A couple of smart tv questions guys

[Marc Berry]

Firstly, merry Christmas and a Happy New year to you all.

So, tonight I have had a second smart tv in the house give me an issue along with an ongoing but unrelated issue on another so I thought it best to seek help.

Ongoing issue with our bedroom TV. An LG TV from, i think, 2016 running, i think, Web os. We have a homeplug who’s adapter is connected via ethernet to the main router and the extender in my sons bedroom has both ethernet and WiFi on both 2.4ghz and 5ghz. As mentioned the extender is in my oldest sons room and then through only 1 wall and 1 metre away we have our bedroom TV connected to the WiFi. When i check the speed in our bedroom using my note 8 smartphone on the 5ghz it gives 40-50mbps and on 2.4ghz it gives an admittedly wavering speed between its lowest 10mbps to 31mbps. The virgin fibre connection gives me up to 221mbps downstairs connected directly to the router.

When we run netflix on either 2.4 or 5ghz WiFi it buffers almost constantly and youtube also initially said no connection but then connected and i just haven’t yet used youtube to watch anything so can’t say whether it would have had buffering issues. I can report back on that one. Any thoughts on that?

Issue 2, oldest sons Samsung smart tv from, i think’ 2016 and I think running tizen. When he turned it onto the menu earlier the tv screen was perfect and still is but when running netflix or youtube the screen when almost completely pink then green with a sort of ‘artifact-y’ appearance. I changed back to the main menu and it was fine so it was just the streaming apps. I reset the YouTube app and retested but no better. I googled a bit and found something mentioning hardware acceleration but I can’t find that option on the tv (think they were referring to a different form of device). I did however turn off some settings that I thought i had already such as auto contrast, auto something else and then turned off and on and it was better but I am not sure what sorted it and if it was the off/on sequence then it could rehappen. Any ideas with this also?

Thanks guys.

[Marc Berry]

Hey guys.

So happy new year first.

Any ideas on the above?

Cheers guys

[Richard]

A hopefully Happy (happier?) New Year to you.

I cannot respond directly but I do have an issue using Wi-Fi with one of our so called smart enhanced devices. Rather I should say that my wife has an issue with the one in the kitchen. While the wired one in the lounge will access services on demand, the Wi-Fi served kitchen one suffers what you talked about. It stutters jumps and make viewing impossible. While not conclusive it does make me suggest that some of these devices are less tolerant than we might hope. I did think about trying power line working, but reviews suggested that many such devices, from different makers are not as reliable as I would like. I am still wondering how to run a cable to one of the most difficult locations with its tiled walls, tiled floors and other hard surfaced flooring in the way. Sharing a route with the builder installed TV coaxial cable is a theoretical option, though I have never managed to add a cable to an existing, probably poorly installed original.

[The Duke]

I can’t answer either never owned a smart tv, mainly as all friends and family have them , and I’m yet to find one with an intuitive and none clunky os.

As regards to home plug kits, i have 4 tp link jobs set up.made up of different gens of tp link plugs. For me they have simply just worked. Each one gets about 6 to 12mb when i test them with speed test dot net.

My best praise is, they are boring, they just work. My first pair was set up about 5 years ago, my last edition was probably 3 years ago and I’ve never touched them since the day they was installed. The first bit of tech I’ve bought that ‘just worked and kept working’.

[The Duke]

I can’t answer either never owned a smart tv, mainly as all friends and family have them , and I’m yet to find one with an intuitive and none clunky os.

As regards to home plug kits, i have 4 tp link jobs set up.made up of different gens of tp link plugs. For me they have simply just worked. Each one gets about 6 to 12mb when i test them with speed test dot net.

My best praise is, they are boring, they just work. My first pair was set up about 5 years ago, my last edition was probably 3 years ago and I’ve never touched them since the day they was installed. The first bit of tech I’ve bought that ‘just worked and kept working’.

[Richard]

That is interesting Steve, I have no experience of the home plugs, just what I read about them in reviews. I probably broke my first rule for reading reviews – believe nothing unless you have tested it yourself.

Perhaps I should give them a try, you make them sound less of a gamble. I do wonder if those complaining had house wiring problems or, quite likely an axe to grind.

[PlaneMan]

At my mothers a homeplug setup has been in place for a few years to service a IP camera in a bad wifi spot. Apart from the very odd dropout (old wiring in the house) it’s been solid.

[The Duke]

Richard, whether they work is down to how your house is wired. You’ll find if they work they will work, or they wont work at all.

They are that simple to set up, find a double socket, plug both in and hit sync on each. Then you move one of the two home plugs to where it’s needed, if it’s ropey , they aren’t going to work in your house. If it works, they will just work for  a long time. With no user input.

So buy from a place that excerpts returns easily , as you’ll know within 10 mins if homeplugs are for you.

I’ve only ever used tp link home plugs, so can’t comment on other brands. But they haven’t disjointed me.

[Marc Berry]

Cheers guys

They one pair I have work great as tested by using speedtest but it is just the smart tvs having the issue on wifi with them.

Any thoughts on the pink and green artifacting only on streaming apps?

[Richard]

Steve, thanks for the reassurance, I will try to give it a whirl over the next few weeks. I had/have two medical appointments today the first went well and I have sign off on my eyes. Happily some other daughter issues appear to be declining in severity and she was able to get out of the house for something she has been unable to do for months. With luck my ‘time budget’ might get a little relief, though next week is set to be hectic with Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday already booked up with appointments, so timing deliveries could become an issue.

