Why doesn’t my Samsung TV get on with my BT Smart Hub 6?

BT to their credit have sent me a new router and Samsung talked me through an hour of factory resets, and they still don’t like each other.

I establish a connection using WPS and everything is great. Then it will drop the connection, but never whilst actually using it.

Repeat.

For whatever reason the TV doesn’t accept it if I enter the WiFi password, but it is OK if I do it using the WiFi extender. But this isn’t particularly stable either.

Any ideas?

No idea. I use an ethernet cable to connect my router to my telly. More reliable and faster than wifi. Is that an option for you?

Nope. TV is “floating” on the opposite wall to the router.

Is your router on a fixed channel or is it set up to move around for the best signal?

Dunno. BT Smart Hub 6.

I would check the time and date on the TV just in case it is way out. Then make sure you shutdown the TV and unplug it before starting it up again.
There is a problem like this with BT routers which is fixed with a reboot but you’ve done that already with the replacement.
If it’s an old TV maybe change the WiFi password removing special characters and only using letters and numbers. I’ve not had this problem for a long time so if the TV is less than ten years old ignore.

Interesting, I have the same issue with a BT whole home mesh and Samsung TV. Seems to connect fine but then would constantly drop the signal. Eventually had to revert to using the router WiFi rather than the mesh. Sorry, can’t help more.

TV is a 2020 model.

Split the channels on the router.

https://wifiplug.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002567049-Setup-2-4-GHz-BT-Home-Hub-6

What Drac says, split the SSID’s one for 2.4Ghz and another for 5Ghz, it’s a common issue on BT Smart Hubs.

Check the WiFi channel. We had an old leapfrog device that randomly refused to connect. In the end we traced it down to the router swapping channel. In the UK we have 1, maybe 2 channels that other parts of the world don’t use. When the router changed to one of these channels the leapfrog couldn’t connect. Resolved it by fixing the channel.

This was about 10 years ago so don’t know if the same applies to the 5ghz but certainly check the 2ghz SSID.

Hmmm… router setting show that the channels are already split. TV is on 5GHz.

Change channels for each network on your router as is could be clashing.

Sounds to me like you should be changing the tv to 2.4ghz which should be the default for the hub. My WiFi extenders are 5ghz but that’s fine for the local use they’re required for. Also explains why it works from your extender not your hub.

Right then… found the “Separate Bands” switch and selected it, then reset the router.

The TV has now latched on the the 2.4GHz frequency automatically.

Let’s see what happens!

Set the IP address as static and above 50 on the TV. Had to do this with the two Samsungs we had in our house. Our two are on .51 and .52

Happened with the hub5, but we’ve had two since, and ported over the settings. Currently on the latest BTHub

I once had a similar problem with my Mac repeatedly disconnecting from my BT router. A number of calls to nice ladies in India failed to solve the problem, then one who was a bit more on the ball put me through to a Mac tech specialist.
We must have spent well over an hour trying to fix it at both ends, and while I was putting the password in yet again, I was saying the characters out loud to myself, just to make sure I was doing it right, and he stopped me. Then he asked me if I’d put a dollar sign in front of the password, to which I replied no, somewhat surprised.
It seemed that BT required a dollar sign at the beginning of the password specifically for Macs. Nowhere was this mentioned in any paperwork, online, anywhere.
I did as suggested, and never had another issue. To be fair, BT did upgrade the system with later HomeHub models, but it was bloody annoying, and a clear example of a tech company setting up their system differently for one sort of user, then failing to include any notification to that effect where people could easily find it.
My current HomeHub is very stable, it rarely reboots itself during the hours I’m actually using it, I think once in the last eighteen months to two years, I can’t fault it.

Well, splitting the frequencies failed!

@fossy, is it as straight forwards as the internet would suggest?

@harry_the_Spider

Yes it’s just as straightforward as splitting the frequencies etc.

Find the TV in the list of connected devices on the router (it’s a while since I used a BT Hub but I think you need to enable the advanced settings and then it’s under My Network). Hopefully it will be obvious which one the TV is. If you select it you will be able to either set it to keep the ip address it already has or change it to one of your choice – I think the setting says “Always use the same address”. Pick any not currently in use, so go for something high up like 192.168.1.200 or something (no higher than .253).

Restart the TV. At this point the TV will get the address you assigned to it. You can also mimic the setting on the TV by giving it the address manually rather than it asking the router for an address. It must be the same as what you put in the router. The TV will be set to DHCP or “Automatic” in the network settings but you will need change this to manual and enter the ip address you chose (192.168.1.200) and also probably the subnet which is 255.255.255.0.

EDIT – just noticed you said your extender is not stable either – that makes me thing interference rather than anything else. Try setting the broadcast channel manually as a first port of call….. Also turn off any extenders as a test.

When you split the frequencies, did you change both passwords and ensuring the telly has forgotten the old details?

The best resource is community.bt.com it’s full of soft/hardware engineers, ex and current openreach and BT employees. I had a problem with the home hub and our wired and meshed network, which also has an air bridge to an outhouse. Home hub couldn’t cope with it so they advised a different router, provided all the setting and it’s been perfect since. Way beyond what BT helpline does (which is read off a screen). So I’d go there 👍

Just lock the IP address in the router settings for the TV, but it must be above 50. Both our Samsungs refused to connect until we gave them a static IP.

Forgive me for sounding like a dummy, but I know little about this sort of thing.

The Gateway for the TV is 192.168.1.254, so I need to drop this below the .254?

