Since there are so many darn TV’s, I don’t want to speak in absolutes. Specifically mine (under preferences) has a setting for “Standby LED” (on/off) with the following “When you TV is in standby, the white LED on the front of the TV will be on.”
Since most devices, especially smart devices go to sleep/standby rather than actually turn off these days, it means that the while LED is “on” when the TV is otherwise off. The same LED turns back “off” if the TV is in active mode. Or if I toggle said setting, it’s dark all the time.
And this is a roughly $400 (admittedly on sale) 65" QLED TV by Hisense, so not near the top or bottom of the spectrum of smart TV’s out there.
One option would be to disable power to the TV at night. This would mean you’d have to re-enable power when you wanted to watch it. Some simple ways to do this are to unplug it or have it plugged into a power strip which has a switch. There are also fancier ways like having a plug with a switch, like in this Amazon query. There are some with a switch at the plug, a plug with a corded switch, and a remote control to wirelessly turn the plug on and off. You could also have it plugged into a lamp timer which turned off at bed time and then turned back on in the morning. Some lamp timers have remotes as well. These timers will turn on/off at set times, but you can use the remote to manually turn it off or on whenever you like.
That’s what I was going to say. The remote for my Roku, for example, doesn’t have the little IR emitter on the front, and I’m pretty sure it uses Bluetooth to communicate with the unit.
I had a device that was designed to put a TV completely to sleep instead of standby - it was like plug adaptor that had an IR receiver on a cable which you put near the TV - the power for the TV was plugged into the adaptor and the adaptor into the wall - when it detected the TV power draw dropping it would interrupt the supply and turn the TV off completely - the only drawback was that turning the TV back on was two presses on the TV remote - one to activate the external device and supply power to the TV, then a second press to turn the TV on.
(The notion is that this external device had its own standby mode that consumed very small amounts of power in comparison to the TV on standby)
Similar devices are made under the brand Bye Bye Standby, but I can’t find one exactly like what I had.
Yes, that’s right. I only found that out and tested it a few months ago. And even though I can point the remote behind me and it’ll still work, I still find myself reflexively pointing it at the tv.
No, because plugging it in and out every single morning and night is a massive pain in the ass. There is a 99% chance there’s a menu option to turn it off. If there isn’t, a smaller piece of tape should work. If that doesn’t, a Bluetooth remote likely works.
I have 3 TCL Roku TVs, ranging from a pretty nice Series 6 down to a cheapo Series 3. They all are BT-capable, but only the 6 came with a Bluetooth remote.
If you just use the TV for streaming (no regular TV channels), one way to handle it would be to tape over the light and get an external streaming device like a Roku. In most cases, the external device will be able to control TV functions like power and volume. This feature is called HDMI-CEC. To turn the TV on, you’d press the Home button on the streaming device’s remote and it would tell the TV to turn on. I would recommend a Roku over the other streaming devices since its remote has dedicated buttons for power, volume, and mute. The devices like FireTV and GoogleTV aren’t as consistent with that. One gotcha with this solution would be to make sure the external device has power that’s always on. The external devices often get power from a USB port. The TV’s USB port may or may not be always on. If it turns off when the TV’s off, the streaming device will need to get USB power from a standalone charger so it can be listening for the signals from the remote.
Unless you have a high end TV, I would recommend getting an external streaming device anyway. The streaming hardware in TV’s is usually on the lower end. They cheap out on memory and CPU, so the streaming experience is sometimes sluggish and frustrating. An external device will typically provide a much more enjoyable experience when viewing streaming content compared to using the TV’s streaming platform.
Devices like Roku & Fire TV and cable boxes went to BT or other RF remotes because people wanted to put them in cabinets, behind the TV, etc where they couldn’t receive IR. But since you need line of sight to your TV to see it, many/most TVs stuck with IR remotes because it’s cheaper.
I have an LED clock with nice big red numerals but it too made the room too bright. Fortunately I have a selection of photographic gels (tinted plastic film) of every color known to mankind. A hundred colors and each one has a chart showing the actual transparency over a range of frequencies. I placed various colors over the LEDs until I got the result I wanted. A few things I learned. Even though I used multiple layers of red gels the LEDs barely dimmed. They just kept passing the light on through. But when I found the correct shade of blue it stopped all the light! Played around with the blues and greens until it was just right.
I have a similar one but it has buttons on top and you can cycle through a number of colors and brightness levels. The red on the dimmest setting is perfect. This one, however, had a white LED on the bottom that was blindingly bright and couldn’t be turned off. A strip of electrical tape did the trick.
You can also accomplish the OP’s needs with the right gels–Congo Blue plus Primary Red. I considered mentioning this but the gels are more expensive than disassembling an old remote. I remembered the idea from Bill Beaty’s (@bbeaty) page here on how to build infrared goggles:
They block almost all visible light, while letting through IR, allowing the eye’s small but non-zero IR sensitivity to kick in.
Oh yeah, I’ll just buy a huge reel of the filter material and chop it into little rectangles with my laser cutter so I can resell it. My, uh, CO2 infrared laser cutter. D’oh!
My alarm clock(my nemesis) is also bright as the sun in my very dark bedroom.
My high tech fix is a pillow over it.
I don’t need to know the time during the night. I just need something that alarms on the right days, at the right time. Consistently.
OG wind ups won’t do it. They are persnickety on a good day.
The cats might wake me up. But thats not reliable. At. All.
Yep, get that high tech pillow or a book to block your TV led light.