Amazon might not be the cheapest, but their support package has always sorted me out well, I will start looking at the available options. Our electrical wiring should be sound enough, various parts have been tested and always passed over the last 25 years.

Thank you to all who commented.

[Richard]

Marc, sorry to have hijacked your thread, but I suspect that somewhere in this lot there is a crumb of an answer to your question. I suspect that for whatever reason the link is not up to supporting the services you need for the reliable TV.

As an experiment can you provide a temporary wired access to eliminate link issues and highlight any other issues?

[The Duke]

I’d defo test it ‘wired’ just to rule out wifi, but I’d suspect that the issue will be too with codec support or similar, because of changes on the server side, now make your tv ‘out of date’.

Have a look to see if an update is available.

Plug it into your network, carry the tv to the socket if need be.

If non of the above work, by a Roku.

[Marc Berry]

Cheers guys

The tv with those issues was already connected via ethernet to one of the powerline adapters. If it happens again I might lug it downstairs to connect directly to the router.

I today took delivery of the version 2 of the original tp link powerline with WiFi. As it is an updated version I wasnt sure it would be compatible with the original that is connected to the router but it works great and allowed a wired connection to our bedroom tv and so far netflix is fine and no buffering. So even though the WiFi test on my phone is very fast, it would seem the tvs WiFi isn’t good enough.

In case it helps I have the WPA8630PKIT that has an adapter at the router with only the 1 ethernet port to connect to the router and no WiFi functionality. The WiFi extender has its own 2.4 and 5ghz and is quite a strong and fast connection. I then bought version 2 of the same but the adapter can act as an ethernet extender elsewhere which is in our bedroom and the wifi extender can again go wherever and have its own WiFi, this time allowing ‘up to’ 1350mbps as opposed to the 1200 of the first set. So the original adapter connected to the router and the other 3 as extenders.

[Richard]

Glad you have it fixed I think and believe from your comments.

Personal update, I did a very temporary wired connection to my troubled location, it was not pretty but it completely solved our issue so the so called  TP-Link TL-PA7020PKIT V2 2-Port Giga is now ordered and should be here on Thursday.

[Richard]

The TP-Link kit came tonight, it went in without a set up and works as intended. Thanks for all the reassurances from everyone. I wonder if I should add a few more ports to other rooms. That is one to think about perhaps.

[Ed P]

Home Plugs (TP-LInk etc) work great while they work! However, if your Broadband fails at the ISP end for whatever reason, then there is the possibility that the Homeplug clings to an obsolete DCHP address or pick up the dreaded 169.x.x.x address – if/when that happens resort to the old IT mantra of power circling (switch off/on) at BOTH device ends.

[Richard]

I am a bit confused. Why would a home plug need an IP address let alone a DHCP one as it is simply replacing a wire? As it is nothing much more than a form of loop extender should it not simply use its own protocol to look for and chat to mates it can find? If it finds anyone ‘out there’ shouldn’t it pass along any suitable messages transparently, (i.e. stripped of any home plug ‘private’ protocol) to the end device(s) they serve and leave them to do the cleverer stuff about link protocols? They came pre-configured without knowledge of their deployment and just happily chatted to each other when plugged in and before any higher level stuff was attempted

Having said that, I had a hell of a time years ago when a super intelligent modems were supplied to provide a private wire function. The damned things kept reading and acting on control characters intended for conversations between the end devices. Rendering it back to being a ‘supper thick’ modem cured that problem, but it took a number of commands to down grade it to work as needed. I needed to avoid confusing the terminal points while trying to reset the modems, oh what joy that was, – not!

I hope home plugs would not suffer that issue.

[Ed P]

Richard, although the HomePlug per se does not need a DHCP address the device attached to it usually does – put it down to my trying to make clear which bit needs on and offing!

A little bit of research shows that your post logic is correct but it would be fair to extend it by saying that HomePlugs are ‘non-intelligent’ switches that have a unique MAC address which is used by the router – I guess that on & offing both ends makes it clear to the router which HomePlugs are connected to the base and form a ‘wire’. HomePlugs are a bit weird in that unlike Ethernet cables they allow a star topology so I guess there must be some sort of MAC handshaking taking place.

All I can add is that if you do not switch off both ends good luck in getting rid of a 169.x.x.x!

[Richard]

I can understand and take on board your point about a hard restart often clearing many IT woes, it has been learned and the lessons oft repeated the hard way.

I did wonder if some of the issues were down to early protocol versions, early implementations and some variable manufacturing efforts in the past. As these device should exist down at OSI level 1 and on the NAT side of the router, I am not sure why an ISP issue should affect them. I could see power brown outs or cuts or other NAT events, router restarts possibly but no real reason for them to mess with level 1 unless the protocol was poor at rebuilding broken links or even maintaining their viability. The one big issue in all of this is the state of the in building power wiring and any sources of messing that could be introduced by the in building devices.

I do know that some years back signalling over transmission power lines caused external issues (and had to accept issues injected into data paths). Signal leakage was a cause for concern as the long often runs could form very effective long aerials.

[Ed P]

If you look up the HomePlug tech papers you will see they are far from ‘dumb’ devices (i.e. not just an ethernet wire plus simple switch equivalent). Most of the stuff is driven by communication security and  tests to make sure that the recipient plug is on the same ‘network’, and has the same encryption key. I guess when the Router end gets mangled it sometimes mangles up its connection to the ‘primary’ plug (i.e. 169’s it) and this has to have a hard reset to clear it which in turn I further guess stuffs up the ‘slave’ plugs handshaking and needs a hard reset at that end too.

All total speculation based around bitter experience and frustration!

[Author]

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