Connecting our smart television or Smart TV to the Internet is essential to be able to take advantage of all its advantages and capabilities: access to numerous applications, play video games and even watch television for free on the Internet. And just like our computers, Smart TVs can connect via WiFi or wired.
Most likely, your Smart TV is connected to your home WiFi network, after all, this is the most convenient and convenient way to connect it. However, connecting the TV to the router directly via cable This has some advantages when using television, and it is something that we can consider especially if we have the router near the TV. Below are the most important benefits.
Better and faster connection (but with limitations)
Connecting to WiFi networks is certainly more comfortable, but it can also have certain disadvantages, and one of the most common is that many devices fail to make the most of the bandwidth that we have contracted. If we have 100 Mbps, we hope to be able to download at that same speed.
On the other hand, if you connect the television wired to the router we will maintain greater connection stability, allowing us to get closer to the maximum speed of our bandwidth. Coming closer, I mean that Smart TVs often don’t allow you to take advantage of the maximum download speed, since many models support a maximum of 100 Mbps. However, when you connect the TV via cable, the connection will be even more stable. if it doesn’t reach that 300 Mbps or 500 Mbps that some of us have contracted.
Another advantage of connecting the TV to the router via cable is that minimizes latency, something that is generally very beneficial when playing, but more on that later. In general, when watching TV, lower latency provides benefits when watching live content, which is often important when watching, say, a soccer match.
Connecting the TV to the router via cable provides a more stable connection, but many TVs limit the speed to 100 Mbps, and this is something we need to take into account.
Goodbye to coverage problems
If we talk about improving the connection, we are not only referring to the importance of having a more stable connection and making the most of our Internet connection, but it is also about very important to avoid coverage problems.
In cases where the TV is in a saturated environment, this usually affects the experience since the Smart TV may suffer from interference. To improve the connection, it is important to consider the network compatibility of the router and TV, but in saturated environments, coverage outages may still occur at certain times of the day. The quickest and most effective way to forget about this problem is to connect the TV to the Internet via cable and say goodbye to coverage, network problems and everything else.
For gaming and streaming there are great advantages, especially if we play in the cloud
Last but not least, a good Internet connection in terms of stability and speed allows us to enjoy content consumption more effectively. This is true for both streaming of series and films, as with video games and the use of other applications, and the wired connection, as we saw in the first point of this article, generally offers a more stable connection than via WiFi in many cases.
Although it is true that we do not need extreme connection speeds to watch series and films on Netflix or Prime Video for example, it is preferable to have a stable connection to always enjoy the content. in the best playback quality availablewithout suffering from quality jumps between 1080p and UHD while we try to watch the series and the movie.
In the case of video games with online connection that we download from the Play Store, a better connection will benefit us in the games. But what is even more important in the case of cloud gaming through services such as Xbox Cloud Gaming or Nvidia’s GeForce Now.
Cloud gaming requires not only downloading and uploading data, but also recording the orders that we generate on the controller, which must be sent to the servers so that the movements or actions we want in the game are executed. The more stable the connection, the lower the latency, the better the experience.
In general, connecting the TV to the router via cable also provides advantages when using applications such as video calls and others. This type of connection It’s not a magic solution for some issues, but it’s worth improving the experience if we have connection stability issues when using our apps or reading.
Cover photo | Juan Carlos Lopez for Xataka
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