Internet through TV which method?

[ericmark]

At home our Blueray player and the Sky+ HD box allow me to view internet TV. When at my mothers at the moment only option is to use laptop which is faulty and will not use TV as a monitor.

Now she has broad band being able to watch catch-up or U-tube on the TV seems to make sense even if not watched that often.

But the question is of the 100's of methods which to use? The TV is a LG 32LT7 which has a hard drive built in. It has RS-232C (baud rate 9600) not USB and instructions say the remote can be used to controller many VCR's directly. AV1, AV2, (Scart x 2) AV3, (S-Video) Component, RGB and HDMI x 2, CI module slot (PCMCIA), Aerial in and aerial out not really sure what aerial out is says connect to VCR but not sure if that is to record or play? D-sub 15 to connect to PC.

At the moment an old DVD and an old sky box are connected to the Scart sockets and all programs are watched through the sky box as the local DTV Freeview is a total mess every time I get the TV reprogrammed it lasts about 3 weeks before they move channels yet again so totally given up with Freeview.

So my mother uses a Flipper remote which has just 6 buttons and flicks through channels until she finds one she likes. It is unlikely I can teach my mother how to use any internet TV box, but to be able to set it up for her to watch a selected program she has missed would be good.

If it replaced the Sky box then maybe once the internet program has finished it could auto return to satellite viewing she has no sky subscription for TV only broad band and telephone.

When I have to stay watching ITV3 repeats all night is not really my thing. I can at home plug in a USB hard drive and watch pre-recorder programs through the blueray player so the blue ray player gives me internet, hard drive viewing, DVD and I have one blueray disk. It is the viewing of USB sticks and hard drive which it is mainly used for be it still pictures, audio or video. Including U-Tube.

So the actual Blueray is rarely used it's all the extras which came with it.

So want similar unit for my mother. If after viewing a film it will revert to satellite that's a bonus. Then I could leave mother watching a film and once finished TV would work as normal using Flipper remote.

Ideas please.

 

[DaveHerns]

How do you get internet TV on a Sky box ?

 

[Lucid]

I'm baffled by ericmark. After all the hoo-har about how difficult it is to control a Sky box for his aged mater he now wants to install Internet TV! Beyond that, he somehow expects it to integrate operationally with the existing TV and Sky box. Does he seriously expect his dear old mum to go off surfing the web for streamed TV programmes when the basics of Channel Up and Channel Down seem to elude her?

ericmark, if this is for your viewing pleasure then buy a streaming media box (Roku, NowTV, Android MX, Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV etc) and bring it with you on visits. But if I was you I'd think about the purpose of the visit and try to do something that your mother likes rather than taking over her TV viewing. Take her out, or if that's not practical then try activities indoors that don't revolve around passively viewing. She can do that when you're not there. Do something together to stimulate her mind and change the routine. Have you thought about a visit from someone with a dog. They're great therapy.

 

[Sam Gangee]

An excellent post by Lucid. Many studies have shown that TV watching causes depression, anxiety and stress, leading to obesity, stroke, heart attack, illness and even cancer. Likewise, Lucid is right about dog therapy.

 

[ericmark]

Yes idea was to use it while visiting not to set up for mother to use. At home I use a blueray player to show pictures using either a hard drive or USB stick. Before my DVD writer went to the wall I would burn a DVD for mother to watch, but my PC is poor at burning DVD designed to write Blueray seems to mean does not work with CD and DVD as well as it should.

First thought was to leave a PC at mothers but screen too small for her and it will not work with cable to TV the PC is faulty. Rather than buy a new PC it seemed better to renew her DVD player with some thing which would read hard drives or USB sticks and allow access to internet like my blueray player does. Mine is hard wired and her router is at the moment upstairs so wireless would be better.

I have just looked at Google Chromecast that seems very good. Android MX seems to have all the ports so likely better as would seem I could simply slot in card from camera and show pictures? However the adverts don't really say what it can show so a little uncertain. The Roku seems nearly the same as Google Chromecast but has three models the higher cost ones have USB and micro SD sockets but as with the Android MX it does not say what can be read using the USB? When I bought my Blueray it said on the box for example Jpeg, Mpeg so I knew what it could read. Amazon Fire TV is a far better web site it actually says what it will do. Also has a remote so seems worth the extra £5 to the Google Chromecast. It does state the USB port is only for charging I like the fact they give facts rather than a glossy add. The NowTV was opposite the site tells you nothing about the box it's just a glossy add.

So thank you for the list. So seems from the web that either the Amazon Fire TV to simply show phone content and internet or higher end Android MX and top of range Roku with the latter I would hope I can plug in a hard drive and show films from hard drive? The remote for Roku seems simpler than the Android MX but the Android MX seems to have more ports to allow viewing of films already on my hard drive. So since idea is only to watch while I am there the Android MX seems the best.

So it would seem either Amazon Fire TV and anything I want to show I will put on phone or Android MX and also use hard drive. I hope I have read the adverts correctly which is why I have gone through the options. If I have got it wrong please tell me. To date I am leaning towards the Amazon Fire TV mainly as the remote looks simple to use.

