Question No Ethernet connectivity on Sony XBR

[Barfolomew1998]

Last Saturday I bought a Sony XBR-65800B. I chose this primarily because I wanted a smart tv that I could run Kodi on and from what I've read, Kodi only installs natively on android and fire tv. I had Kodi running on a fire stick, but it was very laggy over the wifi, especially if multiple people started streaming to multiple tv's at the same time.

My house is completely wired with Ethernet running over cat 6. I have a Linksys EA9500 router talking to a AT&T modem.
The router and the modem are in a patch closet. The main closet connects to a 2 patch closets, one upstairs and one in the basement.
I've never had an issue with the network.

So I unpacked the tv and fired it up. It initially connected to wifi and everything worked fine, but I wanted to get it on the ethernet network. I connected the tv to the ethernet
and turned off the wifi. Nothing worked. I tried all the troubleshooting techniques and nothing worked. I hooked up my laptop to the same jack and used the same cable and it worked just fine. I hooked up my popcorn hour and it played movies just fine. I went back to the tv and nothing worked. I called Sony support and we went through it all again. The girl was very helpful, we walked through all the troubleshooting again and nothing worked, so she passed me to tier 2 support. This guy was an ass. He kept insisting it is my router and I need to call them. I didn't think it was my router. While I was on hold I tried 1 more thing. I grabbed a very long ethernet cable that I had used for testing and I ran it from the tv directly to the router. All of a sudden I could get to Amazon and youtube. I mentioned this and the guy said that it wasn't the tv it was my router. That still didn't make sense to me. I actually thought I knew what the problem was (network latency caused by the patch closets and the Sony tv ethernet adapter not having the power to push the signal). I got tired of arguing and got off the phone. I pulled a new cable directly from the router to my jack and plugged that into the tv. This one was longer than the last since it went through the attic. Surprise! the issue returned. I plugged the shorter cable back in and I could login again; However, this time, I tried watching a show and found that while I could login, the connection wouldn't work for viewing.

So I want back to work trying to diagnose; I grabbed a hub and plugged the tv into the hub and the hub was connected to the network. It worked better was but still very spotty during playback.

My feeling is that this is a bad Ethernet controller on the tv, but I have no idea how to prove it. The shorted the cable, the better it seems to work, but at this rate I would have to watch the tv in my Foyer ( which is where the router closet is ) I hate to take back the tv, but it might be my only option.

A few other notes, the tv can get an ip address. I can ping the tv from my computers. The tv says it can access the internet, but nothing works.

So my question is this, has anyone heard of anything like this? Is it feasible the ethernet card on the tv is bad? If so, what can I do to prove it?

thanks
Ashley

 

[jsmithepa]

Needless to say you tried another switch port?

Nobody uses hubs anymore, you meant an ethernet switch didn't you?

Having full house wiring, I assume everything converge into a switch?

If this switch has any sort of green, power saving feature, disable it.

Ethernet is good for 70m, you should not have to question that specially with a factory-made cable.

 

[Barfolomew1998]

Needless to say you tried another switch port?

Nobody uses hubs anymore, you meant an ethernet switch didn't you?

Having full house wiring, I assume everything converge into a switch?

If this switch has any sort of green, power saving feature, disable it.

Ethernet is good for 70m, you should not have to question that specially with a factory-made cable.

Yes, you're correct it's an un-managed switch. A patch closet upstairs (2 24 port patch panels), and downstairs(2 24 port patch panels) that feed into a main patch panel (48 port) closet where I have a 48 port switch, router and modem ( Full electronics closet ). The upstairs and downstairs patch closets are overkill, but seemed a good idea at the time.

Before I posted the original post, I ran a brand new cable through the wall (Cat 6e) that bypassed the patch closets upstairs, so it is a straight run from the router to the tv, the length is about 15m, I did not put a jack on the cables and instead put an rj45 plug on each end. I did this for speed and to just test it first. I had planned to add to the main patch panel and put on a jack over the weekend. I plugged it directly into the router (bypassing the switch). So I now have a direct 15m ethernet cable going from my router to the tv. I still had the same issue. I could get the login screen for amazon prime but nothing would stream.

I hooked the laptop to all 3 configurations. The original cabling (which ran through the patch closets), the straight cable which was outside the walls and ran straight to the router (This was shorter about 12m ), and the new direct cable. I had no issues with the laptop. I also hooked up my popcorn hour which is a tank head and a intel nuc mini pc I have xbmc on. Ran speed tests and streamed from the synology server and youtube on all 3 and had no visible issues. I did not however try the pinging, I can do that tonight.