Do you have new devices in your living room entertainment center that could connect to the internet? Or be controlled by things on your house network like computers or smart phones? Do they have ethernet but not builtin WiFi? So do I.
I have a Samsung Blue-Ray player that my wife gave me for Christmas in 2009. Every since, my family has been asking (pestering) me to connect it to the internet so they can watch NetFlix downloads on it. (They discovered unlimited viewing for $9 per month on my iPad.)
We’ve gone back to the big-name electronics store where it was bought a few times. We were trying to buy the Samsung-specific WiFi adapter for it (LinkStick I think), but they were always out of stock. When I did find one online, I balked at the $79 price tag. (That was mail-order on the internet in April 2010.) For that price, the LinkStick would only get the one device online.
My wife is a big fan of the food channel, and we watched Alton Brown’s “Good Eats” quite a bit. So I like his philosophy of preferring devices that “can multi-task”. So instead, I bought an Apple Airport Express for $99, just $20 more than Samsung’s LinkStick (Be careful not to confuse the Airport Express with an Airport Extreme base-station or other airport device.)
I installed it behind the entertainment center by just plugging it in and connecting an ethernet cable to the blue-ray player . I connected it to my laptop with an ethernet cable, but I could have connected to it wirelessly. I used the Airport Utility that was already on my Mac and set it to connect to the house WiFi. After it restarted, I connected it to the blue-ray player with the ethernet cable. I checked the setup on the player for networking and voila! It was on the internet and we began the NetFlix setup. (The Samsung player comes setup for ethernet connections from the factory.)
To complete the “multi-tasking”, I connected the Airport Express to my stereo with a cable that connects earphone jacks to RCA connectors. (To connect it to an optical port on a stereo, you would need Apple’s special optical cable.)
This setup is better for me for a few reasons:
- I didn’t have to buy hardware that might have only worked on Samsung’s player.
- It was available in the same electronics store where Samsung’s connector was out of stock.
- I can attach the Airport to my stereo and send music through it. This is really cool. (I want my iPad to send to it now.)
- I could decide to attach a USB printer to it, sharing it on the network. (Not likely my wife will allow that in the living room.)
- I could get this device to connect to my 5GHz WiFi hub (the space on the normal 2.4 GHz WiFi is pretty crowded in my neighborhood.)
- If I give away, move, lose, or can’t use the blue-ray player for some reason, I can re-use the airport for other things.
- With the addition of a cheap hub, I could connect more devices. The Samsung widget would only have connected the one blue-ray player. (And the GUI for setting that up was OK, but not as good as the Airport Utility.)
- The Samsung was setup to use an ethernet connection out of the box. I didn’t have to change anything to make it work. Other devices might be setup that way as well.
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