The IP address is 192.168.1.66

I have to say, for the best part of £2k I’m a little pissed that the ****ing thing doesn’t work!

You have an address range that has 255 available addresses in total. .254 is the gateway and .255 is the broadcast address so you have 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.253 available for your devices. Don’t change the gateway address on your TV as that is the address of your router and it needs to be .254. Your TV already has 66 so you can just reserve that on the BT Hub. You can choose to give your TV any of the addresses but you MUST make sure that it is not already given out to another device. Normally something called DHCP makes sure that doesn’t happen but when you start doing things manually you just need to make sure there aren’t duplicates. When you reserve an address for manual use DHCP will exclude it but you need to pick a free one in the first place. Normally DHCP starts dishing out addresses from 1 so it’s unlikely you will have got to 200 hence my suggestion of 200 but any unused address will do.

Does that make sense?

Not really!

I’m in the wireless settings on the router and have found the corresponding IP address for the TV.

To reiterate, the TV is online and functions but it gets dropped daily and has to be reconnected. The router is new and has the same issues as the old one.

Will changing a number solve this?

OK so on the router set the device that is the IP address for the TV to “always use this address”.

Have you found that setting?

Done!

Is this the magic cure?

Also, who the **** is William and why has he got a games console hooked up to my router?

Just fired up a BT Hub. YOu need to access it and then click on My Network then the device that corresponds to your TV. Click on “Change Settings” at the top and enter the admin password. Then toggle the icon that says “Always use this IP address” and then click “Save”

That’s what I’ve just done.

Also, who the **** is William and why has he got a games console hooked up to my router?

Err no idea!!!!

So now you can see if that fixes it. If not then you might need to force the TV to use the address you just reserved. You’ll need to go into the TV settings and set the IP to be manual and type in 192.168.1.66

Thanks. I owe you a pint.

If you really don’t know who William is then check to see if it is a wireless or wired connection from the Hub My Network screen where it lists all the devices. If it is wireless then I suggest you change your password!!!

I only got the router on Friday. No idea who he is. Will terminate it from my end!

If the icon is grey rather than blue it might be that you’ve got a refurbed Hub that hasn’t been refurbed! Remove the device and see if it reconnects. If you want to verify that your IP reservation is working then change it from 66 to something else in the Hub device page where you set it to always use the same address and restart your TV. Have a look in the TV settings and it should have the address you selected. Restart your TV anyway so it gets a new IP lease.

BT home hubs are quite slow when rebooting at giving out IP addresses, so if you have another device (extender, some network switches, network bridge) then these may start up their own DHCP server and you can end up with a conflict. This is the issue we had with frequent drop outs. Some devices (like extenders, access points etc) are configurable with a webpage, some esp small network switches are not – this is where our problem localised. BT home hubs go thru endless updates and resets which is why the bt community forum told me to change to a TPlink one instead 👍 vvv frustrating until that point

If you have a laptop/PC then you can type this into a cmd window to see if there are any other DHCP servers on your network.

ipconfig /all | find /i “DHCP Server”

To launch a cmd window type cmd in the search bar at the bottom right of the screen (W10) and then select “run as administrator” next to “Command Prompt” when the results appear..

It should show only your Hub with the address 192.168.1.254

I have to ask, assuming that this works, why does it work? What have I done?

Regards,

Intrigued of North Manchester

Ah now there’s a thing. In a nutshell…it could be any number of things but what you have done is take the DHCP protocol out of the equation. DHCP has a particular set of rules that need to be followed by both the client and the server and if any of the “handshake” process gets lost in the network for whatever reason then the process will fail. However it is clearly working to a point as your TV has an address. The clue might be in the fact that it works for a day and then needs setting up again. What DHCP does is dish out an address and also reclaims unused addresses so that you don’t run out. On a home network you are limited to 253 addresses which is more than enough for most people but if it gave out a new address every time you turned a device on you would soon run out. The way it does this is it “leases” the address to the device and if the device does not request a renewal then the address is reclaimed. The default lease period on a hub is 1 day but you can change this and that might be another thing to try. A device will start requesting a renewal half way through the lease period so 12 hours after the allocation of the address in your case and will keep trying to get a renewal acknowledgement from the DHCP server until it does get one and then the clock is reset. If the lease renewal part of your TV’s internal configuration is not right then the lease will get expired by the Hub and the TV will drop off the network until it requests a “new” lease rather than a “renewal”. It will request a new lease when you enter the WiFi details again and probably get the same address but a new lease.

Al that is only a guess as you’d need some network sniffing tools to see exactly where the process was failing. @dickyhepburn makes a good point though – if you have a rogue DHCP server then you will get all sorts of problems. The fact that you have troublesome extenders (ooh err missus!) might be the cause of all this anyway. It’s hard to tell. If the static IP fix you just applied does not work then I would be removing the extenders to see if that made a difference.

but what you have done is take the DHCP protocol out of the equation.

Nope not really.

The TV is still requesting an IP address from a DHCP server – so it’s still involved… But it will assign the same IP address each time the lease is renewed.

By setting a static IP address on the TV it will not make a DHCP request so the server is not involved at all.

I’ve always been of the opinion that things that generally don’t move around (i.e. desktop pcs, TVs, set top boxes, etc) are better off with a static IP set outside the address pool of the DHCP server.
Less things to go wrong.

Also, who the **** is William and why has he got a games console hooked up to my router?

He’s using your BT hotpot that all Home hubs send out. It can be disabled.