Trying to get Blu-Ray player hooked up to modem for Netflix streaming

Just got AT&T U-verse set up yesterday. I have internet and TV service set up. I’m wirelessly connected from my computer and have the modem in the TV room so that I can do a wired connection to the Blu-Ray Player for better quality Netflix streaming.

I connected the Cat5 ethernet cable between the modem and Blu-Ray and when I did the auto set-up test, the cable connection test passed, the IP address connection test passed, but the Gateway connection test failed.

I called Panasonic and they told me to call AT&T. I called AT&T and they want to charge me to figure this out. I’m sure this isn’t brain surgery- I just think something’s not set right.

The one thing I did notice is that I could not connect to the internet from my computer until I unplugged the ethernet cable from the modem.

Any ideas?

Was it a crossover Ethernet cable?

Not sure what that means. Can you clarify?

This is the cable that I originally purchased to accomplish this at my old place, except that I foolishly thought the Blu-Ray player needed to connect to my computer and not the modem (which was upstairs).

Crossover Ethernet cable. Most Ethernet cables are “straight-through cables”, designed to connect from some computer or other to a hub or router. If you want to connect two computers directly, with no hub, you need a special “crossover” cable that swaps certain pairs of wires so that signals on one computer connect to the appropriate signals on the other computer. Newer networking equipment performs this crossover automatically, but it’s possible that your equipment may not. The way to test this is to plug in a straight-through cable and a crossover cable to see whether either works.

It’s a thought.

It’s extremely possible that something else is the cause of the problem.

Does your Bluray have a wireless option? I’d suggest trying that, and it should be plenty fast for Netflix streaming as long as it’s a strong signal.

Off topic, but I heard AT&T is capping internet now. How big of a file is a blue ray or HD version of a movie? Seems like you’d be better off buying from U-Verse on demand (if possible) if the bandwidth for an HD show is too big

Is your Blu-Ray player actually connected to a router instead of a modem? I ask because I had the same problem (Blu-Ray --> Router --> modem --> Internet). I had to disable the router’s firewall to get the Blu-Ray player to connect to Netflix. It turned out that the Blu-Ray player (a Samsung) and the router (a Belkin) just didn’t work with each other unless the router’s firewall was disabled. Belkin tech support confirmed this was a known issue.

Can you see what settings it’s used and verify that they’re correct? The gateway is typically 192.168.1.1, but I’ve seen some routers default setting as 192.168.1.100.
If you go to your computer, Start>Run type CMD (hit enter) and type IPCONFIG (enter) make sure the number that shows up under Default Gateway is the same number the DVD player is using.

If that looks good, set your DNS address to 8.8.8.8 and the secondary to 8.8.4.4. That seems to clear up a lot of these problems.