NETGEAR Home Theater Internet Connection Kit (Black)

10 Review to this product

• 

  Guardsix
  December 21st, 2010 on 5:32 am

  Rating

  I needed something to get my blu-Ray player and my DirecTV DVR on the home network. Wireless was an option but just not fast enough or stable.

  In comes Netgears Home Theatre kit. I had already tried two of their powerline devices getting a stable and complaint free connection to my Wife’s kitchen computer so I kind of knew this would work.

  And did it work beautifully! I took the four port adapter from the box, hooked two cat5e cables between my blu-Ray player and one to my DVR and plugged the box into a wall outlet…presto! I have both devices on my home network. I took the other single powerline plug and stuck it in an electric socket behind my recliner, hooked a cat5e cable between it and my laptop and again, I’m on the home network.

  Now I can download movies on demand to my DVR, watch BD-Live stuff from my blu-Ray player and surf the net on my laptop with a great, fast connection. No software involved!

  If you want something other than wireless throughout your home, this is the way to go. Easy, quick and trouble free. Buy it!
• 

  Melissa
  December 21st, 2010 on 6:28 am

  Rating

  We needed a device to hook up multiple new home theater components to the internet: A new Sony Bravia TV with integrated Internet Video, A Sony Blu Ray DVD/Home Theater System, and A DirectTV HD-DVR (for On-Demand). This kit was exactly what we needed. No wonder it was a 2009 CES Innovations Award winner! It works great, right out of the box. Simply connect an ethernet cable from each home theater component to the multi port adapter in one room, then plug in an ethernet cable from your router to the single port adapter in your computer room. The devices automatically detect each other through the home wiring, with no set up or programming whatsoever. To assure better video quality, we upgraded to the fastest DSL service and purchased cat6 ethernet cables prior to connecting this device. We have streamed Netflix movies with the integrated internet video on the TV, and have had excellent HD video quality. We’ve also tried the DirectTV On-Demand with great results. Also, our new TV and Blu Ray system get their software updates through this internet connection, just like a computer. I highly recommend this kit!
  
• 

  Maureen Birdsall
  December 21st, 2010 on 9:27 am

  Rating

  We have the same set-up as the previous viewer (TiVO HDXL & NETFLIX), and are also able to stream the full quality movies without delay. I can’t stress enough how easy it was to install. In the past, shuffling components usually meant something didn’t work after it was all put back in place.

  This was seamless & affordable. I’ll add it to my checklist of Netgear products that have worked as claimed.
• 

  Penguin Chick
  December 21st, 2010 on 9:37 pm

  Rating

  This makes my life so much easier! I am definitely technically challenged but this was very well explained and simple to use. I mostly use it for Netflix and it works even better than my previous set up. I love it. I just plug it in and no matter where I am in the house I have a connection. You can’t go wrong with this product.
• 

  Eliezer Kolatch
  December 21st, 2010 on 10:43 pm

  Rating

  Ok, so you’ve got the modern home, a couple of game systems, maybe a wii and a ps3 or an xbox. YOu have a cable box that can connect to the internet. Maybe you have an Apple TV or a blu-ray player thats internet radio and netflix ready.
  
  Or perhaps you live in a 3 floor house, your wireless router is on the bottom floor near the cable router but your office is on the third floor.

  What do you do?

  Before your options were somewhat limited, you could use your wireless network, with the accompanying limited bandwidth and security issues (how many times have you logged on to a random network on your phone??). Alternatively you could run wires throughout your house, poke holes in the walls, or run wires up to the ceiling and around the room. In the process you’ll either spend a significant amount of money to get wiring put in professionally, or you’ll piss your SO off with wires zigzagging everywhere, honestly, nobody wants to have to run 4 cat-5 cables to their home entertainment system.

  The NETGEAR Home Theater Internet Connection Kit (XAVB1004) solves these problems with an incredible simple plug and play solution. The kit consists of two components, one, is a Powerline AV Ethernet Adapter (XAV101) that plugs into the wall by your router, and into your router. The other is a Powerline AV Adapter with 4-port ethernet switch (XAV1004) that you plug in wherever you want to have ethernet ports (on the third floor or by your tv). In tandem these turn the electrical wiring in your house, your power-lines, into an ethernet connection. They allow you to stream, “wirelessly” 100mb/second in each direction, allowing for as much speed as one could desire, without the actual ethernet wires.

  In truth this works exactly as expected, while the speeds realized weren’t exactly 100mb/s in each direction, i did realize speeds in the mid 70s. I had no trouble streaming Netflix in HD onto a laptop while playing CTF call of duty on my Xbox. Essentially this solved all my wiring problems.

  One thing of note: you have to plug these directly into outlets, no power strips, surge protectors, or backup batteries. It has to be plugged into the wall directly for it to work.
• 

  Wolkmeister
  December 23rd, 2010 on 11:46 am

  Rating

  After continuous frustrations with my wireless network doing HD video streaming, I gave this product a shot. And boy, am I thrilled. It does just what it is supposed to do. Setup was a fast and no-brainer. Thrilled with this product.
• 

  John A. Sauter
  December 25th, 2010 on 12:52 pm

  Rating

  I chose this unit to hook up my new LG BD-390 Blu-ray player to the Internet. I considered wireless n, but the location of my player was so far from my wireless router that I was concerned I wouldn’t get the performance that I wanted for streaming video over the internet. I followed the instructions for setting up the unit. You can encrypt the signal, but since I live in a single family home there was no reason to. Set-up was a breeze and I had internet connectivity to my Sony Bravia KDL-46XBR8 and LG BD-390 Blu-ray player just by connecting the ethernet cables and turning them on.

