Bdv-e3100 nightmare

[Evilgrrrl666]

Hi everyone,
We just got this brand new home cinema system and tried using it for the first time today.
It's been frustrating to say the least:
1. Wifi doesn't work, it says it can't find the wifi USB adapter even though it should have wifi built in.
2. Bluetooth doesn't work, our phones could not see it. Maybe due to close vicinity to wifi router but we didn't realise this could be an issue til later and are now unable to check because:
3. It's stuck in bluetooth mode and there seems to be no way of getting it out. Switching off and on makes it start back on the bluetooth screen. Pressing home or anything has no effect. Unplugging and plugging back in same result. It powers back up and eventually the blue light underneath flashes and screen flashes BT ready. Manual etc is useless it does not explain how to reset or what to press to force a proper shut down and I couldn't find it mentioned here on the forum either. It's like there is hardly any info out there for this model.
4. Can't get to grips with why it goes into standby or how to wake it up etc. Obviously now irrelevant since its stuck.
5. Before it died, we managed to try sky TV and a did and the volume was very low. Music via dlna was perfect and went at least twice as loud. Hope there's a fix for that if this thing ever stops with the bluetooth mode? We are using hdmi with arc.

Overall extremely disappointed on what should've been a happy occasion with a new gadget. Hope someone has some idea at least about how to reset it when it's stuck like this.

Thanks,
Laura

[Anonymous]

Hi there

I guess its best to try and tackle all your issues step by step:

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@Evilgrrrl666 wrote:
1. Wifi doesn't work, it says it can't find the wifi USB adapter even though it should have wifi built in.

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You cannot plug in a USB Wifi adapter in.  As you pointed out, WIFI is already built into this device, so I am unsure on why you have plugged one in.

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@Evilgrrrl666 wrote:
2. Bluetooth doesn't work, our phones could not see it. Maybe due to close vicinity to wifi router but we didn't realise this could be an issue til later and are now unable to check because:

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According to the manual:

Bluetooth devices and wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11b/g) use the same frequency band (2.4 GHz). When using your Bluetooth device near a device with wireless LAN capability, electromagnetic interference may occur. This could result in lower data transfer rates, noise, or inability to connect. If this happens, try the following remedies:

• Use this unit at least 10 meters away from the wireless LAN device.
• Turn off the power to the wireless LAN equipment when using your Bluetooth device within 10 meters.
• Install this unit and Bluetooth device as closer to each other as possible

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@Evilgrrrl666 wrote:
3. It's stuck in bluetooth mode and there seems to be no way of getting it out. Switching off and on makes it start back on the bluetooth screen. Pressing home or anything has no effect. Unplugging and plugging back in same result. It powers back up and eventually the blue light underneath flashes and screen flashes BT ready. Manual etc is useless it does not explain how to reset or what to press to force a proper shut down and I couldn't find it mentioned here on the forum either. It's like there is hardly any info out there for this model.

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As you have pointed out, your device probably needs a factory reset.  The only instructions I have found that "may" do this without going through the Home menu is these instructions from this website:

https://us.en.kb.sony.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/41178/p/46871,74232,74609/c/65,66/kw/reset

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@Evilgrrrl666 wrote:
4. Can't get to grips with why it goes into standby or how to wake it up etc. Obviously now irrelevant since its stuck.

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Hopefully the following explains things more:

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@Evilgrrrl666 wrote:
5. Before it died, we managed to try sky TV and a did and the volume was very low. Music via dlna was perfect and went at least twice as loud. Hope there's a fix for that if this thing ever stops with the bluetooth mode? We are using hdmi with arc.

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Check the settings of the sound mode, as well as turn OFF Night mode.

Hopefully this clears things up for you.

Cheers

[Evilgrrrl666]

Hi, thanks for your suggestions. After posting my message yesterday, it did end up working again, possibly because we'd unplugged it for 30 minutes or whatever, and suddenly when it started back up in bluetooth mode, we were able to press the home button and get out of it.We haven't dared to try connecting via bluetooth again after that in case it would freeze.

The wireless also started sort of working, that error message went away when it finally got unfrozen. just to clarify: it's built in wifi, yes, so we were not trying to plug any adapter into it, but when trying to use the easy setup in the menu, it kept giving that error. Now it's able to scan and find our network, but is unable to authenticate despite double and triplechecking the WEP password on the router... So while it now recognises that it has wifi capability, it still doesn't actually work with our router.

Regarding the volume, after setting up the distances, we increased all speakers by 6db to try and sort it out, also tried the different sound modes but other than football mode, it really is very low volume. I don't understand why they make it so hard to operate these things. the manual barely explains anything beyond the basics. Is there something we're missing? I noted that on amazon et al, among the positive reviews there are plenty that complain about the volume but i couldn't find anything relevant in the troubleshooting articles either. I'd think it was a crappy, very weak system, except that when playing music via dlna, it performed beautifully so I know the volume CAN go up, just somehow not in tv / dvd mode... I don't think night mode was on, but i will check for that specifically.

Another thing we've noticed is sometimes it just kind of freezes for a while in tv or whatever mode and becomes unresponsive. I don't know if that's how it's meant to work and we're just pressing too many buttons too quickly for it to react (sincerely hope that's not the case because we weren't being all that demanding), or if we have a bad unit or perhaps one of the firmware updates that happened yesterday messed something up.

[Anonymous]

Hi there

Since you have updated the firmware, did you end up factory resetting it?  If not, I would probably do it anyhow.  May get rid of "gremlins" (ie freezing as such) and I have heard that it has resolved someones wifi password issue. 

In regards to low sound, I dont have any other ideas except night mode, unfortunately

Cheers

[Evilgrrrl666]

No we haven't factory reset it afterwards. I guess it's worth a try, thanks for the suggestion

[Evilgrrrl666]

Doing the reset sort of fixed some issues though it now Sometimes just dies in the middle of watching TV with no sound until we reboot it. Very irritating. And despite night mode not being on, the volume is pretty low so we sort of got used to turning it very high up. We were surprised that it has no equaliser because that seemed like a normal kind of feature for something like this so one could tweak the sound until voices etc sound right, everything is kind of wooly. Our fault for not thinking to check first. So anyway. It works mostly and thanks for all the help but I can't say I'm impressed by Sony overall. I suppose had it worked out of the box, I wouldn't now be picking faults in everything.