Shopping with the boy

So, I took my son, seven months old, on his first trip to the computer store – Micro Center to be exact.

We were returning the Linksys High Gain antenna I bought as a last-ditch effort since it doesn’t work with their 802.11a routers.

So, after all the wireless and powerline networking devices tried in an attempt to connect the Xbox 360 to the Media Center without running wire, I finally gave up and bought a Cat 6 line and ran it through the house – thank goodness for cold air returns.

After spending a day with the boy watching ol’ dad pull fish tape through the walls and saying “ear muffs” often, I finally got the coveted HD-compatible full set of signal bars.

On to the next project. And now I can say, bring on the need for Gbe. Wireless – Bah, humbug…

XE104 a bust

Well, the Powerline product connected as advertised – no hassles there. It transferred data and connected to Xbox Live at a much higher rate than the 802.11a Linksys WRT55AG I have(which is getting RMA’d, so we’ll see what happens with that).

Then, I tried to connect to Media Center. Nothing, nada, zero. Apparently they can’t see SSDP broadcast packets or delay them enough that the MCE and Xbox 360 never get connected. It’s unfortunate, because these are otherwise great devices – the speed isn’t as much as advertised and signal drops off FAST – go more than 30 feet and you’ll be down in the 30-40MBps range. Any more distance than that and you’ll be hitting the 20s.

So, if they fixed the problem with the broadcast packets, all would be well – very impressive speed and performance – but back they are going to Amazon today.

So, be WARNED! – I have tested these with Xbox 360 and they DO NOT work with Media Center Extender functionality. But, if you are just connecting to Xbox Live, you should be OK.

XE104, I hardly knew ya…