TiVo Roamio OTA-Mini Help (MoCA)

Hi,
You will need to get a common(to the OTA) coax to your kitchen for the mini. The mini has MoCA builtin, so you would need just one adapter to connect the Roamio OTA / router to the coax and then use the mini settings to "connect via MoCA". The only other thing you might need is a MoCA POE/ Whole Home DVR to put on the feed from the antenna, but depending on the amp and it's location, you might not absolutely need the filter.

 

You mentioned coax to many rooms -- if all the coax runs from the closet to the various rooms, then one way to connect everything would be to use a 3-way splitter with the MoCA PoE filter attached to the input, and the outputs attached to the coax runs to the MoCA adapter, the Roamio in the living room, and the Mini in the kitchen.

You should also attach a 75-ohm termination to the "TV/STB out" port of the MoCA adapter (it may come with a termination already attached).

 

Boom, Roamio OTA is done! It has a wired network connection to your router, as officially required. Now to the Mini...

Actually, you're not MISSING anything -- you just have one too many MoCA adapters in your hypothetical setup, given that the Mini has built-in MoCA connectivity, and need to make a single adjustment in how your MoCA adapter is connected.

As for the MoCA adapter connections in that closet, what you've described for your "simple needs" -- a direct connection between the MoCA adapter and the Mini -- will give you the best possible MoCA connection between those two devices (as I found, coincidentally, in some testing I did just the other day).

The only haziness in your plans is that you'll want to connect the Kitchen coax run to the MoCA adapter's coax IN port, and terminate the MoCA adapter's "TV/Set-Top Box Out" port, as suggested by snerd. And because the two devices are directly connected via a single coax cable, you can ignore references to installing a "PoE" MoCA filter. (Chuckle; in fact, putting a MoCA filter on such a direct connection explicitly intended for MoCA signals would be a bit counter-productive, rather than just unnecessary.)

And your plans may seem a bit hazy because the primary "bridging" MoCA adapter is almost never used that way and you won't find many posts or vendor documents suggesting such a configuration. But it's PERFECTLY fine if you're just looking to connect the single additional MoCA device.

Now, if you want to use your coax lines to extend wired networking to multiple rooms, that's where a splitter would come in. And there are a few alternatives that could be discussed regarding how best to integrate your OTA antenna if/when you want to cross that bridge.

For now, what you proposed, with the one connection tweak, is the optimal solution for connecting that single Mini to your network.

 

FYI... You can gauge your MoCA connection quality using the procedure found at the tail-end of TiVo's "MoCA Troubleshooting" page. You'll see something along the following lines (minus a few edits)...

-----
Check the PHY rates on the MoCA-enabled TiVo device

PHY rates only appear on the Network Status screen for MoCA-enabled devices.

1. Go to the Network Status screen. (see below, or the TiVo "MoCA Troubleshooting" page, here)
   
   
2. You will see a TX and RX PHY rate, as well as TX and RX power levels for each MoCA node. Each node represents a MoCA device.

Quoting the troubleshooting guide:

An ideal MoCA 1.1 PHY rate is 180 or higher to achieve a throughput of 100Mbps (this is required to achieve three simultaneous streams from a single DVR). The PHY rate can drop as low as 130; however, this can cause choppy video, distorted audio, or other quality issues.​

-----​

When reviewing the quality of your Mini MoCA connection, it is most important to document and review the data for the MoCA nodes associated with your TiVo DVR and, if it is different, your MoCA bridge device. (MoCA stats of other TiVo Mini MoCA peers aren't that important since there is no communication between Minis.)

For MoCA 1.1 (which will be any MoCA traffic to/from a TiVo Mini, at present), you can reference the following table, from the MoCA 1.1 specs doc, to estimate MAC/data rates based on the observed PHY rates:

​

================================
How to access the TiVo Network Status screen

For the TiVo BOLT, use the following path:

TiVo Central
> Settings & Messages
> Network Settings
> View network status​

... and the following for other MoCA-enabled TiVo devices:

TiVo Central
> Settings & Messages
> Settings
> Network
> View network status​

Though... for devices using the updated HD UI running software version 20.7.2 or later, the path to the Network Status screen has changed:

TiVo Central
> Settings & Messages
> Network Settings
> Network Troubleshooting
> Network Status​

But wait, now there's Hydra/gen4 (software version 21.*)... requiring the user to take the following path to access the Network Status screen:

TiVo Central
> Settings & Messages
> Network Settings
> Network Troubleshooting
> Network Status​

 

Nothing especially mysterious; basically what snerd suggested above, regarding bring a splitter into the mix to extend wired networking to additional rooms -- though not necessarily *exactly* how they suggested.

I was just trying to leave that subject tabled until you had your initial MoCA connection up and running.

 

The first, most common method employed is to feed your OTA antenna signal into an N-way splitter in the closet, as described above by snerd...

... where the "N" in "N-way" would equal the number of rooms to which you want your combined OTA/MoCA coax lines connected, plus one additional output to connect the MoCA adapter in the closet. Just make sure to install the "PoE" MoCA filter as snerd details, on the input to the splitter (with the amp connecting to the other side of the MoCA filter).

However, more custom setups can be imagined if the above approach weakens your antenna signal beyond an acceptable level, if you only want the antenna signal delivered to the single room, etc.

For example, you could quite simply take your original proposal, where you weren't concerned about getting the OTA antenna signals to other rooms, and extend MoCA-only signals to the kitchen plus one more room by connecting your closet MoCA adapter's "RF In" port to the INPUT of a 2-way splitter and connect the kitchen and other room to the outputs. Done. And, again, because this would be a MoCA-only coax segment, you would not install a "PoE" MoCA filter. (By the way, this configuration is exactly what I'm using, to get wired networking at two coax locations where we don't have Ethernet jacks -- and don't need TV signals.)

 

Happy to be of help.

So, out of curiosity... what configuration did you end up going with?

 

For my Bolt+ with Hydra I see much different MoCA numbers than I did before Hydra, have you looked at them ? and do you know what they mean?

 

No, not yet. But are the BOLT numbers different between Hydra/gen4 and gen3, or could it be a difference between MoCA 1.1 and 2.0? Did you upgrade your BOLT and/or any other MoCA hardware, or is your only change the upgrade to Hydra?

 

Just upgrade to Hydra

 

My Bolt+ is on TE4. My Bolt MOCA stats look very good (see photo). Stats are way higher than the old transfer Rates I was getting on my Roamio (about 65-80Mbps).

I have 6 Tivos networked together. 2 Bolts 2 Roamios and 2 Premiers. All the TX and RX PHY rates are above 228 but the first one in the list is way higher, like 600 ... I believe the MAC address indicates that unit is the "Coordinator" What's that?

 

Note that the PHY Rates reported aren’t the same as the video transfer rates reported via TiVo’s network diagnostics. The PHY Rate is akin to the link rate; the effective throughput (MAC/data rate) will be lower.

From the MoCA stats post:

 

I understand. This is a baseline for me so I'll be trying to improve things by taking your suggestion as follows: >>Using a splitter to connect each device (TA & DVR) to the coax, separately; and capping the unused TA pass-through port w/ a 75-ohm terminator.

So if afterwards I'll see what those PHY numbers are. IF higher, then better, right? I'll post results once I get the 75-ohm terminators.