Networking your Digital Home, a new option

So with the release of Windows 7 on horizon and it’s new features such as Play to, homegroup, and even Media Center extenders (what’s left of them anyway) good network connectivity between all the machines in your home is just one of the must haves in my opinion.  Anyone that has read my posts on thegreenbutton.com’s forums knows I’m not a big fan of wireless for extender usage or media streaming in general.  For those that, in the past, had no other option as getting cat-5 to some locations just wasn’t possible there’s a new to consumers technology finally hitting the shelves, MoCA (Multimedia over Coax Alliance) which has Coax to Ethernet bridges.

The first devices available are from Netgear, the MCA1001 coax to Ethernet bridge.  It’s being sold in a pack of 2 for around $189 US.  I picked up two kits a couple weeks ago to test them out.  I had my Media Center and Bed Room Extender hardwired, but not in the ideal way, I had drilled some holes through walls, ran it along baseboards, etc.. It worked and you really couldn’t see that the cables were there as I colored matched them to my walls but my 2 year found them and he loves to pull on them. : )  So back to MoCA, I installed one device in my office which is where my servers (homeserver, domain controllers etc..) and where the Internet router is located.  The next device that got plugged into the switch in my living room where my Media Center, Xbox 360, DNLA TV, and 2 HD Homeruns are located.  2 things I found out while getting this up and running.  The MoCA devices do not work if they are downstream from a drop amp, so I had to rewire somethings to get them hooked up to the cable coming from the wall (I have a drop amp in my office and in the living room because of the amount of tuners I have).  After that I found that my OCUR’s wouldn’t work if they were downstream from the MoCA devices, so I ended up putting in a splitter from the wall 1 leg going to the MoCA device and the other to my drop amp and everything was happy.  I tested like this for about a week before moving on, I had no issues streaming HD content from my homeserver while others used hardwired extenders.

The next step was to install a device in the bedroom for the extender there, that was a simple install just replacing the Ethernet cable from the extender and running it to the MoCA device, and hooking the MoCA device up to the coax in the bedroom.  The extender came right up and is running just as good as it was when it was usually a traditional hard wired Ethernet connection.

So anyone who is looking for a way to get good network performance that can’t use a traditional Ethernet connection I highly recommend checking out these devices.  I have in the past tried Powerline to Ethernet bridges and no luck what so ever so it’s nice to see something that just worked out of the box, with the exception of my drop amp and OCUR issues which I imagine most people wouldn’t see.