Originally Posted by
WorldLux
I can only give general advice and not advice specific to Italy.
Tricky question without precise address. The location can make huge differences in terms of available speeds. A flat two streets over from my home has a maximum speed of 30 MBit/s whereas I can get 1 GBit/s.
In terms of speed, 20 Mbit/s should be enough to watch TV and browse at the same time. Much more (i.e. multi-screen and multiple devices browsing ) is probably going to be an issue in terms of bandwidth.
I wouldn't count on it. When cleaning out my home in Southern France last June, I found a paper from 2012 announcing that fibre would arrive very soon. To this day there's no fibre access at that address.
I probably inquire with the company responsible of maintaining and extending the network whether works are underway or not.
An alternative to TV via internet may be a satellite dish. Could overall work out cheaper depending on how much time you're actually going to spend in Italia. In terms of cabling, it's certainly not wrong to have a couple of Cat 5 (or better) in the walls.
Thanks for replying.
I'm skeptical about the fiber as well. One reason I'm thinking streaming vs. satellite (which is quite ubiquitous) is that I want to be able to watch Italian TV from my US house and US TV from Italy. I think if I VPN the two homes together I can do that. Plus, I'm probably going to drop some QNAP NAS's with HDMI in and have them do remote replication. That way my US home can grab some programming off the TIVO and replicate it to Italy where I can watch it the next day.
I'd love to put Cat 5 in but it's a 16th century property with thick walls covering 4 floors so I don't think that's going to be easy. I'm thinking powerline ethernet wifi repeaters can help me create a mesh across the house.