What are the rows of ports on the back of the IPTV set-top box used for? Identify HDMI, AV, USB, and fiber optic ports at once, so no more guessing about wiring

Last year, I helped my cousin move, and the TV cabinet was moved. The master came to the house for a long time and couldn't make an appointment, so I volunteered to do the wiring. I'm familiar with optical modem. How can Paikou recognize that I wrote an article? . But when it was the turn of the set-top box, I squatted behind the TV with a handful of cables and studied it for ten minutes.: There are five or six ports on the back of the box, including a flat one, a set of three circles of different colors, a square one with a small cover, and a USB port - which one is plugged into the TV, which one is plugged into the stereo, and why the USB flash drive is not responding after being plugged in, all of which are vague. On the day after I picked it up, I made up my mind to figure out the rows of mouths one by one. This is the note I took that night. If you have an IPTV at home, and if you want to check the wiring yourself after the installation master leaves, or if you move and reconnect, you can just copy it.

First, recognize all the rows of mouths.: Five mouths, five errands

There are only a few mainstream models of telecom boxes in recent years, such as ZTE’s B760 series, Huawei’s Joy Box EC6108, and the latest ones include palm-sized micro boxes. The rows of openings at the back look similar, and they are divided into five categories according to errands.

There are two more that are not considered "mouth": Power round port and reset pin hole. There’s nothing much to talk about about the power port, but the reset hole needs to be punched out - it’s not the same thing as the reset of the optical modem. Factory reset of the box will erase your ITV account , wiping it out cannot be saved by restarting it. You have to call 10000 number to re-authorize it. The children at home were playing with the pins and poked them, and they noticed.

HDMI is the main force, but don’t plug it in randomly on the TV end

Now install broadband, the master will give you HDMI by default: With one cable, video and audio can be passed together, starting at 1080P, and the new box can also handle 4K. You need to identify the two ends of the cable if they are different - the box end is plugged into HDMI OUT, and the TV end is plugged into any port labeled HDMI IN. Then press the signal source on the TV remote control and select the correct number for your plug. It sounds simple. This is where I got into trouble at my cousin's house.: There are three HDMI ports on the back of her TV, one of which is marked ARC. I plugged it in casually and got hit. There was no sound for a long time after the screen came out. After checking for a long time, I found out that it was plugged into an ARC port.

ARC is not a box for you. It is used by the TV to send sound out - the sound from the TV's own App is sent back to the amplifier through this port. When you plug the box in, the direction is reversed. Some TVs make no sound at all, and some TVs have both picture and sound but get angry every now and then. Just one rule: Plug the box into the ordinary HDMI IN port, leave the ARC port empty or connect it to a power amplifier . I was in this trap later Write about the box with no sound I also mentioned here that this time I paid the tuition again.

And the line itself. The HDMI cable that comes with the box is version 1.4 for older boxes, which is more than enough to run 1080P. ； If you change the 4K box to watch 4K channels, it is best to change the cable to version 2.0 marked with high speed, otherwise the screen will occasionally go black. You don’t need to buy expensive cables. A high-speed cable worth a dozen yuan is enough. Dozens or hundreds of “gold-plated fever cables” can’t hear any difference at the bit rate of IPTV, so you save money.

Old TV doesn’t have HDMI: The three colored mouths of AV are reserved for it

The TV in my cousin’s bedroom is an antique from more than ten years ago. There is no HDMI on the back, only a row of round holes. The box is connected to it by the set of red, white and yellow AV cables. Very unsophisticated in recognizing the Dharma: The yellow tube video, plug into the yellow video port on the TV ； The left and right channels of the sound are red and white, and the colors are inserted. The colors of the three heads correspond to the colors of the three holes on the TV, so don’t make a mistake.

There are two truths that need to be said first. First, don’t expect the picture quality. The highest AV cable is 480P. The pores on the human face will be blurry when connected. It’s no problem to watch the news broadcast on the opera channel, but the subtitles for watching football games are all rough. This is not a broken cable, but a ceiling of analog signals. Think clearly before you complain about the picture quality. Second, some new boxes have the AV port cut off, and there is only HDMI on the back. If you encounter an old TV with a new box, buy an HDMI to AV converter, which costs dozens of dollars each. Remember to connect the converter to USB power supply, otherwise there will be no output.

After plugging it in, turn on the TV. Don't select HDMI as the signal source, select AV or "Video". My mother-in-law once watched her disappear. The TV signal source jumped back to the TV channel. The one with no signal As mentioned in this article, this error is more common on old TVs, because the source button on old TVs is easier to press by mistake.

