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Panasonic BL-PA100KTA Ethernet Adaptor Starter Pack Includes two HD-PLC (High Definition Power Communication) | 
 enlarge | Brand: Panasonic
Category: CE
List Price: $149.00
Buy New: $55.99
You Save: $93.01 (62%)
New (11) from $55.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  78 reviews
Format: Cd
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Operating System: N/A
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 2.5 x 10.5 x 6.5
Legal Disclaimer: Warranty does not cover misuse of product.
Warranty: 1 year warranty
MPN: BL-PA100KTA
Model: BL-PA100KTA
UPC: 037988845088
EAN: 0037988845071
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | HD-PLC as the Core of a Home Network | | • | Easy Setup - No PC Required | | • | Connect Through Any AC Outlet in Your Home | | • | Use up to 16 adapters per network |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The HD-PLC (High Definition Power Line Communication) Ethernet adaptor makes it possible for your home electrical wiring to serve as a link between your PC and modem. Getting online access is as easy as plugging into a power outlet. You can move your PC and connect to the Internet anywhere there is a power outlet in your home!There's no tricky installation or complicated settings. Just take the BL-PA100A out of the box and plug it into the power outlet. Set up the other equipment on the network, such as routers and PCs, as described in their respective instructions. With speeds up to 190 Mbps, advanced error correction, and AES 128-bit encryption, the BL-PA100A provides peace of mind at the speed of light.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 73 more reviews...
 Easy Setup & LED's Display Signal Quality January 3, 2007
57 out of 57 found this review helpful
I researched competing products from DLink and NetGear online and read numerous reviews. Any of the HD-PLC products should perform similarly in the same situation. Before deciding on a powerline Ethernet product be sure to understand that the quality of your home wiring and the distance the signal must travel all can affect the performance of the product. Poor quality wiring or very long electrical runs may limit performance.
What I liked most about the Panasonic product is that the kit which includes two units is preconfigured, so it works right out of the box without any special configuration. I didn't have to install ANY software to get my network running. I plugged in one unit to my Internet router, and the other unit into a power outlet in a nearby office. Once I connected the Ethernet cable, I was up and running. It was really that easy.
One nice thing with this unit is that you can run a speed test from the unit itself, with the front LED's displaying the estimated network performance. This was handy as I tried different outlet combinations to acheive the best performance. As a side note, I found that plugging the "Master" unit into an outlet as close as possible to the breaker box yeilded the best results. By putting the master as close to the break box as possible (electrica wiring distance) I was able to get a much better signal. I have the master unit in a downtairs room that is about 40' from the breaker box, and the secondary unit in an upstairs office that is about 65' feet from the breaker box.
Note that any powerline Ethernet product is susceptible to interference from other devices. Pay attention to the manual regarding the types of devies that can cause interference, and avoid ever pluggint the device into a surge protector, since that will greatly limit performance.
An additional nice feature of the Panasonic unit compared with DLink and NetGear is that the unit has a power cable. This allows me to plug it into "hidden" outlets, and then place the box in an easy to reach location. Both the NetGear and DLink products are a box that plugs directly into the outlet. This makes them more difficult to access, especially if you want to look at the box to see what it is doing. I like that the Panasonic can sit nicely on the corner of my desk and I can see the lights. I also suspect that the Panasonic will operate cooler since it can be placed in locations where there is air flow all around the unit.
Performance will vary by house and situation. I have a gigabit network switch that connects my machine directly to a server. When I copy a 50 megabyte file to my server using Windows XP, it takes 8 to 9 seconds to copy a 50 megabyte file. Running the same 50 megabyte file copy to a machine on the HD-PLC network connection took about 27 seconds. This seems to be pretty good performance overall. Note that "speed test" is only as good as what is being tested. My test was a real world test under Windows XP copying a 50 megabyte ZIP file.
 Easy to Test - Functions Poorly with Battery Backups (UPS) April 23, 2008
18 out of 18 found this review helpful
This product is very easy to test. Plug the two units into the wall outlets of your choice and then press a button on one unit. The quality of your connection will then be displayed. You don't need to connect the adaptors to anything in order to test them. What could be simplier!
