I dont know if it'll be helpful but i'll give you a rundown on what i have. Like you i wanted simple but to the uninformed there is nothing simple about home networking.
I have a older highset house. Total length is 14.7m. Brick ground floor walls & FC & cladding upper. Downstairs has at one end my office/guest room. This is where my computer, printer NBN box modem etc is. The other end is a lounge/office for wife (I'm not allowed in apparently) When i was renovating a few years back i ran a cat 5 cable to this area from the NBN/Telstra box as it was originally my office/lounge/cave.
When we got NBN about a year ago & found out the joys of torrent sites looked into streaming.
So to paint the picture computer/modem etc is bottom right & main upstairs TV/Lounge is top left (so couldnt get much further away). To hard to try & run cables upstairs(without ripping sheeting off wall & house is pre 1980 so all FC is actually AC
)
I do have the Cat 5 cable to bottom left. I connected my old adsl modem & turned it into a bridge/wireless repeater (if thats what its called) So the bottom left part of the house is well serviced by the fritzbox & billion repeater wi-fi.
The issues really start to happen when trying to get wi-fi upstairs (in places)
I have a Powerline 500mbps EOP (Ethernet over Powerline) connected to my modem, which is a fritzbox 7390. The modem has dual band wi-fi, this operates on 2.4 & 5 megahertz . Fortunately (or unfortunately) being an older house the electrical wiring doesnt follow any real format & one of the power circuits services some of the power points at each end of the house. Not all though & i have upgraded & added circuits etc. So the EOP is connected into that & i run a cable from the upstairs EOP to the TV.
The EPO also operates wi-fi to extend the range as well as connected via cable to the main TV
In the bedroom upstair (upper right end) i have a PS3 which connects seemlessly to the fritzbox wi-fi (as there is only the floor/ceiling as a physical barrier it streams excellently)
I have a 3TB hard drive that i download movies, Tv & music to, which is obviously attached to my computer.
I have Universal Media Server program that runs on my PC & through the modem ect it streams wirelessly to all parts of the house.
It seems to work really well & picks up the PS3 & Sony TV(main) always. It even picks ups a samsung smart tv & we dont have one so must be neighbors
.
Now the good & bad.......
Wi-fi throught out the house is excellent for mobiles, laptops, ipads etc. I can watch downloaded movies, tv through the PS3 on the bedroom TV with no problems, however..........
The main TV upstairs can be a bit hit & miss.
Generally i find when i download 1080p movies i sometimes experience a lot of lagging, now this is the queer part as some movies (or TV) will cause no end of grief & other are no problem at all, eg had no problems with Avatar (even in 3d) but have had problems with others. So i tend to think that sometimes it is the quality of the rip of the movie.
I tend to download most movies in 720p and to be perfectly honest dont notice much (if any)difference, (& if anyone is pirating movies, who ya gonna complain too
) again i've had movies that have $hit sound quality & good Vid, so really believe its more to do with download.
The other strange part is that i have watched a movie/series one day & gone to watch with swmbo & have all sorts of problems, so thats the streaming issues.
One of the other things i found out is that wireless can be really finicky & any interference can cause problems when streaming. I found this out when connecting a new wireless keyboard & mouse & they all operate in a 2.4gightz range.
My opinion of the EOP... well when it works(which it does most of the time) it works well. I imagine in a newer house with a more direct route through the power circuit (mine goes back to switchboard before going to other end of house) then it would operate really well. I might add that this is my second one of these as the first $hit itself, but it was replaced under warranty & because my original was older I got the newer version, so this one is a lot faster & more stable than the previous one.
If you have hearing like an orchestra conductor then i suspect wireless just wont cut it, but again more likely to be the download & hey a quality sound system could make rap sound like rock
.
Its a bit of a long winded post and like Gunsrunner says
It is a labor of love to have everything working perfectly, or just put up with a substandard network.
When it works, its awesome!(most of the time) When it doesn't work it's --------.
Short of cabling i dont know if there's any real 100% wi-fi systems & if i was building would have multiple sockets throughout the whole house cos who knows what the future holds.
I might also say i do wonder though about all the wireless stuff in houses & what its doing to our brains. The increase in brain tumors cant be due to better detection.
Whilst not really offering any specific advice i hope this helps you to see that there are simple solutions (and man it had to be simple for me
) & in most cases suspect it comes back to budget
Moggy
