Networking Options For Blu-Ray Player

[Woodruffe]

Hi,

In my last post I was after a new, faster Blu Ray player. Well, as it was a Snow Day today and school was closed I took the opportunity to browse the stores after the BDP 360 had sold out online for the great price of £99. Wandering into the local Sony store I started chatting to the salesman about the lack of the 360 and wondered if they had any in stock. Turns out they have stopped selling them due to the BDP 363 coming out and he proceeded to sell me one, complete with 3 films for little more than the online price of the 360, the speed in which he offered me a discount was scary!!!

Any, got it home all plugged in and I am very impressed with both the speed and picture quality but I have a little problem. I would like to network it to use the BD Live extras on the disk but having wooden floors prohibits running a CAT5 cable to the router, the instructions, however, mention about connecting it wirelessly. I've hunted around for Sony wireless dongles but there seems to be very little info out there and I was wondering if anyone had any experience of this?

Thanks,

Ben.

 

[bigboss]

Well, the salesman hasn't given you the entire information. The BDP S363 is essentially the S360 with 2 differences:

1) The S363 is sold only in Sony Centres

2) The S363 has a backlit remote which the S360 does not.

Sony centres don't sell the S360; they sell the S363 instead. Both the models will co-exist until replaced by a newer model later this year or next year.

You can connect your player to the internet by means of a homeplug. There's no wireless dongle for Sony players, & connecting a wireless dongle to the USB port on your player will not work either.

 

[Woodruffe]

And I thought I was getting a bit of a deal! Thanks for the link, looks like it will work perfectly.

Ben.

 

[Tonya]

Hi there!
I initially had the same problem connecting my Sony TV, BluRay player, Humax FoxSat and Media Centre PC in one of the racks I have at home.
Now presuming you already have a wireless router installed somewhere in the house, simply buy a second one but make sure it can be set up in access point mode as well.

That makes it a receiver rather than a transmitter of your internet signal.
So just place the newly configured access point behind your equipment and conect up everything that needs an internet signal.
The access point simply gets the signal from your original router and passes it on.

You will have to connect the AP to your PC first to configure it first, enter your WEP codes, etc, but follow the instructions in the manual and you can't go wrong.

Once connected to the access point, your equipment will think it's plugged directly into your normal router.

You can also use the "homeplug" method and send the signal through your ring mains wiring, but it's a more expensive solution, especially if you want to have more than one item connected at the same time!

Good luck!

 

[Vimeous]

An expansion on Tonya's suggestion.

You technically don't need a full router to achieve a wireless link as described. The bare minimum is known as a wireless bridge.
This is a device that can only receive a wireless signal.
A wireless router modem (all-in-one type device) being used to provide wireless access to devices only is known as an access point. The same device set to only receive the signal of another access point/all-in-one is operating in bridge mode.

TBH though that's all technical because in practise most bridges only have one ethernet port. This is to either connect a single device or (like me) to a dedicated switch.
The great advantage of a physically larger router that can operate as a bridge is all those extra connections they can have!

Remember that the single link between the two devices must carry the traffic for everything you use attached to the remote device. In practise even 802.11g is fine as long as you're not streaming from more than one machine across the connection (and the signal strength is good).

 

[bigboss]

Yes, a wireless bridge like this one can work, but it didn't work for me, because it's not compatible with Vista. I'm not aware of any similar product which is compatible with Vista........I'll be interested to know if there is one.

 

[michael hoy]

Hi.

Check this http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=2375

I used this on my Panasonic BDP works fine.

I now have Windows 7 on my laptop, and the CD that came with it works just the same as on XP and Vista.

 

[Woodruffe]

I played around with an old Belkin wireless router for the majority of yesterday and just could not get it to bridge or become an access point. I tried updating the firmware as recommended by Belkin support and I think I have managed to 'brick' it However, a bit of browsing from one of the links on powerline ethernet adaptors has thrown up a Netgear version which has 4 network points built in, with a movement of my router to another phone socket this will enable all the P.C's to be hard-wired into the network and allow streaming of HD material to my Xbox 360 so it's not all bad!

Thanks for all the advice, really appreciate it.

Ben.