These adaptors send a signal over your powerlines. Unfortunately that signal will be viewed as noise by some surge protectors and most UPS battery backups. The better your surge protector or battery backup --- the less likely these adaptors will work for you. That would also be true for other manufacturer's powerline adaptors. I could not get the Panasonics to work when I plugged one of these adaptors into an AC outlet near my computer when I had my battery backup connected. When I disconnected the battery backup, I then had a good connection. The battery backup very effectively removed the signal from the powerline.
A side note for experts: If you're electrically proficient you'll get better performance when these two adaptors share the same phase of your house wiring. While I know that very few users would have the know-how to make the simple changes required at their circuit breaker panel, I mention this only to the electricians/techs who may be reading this. Even in this case - the UPS/battery backup should be on the other phase. I also strongly suspect that the reviewer who said he got better performance when one adaptor was located near the circuit breaker panel was in fact attributing what he saw to the two adapters being on the same phase.
For those not technically inclined, try the adaptors on as many outlets as possible, while still appropriate for your needs. You will certainly see different results, depending on the combinations you have chosen.
 HDTV Yes, HD-DVD No, 120-240v October 12, 2007
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
Awesome in that every outlet in my house measures full speed. Fast enough to play flawless HDTV (via HDHomeRun device). Rated for operation using 120 and 240 volts. Most people can stop reading here.
Unfortunately, continuous stutter playing back HD-DVDs so still needs to be faster for this application. I've solved this need by using a D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N Wireless Router which provides great coverage (latest firmware) and speed.
Update 13-Oct-2007: Beware noisy devices. They can reduced bandwidth and greatly increase latency. Found a DC adapter that apparently throws off electrical noise. I unplugged it from the same socket as the Panasonic device and, as the manual seems to suggest, put it into a surge protector. That seemed to help throughput. I then cascaded another surge protector in series and that seemed to help more.
Awesome performance for price! April 10, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
While this device uses its own standard, called HD-PLC, it works great! the price on amazon was amazing $46 for two! i have 9 terminals and 1 master in the house and can stream DVD (not hd!) on all floors of the house. While it may not peak faster than 54mbps wifi at 10ft; it is consistent in speed and has low ping times. The best part is the ability for the unit to adjust to signal noise without dropped connections or long ping timeouts if intereference is present. A problem with all wifi products. Also there is no configuration of wireless. The best setup is to simply use a router (say a wrt45GL with DD-WRT firmware) hooked up to the switch port. This will allow you to have wifi and power ethernet at the same time. I have tried many of these "powerline AV" units which cost $40-75 per unit and they do not perform any better. Panasonic units are very nice looking and the cord allows you to hide each terminal rather than hang it off the wall plug which is sightly.
A great unit; discounted deeply due to its non-standard format. But honestly i have a old homeplug setup (14mbps) and a wireless phone line device on the same power socket and i still am able to stream dvd bitrate without any stuttering using Samba. FTP and NFS are supremely faster than XP's SMB so you will see even faster transmission rates that with windows sharing.
My biggest gain is that i can use windows copy over a share to copy a 1GB file without ever getting the dreaded fail. This might take several hours to copy with the unit but with wifi it was a guarantee fail at somewhere during the transfer which is most frustrating. That pain is gone now!
Remember these are not surge supressors and almost every powerstrip that offers decent surge suppresion will render this type of network device useless including powerline and homeplug. The manufacturers will acknowledge that if you get hit by lightning you will probably fry anything connected directly by ethernet. The only solution is to have a UPS that has a network surge suppression system. Highly recommended to protect your pc's and switches. Remember all ethernet over power have this problem so its not just this product. Something to think about.
5 stars for performance; ease of use; scalability; and amazing amazon price.
Easy to set up, flawless and very fast. December 17, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Took the units out of the box, plugged the first in upstairs and the second in the basement where Wifi access had been marginal. Worked without any additional setup and extremely fast and stable. This is on a Mac where there were few other reasonable solutions. I would highly recommend this.
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