wow, 35-40 feet through 4 or 5 walls! That's different. I'd be extremely suprised if you got anything good through that many walls. I'd definitely eliminate the X10. I fogot to mention my setup was about 8 feet through one wall and set up as high in the air as possible. If anyone walks in between the devices, it crackles like crazy.

But sometimes I have no idea how these things will be affected. I tried setting it up in my parents house. I wanted to send signal from a small TV room to my room. The area in between had two closets. Eventually, even with the devices placed on opposite sides of the wall from each other, no more than a foot away, it still had terrible reception.

I'd try that phone line option. That sounds interesting. But like you say, it could just be that the X10 ones are crappy. It's all I could really find 4 years ago.