Sharp Promises ‘Idiot-Proof’ Home Networks June 26, 2007

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There’s a push on these days for a new type of home network that uses the existing electrical network in your house for shifting multimedia content from room to room. It certainly works but tends to be pricey.

Sharp is the latest - and somewhat late - entrant to this sector, promoting its new adapters as the perfect solution for those that can’t get their head around wireless networking and have no desire to lay an unsightly wired LAN around the house.

The new products are the HN-VA40S and HN-VA10S PLC Adapters, which use the international HomePlug AV 1.1 standard. In reality, it promises up to 200MBps transfer speeds but 85MBps is more likely – and pretty damn fast to boot. Just plug the HN-VA10 into a plug socket, connect the Ethernet cable of whatever device you have files on and then plug in the 4-port HN-VA40S receiver in the other room, up to 150m away – if your house is that big.

Launching in August, we have only Japanese pricing right now, which works out at around £100 for the pair. Expect that price to jump a bit while traveling this way.-Martin Lynch

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