Windows 10 laptop unable to 'see' Roberts Stream 93i radio

tpriest · 26 Dec 2016

I've been working out how to get my Roberts Stream 93i Internet Radio to play music from my two Win 10 Pro PCs.

The desktop, after enabling media streaming via the link in WMP, sees the Roberts radio and my Dell laptop. The radio sees the Desktop and happily plays music from that PC.

The laptop, after enabling media streaming via the link in WMP, does not see the Roberts radio, but it does see my desktop. Thus the radio doesn't see the laptop and is therefore unable to play music from the laptop.

When I use "Cast to" on a music file it momentarily says searching then shows the Roberts radio. But 'Casting' to the radio has no effect.

However the radio is not shown in the Connected Device list in the PC Settings, and trying Add Device fails to find it (though it does find a neighbour's Sony Bravia TV).

The desktop is Ethernet connected to the router, the laptop is wirelessly connected, as is the Roberts radio. Could it be the laptop's WiFi somehow inhibiting connection to the radio?

The only other difference I can think of is that the laptop is running Win 10 Anniversary Edition (build 1607), the desktop is running the November 2015 build (1511).

Rebooting the laptop made no difference.

I have a feeling it's going to be something simple. But I need a steer in the right direction.

Any thoughts would be most welcome?

tpriest · 27 Dec 2016

I tried experimenting with wired and wireless connection, it made no difference.

Both the desktop and the laptop run Kaspersky 2017. I turned Kaspersky off on the laptop and allowed Windows firewall & Defender to start up. The Roberts radio could now see the laptop and play music streamed to it. Re-enabling Kaspersky blocked it.

So what part of Kaspersky? The firewall seemed a pretty good candidate for investigation. I disabled K's firewall, bingo, streaming worked.

Re-enabled the firewall and then started to compare K's various firewall screens between the 2 PCs.

I found that on the Firewall Settings/Networks screen the desktop showed the Internet as a Public network, the PC's network controller was shown as a Local network. On the laptop the Internet was a Public network, the network controller / WiFi network was shown as a Public network. Changing that to a Local network made it work.

Looking at the Kaspersky Help it says

Public network. Computers on the network have no access to files, folders, and printers. Access to your computer via Remote Desktop is also blocked.
Local network. Computers on the network have may have access to shared files and folders on your computer. This option may be used in office or home network.

This now helps it to all make sense. The radio couldn't see the laptop because it was a computer on a Public network so was blocked from all the files and folders. On a Local network it could see them and so works as a streaming device.

The only outstanding issue is that on the Desktop, on the Network and Sharing Centre/Media Streaming Options dialog the radio is described as Roberts Stream 93i [MAC address]. On the laptop the radio is described as an Unknown Device. No idea why. Any thoughts?

ahstongate · 22 Mar 2019

Don't know if this would help with the issue but I have been able to cast wav files to my Pure One Flow without a problem until recently. The way I overcame the problem was to convert the wav files to mp3 or wmf files using Audacity then cast to device works fine.

tpriest · 22 Mar 2019

Thanks for the thought. The files were already in mp3 format. But it does now seem to work.