Sony 32 EX500 USB Wifi Adapter

jomppa

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Hi

My parents in Law bought a new Sony EX500 which is pretty nice.
BUT I can't get my USB wifi adapter to work in the tele.

Is there a known compatible list or do you have to enable something?

A 2GB USB storage stick works very well from the same USB port with an AVI by the way. 500GB doesn't but didn't expect it as it is formatted to NTFS and should be FAT.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks
John
:)
 
Has to be the Sony Wifi stick - unfortunately there is no inter-compatibility between PC dongles and CE hardware right now. Maybe get a pair of homeplugs - more reliable and better connection speed, possibly even cheaper?
 
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Been there muself - but only the Sony one works - bought it from local Sony Centre for £79.90 - ouch!
 
Wow .. nice .. not :-(
Is there an alternative ?
Where is the cheapest place to buy and what is the model number to search on the net ?
Thanks
John:(
 
I was looking at this dongle for a 40ex503. Price is just amazingly dear.

I was googling like you do and found it uses the:

Chipset: AtherosAR9280
FCC ID: AK8UWABR100.


Now if you clever people could look at the chipset and tell us if we could meybe use a cheap dongle with the same chipset that would be real cool. I have found drivers for the chipset online and I think the chip is used for laptop internal wifi boards.

I cannot find a dongle yet but am still looking.

Lets hope Sony have not hardware locked it in some way.

I would have a punt on a shanzai $10 dongle just to see if it worked.


Now, after trawling the net I found the xbox360 wireless adapter for pc uses the same chipset (I think)(looks like the one with one aerial stick on it). If anyone is brave enough to stick it in and have a go this would be helpful and hopefully not damaging to either. Would be great if this worked.
 
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Where did you find out what chipset it uses ? Have u got the URL ?
 
Whichever USB adaptor you use you will still need drivers for it to work, I would imagine the Sony TVs only have the drivers in the firmware for the specified wireless dongle to work.

Another option possibly would be to use a Wireless G gaming adaptor such as this. Once connected to your wireless network you can use an ethernet cable from the adaptor to connect to your TV. It also costs around half what the Sony adaptor costs.

Just a Thought :)
 
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I got a second cheap router, put DD-WRT on it and setup as my wifi bridge. I was just interested in wifi adapter if could find a suitable cheap Chinese model. I appreciate the drivers will need to be build into the set hence it will be a limited range of models that will work.

You can get the source code for the set here.
Sony Global - Linux Source Code Download page

I've not had a chance to look at it yet. I did the same with my Asus O!play to find out it had build in support for a couple of models of realtek usb wifi adapters. Sony won't be different, its a case of which chipset they have support for and have they locked out non-sony models.
 
The chipset is AR7010 and the radio is AR9280. The Xbox360 wifi n adapter has these but its been confirmed on other forums it doesn't work with Sony Ex500 series or bluray players. USB wifi adapters than use that combination seem to be very rare. I can find half mini pci-e cards but thats no use as the tv has a USB socket for wifi. It might have a mini-pcie slot if you open up Sony product if anyone wants to try it ;-)
 
I tried a TP-Link TL-WN722NC which uses the Atheros AR9271, its not recognised by the tv though.

3com seem to make a USB adapter with the extact same chips but it costs £60 so no saving really. Gemicom sell one as well but I can't find it for sale or mentioned anywhere bar Gemicom website.
 
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Has anybody found a cheap reliable alternative to the very expensive Sony dongle? I'm not convinced about the homeplug option, so a good bridge is prolly what I need.

Thanks :)
 
Hi all,

I think I've been to this thread a couple of times now and this time I had an idea.

What you really need, is a small usb powered wireless bridge... you can plug it into the usb slot on the TV for power, with a very short ethernet cable from it to plug into the actual ethernet port of the TV.

Any configuration that you need to do can be done by plugging the unit into a proper pc (setting wireless security etc.) - this would then mean that no driver support is required on the TV (let's face it, Sony are the kings of 'Proprietary'!).

So I googled....

Netgear Universal Wifi Internet Adapter: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Amazon sell that currently for £20 less than they sell the UWA-BR100 which is about 1/3 less. It also comes with the added benefit that if you ever have the sudden realisation that Panasonic/Toshiba/Samsung/LG make better tvs, you'll still have a wireless 'dongle' that you can use rather than some overpriced proprietary single-use tat.

Sounds like a plan to me. Well, actually, it doesn't - I fitted my house out for wired gigabit connections when we did the moving in decoration dance, so I don't have to spend huge amounts on wireless tech, worry about the thickness of my walls or anything like that!

My TV already has two wires going to it, minimum. A coax aerial cable and a power cable. An ethernet cable makes very little difference.

C
 
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wen i go to look at anew tv.eg kdlex503 in the shop the picture looks rubbish. will it be better wen i get it home or are they that bad.cos said tv won what hi fi tv of the year but looks crap to me .thanks
 
Has anyone tried plugging the Sony USB device into a Windows 7 PC to see if it recognises the hardware?
 
Can i use the UWA BR100 on my non-wifi-card desktop PC to give it wifi functionality instead of using it on the TV. I bought it wastefully, i don't need to put it on the TV since my wireless router is right next to the TV and wired to it with an ethernet cable, thanks, if possible please email me the answer to karanjbhatia at gmail dot com (i hope it is okay to post email addresses here?)
 
Buffalo wireless-N300 cable router/access point.

from my sony bravias LAN connection i take a network cable to the buffalo unit which then wirelessly bridges to my BT Homehub 3 which connects via adsl to the internet. It was easy to set up and works brilliantly. It also looks great and has a few more ports to plug a playstation 3 into etc etc. and the best thing was it cost £20 from an online store.

I just need to find an alternative to the skype webcam being so expensive...
 
Buffalo wireless-N300 cable router/access point.

from my sony bravias LAN connection i take a network cable to the buffalo unit which then wirelessly bridges to my BT Homehub 3 which connects via adsl to the internet. It was easy to set up and works brilliantly. It also looks great and has a few more ports to plug a playstation 3 into etc etc. and the best thing was it cost £20 from an online store.

I just need to find an alternative to the skype webcam being so expensive...

I did much the same with a Netgear WG602 Wireless Access Point (WAP) which I happened to have in the garage. Works perfectly. These WAPs are available on e-Bay for around £20 (second hand). Set it up in 'client mode' (having tried point-to-point mode, which failed). The key points seem to be

  • Make sure that all the settings in the Wireless Access Point and your main wireless router are the same (channel number, passwords, etc.) - after all .. you want them to talk to each other !
  • Set up the WAP by connecting it using an ethernet (Cat 5) cable. Once the WAP connects wirelessly, you'll get an error message on your PC about "IP Address Conflicts". This means the WAP is trying to connect twice (wired and wireless). At this point, pull out the ethernet cable !
  • Connect the WAP to the TV using a LAN (ethernet, Cat5) cable.
Having set it all up, I've fixed the WAP on the back of the TV, using the M6 threaded holes provided for fixing the TV to a wall mounting bracket.

Avoid the curse of Sony's £50 to £70 proprietary dongle ! Use a Wireless Access Point for £10 to £20.

This is a wild guess, but it's a fair bet that this can be made to work using any WAP which operates in client mode (Netgear, Linksys, Buffalo, Belkin . . .). Check the user manual first though.

Hope this helps.

Nodder
 

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