House Build - HD Anywhwre

[Too Late]

Hi all
I am doing a large house refurb and the electrician mentioned to me about using HDanywhere to share and distribute HD outputs throughout the house.

Originally I thought this was a nice idea but after sleeping on it, so much is streamed these days.

The only thing I can think about is the CCTV feed being shared to all TVs. That's it.

Does anyone use HDanywhere?

Cheers

[geeks]

Not sure I would bother, you would be better off having a couple of CAT6 drops into each room to be honest, gives you far more flexibility.

[M1AGM]

Yes, pretty pointless, just put in ethernet instead for where you want your Tvs etc. If on Sky you can use the mini boxes on the wired network which makes them more stable.

[PhilboSE]

Yup. The cheap, future-proofed way is simply to run cat 5e to any tv point and then run a streaming device plugged into each display if it doesn’t have smart features that are any good.

[Condi]

Even running Cat5E is unnecessary, powerline adaptors are really good and despite what some people say will happily work across circuits in the house.

The only place I have a dedicated Cat5E cable is from the house to the garage (bottom of the garden), most other internet connected things are wired via powerline adapters and I have no issues. Even the Cat5E cable is connected to a network switch in the house which is itself plugged into a powerline adaptor.

[RizzoTheRat]

I've never managed more than 20-30 Mb/s over powerline, whereas Cat5e will do 1 Gb over the kinds of lengths you'd have in a house. If you're doing a refurb anyway it's a no brainier to at least put in ethernet cables to locations where you'd want wifi access points and fixed devices like TVs. However if you're putting in ethernet cable I'd got for Cat6 or higher as it's not much more but can take more power using POE (power over ethernet). You mentioned CCTV in the OP, you're going to need to get power to them so its no more hassle to get a network cable with POE to them than it is to get a mains cable to them, and you then have a 100% stable connection back to your recorder.

If you're doing a full refurb have a serious think about smart home stuff. Automated lights, curtains/blinds, extractor fans etc are great and really cheap to do these days. If you're likely to want to install anything like that in the future then you're going to want power and or network points in relevant locations.

Edited by RizzoTheRat on Tuesday 25th March 12:09

[Sheepshanks]

Condi said:

Even running Cat5E is unnecessary, powerline adaptors are really good and despite what some people say will happily work across circuits in the house.

The only place I have a dedicated Cat5E cable is from the house to the garage (bottom of the garden), most other internet connected things are wired via powerline adapters and I have no issues. Even the Cat5E cable is connected to a network switch in the house which is itself plugged into a powerline adaptor.

If you go mad with things like powerline adapters and wireless access points etc you end up with (relatively) bonkers background power usage.

[119]

Powerline adapters are indeed, garbage.

They are a poor solution, especially if a house is being completely refurbed allowing the opportunity to run cat5/6.

[geeks]

Condi said:

Even running Cat5E is unnecessary, powerline adaptors are really good and despite what some people say will happily work across circuits in the house.

The only place I have a dedicated Cat5E cable is from the house to the garage (bottom of the garden), most other internet connected things are wired via powerline adapters and I have no issues. Even the Cat5E cable is connected to a network switch in the house which is itself plugged into a powerline adaptor.

Hard disagree there, powerline adapters are handy when you can't run cables and only have a few devices to hang off them, but you would be mostly better off with mesh hubs that have ethernet ports. But as in the OPs case when doing a major refurb you would be silly not to run ethernet where you need it.

[Too Late]

Cheers chaps.
I might start a build thread.

Home automation is loxone. Looking at automating as much as possible.

I think you are all right. fourkay.co.uk do some nice ethernet hdmi switches which I might look at for the unifi protect hdmi feed across the house. This will ensure every TV will have access to view live CCTV feeds.

[GuyW]

Powerline adapters should only ever be used when there's no other alternative. Awful, awful things. Yes, even now!

If you will be running cable, ethernet. For everything. Cat6 if you're going in now, make sure it's not cheap CCA cabling (so no Amazon or Ebay specials).
You've got so much flexibility. Networking, (wired and wireless through the house), audio, video (HDMI over ethernet) security. The lot.

