gigabit ethernet gigabit ethernet on smart TV

[Mihai B.]

Hello,

Is there any way of installing an usb gigabit network adapter on a webos smart TV?  The builtin wired adapter is only 100mbps (on a 2000$+ TV, shame  on you LG!!!)  while the wifi (N) is very poor, with the router at 1m from TV it only gets half the bandwidth of the wired network. Anyway the wired network  maxes out near 100mbps but I need more bandwidth as I have 4k video content with bitrates grater than 100mbps which I cannot stream without stuttering to TV through XPLAY/PLEX. 

Kind regards,

[lguser]

Hello KM Lee,

Does it replaces the built in ethernet adapter settings in menus or you have an additional settings for the usb adapter ?

Did you check the actual bitrate, 200 Mbit/s would be sufficient ?

Please tell us your TV model and full WebOS version, available in "About this TV" menu for LG TVs.

Even lg c9 oled is limited to 100 Mbit/s so if a gigabit adapter is supported it is a good news.

Please confirm that you talk about an usb adapter and not the pcmcia netgear GA511 adapter.

If it is really an usb adapter you use, please give us the exact model,  version, chipset if available.

Is it this one ? : "Cable Matters USB to Ethernet Adapter"

link hidden, please login to view

You don't need to use an powered usb switch to give the adapter more power than what TV usb port can give ?

I tried an usb gigabit adapter in the lg c8 usb port, leds on it are not turning on, the adapter isn't supported and gives me an "unknown device disconnected" message when I plug out the adapter. The chipset in it is an "ASIX AX88179"

Thanks for answers

[KM Lee]

Let me give you more details.

0. My TV is LG 65C7P

1. I was able to connect to a router and it gets an ip address, gateway ip and everything from dhcp. I can go into the router and verify the ip address of the added lan card. It also appears in my media server app.

2. The TV will not show anything about this network card. In the settings, it says both wireless and wired lan is disconnected. However, the Netflix is running with the lan card. Pretty strange feeling.

3. My environment is Windows 10 running on a 24/7 server with Mezzmo as the media server. I was able to stream the highest bitrate 2160p remux + DTS-MA without drops. With network monitoring tool, the streaming is reaching 160mbps peak and 110mbps average during the media being played. This same media file was dropping once in every 5 seconds when connected to internal 100mbps alone and once in every 15 seconds with the 5Ghz wireless connection. I can sense that browsing the media server directories are crazy fast.

4. I am using this model: 

link hidden, please login to view

5. Just plugged it on the side of the TV that has the blue colored USB port which is USB 1. No any additional power supply was used.

6. Another strange observation is that, it is still working even after it shows "unknown device connected." 

 

 

[lguser]

Thanks for those infos.

1. It means no possibility to set manual settings, it has to be done from dhcp server if needed.

2. The OS automatically initializes a connection when usb adapter is recognized and the menus settings are only for the built in adapters : wireless and wired.

3. You only had ethernet cable to the usb adapter when you did get those 160 Mbit peaks right ? No ethernet cable plugged in the built-in ethernet port?
I personally use a rpi 3b+ with librelec, the minidlna add-on and the LG built in video player

old 4. and 7. It seems that mezzmo client needs the built-in ethernet to discover the mezzmo server and that smb part is handled by the OS.

It would be interesting to know if the TV also uses the usb adaptor connection for built in video player with dlna and is as easy to handle as netflix, only one ethernet cable plugged in the LAN usb adapter.

6. Ok so you get dhcp connection even though "unknown device connected." appears, right ?
It made me try again with an ethernet cable plugged in usb ethernet adapter, still no led, only the "unknown device connected." message.

I gonna need this cable matters adapter if built-in video player with dlna is as easy as netflix concerning connectivity because dlna doesn't seem to have this multichannel functionality.

[KM Lee]

3. That is correct this transfer rate is possible with only the usb network card.

I am using the TV built-in video player and Mezzmo lists the files to TV. Somehow the usb only setting makes the media server disappear after some time. I have wifi+usb setting now and this will allow the wifi to scan the local network and stream the video with usb network card. I turned-off the TV for more than 10 minutes and turned it on again to make this setting work successfully for three times continuously now.

 

[lguser]

I though mezzmo was a server / client solution with mezzmo software running on the TV in addition to the server software.

It looks like mezzmo is just the dlna server part like minidlna is.

I think there is no samba use anywhere in your setup, it is dlna only.

You use the LG built-in dlna browser and play files with the LG built-in video player like I do.

So, if you don't want to use wifi :
Have built-in ethernet and usb adapter ethernet cable plugged on ethernet switch to be able to browse the dlna server file list any time.
Use built-in ethernet connection alone and plug the usb adapter only when playing media files with high bitrates with peaks superior to 100Mbit/s.

