Why is the 100 Mbps port an issue on a device that can never do more than a single video stream. Why should the TV manufacturer spend more money on that part?
I've never dug deep into this, but the normal argument is that it's possible to saturate a 100Mbps link with a single 4K Blu-ray stream. Even if most people will never hit that limit, it would be nice for a top of the line 4K TV to support "normal" (for some media-savvy folks) 4K streams.
But that's not a very compelling argument on its own, since the Ethernet link is just one link in the chain. Having a gigabit port doesn't help much if the TV can't handle decoding video at those bitrates in real time. It's definitely possible that TV manufacturers choose 100Mbps ports because they know the TV can't deal with huge streams for other reasons.
It's an interesting situation for the manufacturers. Even if 99.9% of buyers will never see streams above 100Mbps, and even if that other 0.1% can't effectively use them, it might be worth it to bump the port to gigabit since complaints about 100Mbps ports come up so often in reviews and in online discussions. Maybe throwing in a borderline useless gigabit port would generate enough sales to justify the marginal BOM cost increase.
As an example, my TV has a 100mbps network port - I thought I was being smart, and plugged my TV into a wired network cable. It kept buffering on a large 4k movie, which confused me because it had been working fine over wifi.
Finally realized my wifi was faster than 100mbps, and hence handled the stream fine, but wired couldn't keep up.
> I've never dug deep into this, but the normal argument is that it's possible to saturate a 100Mbps link with a single 4K Blu-ray stream.
Are people really keeping and 123Mbps or 144Mbps (the two >100Mbps options) 4K Blu-ray rips? The largest 100GB triple layer disc can't even hold 2 hours of video at those rates. Realistically you'll max out at 72Mbps or 92Mbps on 4K discs.
To access highest quality Pure Stream available at 80Mbps you must have a minimum internet speed of 115Mbps over Wi-Fi. Ethernet (wired LAN) connections are limited to 100 Mbps due to the TV’s product specifications. Therefore, to enjoy 80 Mbps with Pure Stream functionality, you need to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi (wireless LAN) that supports minimum IEEE 802.11 n/ac.
> But if the internal storage of the TV (or the processor) can't handle above 100Mb/s it'll never practically matter.
UHD Blu-Rays already exceed 100mbit/sec. That is current commercially distributed consumer content that requires gigabit to stream properly over a network.
Any 4K capable smart TV or streaming device should have a gigabit ethernet interface, no questions asked. 1080p devices, sure, they can get away with 100mbit just fine, but 4K devices have no excuse.
The fact that LG still to this day ships OLED TVs with potentially five digit price tags and 100mbit ethernet ports is a level of cheapness that I can not fathom.
And they handle gigabit just fine, you can plug a USB gigabit adapter in to the TV and it works entirely as expected.
For one, it’s dirt cheap to add what’s basically standard everywhere else. These can be expensive consumer devices and I don’t like seeing sacrifices when it’s completely unnecessary to sacrifice speed here. WiFi is also faster, so TVs can handle the speed.
