The smart TV and the radio

The smart TV is the most entitled device in the house: it sits through a wall, it prefers the slow band, it updates at the football, and it has a UI that says ‘network error’ for twelve different sins. Households then upgrade the drop. The drop was 400 Mbit and bored. The television was on 2.4 GHz through a kitchen. This is the cheapest article in the issue, if you own a cable.

Bitrate, not brag

4K streams are tens of megabits, not hundreds, most of the time. HDR and extra streams add up; they do not add up to a data-centre.

If ethernet to the TV is smooth at 7pm, the plant is not your critic. If ethernet also buffers, then we talk about WAN.

The band

Force 5 GHz, hide 2.4 if you must, or cable. TVs will pick the worse band and then sulk with confidence.

A dual-band SSID with a clever name is still one name. Split names if you need to bully the telly.

7pm

Updates, other streams, a cupboard hub, a neighbour’s mesh. Measure. Then either cable the TV or admit the WAN is a cabinet at the lane end.

Do not buy 2.2 Gbit because Match of the Day pixelated. That sentence has funded a lot of vanity.

A television is not a speed test. It is a bad wireless client with a large glass face.

The smart TV will take as much network as you give it, badly. Give it a cable. Keep the drop for something that needs one.