Hmm. I have a modern Samsung TV. Which I rarely use, and am mostly clueless about its various magical capabilities.
It never occurred to me that I could hook a BT keyboard up to it. I’ll have to look into that. I’ve had a couple of old Logitech keyboards with the USB dongle / key sitting around for a couple years. So of course I threw them away 3 weeks ago in a fit of decluttering. Timing is everything.
At least BT keyboards are cheap. And as little use as it’ll get I sure don’t need a fancy feature-filled one.
Yes, hmmm. I have a fancy smart LG in the basement. I don’t log in to anything very often, but i do sometimes search for a movie by name. Honestly, usually I’m searching for something popular enough that after typing 2 or 3 letters, i can select it on the screen. But i wonder if I’d like a keyboard.
The thing is, even being a professional editor, I haven’t fully understood GPU loads and responsibilities so that accounts for the worry. It’s why I started this thread: because I haven’t owned a TV since CRT days 25 years ago, I need to get one now, and I have a bunch of odd, unusual concerns/questions.
I didn’t know that either. It would Shirley make it easier.
Yes, the TV probably doesn’t even support mouse so that could give back some room and you probably don’t need a number pad, backlight, Fkeys, etc. But even with some extra junk like touchpad, I like these little guys:
They’re about the size of a paperback and dingding has a power switch so the battery charge lasts for ages. I use them for a few different non-PC applications.
My cable box has HDMI out, so the TV’s computer/decoder does nothing for cable.
And the giveaway here is that the data from a Plex server on your PC arrives by network, usually the Wifi you set up on your TV. hence, a compressed data stream that the TV’c computer decodes.
I never connect my TV to the wifi. I have PC’s for some things, and the cable box has all the streaming apps.
Great cartoon, two devils watching some guy behind them with a remote and a TV. One says “this part of hell is where you enter your password over and over using just the remote…”
But the PC is collecting data galore anyway. Why add another company? My PC does not have a microphone attached. There were some news stories about how the data collection on some TV’s included alway-on microphones and conersations were being stored.
I don’t know about the 2060 but my 3060 there’s an app along with the driver that monitors it and tells me how busy it is, GPU%, memory use, temperatures, fan speeds, etc.
I bought the 65" version of that TV for a conference room at work, so I’ve used it, but my use case is going to be different from home use. For me, the most important thing is that the screen looks good from multiple angles. It does. From reading reviews, there may be similarly priced TVs that look better only straight on.
My basic conclusion was the QM7K was the cheapest TV that met my wide angle requirements, was bright enough for a room with skylights, and was rated highly for viewing computer output (like PowerPoint, not a streaming video).
There are much cheaper 65" (my size) TVs, but the general consensus I picked up from review sites was that they have lots of compromises, so unless size and price is your only criteria, avoid them.
The interface seemed fine. It was much better than the dead Visio TV it replaced, that had many functions that could only be controlled by an app. It is also a better interface than the LG I bought for a different room that uses the remote as a sort of air-mouse that controls an on screen pointer. That is a fun gimmick, but my arm gets tired after a bit, and it would be impossible to use for anyone with a tremor.
PowerPoint and Zoom meetings look good on it. By default I think it wants to come up to a home screen with lots of streaming options and ads for shows, but I could change settings so it defaults to turn on to an arbitrary HDMI input.
I have a heavy confession: I didn’t wait to check my keyboard and carelessly posted one that’s similar but different from the one I have. Worse, I think it lacks the hard power toggle I enthusiastically dinged. Here’s what I intended to recommend, I should have remembered the name PONYBRO:
I’m sorry and, as penance, here’s a non-PC place I’ve used one:
Printer input: some applications call for a label or ticket with an operator entry but are simple enough to not require an entire computer. For example, a Next-Due windshield label after an oil change needs the mileage and/or date from an operator. Or the name of a guest on a visitor badge. Or jump-to a value on the deli counter ‘Now Serving’ customer incrementer instrument (I didn’t want counter twice in a row, lol). A modernized pricing gun or checkwriting machine. They’re online now but hospital bracelets were printed using similar devices in the past.
Some of these printers have little displays for user prompts and can run BASIC-like programs. As I understand it, these programs can get quite sophisticated, i/o databases, graphics, barcodes, wifi, etc, all on printer hardware.
So, back at the oil change shop, you can have the little keyboard powered down in, say, a shirt pocket while the printer on the bench/cashier waits for an odometer input, maybe discards non-numerics, to print the entry plus 3000 and currdate plus 90 days on a preprinted electrostatic vinyl decal. You’d need a printer with a clock but probably not a display for an easy entry like this, a cheaper budget one will work. And the semidisposible keyboard will take the fingerprints and ketchup and brake fluid and the printer stays clean.
Here’s a tip that may be handy when connecting a PC to a TV over HDMI. Sometimes (depending on the PC’s graphics) you might get overscan (top and bottom of the image cut off). When this happened with my former laptop I assumed there was some adjustment in the PC settings but couldn’t find any. When it also happened with my new laptop I did some more reasearch, and it turns out that the solution is not in the laptop but in the TV.
The solution is TV-specific, but on my Sony Bravia there’s a “Display Area” setting which is rather confusing – it’s usually set to “Normal” but there is also a “+1”, “–1”, and “Full Pixel”. The fix to the overscan problem is to set it to “Full Pixel” when using a PC source.
The one you first recommended arrived today. Has a physical on/off switch. Runs off 2 AAA batteries. Took a few seconds to connect to my TV and is magic convenient.
One other gotcha you may see. Many streaming services have different tiers for mobile devices vs TVs, or don’t allow TV streaming at all (like NFL+). Their apps attempt to detect that you’re moving the content off the device via HDMI to another device and stop streaming, possibly with some kind of scolding error, but possibly with no indication what happened.
This is very good to know. And at this point, I may be abandoning my idea of streaming with PC via HDMI. I just woke up and can’t think well but I wanted to answer this while I was thinking of it.
I now have a new TV, the TCL 55 Inch Class QM7K Series and I’m trying to find best ways to check the screen for defects. One thing I hope to use is black-screen.cc which offers up 4K full-screen black, white, and other colors. I also need some gradients to check banding.
HDMI provides information about physical dimensions of the screen, the manufacturer, the resolution, and other kinds of specs that the program can use to decide if it wants to display anything.
For example, a 60 cm x 34 cm display manufactured by Dell is a 27 inch computer monitor. A 122 cm x 69 cm display made by Visio is a 55 inch TV.
Other things are even more simple, like only stream through an app, and only make the app available for phones and tablets, and only allow it to stream to the internal screen.
Just as a point of clarification, earlier versions of HDCP have been around for awhile and are also essential for 1080p and even 720p, not just 4K. It’s basically a copy-protection scheme layered on HDMI that prevents unlicensed devices from receiving high definition content (anything greater than 480p).
