TV & Internet

Repost: Corrected the garbled data in table of speed test results.

Samsung Frame TV

To put the finishing touch on our big remodeling project, we got a Frame TV. We hung it on the wall upstairs. It can be used to display artworks using very little power, at least that's my impression. It can also be used as a regular TV. My wife uses it to watch sporting events.

Ever since we started using it, games were constantly getting interrupted by the spinning dots which indicate that there has been some interruption in the signal. Very annoying, especially when it happens in the middle of a play.

I've been meaning to look into it, but it took a while to get all my ducks in a row. Today I got all the quackers lined up and ran my test.

Frame TV Driver

The Frame TV is funny. It has a separate control box that is connected to the display by a very thin cable, I think it might have a fiber optic component. It allows you to hide this box somewhere remote from the display, but it means running the cable through the wall. That's okay, major remodel entails tearing holes in walls, so another hole was no big deal. The box has a dozen different connection points. The only one we are interested in is the ethernet jack.

The quickest and easiest way to connect it was to run a 100 foot ethernet cable across the basement floor. That mostly works, but we keep getting the hiccups. So I thought I would try these ethernet-over-powerline adapators.

TP-Link Powerline Ethernet Adapter

They worked, but not any better than the cable. They only work with outlets that are connected to the same circuit breaker. Don't know what's up with that other than maybe their signal just isn't that strong.

Hitron Ethernet over Coax Adaptors

I had coax run all over the house when we built it, so I had coax near the Frame TV control box, but all the coax runs to one cupboard. There were labels on the cables at one time, but the few that are left are near illegible.

Sperry Wire Tracker

I borrowed this one from Osmany and I was quickly able to identify the coax I wanted. 

Now all I need is a computer to run the speed test. An earlier test using long (100 foot) cables was not encouraging, so I wanted to be closer to the control box. A laptop would be great, if it had an ethernet port, but none of our laptops have one, they're all wifi. I could have drug my Chromebox out there, but it had half a dozen cables tying it in place, but now I've replaced the Chromebox, so I can set it up out by the control box and run Google's speed test, so I did. Here's the results:

Cable	Upload	Download	Speedtest Rating
Internet over Powerline	24.6	39.7	Fast
50' Cable	91.7	91.1	Very Fast
Internet over Coax	149.5	244.2	Very Fast

Internet Speed Test - Megabits Per Second

The numbers are averages of three tests. The differences between successive tests were neglible. The coax adaptor is connected directly to the router. The other two were connected to a switch.

Will the coax cure the hiccups? We shall see, I've done enough for now.