Any of theses solutions are better than having to use an ntfs formatted HDD plugged on usb port with media files
knowing ext4 is not supported on TV even though it runs linux

For information, the chipset in the usb adapter is apparently a Realtek/RTL8153

Thanks again for having shared your experience

[Lubomir Ivanov]

On 12/7/2018 at 11:33 AM, Mihai B. said:

Well, I have finally managed to increase the network throughput to at least 150 Mbps, which is fair enough for my initial problem - 4k video content with bitrates grater than 100 Mbps. My good old wireless router (DIR-600) had behaved very weird in the last weeks - the internet speed on my computer was very slow, only half the bandwidth I receive from my ISP. So I decided to buy a new dual band router (Archer-C5 V4) and now the computer receives full internet speed, and surprisingly the TV (only wifi N) connects to the 5 Ghz network at speeds > 100 Mbps. 

Now the move in case (American Made) plays very smooth without any stuttering - max bitrate measured with speedometer on the Plex linux box was 15 Mb/s, or ~ 120 Mbps. Another movie with peaks > 100 Mbps is Life of Pi, especially the scene with thousands of moving meerkats on the island.

 

To be honest, I tried Plex server on my Windows PC (not very powerful but it plays any movie I tried and it's rendering on the chromecast via VLC player).

I removed Plex and just shared the folder with the movies, also I enabled media streaming on order to watch movies on any device.

I use this as it's the simplest method I've found yet, and It's working great for 4-5 months now. I will try with better quality and higher bitrate movie.

I haven't checked how much speed it needs but have played lots of movies without stutter, even tried simultaneous play on 1 TV, 1 ChromeCast, 1 laptop and one phone... I wonder how I didn't fry the router.

[Mejriou]

Guys,

is it possible to use subtitles within your solution?

[Mejriou]

@KM Lee Did you run some internet speed test to see the difference?

[Lubomir Ivanov]

On 6/26/2019 at 5:18 PM, Mejriou said:

Guys,

is it possible to use subtitles within your solution?

No, for subtitles you need PC with HDMI to play the movie on the TV or external HDD, or use Plex... As it turns out, LG makes the dumbest "smart" TVs.  😕

[PeterV]

On 4/20/2018 at 12:18 PM, Mihai B. said:

Hello,

Is there any way of installing an usb gigabit network adapter on a webos smart TV?  The builtin wired adapter is only 100mbps (on a 2000$+ TV, shame  on you LG!!!)  while the wifi (N) is very poor, with the router at 1m from TV it only gets half the bandwidth of the wired network. Anyway the wired network  maxes out near 100mbps but I need more bandwidth as I have 4k video content with bitrates grater than 100mbps which I cannot stream without stuttering to TV through XPLAY/PLEX. 

Kind regards,

Plex has a Transcoder. Maybe you can use that to get the bitrates down.

I use the native PLEX app. I don't know if that makes any difference.

[sliyk]

On 6/22/2019 at 5:17 AM, KM Lee said:

3. That is correct this transfer rate is possible with only the usb network card.

I am using the TV built-in video player and Mezzmo lists the files to TV. Somehow the usb only setting makes the media server disappear after some time. I have wifi+usb setting now and this will allow the wifi to scan the local network and stream the video with usb network card. I turned-off the TV for more than 10 minutes and turned it on again to make this setting work successfully for three times continuously now.

 

Hi

I have a question, what do you mean by wifi+usb? are you conntect via both? how to do you know which mode is the TV using to stream your media?

I have just ordered the same dongle. Hopefully this works for me.

currently have a synology ds218+ hooked up to google wifi and tv, google wifi wont let me band change the network to excludively 5ghz (alas) and the ethernet port on the tv sucks. hopefully this will be a nice and affordable workaround.

[sliyk]

9 hours ago, sliyk said:

Hi

I have a question, what do you mean by wifi+usb? are you conntect via both? how to do you know which mode is the TV using to stream your media?

I have just ordered the same dongle. Hopefully this works for me.

currently have a synology ds218+ hooked up to google wifi and tv, google wifi wont let me band change the network to excludively 5ghz (alas) and the ethernet port on the tv sucks. hopefully this will be a nice and affordable workaround.

Doesnt seem to work for me LG65 Oled65b7v

I already had a usb 2.0 ethernet port and connected it. the tv does say unknown device connected but no ethernet lights turn on and nothing happens.

I did notice a long thin port above the usbs whats that for?

[amuk]

Being in Europe, I tried another adapter to connect gigabit ethernet to my LG 65OLEDC7V.  The device  I used was a TP-link UE300(UN).

link hidden, please login to view

The adapter has the same chipset as mentioned by @lguser, namely the Realtek/RTL8153. Unfortunately I can not get the TP-LINK to work, not in the USB 1 port (USB 3.0 ) neither in the 2 or 3 ports (USB 2.0).

