Just received Q10 Pro

[atkinsonline]

Hi, thanks to .'s answers yesterday and very quick turnaround, I received my new Q10 today.

Only had time for a quick play but so far, loving it.  Picture is great quality and Atmos sound is working fine (one of the main reasons for buying it).
I have a slight problem but not really with the Q10 so I'm just looking for some advice. My TV and receiver (Denon X2300W, also new) are in my lounge which is two floors away from where my NAS sits.  I use very good Devolo Powerline adapters (max 1200 mbps) to connect from NAS to switch up stairs to equipment in the lounge.  This normally works perfectly and is also how I get 60mbps internet from downstairs to upstairs.
Connecting the Q10 to my NAS via that causes LOTS of stuttering of video.  If I connect a very long ethernet cable across the two floors, the Q10 plays back perfectly.  Does anyone have any advice on this to avoid a very long ethernet cable?  I keep the NAS upstairs near my main work computer for speed of copying files (1gbps connections).  I may need to rethink that!

[Later], I thought my Apple TV box was playing these files perfectly but I see now that it also struggles with very big files (eg 30 GB MKV) so I guess I'm hoping for too much from powerline.

Let me know if I should not post a question like this here.  I'm sure I'll have real Q10 questions soon 
Thanks
John.

[Karl]

John,

My experience of these powerline devices is that they are very susceptable to interference, this causes the available bandwidth to be reduced, which for non streaming  you would not notice.   LED lighting can cause very bad interference.

The quality and size of the mains wirng is part of the equation.

Too large a packet size setting (MTU) can also cause problems.

One test is to unlug or fully turn off everything (not leave in standby) in the house except your powerline units NAS  Q10 and TV and see what  the video is like.

If you live in a flat you will be subject to other peoples devices like computers and microwaves which generate a lot of mains noise.

Interference supression may help but if the above test fails I would install cable!

You could also reverse the situaion so the NAS is next to the HT Equipment but this option might not be desirable depending on your computer needs.

Best option put in a cable as interference is increasing all the time!

Karl.

[atkinsonline]

Thanks for the reply Karl,

I'll try your suggestions.  I suspect something has changed to affect the powerline adapters because I can see now that copying a large file is much slower than it used to be.

For now, I've done as you suggested and moved the NAS to be near the AV equipment in the lounge and it's working perfectly.  I do all my work and blu-ray ripping on my main big PC two floors up and will not be able to copy 40 or 50GB iso's via the powerline. I need to investigate installing cat 5 or cat 6 around the house but that is not going to be easy.   I've got a 1TB portable hard drive but that is not particularly fast as a transfer medium.

I must be completely off topic here so had better stop.  Very pleased to say the Q10 is working perfectly so far.

John.

[Phil181]

Powerline is definitely variable according to your situation (but generally much better than wifi for consistency).
I found that following the instructions so the adaptors are directly into each power point (not on a power board etc) is the first step.  A double adaptor is fine if you need the clearance. 
The next thing is to see if the power points are on the same main power circuit or not.  i.e if you pull the fuse/switch the breaker, do both points go out?
I found two different points in my lounge were on separate circuits and it was better throughput plugging the Powerline adaptor into the same power circuit and using a 15m ethernet cable to connect to a switch (that my Q10 Pro, tv, AVR and a 4Tb Seagate Central are all plugged into).

My EOP is the D-Link PowerLine AV2 2000 model.  I can play high bit-rate 45Gb remuxed Blu-ray 1080p 7.1 mkv files perfectly from a NAS in a different room with no issues on the HiMedia (whereas my old WDTV struggled and buffered on files > 16Gb with the same EOP set-up).

BTW have you also tried the 5GHz AC wifi with your Q10Pro?

[atkinsonline]

Hi Phil, thank you for the detailed reply.
I'd not looked at my powerline adapters for a while but just did.  It turns out one of the main two between NAS and Q10 was a 650mbps Develo and the other was 1200mbps.  I found another 1200 so swapped out the 650.  Each is plugged directly into a mains socket.  When copying a big file I get about 5MBps which I guess is about 40mbps which seems slow for a 1200 device.  I'd expect around 300 to 500mbs.

I've found that my 1TB portable hard drive is pretty quick.  It is USB 3 as is my NAS and PC so when copying a big file I get about 95MBps which is pretty good.  It's inconvenient to transfer from PC to NAS via an external drive but I can live with that until I cable up with ethernet.  So for now, the NAS lives near the Q10.

I have friends arriving soon so I had better tidy up all the cables etc and get ready to demo and show off later!

[Karl]

If you plug the powerlnes into the same double socket or adjacent sockets you will see the maximum throughput at best conditions.

Running over 3 floors is unlikely to be a single ring and the type and make of breaker between rings can therefore have an effect.

My experience of rings is that over times screws loosen due to the mains frequency and poor instalation. Sometimes the ring is compromised as stripping the insulation nicks the copper cable which breaks as it ages. You can check the ring is good by disconecting a socket  and ensure all other sockets remain live. Tightening the screws and checking every socket can help with mains quality and piggy back signalling. BUT don't attempt this if you don't have the relevant ability/experience.

If you can put in an ethernet cable this is he best option but if that is not possible removing interference and overhauling the ring connections may offer  some improvement.

[atkinsonline]

Thanks very much for the additional information. I definitely did get faster throughput once so something has changed. I'll investigate how easily ethernet can be connected and if that is not feasible I'll try to see why the powerlines have degraded. I hadn't considered that 3 floors could be a problem. The floors are definitely on different circuit breakers.

I transferred a 4TB drive from my Dune HD 3D box to the Q10 but the Q10 could not read anything on it. Fortunately, the drive was easy to format via the rear USB port with my PC so I'm currently copying loads of stuff from my 2TB portable drive to the internal drive via USB3.  It is taking a long time. I'm using the Android File Manager and it provides no feedback except that it is copying files.

[futeko.com]

There are better file manager apps available in Play Store.

I'd recommend Asus File Manager.

[atkinsonline]

Thank you.  I'll check that out.