I have an ACR-PV76120 Playon!DVRHD with a Playon! Wireless USB adaptor; the unit was supplied with firmware v8.3.3 r4624, but I have upgraded it to v8.5.4 r7317.

I have an existing peer-to-peer network on my desktop (Windows XP SP3) which has WEP encryption. I have temporarily disabled Windows Firewall on this machine.

When I go into Setup | Network | Wireless Network. I see the available networks including my own. I select this network, and then see the screen which (I presume) requires me to provide the encryption key. I carefully type this in, ensuring capitalisation as appropriate, then select the OK key.

It runs the connection test for some time, but then responds “Test Fail”. I repeated the operation several times to eliminate the possibility of mis-typing the encryption key.

I tried switching the Wireless USB adaptor to the other USB port, but the problem persists; I tried it with and without the USB extension cable, but this made no difference.

I then decided to try the Wireless USB adaptor on another machine – a Windows 7 laptop. I successfully installed the supplied driver software, selected my network name, and provided the same encryption key.

Connection was successful.

I’ve now run out of ideas; I would not like to downgrade the firmware to an earlier version, because (a) I encountered snags with the firmware which was supplied with the machine, and (b) I much prefer GUI v2.0.

Can anybody help?

Hi Ken,

I seem to remember that some text fields are not empty by default but filled with a space. If you try to enter your password there it will have the space before it, causing errors when logging in. Can you select the text field and clear everything first before entering the password? Just to test the combination of dongle and firmware you could temporarily disable WEP on your router and make an open network.

Thanks for the quick reply, vanhal.

I've tried both your suggestions:

Clearing the text field before entering the password made no difference.

I then disabled WEP, and as anticipated, the screen requesting the password was bypassed, and it went straight in to the connection test.

However, it still failed.

So it now suggests some sort of incompatibility between the Wireless USB adaptor and version v8.5.4 r7317 of the firmware.

Any further suggestions?

Downgrade your firmware to r4585. It's GUI 2.0, but lacking several bugs found in later versions.

Make sure to reset to factory defaults, if prompted.

A guy from ACRyan email support says "Please take note that Playon!DVRHD is designed to host Peer to Peer connection instead of allowing it to connect to a Peer to Peer connection. It is a limitation on the unit and nothing is wrong or faulty for your dongle or unit."

I find that a bit surprising - why do I see a screen showing available networks if I can't connect to them?

If it's true then downgrading to an earlier version of the firmware won't make any difference, will it?

What is the difference between a host and a client in a peer-to-peer network? All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others?

Ignore that email - you can certainly connect to networks broadcast by a router. I'm not sure about ad-hoc networks. Just to clarify: are you using a router-based network or an ad-hoc network?

I seem to recall that the AC Ryan needs to connect to either WEP, WPA1 or WPA2 encrypted wireless networks. Hybrid WPA/WPA2 encryption seems to confuse it.

You'll have a better experience with your DVR-HD using r4585. The latest versions simply have far too many issues.

dasjournal:

My network is not router-based, it is ad-hoc, hosted by my desktop.

The issues you refer to in firmware versions later than r4585 - are they documented anywhere?

Since my earlier posts, I have created an hd-hoc network on the Playon!DVRHD, and successfully connected to it from a Windows 7 laptop. My next task is to connect via a wired network ...

Now I've successfully established a wired connection

Yes, wireless has its disadvantages.