Hi,
Sorry, this will be a long first post, but its a weird problem.
I have two Vizio E291i-a1 SMART TV's that I installed about 3 weeks ago and at the time effortlessly attached to the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi from my ASUS RT-AC66U. Both TVs are identical and both connected with no problems.
I've been using both TVs daily for about 3 weeks and both TVs worked flawlessly this way. I could NETFLIX from them, etc, all systems A-OK 100%.
Yesterday morning both TV's developed the same symptoms. Once powered up they became unresponsive to their remotes and the buttons on them. The TV would play video fine but you couldn't change the volume or enter the menu, or power down except by pulling the plug. Ironically (you'll see why in a minute) the only function still controllable on the TVs were the internet apps. i.e. I could watch NETFLIX initiated from the remote but not control the TV volume or power. The problem occurs immediately and every time.
Long story short I discovered that if I did not attach the TVs to the Wi-Fi after resetting them to factory condition, the TVs would work properly. Once attached to the Wi-Fi, the same symptoms occur immediately. Spent some time on Vizio's tech chat and they finally told me - its your router - its sharing and sharing must be off (I couldn't get any more details from the "tech"). I didn't believe them because the combination had been working great for 3 weeks. How do you explain that? Vizio said the TVs had NOT received any new firmware, and I know the router didn't.
This morning on a whim I tried attaching one of the TV's to the Wi-Fi hotspot from my ipad3. Guess what - that works absolutely perfectly. No issues. So Vizio must be right - something about my network is exposing a bug in their TVs.
BTW, the TV's are 2.4 GHZ or Ethernet only - no 5GHz. Also I don't think its related to the radio in the ASUS because I connected one of the TVs via Ethernet directly to a LAN port on the ASUS. Bam - same problems. Its the network itself. Of course I've tried the obvious rebooting/power cycling everything multiple times to no avail.
So, given the clue Vizio told me that the router is "sharing" and that's the problem, anyone have any idea what about my ASUS network could be causing problems with my TVs? I'll be messing with settings but maybe someone else has run into something like this?
Thanks.
ADDITIONAL INFO - I see one anomaly in the ASUS System Log. I see a continual dnsmasq-dhcp[552]: DHCPDISCOVER (br0) of a MAC address and a dnsmasq-dhcp[552]: DHCPOFFER (br0) to that MAC address of an IP. This is repeating every 2 seconds and restarts immediately after rebooting the ASUS. I cant find what has that MAC address on my network.
Also, the only thing I did to the router in the three weeks since installing the TV's is mess around with attaching my old Verizon 3G USB dongle as a backup WAN. Never got it to work so I removed it. Maybe that messed something up. I cant swear that the TV's works right after messing with that.
Add - I found out the mystery DHCP activity was to my Cisco media bridge. I power cycled it and the DHCP messages stopped but this did not FIX my TV problem.
Sorry, this will be a long first post, but its a weird problem.
I have two Vizio E291i-a1 SMART TV's that I installed about 3 weeks ago and at the time effortlessly attached to the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi from my ASUS RT-AC66U. Both TVs are identical and both connected with no problems.
I've been using both TVs daily for about 3 weeks and both TVs worked flawlessly this way. I could NETFLIX from them, etc, all systems A-OK 100%.
Yesterday morning both TV's developed the same symptoms. Once powered up they became unresponsive to their remotes and the buttons on them. The TV would play video fine but you couldn't change the volume or enter the menu, or power down except by pulling the plug. Ironically (you'll see why in a minute) the only function still controllable on the TVs were the internet apps. i.e. I could watch NETFLIX initiated from the remote but not control the TV volume or power. The problem occurs immediately and every time.
Long story short I discovered that if I did not attach the TVs to the Wi-Fi after resetting them to factory condition, the TVs would work properly. Once attached to the Wi-Fi, the same symptoms occur immediately. Spent some time on Vizio's tech chat and they finally told me - its your router - its sharing and sharing must be off (I couldn't get any more details from the "tech"). I didn't believe them because the combination had been working great for 3 weeks. How do you explain that? Vizio said the TVs had NOT received any new firmware, and I know the router didn't.
This morning on a whim I tried attaching one of the TV's to the Wi-Fi hotspot from my ipad3. Guess what - that works absolutely perfectly. No issues. So Vizio must be right - something about my network is exposing a bug in their TVs.
BTW, the TV's are 2.4 GHZ or Ethernet only - no 5GHz. Also I don't think its related to the radio in the ASUS because I connected one of the TVs via Ethernet directly to a LAN port on the ASUS. Bam - same problems. Its the network itself. Of course I've tried the obvious rebooting/power cycling everything multiple times to no avail.
So, given the clue Vizio told me that the router is "sharing" and that's the problem, anyone have any idea what about my ASUS network could be causing problems with my TVs? I'll be messing with settings but maybe someone else has run into something like this?
Thanks.
ADDITIONAL INFO - I see one anomaly in the ASUS System Log. I see a continual dnsmasq-dhcp[552]: DHCPDISCOVER (br0) of a MAC address and a dnsmasq-dhcp[552]: DHCPOFFER (br0) to that MAC address of an IP. This is repeating every 2 seconds and restarts immediately after rebooting the ASUS. I cant find what has that MAC address on my network.
Also, the only thing I did to the router in the three weeks since installing the TV's is mess around with attaching my old Verizon 3G USB dongle as a backup WAN. Never got it to work so I removed it. Maybe that messed something up. I cant swear that the TV's works right after messing with that.
Add - I found out the mystery DHCP activity was to my Cisco media bridge. I power cycled it and the DHCP messages stopped but this did not FIX my TV problem.
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