Connecting WiFi Dongle on LG TV to Wifi via Airport Express

Question

Connecting WiFi Dongle on LG TV to Wifi via Airport Express

I bought an LG WiFi enabled television ( model 32LD550) and an LG Dongle (AN-WF100) and I'm trying stream Netflix movies through the webcast Netflix App built into the TV. If I use the ethernet cable, it works great. But when I try to use the LG Dongle AN-WF100, I get a message that says my Internet Connection Speed is slow and it will not play the movie, or load my Netflix library.

I am using a 4th Generation Airport Extreme Dual Band wireless router that I puchased in March 2011. The transmit rate on the router is 243 and the mode is 802.11n. I have Comcast broadband that registers about 20 mbps download speeds. So, it certainly would seem that my wireless download rates are more than adequate for streaming Netflix (not to mention, I also have Apple TV and I have no problems at all streaming Netflix via Wifi on that).

The LG Television is only about 15 feet away from my Airport Extreme.

Has anyone else had simillar issues with using an LG Dongle to stream movies Wifi using an Airport Extreme? Any advice how to make this work?

I had the service department from LG comes and look at my TV and they said everything is working fine, and that the fault lies with my Apple Airport Extreme. He says I should switch to a different wireless router, but that is not an option for me as the Airport Express was not cheap, is fairly new, and it works great with all my other equipment.

I greatly appreciate any advice any of you may have in troubleshooting this problem, as customer service at both LG and Apple don't seem to have a solution.

Airport Extreme 4th Generation Dual-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.6.8), LG TV 32LD550, Dongle AN-WF100

Posted on Jul 1, 2011 1:54 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 1, 2011 2:26 PM in response to stevenfromelmer

I can't speak specifically regarding LG, but the Whole Home feature on Direct TV (record a movie on one DVR and watch it on another TV in another location) just won't work with wireless, and I have a strong fast connection at 300 Mbps. Ethernet works perfectly.

Few audio/video products will accept "n" wireless at 5 GHz. I suspect that your LG accepts a 2.4 GHz signal, which would top out at 130 Mpbs.

If you are trying to stream High Definition video, especially at 1080P, my opinion would be that it is unlikely that you will be able to do so reliably using wireless.

Perhaps another user who has figured out how to do this will post with some input.

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Answer 2

Jul 1, 2011 2:31 PM in response to stevenfromelmer

I think I finally have this figured out! Apparently the LG Dongle only works at the 2.4 GHz frequency. I enabled my guest network and gave it a unique name with WPA2 Personal security and then connected to the guest network instead of the base station network and at the same time, it seems my TV received a push from LG to update to the newest software version for the TV - which took it first from version 6.something to version and then had to update again so it got to version 8.something.

I'm not sure if it was switching to the guest network or the TV updating to its newest software, but it now works just fine!

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Answer 3

Jul 1, 2011 2:52 PM in response to stevenfromelmer

The "main" and "guest" networks both broadcast exactly the same dual band radio signal, so I imagine that the LG update helped with the connection.

Glad that this seems to be working for you.

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Answer 4

Jul 1, 2011 2:57 PM in response to Bob Timmons

I bet it was the update. It was technically telling me the connection was no good, but in the background was connected and pushing the updates to the TV. not sure why it took so long for the final updates to come through though...

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