i-player connection

[John Rumm]

I am obviously not in my right mind then, since I did some last week :-)

Alas not that ideal when you need to stick a ceiling mount wifi access point onto a concrete ceiling and a surface mount pattress and euromod faceplate with RJ45 module beside it is going to look fugly.

A single CAT5E with PoE is about the only neat (ish) solution, and that means sticking your own RJ45 on the end.

I recently switched over to using "pass through" style RJ45s which are much easier to wire with 100% success each time. e.g:

You can strip off an inch or more of outer jacket, and then untwist the wires and arrange them in the right order. Then feed them into the plug so that they poke right through and out the front. Slide the cable in until the jacket is tucked into the plug, and crimp with the proper tool:

and it crimps the terminals and the cord grip, and also trims the wires flush with the end of the plug. Since the wires pass right through the plug you can easily see they are all in the right order, and you know they must also be deep enough in the plug for the IDC terminal to properly bite into them.

As a final bonus, because you don't need to juggle having enough wire exposed to make sorting the wire order doable against keeping the untwisted length to a minimum to minimise near end crosstalk, you can get the amount of untwisted conductor down to practically none:

So yes, I agree that avoiding terminating RJ45s is the way to go if you can get away with it, since patch leads are cheap and good quality RJ45 punch down sockets are easy to wire, there are ways of making life much easier when you do have to stick a RJ45 on a wire.

[John Rumm]

These are only £20, and support VLANs and basic "managed swtich" toys.

True, but how many times will you want link aggregation etc outside of places where you are likely to have *planned* and provisioned multiple cables?

[Tim Lamb]

Indeed. The first move is to clear all the junk this particular critic has stored in the eaves cupboard for working access.:-)

[Tim Lamb]

Thanks John. Netflix is now available.

The next problem is remote headphones. I'm not sure why this is needed (increasing deafness/embarrassment about high volume settings perhaps). Daughter has been invited to supply some Christmas headphones.

I don't think the Panasonic has Blue Tooth built in. Is there a work around? Sound bar with a radio o/p etc?

Sound bars I have briefly looked at seem to use batteries! Why?

[Tim Lamb]

I know my limitations:-)

I'm OK with backing boxes. Have plenty of cable and, as you say, patch cables are cheap.

Now I just need to climb a ladder and wade through the Rockwool!

[charles]

No idea, but the two I have are mains operated.(one on kitchen tv, the other for my desktop computer). The main tv sound goes into my hifi.

[Andrew]

Clive Sinclair pulled that trick many times without even a vaguely 'working' prototype to pull in lots of advance sales.

[Andrew]

Sony still sell their 'handy speaker' for personal TV listening .

[Andy Burns]

I think techmoan liked that one, recommended it for elderly/deaf parents etc

[Tim Lamb]

No TV bluetooth is the first obstacle.

Does get round the issue of not hearing the telephone when wearing a headset.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Certainly at one time there were cordless headphones where the TX plugged into the TV headphone socket. But if that killed the TV speakers, not much use with others viewing.

If an old set with a Scart, you can usually pick up audio out there - or of course from phonos, if it has them.

Really? Never seem that. Do you have to move it to a dock for charging every night?

[John Rumm]

There are a number of ways of working round this...

The first question is, does the TV have:

A headphone socket? A SCART connection? Connections for external speakers? An Optical Audio out?

You can still get Infrared Wireless headphones and RF/UHF wireless ones. These typically have a base station that you connect to the audio source, and then that broadcasts to the headphones. These could be connected to a headphone socket, or a scart, or possibly a speaker out connection. With the addition of a digital audio decoder - about £10 from Amason/eBay (aka SPDIF/Optical to audio) you could also drive the base station from a TV optical or digital audio output.

In a similar vein, there are devices (Amazon/eBay etc) that will take an analogue audio feed and make it avaialble via bluetooth, then standard modern "wireless" headphones or earbuds would work.

Yup that would be another option - plenty of those will pair with bluetooth headphones. IME the ones I have seen are mains (or at least external PSU) powered.

Other options include if you are using an AV amp - some of those will also support bluetooth. Same applies if connecting to an external HiFi.

Lastly there is the dedicated streaming box options that take over all the smarts and just use the TV as a screen. Many of these will have connectivity options.

[Andrew]

£169 on the sony website, but only £135 at John Lewis (but says out of stock). I think that was the price for the previous model which they were clearing out.

[John Rumm]

Oops, forgot the link:

[Tim Lamb]

In message <GWjaV$ [e-mail]>, Tim Lamb [e-mail]> writes

Right! Loft crawling My knees hurt, my lungs hurt and now my brain hurts.

What idiot devised the scrambled numbering for the Screwfix Philex Ethernet socket? They have attempted to both number the connections and colour chart the wiring. What is wrong with conventional numbering and a chart? I suppose this is meant to be understood internationally:-(

>

[Andrew]

"Green technology reduces power consumption"

"Max Power Consumption 2.82 W (220 V/ 50 Hz)" "Max Heat Dissipation 9.62 BTU/h"

Wonderful. That will save the planet.

[Andrew]

But the Netgear GS305 is cheaper? and uses less power

Power Consumption (Max and Standby) 2.34W << massive saving :-) Power On/Off Switch No Yes No No Heat Dissipation (Max and Standby) 7.99 BTU/

[Andrew]

And there are some Black Friday deals on the Netgear store

[John Rumm]

I am impressed they not only did the conversion correctly, but also got the units right :-)

[John Rumm]

That is an unmanaged switch, so not comparable, and not suitable if you want VLAN support and link aggregation.