Hi
So I'm on the verge of ordering Sky Q. I live on an old rambling farm which at least has relatively modern electrics, but a lot of the wiring is long to longish distance. I have homeplugs successfully working at good speeds (above 50 up to 400ish), pretty much everywhere in the property except, of course, in one of the locations where I want a minibox. I am not on Sky broadband.
The distances involved here would be too great for the built in Sky Q/ minibox WiFi mesh system, I am almost certain. If they need to see each other through their own wifi, they won't, I'm certain of that. That's why I have homeplugs in the first place. So all would have to go through ethernet, and that's why it's a pain that the homeplug at the one minibox is so (too) much slower. I have ordered new homeplugs to replace these old ones and really hope this rectifies the situation.
Because I rely on homeplugs so much at distances I suddenly thought, what happens if after a month or longer it really proves impossible to use the miniboxes. I really do believe that, whilst perhaps not likely, this is certainly possible, especially in the damper winter months in such an old building. The homeplugs work marginally less well here every winter because everything just gets damper. It would be a disaster because my parents have had 2 Sky+ boxes til now which, of course, have always worked perfectly. As far as I understand it, there's no going back from this upgrade. Does anyone have any experience of homeplugs with miniboxes in general, but especially at longer distances?
I wonder if Sky, in this particular circumstance, would allow an additional Sky Q main box if it was connected to a different 'home' network i.e. different subnet. Instead of a minibox so to speak. It's really important because if the minibox turns out not to work my mum will lose her recognisable telly. We live in a freeview/ mobile signal black spot. Up until now she was on the RF system but the old Sky + box went dead. My dad's box is also creaky ancient but not so ancient as to still have RF. So to move to Sky Q now is an excellent idea on paper. The farm is a listed building so getting a 25 metre plus dual cable from the satellite dish to my mum's room is an enormous hassle, peg tiles off, medieval brickwork, blah blah, which makes freesat tricky. For her to keep Sky without the new cabling I would have to find an ancient Sky + box with RF output to provide, ultimately, a rubbish picture. With the minibox that problem is solved, on paper. I hope someone has faced a similar situation and has some experience they can share. I'm holding off ordering until I have tested the new homeplugs tomorrow. If they fix the speeds I will be very happy. Still, if people were to say that their longer term experience of a homeplug/ minibox combination was terrible or so, I would definitely reconsider the transfer to Sky Q. Sorry for such a long message and thanks.
