Connect Your Smart TV To A Router

In part 1 of this article, Joanne wanted to know if she could connect her SmartTV to her home router.  Yesterday, I explained how the process worked. Today, I’ll walk you through it step-by-step.

When you are first setting up a smart TV, you should connect it to a wireless network to gain all the benefits of owning one. Usually, there are menus on the TV that will assist you with set up. My television happens to also be a Samsung, so the menus may be similar to what you see, but also could be completely different. I started by pressing the Menu key on my TV remote. This brought up a menu with various options, one being Network. I navigated down to this and found the following menu.

Under Network Settings, it will ask you to set up your wireless using the build in LAN adapter. Then, it will search for your router. This is where you will need to know the SSID that your router is using. If your wireless comes from your Internet provider, this was determined and configured when the router was installed. The SSID may even be listed on the bottom of the router, or been on a card given to you at the time of installation, if you never changed from the default settings. If it is provided by your Internet provider, you may be able to call them to find that information. If you set up (or someone else helped you set up) your own wireless, then whoever set it up needed to record this information. As you can see, my search brought up a list of various routers the TV found nearby.

Choose the network you want to connect to, and you will be asked to enter the security key, which I imagine is what you are calling the pin. This is the password for the network, or in other words, your router.  Again, if you have never changed the settings on your network, this will also be listed on that sticker or card, or known by whoever set up your wireless. If you’re not sure you know that password/pin, it’s the same one you use to connect all your devices to the wireless network that you use, such as your laptop, phone or tablet.

Once you correctly enter that pin/key, your TV will confirm that you are connected to the network. Once you’ve done this once, the TV will automatically use that network from then on.

If you or no one else knows that password/pin, and you really want that TV on your wireless, then you may want to log into your router and reset your wireless password. Now, please bear in mind, changing this will require you to re-enter the password for each device you use to connect to the wireless network, so this isn’t something to do without taking that into consideration. But without knowing the password to the network, there’s not a lot more you can do to connect that TV into the network, unless you have a wired connection near the TV somewhere to connect onto your network.

However, once you do have your WiFi set up, you should have the ability to open up web pages and applications, such as NetFlix, Hulu, and YouTube, directly from the menu on your television. For example, my Samsung TV has a built in SmartHub that easily lets me open up different applications simply by using my remote.

~ Audra