A couple of PC questions.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've got a desktop PC used with the main AV system. Mainly just a jukebox for music, etc. But does have an HDMI feed to the TV.

Added a USB Wi-Fi dongle - not the cheapest one I could find, either. Reports the Wi-Fi signal as excellent.

But often doesn't go online after booting. Shows it being connected to my Wi-Fi by name, but not actually on line. Little circle thing going round as long as you care to leave it. Windows tries to sort the fault, but doesn't. Unplugging the dongle then re-plugging gets it going. Be difficult to run a cable to it.

My idea is to set up a more comfortable place for Zoom etc meetings using the TV, rather than the laptop. Have ordered up a USB webcam for it. Already have a USB headset which works with it. And a combined cordless keyboard/ mouse pad.

Other thing - do any video cards for a desktop carry the PC audio too to the TV?

[Paul]

Regarding the video card question, yes, video cards carry audio over HDMI and DisplayPort. LPCM 8 channel is the non-proprietary option for the audio. That could easily carry stereo for you or even 7.1 audio.

In some cases, multimedia devices also have HDMI in and HDMI out, and this allows "dropping" the audio at one device and the video at another device. Like perhaps, running a soundbar as well as a TV set, from the same original signal from the computer. Some of these concepts may be addressed in the Wikipedia articles on HDMI and DP.

In Windows, look in the Device Manager, as well as the Sound Settings when you right click the sound icon in the lower right of the Windows screen. Example here from Windows 10. This picture shows I'm ready to run the audio (but my monitor doesn't have speakers, so it won't work).

At a very early point in time, digital audio on the video card was not "origined" by the video card. A two pin SPDIF interface on the top edge of the video card, allowed running a cable from the motherboard audio chip to the video card. The video card then converted the 6Mbit/sec SPDIF signal into the HDMI audio slots as needed. Whereas modern video cards, there is a sound block in the video card that makes the required digital stream locally, and the two-pin interface on the top edge of the video card is not used.

On early ATI/AMD video cards, the sound driver was actually written by Realtek, rather than by ATI staff. Which was also a bit kooky looking. As long as your kit was created in the last five or six years, there's a good chance all the rough edges on this stuff have been filed off.

Paul

[Kellerman]

PC sound output - Yes - via the HDMI lead from graphics card to the TV (card dependent, check specs, most Nvidea Gforce cards do)

Wifi - dongle/driver dependent not all work instantly.

Have you tried a pair of powerline adapters that (in effect) take the ethernet cable from router to destination via the ring main? Warning - same ring main. But not happy if up/down is on separate ring mains, dont like sockets that are on spurs off the ring main and they DONT work on the end of an extension lead - DAMHIKITDOK - other than that they are brilliant :-)

[John Rumm]

Probably worth mentioning that the HDMI audio output will be seen by the system as a separate audio device to the onboard analogue output for speakers or headphones. Hence you may need to explicitly select that as the default to actually hear anything on the TV speakers.

[John Rumm]

What version of Windows? It might be worth seeing if there are any driver updates for it.

While its not working, open a command prompt and type:

ipconfig /all

Post the results back here.

Its possible its getting stuck at the DHCP part of the process. Have you tried assigning it a static IP address?

Yup, see Paul's and my comments elsewhere on the thread.

[The Natural Philosopher]

+10001. You do have to do this - at least on linux.

Its the only sound(!) way to get sound and picture in sync on an HDMI TV from a PC. The TC delays the picture considerably. But does the same to the pound!

[T i m]

Whilst there is no reason why a USB WiFi dongle shouldn't work, did you explore the option of a WiFi card?

Did it come with drivers and if so, did you allow Windows to install it's own automagically?

I ask because I have had instances where whilst it seems to work, it doesn't work properly and have had to 'upgrade' the drivers to the ones supplied (or downloaded from the hardware vendors website, if any are offered).

Cheers, T i m

[Fredxx]

I have had many issues with reliability with no-name wifi dongles, even when they have a well known chip-set. They work for a time, often a week or more at a time then stop. If unplugged and re-plugged it then works again.

I have found a wifi - Ethernet bridge more reliable. A current one I use is a TP_Link device. Some bridges might have more than one port too or can work as an Access Point.

I would have thought a good chance with HDMI?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Although Windows troublshooting said everything was OK, it looks like all I had to do was tick the box for the homegroup. Seems to be OK now.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The dongle is TP Link, and not cheap. IIRC, this motherboard was a bit lacking in spare PCI slots.

[T i m]

<snip>

Hmm.

I've never bothered with the Homegroup thing so not sure what it's supposed to do / offer, however, although I've never made use of it, not joining one has never stopped anything working either?

Cheers, T i m

[Fredxx]

In device manager, check the device power options don't allow it to go to sleep. If you can find which 'hub' it is attached to[1], ensure that cannot 'sleep' too.

[1]UsbTreeView is a very useful program that give you the USB tree as well as detailed info on every endpoint.

[Brian Gaff (Sofa 2)]

That sounds like an older network router or dongle for wifi. I often find this. I either get buffering or it takes time to actually get web pages or the internet goes away, even though wifi seems to be connected.

Brian

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It was failing to allow internet access at boot. Not going into a sleep mode later.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Have BT FTC here. Dongle bought only months ago.

[Dave Liquorice]

I've had USB to RS232 devices spontaneously "disappear" from the USB subsystem and also spontaneously come back. There was some tie up with what was connected to the RS232 side but don't know if that was loading or data related. The convertors used the Prolific PL2302 chipset and they don't have a unique USB serial number. So when one goes away and comes back the OS (linux) connects it to the next free OS USB device not the port it was connected to. Sensible, it's a "new" device...

Replaced with a convertor using the FTDI FT232RL chip, these have unique USB serial number and haven't missed a beat. The OS is configured to connect a given USB serial number, on any physical port, to the same internal USB device.

[Bob Eager]

Yes, I had to do that with two USB devices - the doorbell and the door lock.

In both cases I just add a symbolic link in /dev.

[Jethro_uk]

It's more for machines that travel around ... you have your Homegroup in a slightly more trusted zone than anything else that might be on the network. Although I suspect it's real use is to have something different between various flavours of license. Much as you couldn't join a domain with the Home versions of 'dows ....

[T i m]

On Thu, 30 Apr 2020 13:08:20 -0000 (UTC), Jethro_uk <jethro [e-mail] wrote: <snip>

Ah, so it might set a more trusting security template in the Windows Firewall (that I don't use either). ;-)

OK.

Cheers, T i m

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Dunno - it might just have forced it to over write a faulty setting?