Tivo on 2 levels of house help

Easily, no. Possible, yes. What's your budget?

My modem and router are on one floor. My Mini is next door. My Roamio is on a different floor. It can be done, but not on the cheap.

 

If you do not have coax or ethernet connections, its harder to connect a Mini. Wireless is not an option.

 

drill a hole and run ethernet to the mini downstairs. I actually run my ethernet from my upstairs router down through the laundry shoot and then up under my downstairs tv. I know that probably isn't possible in your current setup.

 

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How hard would it be for the intended Mini VOX location *to* have a coax hookup that links back to the shared coax plant?

 

Y'all forgot to take your happy pills today. Yes, it can be done, and easily and less-expensively enough. But, YMMV.

1. Wireless: Connect your main TiVo box upstairs via Ethernet. Put the Mini downstairs, and attach it to a wireless bridge wirelessly connected to your network (thereby "getting around" the requirement that the Mini be connected to your network by Ethernet/MoCA). Note: this works for some people, for others, no, or sometimes fine at first and problematic later--it tends to depend on the robustness of your wireless network.

2. Powerline adapter: Same as above, but this time, connect the Mini to a Powerline adapter which plugs into and sends the signal over your regular wall electrical line. Another Powerline adapter at your router completes the circuit. Again, success varies, and some people have had no issue whatsoever with this, others, yes.

IMHO, if you experiment with these routes and need to buy the networking equipment (which easily could be under $100, for good stuff), best to do so from a source where you easily can return the equipment, if matters don't pan out.

 

The Powerline Ethernet has worked for plenty of people as well as the above WiFi workaround.

-KP

 

A lot of the answer depends on the physical construction of your house and how fussy you are with wire placement/visibility.

The very first thing I would suggest you try is the powerline Ethernet adapter. These usually work very well, and it is an extremely easy solution for you if it works - no drilling or new wires of any kind.

The next option would be running a new Cat6 Ethernet wire downstairs. This is where it all depends on the house design and construction, but it is usually very easy for a professional and difficult for the average homeowner. The most simple bit of luck is if your router or Ethernet switch is located above a downstairs closet, laundry room, or other such place where you would not mind an exposed wired running down the wall. If you have this luck, then you do not need to drill through the interior of the wall baseboards at all; instead, you can just drill a small hole next to the wall and drop a wire straight down. Of course, this would also require the location of that wires to be within easy access to where you want the new downstairs TV!

There are other options that we could talk about for routing wires or coax, but if you need to ask about them, then you really probably need to call either a cable guy or an electrician to evaluate your house and do the work. Good luck.

 

How good is your existing router? If you have a reasonably fast router you probably can pull it off by getting something like a Tenda AC1200 router for $40, setting it in bridge mode and connecting it to the Mini.

 

I don't think $45 is a lot of money. I bought this in November and have had no problems with my mini. Of course, ymmv.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018YPWORE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

I have been watching this thread because I have a similar issue. Based on the prior post, I didn't realize that you can get a Mini to work with a Roamio OTA with just a Ethernet-2-WiFi Universal Wireless Adapter. Is it that simple, you just need a device that can get wireless internet and plug it into the mini's Ethernet connection? I thought you needed a wired connection? How does the Roamio communicate to the Mini without a wired connection?

 

Let's be clear. In this environment (as opposed to MoCA) the Roamio and the Mini talk to the router. If a wireless bridge is used, it talks to the router and the Mini and/or Mini talk to it.

A Premiere has no wireless. TiVo makes a wireless N adapter that connects to the Premiere's Ethernet port. The Premiere thinks it is wired. A very old and not so good way to do it. But in a (almost) perfect world it can work.

Yes, a wireless bridge can be used. The two I use also can be managed from a PC. One has a signal % of 50. The other is -55dB. Both have are 99.9% reliable. Nothing is perfect. TiVo has improved their networking since 20.7.2 was released. Unless you have a bunch of devices you never notice.

Step one: get a really fast powerful router. After that it's all downhill.

 

Not sure how powerful my router is. I know I have internet speeds of 100 mbps and it runs on the 2.4 GHz N band. Is that enough?

 

2.4GHz seems to tops at 50mbps and 5g can reach 100mbps.

 

Problem with wireless is no amount of calculation can substitute for observation. In other words: maybe, with a slight edge to maybe not. Also, your internet speed is not a factor. Your older 802.11N may not cut it. I'm using a Netgear R8000 and all devices (except a printer) are 802.11ac at 5GHz. There is an R9000, but what I have works. Sorry I can't help more. MoCA is better and much more reliable.

 

Ah, you are right. I meant the wired internet speed is 100 mbps. I just checked wireless speed and it is only 30 mbps. I guess there is no easy way to do it. I guess I will just wait for a Roamio to go on sale around Christmas. Thanks for all of the input.

 

You seem to still be using the word "internet" where is does not belong - I think you are actually talking about your LAN speed (LOCAL AREA Network), limited just to your own house. Depending on where and how you are measuring it, this speed is generally determined by the max speed of your router.

And although 100 Mbps is blazingly fast for an Internet connection, it is actually quite slow for a modern LAN. 100 Mbps is fast enough for most things at home, but he standard for many years now has been 1,000 Mbps (1 Gbps). A 1 Gbps LAN will make a huge difference in how fast large video files can be transferred between devices, but that is still unrelated to any available wireless LAN speeds.

 

What happened to the original plans for OTA and a Mini as described in your November thread, here:

Help on Mini Set Up​

MoCA sounded doable, but you dropped-off.

 

What @V7Goose said, but with the caveat that the 4-tuner Roamio models and pre-VOX Minis all use FastEthernet (100 Mbps) interfaces -- although the Minis do also include MoCA 1.1 connectivity, which can exceed 100 Mbps (up to ~170 Mbps). But, again, any communication with a 4-tuner Roamio faces the 100 Mbps bottleneck of the only wired way in or out of the box, its FastE port.