# Hooking up Mini with Powerline internet connection



## moon_tower (Feb 2, 2008)

I'm wondering if y'all can help me. Here is the situation.

Just bought a mini. I also have a Roamio Plus.
Both are hooked to the internet through an internet cable to a powerline adapter. The powerline is working fine. Both have connected to Tivo Service successfully. When I go through guided set up it goes great until I get to choose the Tivo to connect the mini to. It shows my Roamio, but it is greyed out with a "no" sign next to it. I've tried power off resets on both boxes and had both connect to Tivo afterward, both success.

I called Tivo and the rep said that it might be a bug with the Roamio software. Before I send my Mini back to them for a refund, any ideas?


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

moon_tower said:


> I'm wondering if y'all can help me. Here is the situation.
> 
> Just bought a mini. I also have a Roamio Plus.
> Both are hooked to the internet through an internet cable to a powerline adapter. The powerline is working fine. Both have connected to Tivo Service successfully. When I go through guided set up it goes great until I get to choose the Tivo to connect the mini to. It shows my Roamio, but it is greyed out with a "no" sign next to it. I've tried power off resets on both boxes and had both connect to Tivo afterward, both success.
> ...


For some reason it takes a few days for the Mini to see a new TiVo, I installed a new Roamio to my system that already had a Mini paired to a TP4, the Mini could play programs from the new Roamio within a day but if I wanted the new Roamio to be the host for the Mini that new Roamio + was greyed out for about 5 days, I may have reduced that time be forcing more call home connections. Others have seen this problem, see this Thread http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=502049


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## moon_tower (Feb 2, 2008)

Thank you for the response. The Roamio is a few months old though.

I decided to go ahead and hook up my mini via MoCa. I wasn't going to fool with MoCa since I already had the powerline connection, and it took some doing to get coax cable access to the mini. As soon as I fired up the mini in this configuration, it saw the Roamio.

If anyone has any information on why the powerline didn't work, I'd be glad to hear it. I figured it would be the same as two TiVos hardwired to ethernet.


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## lessd (Jan 23, 2005)

moon_tower said:


> Thank you for the response. The Roamio is a few months old though.
> 
> I decided to go ahead and hook up my mini via MoCa. I wasn't going to fool with MoCa since I already had the powerline connection, and it took some doing to get coax cable access to the mini. As soon as I fired up the mini in this configuration, it saw the Roamio.
> 
> If anyone has any information on why the powerline didn't work, I'd be glad to hear it. I figured it would be the same as two TiVos hardwired to ethernet.


I going to make a guess that the problem is about the ping test TiVo is doing before a stream can take place between the Mini and or two Roamios, I think this is to prevent using a VPN network (or something like that) to put another Mini or Roamio in another home. See Thread http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=9946595#post9946595


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## brlf (Dec 17, 2004)

I'm using the Powerline connection and it works fine. I was using a Peerless HD Flow to stream my Series 3, but was able to remove all of that after upgrading to a Roamio and Mini. Love not having any cables and the picture is 1080i instead of the 720 I was getting.

I also had the initial setup issues, but after resetting the boxes and connecting to the TiVo service multiple times I got it within 2 hours.


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## Tom Pich (Jan 29, 2013)

Powerline is hit and miss as far as having enough throughput to stream in my experience. It'll work for some and not for others. I had a powerline setup that worked great for getting an internet connection to all my devices and for streaming Netflix. It wasn't fast enough for streaming between my TiVo Premieres. I got stutters and dropped connections. I also didn't like the fact that having certain electrical appliances turned on would slow the powerline connection. For instance, having my TV on would slow the connection from 78mbps to 52mbps.