[Condi]

I den't get the hate for powerline adaptors, I have TP Link ones and they're great. There are about 5 at various places across the house, plugged into extension leads, with network switches, CCTV cameras, NAS drives attached, all sorts of fairly high bandwidth uses. They work across circuits, no problem, it's easy to add new ones, and while not as good as a dedicated Cat6 cable run, they're 90% as good for 10% of the price, and when I move they can move too.

[RizzoTheRat]

Too Late said:

I think you are all right. fourkay.co.uk do some nice ethernet hdmi switches which I might look at for the unifi protect hdmi feed across the house. This will ensure every TV will have access to view live CCTV feeds.

If you're using Unifi Protect why not keep it within the ecosystem and use thier Viewport to stream to a TV? (disclaimer, I've never used one so no idea if it's any good). You also definitely need to be running ethernet cables everywhere as the Unifi cameras are all POE

[geeks]

Condi said:

I den't get the hate for powerline adaptors, I have TP Link ones and they're great. There are about 5 at various places across the house, plugged into extension leads, with network switches, CCTV cameras, NAS drives attached, all sorts of fairly high bandwidth uses. They work across circuits, no problem, it's easy to add new ones, and while not as good as a dedicated Cat6 cable run, they're 90% as good for 10% of the price, and when I move they can move too.

Its not hate (from me at least) it's just the right tool for the right job, on a big refurb Cat6 is the better and right tool for the job.

I used to use powerline adapters, they were ok, not bad, not great but ok. I swapped them out for TP Link Deco mesh units and they were much, much better. They also came with me when I moved and Wi-Fi is generally more useful to pump around the house than anything else.

[Xera]

To respond to the OP's question, I've got HD Anywhere in the house and I quite like it.

I admit that I didn't buy it myself and it came with the house (but it is expensive). I've connected my Sky/Virgin Media box, CCTV, Firestick and DVD player.

It allows me to control all of it centrally. The only drawback I can think of is that if 2 people want to watch Sky, one person decides what to watch for everyone - i.e. unless you have multiple Sky boxes, you all watch the same thing. If you're going to have multiple boxes, then I agree the HD Anywhere isn't necessary.

It works for us as we (a) don't have many TVs in the house and (b) tend to really watch on one at a time except when my dad visits and wants to watch something else / sports in another room. For streaming, it's easy to get multiple firesticks and bung them in the HD Anywhere.

I like it because my house had it. Would I buy it when doing a new house - I don't know, depends on what I plan to watch and how many people will watch TV at the same time. It's important to understand the HD Anywhere limitations above.

[PhilboSE]

My house had a distribution system when I bought it, pretty quickly I decided to pull it out and use local devices instead. Far better.

As pretty much everyone has said, power line is only a solution when you don’t have the infrastructure in place. It has limited max bandwidth and can bog down with contention under concurrent usage. If you can, just stick Cat 5e/6 in place.

[P675]

Powerline causes a huge amount of interference on your network. I was using 4 of them before I put wires and proper wireless points in. Did the job but was actually slowing things down quite a bit.

[Gary C]

Condi said:

Even running Cat5E is unnecessary, powerline adaptors are really good and despite what some people say will happily work across circuits in the house.

The only place I have a dedicated Cat5E cable is from the house to the garage (bottom of the garden), most other internet connected things are wired via powerline adapters and I have no issues. Even the Cat5E cable is connected to a network switch in the house which is itself plugged into a powerline adaptor.

I disagree

Had nothing but pain from powerline and have run cat6 through our house with a massive improvement.

It wasn't that the powerlines were slow, it was more the slight lag before any transfer would commence. On large file transfers it wasn't an issue but for frequent small transfers and online games, they were crap.

[White-Noise]

My microwave makes the powerline adapters very unhappy. But they can serve a purpose.

[Baldchap]

RizzoTheRat said:

Too Late said:

I think you are all right. fourkay.co.uk do some nice ethernet hdmi switches which I might look at for the unifi protect hdmi feed across the house. This will ensure every TV will have access to view live CCTV feeds.

If you're using Unifi Protect why not keep it within the ecosystem and use thier Viewport to stream to a TV? (disclaimer, I've never used one so no idea if it's any good). You also definitely need to be running ethernet cables everywhere as the Unifi cameras are all POE

Viewports are good and allow some good customised views per device etc, however most modern TVs will support the Unifi Protect app directly on the TV if you're ok with a single default view.