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the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Kokubunji, 2021.07.21

We've been having problems with the sound-bar for our television dropping out all the time. I looked into it online and many people had linked it to wifi dropouts. So I bought a small network switch and a wifi range extender and now have a workaround for the sound-bar's notoriously poor wifi client.

The wifi range extender and the main wifi router (which is on the second floor) are from the same manufacturer, and I bought the extender having read that together they could create a "mesh" network, meaning that our phones and laptops would automatically connect to the closer of the two wireless access points wherever we were in the house. But there was a problem: the firmware available for our model in Japan doesn't yet support the mesh. I wrote to the manufacturer and the (almost) English response was that I'd just have to wait.

Sooo I didn't wait. I noticed that the router model we have goes by a different name in the US and downloaded the US-market firmware and installed that. And, success!

But then the TV stopped connecting to Netflix. Looking at the (Japanese only) diagnostics on the TV I saw that everything was working except the DNS. Throwing another 45 minutes of research at it I found that this manufacturer's mesh systems seem to have a problem with common DNS providers like 8.8.8.8 and 1.1.1.1. So I decoupled the mesh and right away everything started working.

Now the sound-bar is still having drop-outs but the TV's network works better than it ever did on wifi so I've taken one step forward (albeit not the one I intended). However the TV is flickering when on HDMI input, and I suspect there's a problem with the TV's electronics. Both the flickering and the sound-bar dropouts could be caused by that.

I'm going to write to the friend-of-a-friend who sold me the sound-bar.

rand()m quote

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who'll decide where to go.

—Dr. Seuss