TV station 7mate has no audio

I have an LG 42PC5D television.  The Seven Network recently revamped their channels and introduced "7mate" to their offerings.

The issue I was experiencing was that while the picture was perfect, there was no audio.

After some basic troubleshooting with the unit in question as well as the other televisions in the house that showed a picture and produced audio for 7mate, I started to wonder if something was wrong with the LG.

It turns out that the Seven Network and LG were aware of the problem.

The fix is to perform a firmware upgrade on the television via a USB thumbdrive.  The LG Frequently Asked Questions page will provide some helpful information.

The upgrade process itself is quite simple.

In Summary:
Create a folder on the USB thumbdrive called LG_DTV
Download the correct firmware for your television from the page above
Turn the TV off
Plug the USB thumbdrive into the SVC port on the TV (mine was on the left near the A/V 2 connections)
Turn the TV on and wait for the upgrade screen to appear
Using the remote control, select START

When the firmware has been successfully upgraded, the TV will reboot itself, problem solved.

VividWireless Gateway advanced authentication credentials

There are multiple interfaces which are available on the VividWireless Gateway router.

These interfaces are:

• Telnet
• HTTP configuration standard
• HTTP configuration advanced

Telnet access can be made by using the standard Windows or Linux/UNIX telnet commands or alternatively via PuTTY.

HTTP configuration standard using the following credentials:
Username: admin
Password: admin123

The standard configuration permits the unit to be configured by general users.  Most, if not all, users of the Wireless Gateway will typically use this interface.

HTTP configuration advanced using the following credentials:
Username: vividwireless
Password: engineer2009

The configuration advanced permits the unit to be configured by more advanced users.  Most average users will never use the options that are made available.  I will not go into the configuration supported in this mode.  Instead I will leave it up to you, the user, to experiment and play.  Enjoy!

VividWireless Gateway root access via HTTP

The VividWireless Gateway router permits root user access via its HTTP interface.

An example of this is:

http://<router IP>/ajax.cgi?action=tag_ipPing&pip=;whoami

The above command will show the output of 'root'.  The default IP address of the router is 192.168.1.1.

Unable to disable next generation Java Plug-in

I've run into an issue where I was unable to disable the next-generation Java Plug-in via the Java Control Panel.  This is with JRE1.6 x64.

I found several cries for help on this issue even on the Microsoft forums where they say to visit the Java site even for Microsoft products.

One page I found suggested editing the registry and set a DWORD setting to 0.

This key is:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Plug-in\1.6.0_21\UseNewJavaPlugin

Setting this to 0 will resolve the issue, however, it will return to a value of 1 the next time the Java Control Panel runs.

Further investigation by running the Java Control Panel and attempting to remove the check from the check box for the next-generation Java Plug-in via a mouse was futile because it appears to not accept mouse input in its visibly disabled state.

I put on my work hat and decided to see if the UI would accept input via the keyboard.

This worked.  By using the keyboard to navigate to the Enabled... check box, and hitting the space bar, I was able to disable the plug-in.