 

From your replies @lguser, it is not entirely clear to me whether you got the Cable Matters adapter to work yourself, in your own setup, or whether you are just giving advice in case someone gets one?

 

@KM Lee, which version of WebOS are you using?

 

 

 

 

[sliyk]

On 7/12/2019 at 2:15 PM, amuk said:

Being in Europe, I tried another adapter to connect gigabit ethernet to my LG 65OLEDC7V.  The device  I used was a TP-link UE300(UN).

link hidden, please login to view

The adapter has the same chipset as mentioned by @lguser, namely the Realtek/RTL8153. Unfortunately I can not get the TP-LINK to work, not in the USB 1 port (USB 3.0 ) neither in the 2 or 3 ports (USB 2.0).

 

From your replies @lguser, it is not entirely clear to me whether you got the Cable Matters adapter to work yourself, in your own setup, or whether you are just giving advice in case someone gets one?

 

@KM Lee, which version of WebOS are you using?

 

 

 

 

Eureka it works!

I got exactly the same one, the Cable matters plug, initially I tested it wth my usb 2.0 dongle which failed (as in my post above) then I got the usb 3.0 dongle and it works like a charm! you can also connect via wifi for the other tv features to continue to work as well. This a massive fix for the TV!

[Metasyntactic]

On 7/15/2019 at 6:30 AM, sliyk said:

Eureka it works!

I got exactly the same one, the Cable matters plug, initially I tested it wth my usb 2.0 dongle which failed (as in my post above) then I got the usb 3.0 dongle and it works like a charm! you can also connect via wifi for the other tv features to continue to work as well. This a massive fix for the TV!

This also worked for me.  I bought the plug from 

link hidden, please login to view

and it works amazingly.  Movies that went about 100mb/s (and even were flakey over 5g wifi) play perfectly.  Thank you all so much for this information!

[amuk]

On 7/16/2019 at 9:58 PM, Metasyntactic said:

This also worked for me.  I bought the plug from 

link hidden, please login to view

and it works amazingly.  Movies that went about 100mb/s (and even were flakey over 5g wifi) play perfectly.  Thank you all so much for this information!

I think I have been able to find the exact same black version on German Amazon as well and have ordered it. Should be able to test by the end of the week. Will post the results here.  Fingers crossed!

[MrZippo]

Hi all,

I too purchased the Cable matters adapter from Amazon UK

link hidden, please login to view

I can confirm that Plex, Amazon Prime, Netflix and the LG app store all work fine despite the TV saying that there is no internet connection via LAN or Wifi.
Also it appears that everything seems to load up a tad quicker.

 

 

[amuk]

yes, I now too can confirm that also the black Cable Matters adapters work as described above. Seems in Europe only the black version is being sold at the moment. I ordered mine from German Amazon

link hidden, please login to view

[Science-is-Truth]

Upgrading to Gig Ethernet will have ZERO effect, in any case there is NO WAY to add a different Ethernet adapter to an existing TV.

Its a TV not a PC, on a PC your have the freedom to pretty much whatever you wish as long as you have the harware port and software drivers to support the adapter.,

The problem is between your router and the rest of the Internet.

Its like having a private drive that connections to the interstate on which you can drive at 100MPH, but traffic on the Interstate is only going at 50 MPH.

Guess what your journey and your data will travel at the slower rate

[schneidernet]

1 hour ago, Science-is-Truth said:

Upgrading to Gig Ethernet will have ZERO effect, in any case there is NO WAY to add a different Ethernet adapter to an existing TV.

Its a TV not a PC, on a PC your have the freedom to pretty much whatever you wish as long as you have the harware port and software drivers to support the adapter.,

The problem is between your router and the rest of the Internet.

Its like having a private drive that connections to the interstate on which you can drive at 100MPH, but traffic on the Interstate is only going at 50 MPH.

Guess what your journey and your data will travel at the slower rate

Not true. I was getting 30mbs and lower down through the TV's port. Being curious I tried the CableMatters USB 3.0 dongle into my 4-port USB adapter and get now  90mbs down according to LG app. My house connection is 1gb fiber that tests reliably above 980mbs up and down. The TV is fed via Cat 7 to a switch and then Cat6 to the TV. The USB adapter connects a Logi KB RF dongle and USB sticks used for firmware updates and other purposes.

Anyway the 90 down is plenty fine for streaming so I am not inclined to investigate why the set tests so low. Maybe if bored, I'll connect a GB Ethernet laptop to how it fares on the line.

Also confirm I bought US Amazon  CableMatters in Black and TV settings shows NO Wired or WiFi connection at all but it works.

http://Cable Matters USB to Ethernet Adapter (USB 3.0 to Ethernet / USB 3 to Ethernet / USB to Gigabit Ethernet / USB to RJ45) Supporting 10 / 100 / 1000 Mbps Ethernet Network in Black