs, [actually it’s a 55″ 1080p Rear Projection] I now need a way to get my standard and high def content on both screens easily, not to mention laptops, psp and the like. I also have a stack of music and photos that I want to share around the house as well.

As I had said in a previous post the central point to this, in my opinion,  is a shared storage pool, preferably a network attached storage device  such as the Link Station Live. Of course I also need to get this data transferred, at high speed, around the house. For me this means getting data to my two main cinema rooms, as well as into 1 bedroom and the dining / kitchen area. Quite often we will be sitting in the dining room and want to listen to some music, or I’ll be up doing a spot of work / blogging in bed and perhaps want to stream some music or check out my photo collection.

Of course wireless is one option, but I’ve found that I perhaps don’t get maximum thoughput all around the house and of course when dealing with high def content it’s all about the throughput. Then of course I could consider putting cat5 cables throughout. Actually at present I’ve got cat5 to the lounge and to my cinema room, but nowhere else. Of course, unless you have been lucky enough to find a house with cat5, or managed to do it yourself during some renovations, then it can be very messy to deploy cat5 throughout.

That is of course until you discover a little marvel called the Home Plug. The setup couldn’t be simpler. You plug one into a wall socket and connect a cat5 cable to your home broadband router. Then you take the other one and connect it to a plug in another room. Now you can take the cat5 cable from that plug to any device in that room and like magic you have a home network, over your existing electrical wiring. The model linked about can provide up to 85Mbps which should be more than enough to deliver all the high def content I need around the house. Expansion is easy as well. You simply plug another home plug device somewhere else in your house and you have network connectivity to that room as well.

So there you have it - home networking made easy.

Posted on January 29th, 2008 by nigel