I've since ran ethernet to the two locations where I needed it and will use MOCA when I expand with TiVo Minis. It's great that powerline has worked for you though.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

78mbps? WOW. The best I've gotten with AV500 gear was like 40mbps in my apartment, now I'm lucky to get 20mbps in a house.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

Bigg said:


> 78mbps? WOW. The best I've gotten with AV500 gear was like 40mbps in my apartment, now I'm lucky to get 20mbps in a house.


i get 70+ Mb/s on both my 500 and 600 units in all but one location, that location only gets 50 Mb/s (of course that's where I have the PC)


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

dianebrat said:


> i get 70+ Mb/s on both my 500 and 600 units in all but one location, that location only gets 50 Mb/s (of course that's where I have the PC)


That's really good. Wish I got those speeds! I might have to bridge N routers or something, as access to my HTPC is horrendously slow for large file transfers.


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## hazelnus111 (Feb 4, 2013)

I have been using the Actiontech 500Mbps Powerline ethernet Homeplug AV2 adapters (PWR511K01) for over a year now. I currently have a Premiere, Roamio Basic, and Tivo Stream. The performance and speed of the Actiontech has been good. I was never able to easily measure throughput, but with kmttg downloads, I would get about 40-50 Mbps.

I decided to try out ZyXel's Homeplug AV2, which based upon reviews seemed to have faster speeds and added a Gigabit ethernet port (but didn't expect it to do much overall for my speed above 100Mbps, given the Ethernet ports on the Premiere and Roamio Basic) I got this product and plugged it in to the same places as my previous Actiontech. The ZyXel utility (I downloaded v7.0 free from their website; ftp://ftp2.zyxel.com/PLA5215/software/PLA5215_7.0.0.zip), showed 90-115 Mbps speeds up and down. However, when I plugged the Actiontech's back in, I got 90-101 Mbps speeds. Not much difference. (I was pleasantly surprised to see that the free ZyXel utility could measure my Actiontech adapters speeds.)

The big problem that I ran into with the ZyXel is that, unlike my Actiontech devices, it would drop the connection while I was streaming with Streambaby or transferring a file from my NAS with PyTivo. So, I returned the ZyXel but feel that all was not lost as the ZyXel utility is now helping me find the best plug combinations for internet speed with my Actiontech adapters.

At this point, though, I am just getting a 50' white Cat 6 cable and connecting my two Gigabit switches (one upstairs and one downstairs) and will just make sure that I have my speed consistently maximized. I may consider MOCA 2.0 once the devices come out if they have good performance reviews.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

hazelnus111 said:


> I have been using the Actiontech 500Mbps Powerline ethernet Homeplug AV2 adapters (PWR511K01) for over a year now. I currently have a Premiere, Roamio Basic, and Tivo Stream. The performance and speed of the Actiontech has been good. I was never able to easily measure throughput, but with kmttg downloads, I would get about 40-50 Mbps.
> 
> I decided to try out ZyXel's Homeplug AV2, which based upon reviews seemed to have faster speeds and added a Gigabit ethernet port (but didn't expect it to do much overall for my speed above 100Mbps, given the Ethernet ports on the Premiere and Roamio Basic) I got this product and plugged it in to the same places as my previous Actiontech. The ZyXel utility (I downloaded v7.0 free from their website; ftp://ftp2.zyxel.com/PLA5215/software/PLA5215_7.0.0.zip), showed 90-115 Mbps speeds up and down. However, when I plugged the Actiontech's back in, I got 90-101 Mbps speeds. Not much difference. (I was pleasantly surprised to see that the free ZyXel utility could measure my Actiontech adapters speeds.)
> 
> ...


I typically get around 15mbps, although I have seen them above 40mbps. They seem very random, and that's on a relatively small circuit breaker panel from 1999. I couldn't imagine them on older wiring!

If I was serious about it, I would do bridged AC routers or MoCA, but I'll probably only live here for another year, so the transfer rate isn't a big deal. I'm hoping at some point to move, buy a house, and then I'll be able to wire CAT-6 to every room and have full gigabit to TiVo, NAS, etc, with MoCA just for the minis and wireless just for mobile devices.

MoCA 2.0 is very promising, if they actually ever release it. The bandwidth potential on coax is definitely there.


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