No response when inserting U disk into USB port? Don’t scold the box yet

The most misunderstood thing in this row is USB. Many people eagerly insert a USB flash drive to play movies stored at home, but the box does not move at all, either does not respond, or prompts "unrecognized." I tried a box from three companies and disassembled it into three layers.

The first level is the format. When the box reads a USB flash drive, the FAT32 format is the most stable. Nowadays, most large-capacity USB flash drives are shipped from the factory with NTFS or exFAT. The old box does not recognize it and there is no response when plugged in. Get it on the computer and format it as FAT32 and try again. More than half of the cases are "no response" and that's it. The video files placed in the USB flash drive are also particular. The universal format MP4 is basically universal. Some strange packaging formats found on the Internet cannot be decoded by the player that comes with the box.

The second floor is about the entrance. Not all boxes will automatically pop up when you plug in the USB flash drive. For several models, you have to find it yourself.: In the main interface, scroll to "Applications" or "File Management", enter "Multimedia Playback", select the storage device (usually called sda1 or USB1), and then enter the directory to select files. The master who installs the computer does not know how to teach this, and the menu is buried deep. Many people think that the box does not support it, but in fact they are not looking for the right one.

The third layer is the hardest: Some of the boxes customized by operators do have the USB locked at the factory. They only recognize the designated wireless network card and do not read the USB flash drive data. This kind of lock is deeply customized. There is no switch in the settings, and there is no solution - don't compete with it. If you want to watch local movies, you can use the TV's own USB port or use your mobile phone to cast the screen, which is faster than fiddling with this lock. How to clear the few gigabytes of storage in the box that are full? Storage cleanup article I’ve written it before, so I won’t repeat it here.

Fiber optic port and network port: One for the speakers, don’t change the other one randomly.

The square port with a small cover, labeled SPDIF or OPTICAL, is the digital audio output port. What it manages is very simple: Send the undecoded digital sound as it is to an external power amplifier or decoding speaker for interpretation. The TV at home is directly connected to the box and has no speakers. This port will never be used and is covered with dust. If you have a power amplifier at home and are interested in surround sound, buy an optical fiber audio cable. Open the small cover on the box end and plug it in all the way. Plug the OPTICAL in on the power amplifier end. Do you want optical fiber or HDMI for the TV sound channel? It depends on how the equipment is arranged.

There is a detail worth remembering: The red and white AV cables also carry sound, but they are analog signals, and the decoded sound is sent out directly. ； The optical fiber port uses digital signals, so the sound cannot be resolved and must be left to the subsequent equipment. Therefore, from the same box, the sound can be heard differently through AV red and white and optical fiber. Of course, this difference requires discerning ears and good equipment. Don’t worry about ordinary TV speakers.

The rules on the other end of the network port are simple: Plug one end into the box and the other end into the IPTV port of the light modem. This channel uses the multicast channel for live broadcast, which is two channels from the broadband channel for the Internet. Changing the bridge connection breaks IPTV For that kind of thing, the root cause is probably on this VLAN. I really want to go wireless, but that’s another question. Why is the box stuck when connecting to WiFi live streaming? The article about me connecting to WiFi in the box I have calculated the multicast accounts here and concluded that it depends on the performance of the live broadcast. To be stable, one network cable can solve all problems.

Wiring self-test: After installing or reconnecting, do it again in five minutes.

Regardless of whether the master pretended to do it or you reconnected it yourself, sit down and spend five minutes checking it, which can save you several phone calls later.:

• HDMI is plugged into the TV HDMI IN, not the ARC port - the number selected in the signal source list matches the actual port plugged in
• AV cable is three-color to three-color, and the TV signal source is switched to AV - check this for old TVs
• The two ends of the network cable are the box network port and the optical modem IPTV port - enter the live broadcast and flip through several channels, and all the CCTV and provincial channels will appear on the screen.
• The power adapter is the original one that comes with the box - if the voltage is wrong, the machine won't turn on if it's at least one, or the box will burn if it's too heavy. Don't use the head of other devices to make do.
• Make sure the reset hole is not blocked by wires - it doesn't matter if it is blocked, but the worry is that it may be accidentally poked when cleaning.

If all five are passed, this set of wiring is considered to be standing. If something goes wrong again later, just look through the troubleshooting notes I wrote over the past few years.: If there is no signal, check first The signal source article , there is no sound when browsing the audio settings section, and the more I use it, the more stuck I am in clearing the memory. Once the mouth is fully identified and the wiring is connected correctly, the rest of the diseases will not be caused by this row of mouths.