  I have mainly used the connection for streaming Netflix movies over the internet. I am very pleased with the results. The clarity of the images is even better than on my computer. I can only attribute this to the better graphics performance of the LG player and Sony HDTV compared to my computer, since the streaming speed at the computer has to be greater than at the LG player connected to Netgear, but it does say that the ethernet speed of the Netgear unit is sufficient to not degrade the quality of the image. There was only one time when the LG unit’s Netflix streaming indicated less than full quality (both the Netflix application on the computer and on the LG player do a line speed quality check before they begin streaming). But after playing the movie for a few minutes, the LG automatically detected a change in quality in the streaming speed and increased the performance back to maximal image quality. I’m not sure what drove the performance down. There must have been some electrical interference from some device connected to my power line. If I see it happen again, I’ll try and isolate the source of the problem and will update this review.

  If you are concerned about using wireless to connect your home theater components, I would highly recommend this alternative. The assurance of being able to drive high speed ethernet to any part of the house is well worth the price of the unit.
• 

  Ryan M
  December 25th, 2010 on 7:30 pm

  Rating

  I bought this product a couple of days ago because I had a router that I was using as a repeater go out on me. I have a xbox 360 and a PS3 that I play online with and I use the 360 for Netflix streaming. I thought I’d give this a try. I litteraly took 5 minutes to hook up. I plugged it in at the router and the other part at my entertainment unit. They connected immediately. I connected my 360 up and gave a Netflix HD movie a try. It loaded quickly and once the movie started playing, it was flawless. Unfortunately I can’t get in depth with the technical talk. I do know a good deal about computers and networking but just stuff I’ve picked up on my own. All i can say is if you need a solid speedy connection this is a wonderful device.
• 

  K. Winslow
  December 25th, 2010 on 11:26 pm

  Rating

  Read most of the other reviews and took a chance. Really wanted the wires off the floor and wanted faster speed then wireless for Wii and streaming movies, music and You Tube to my entertainment center. The house was built in 1984 and is single story. The office where the router is and the entertainment center power are on different circuits.

  From opening the box to up and running took 15 minutes and 10 minutes were in moving some furniture. There was no software to install, no configuration, it was truly plug and use. This product could not have preformed better. It was a little pricey, and there are cheaper ones out there, but this was worth every penny! Many of the less expensive ones had a greater percentage of dissatisfied customers and I needed all four ports this had for TV, Sound/Blue Ray, Wii, Videoconferencing.

  Did not need to call Netgear about set up so I can’t testify about their customer service. Also not sure of multiple floors, but it definitely crossed circuit breakers in the electrical panel. Distance from plug in office and entertainment center is 40′.
• 

  IAMSLICK
  December 26th, 2010 on 9:47 pm

  Rating

  It took me awhile after receiving this product to actually install it and play with it. I already have a similar device that is made by ActionTec, and it works great. This is even better, though.

  Both this product and the ActionTec product I have work by connecting a small box to a power outlet, and then running a network cable from your router or cable modem to the port on the box. Then, anywhere else in your house you plug the receiving end into another power outlet. With the ActionTec product the receiving end is another small box that has a single network port on it. In this Netgear product you plug the small 4-port router into the power outlet, and then you can plug up to 4 devices into the back of it. Pretty amazing!

  The setup on this is a huge no-brainer. Just plug both the sending and receiving ends into power outlets and they find each other and you have instant network access anywhere you want it. I tested mine by running DSL Speed tests through it and I easily got full 6Mbps down and 512kbps up DSL speeds. I have a pretty complex setup too. My internet comes into the DSL modem, then out to a Cisco 800 series router, then out to a Linksys WRT54G wireless router, then out to the wall, through the power system, and then it finally arrives at the end device. Worked perfectly, first time, nothing to setup.

  I plugged the end device router portion of this diectly into a wall outlet, and then I also tried plugging it into a power strip in my entertainment center. It worked great and got full bandwidth there too.

  I have a fairly modern entertainment setup with a 46″ Sharp 1080P LCD TV, Dish Network HD DVR, Sharp Blu-ray player, and a Wii. Of all those devices, only the DVR has a network port to take advantage of this Netgear product. The Wii has built in Wireless. So this is overkill for me as a Home Theatre product. If I had a different blend of entertainment products I might be able to take advantage.

  I see other uses for this, though. A neighbor of mine bought each of her 3 kids a laptop and set up a study area in their basement. Her wireless router signal wouldn’t reach, though, and so she paid a lot of money for a much better router. Coverage was still spotty so she had it hard wired through the walls. This Netgear option would have provided access to each laptop, and would have saved her time and money.

  Anyway, I think this is a really cool product. It works very well, and I highly recommend it. People struggle so much with getting wireless working in their houses, I see this is a serious alternative because you need zero networking expertise to get it working.