Thank you Lucid.

Just seen there are two Amazon Fire TV units and can get from Tesco so at £79 the larger one seems best for what I want. Thanks again.

 

[ericmark]

How do you get internet TV on a Sky box ?

You simply click on what you want to watch and the sky HD box auto connects with the sky router which connects to the Open Reach fibre optic box and it does it all for you and stores it on the hard drive for you to watch when you want. It really is easy. But my mother is using a very old sky box which does not have this option and also with Sky as soon as you stop paying all access to hard drive is removed. I have at the moment a Sky+ box which had loads of films on it but the sky card reader went faulty so box thinks there is no card so will not play films down loaded. Even from BBC.

The Sky system does not charge you for a film until you watch it. So you can down load a movie then if you decide not to watch you are not charged. However this means no telephone or internet connection or no subscription and card and hard drive becomes dead.

So for my mother having the Sky HD box is a waist of money she can't use the remote to view the electronic program guide never mind watch recorded programs. But I often have to stay the night and there is a limit how many times one can watch heart beat it seems ITV3 is her favourite channel so to pop my 1TB hard drive in my pocket which is full of films would mean I can watch some thing worth watching. She seems not to like films for men I think more about channel name than what is shown.

As to if you can watch internet when you don't also have Sky fibre optic broad band I don't know? But yes you can watch internet catch up TV with a sky HD box.

 

[big-all]

chromecast is very limited as in bbc dave and a few other normal channels subscribe to it
itv channel 4 channel 5 dont

 

[DaveHerns]

I haven't got Sky fibre optic . I thought you were referring to things like Facebook and AMG (?) where they do live streams from rallycross meetings etc. I have to plug my laptop into the TV with a HDMI cable for this . I have a smart TV but it access to YouTube has been withdrawn. Virgin was better for this but they ripped me off and I will never use them again

 

[Lucid]

At home I use an Android MX box. The reasons are: a) it's an open platform system so it isn't tied to content via a manufacturer portal b) it was relatively inexpensive c) there's a really good media player called KODI (previously called XBMC) which does a lovely job of presenting and playing my own disc rips and streaming movies/TV from the web. My disc rips live on a large NAS drive connected to the house network. This can be accessed via wired and wireless connections. It also plays a wide range of video file formats from its USB port either from a pen drive or portable HDD. My brother runs a similar box at home but he tends to focus on the movie streaming sites.

The Android boxes run the same basic software O/S that Android smartphones use. That means you have access to the market place at Google Play and there's good support for 3rd party applications (e.g. Kodi) which spawns its own set of software add-on packages to increase functionality.

I rip mostly DVDs. The programme I use is called MakeMKV. It can rip Blu-rays too. For DVDs I make 1:1 quality rips. Blu-rays can be ripped 1:1 too. Both can also be reduced in file size too. The rips can include multiple different audio tracks (Stereo, DD, DTS) and also subtitles if the original disc has them. On playback the KODI software can be set to play subtitles by default. All the audio and subtitle options can be adjusted exactly as you might with a DVD. One big advantage of rips is the option to exclude the ads and anti-copy warnings so that the main feature plays almost immediately. Other options include playing music and pictures either frame by frame or as screen shows.

 

[ericmark]

Today visited PC world. They had NowTV, and Roku, and I must say the Roku 3 looked very good. They actually stated that they don't sell Android MX and Amazon Fire TV because they did not feel they were legal. Oddly the Roku 3 at £69 was cheaper at PC world than sold on the internet.

Since my mother likes to shop i.e. for me to take her out. Likely it will be Roku 3 my PC is not big enough for her to see so internet shopping is not yet her thing.

 

[ericmark]

The Roku 3 was bought and returned. Although the demo device worked well, when I came to use it I found it needed another device connected to the internet with a browser to set it up, then found could not get to work without entering bank details into it.

 

[Lucid]

Today visited PC World .... They actually stated that they don't sell Android MX and Amazon Fire TV because they did not feel they were legal.

Ha ha ha. Nothing to do with the fact that there's no margin for them in Amazon Fire or Android MX then. What bullshitters.

 

[ericmark]

I then got an "Icecrypt S3250CCIHD Set-top Box" it does most of what I want. Just one problem can't get flipper remote to work with it. I am sure in the end I will get it to work, and if it does then it should work very well. Not what I would call a good box, but when turned off and on again it defaults to satellite TV which is great. So I can set it up to show a movie and once mother has watched it then simply switch off and on and back to TV. There were two codes given for Icecrypt but neither worked. Tried both the read one remote from other and keep on clicking on/off button methods but run out of time before I got it running.

 

[Dave54]

None of them seem to have the complete answer. I've got a Chromecast, mostly to use with Netflix. As already said not all the channels support it, but you can cast off Chrome with some Android devices (not all), or with a Windows Laptop etc. which gets around that. Very simple to set up and use.

 

[ericmark]

I got flipper controller to work using the read remote function for up and down keys. Since I can hide all unwanted channels I don't need to use favourites so no need for number buttons under slider to work. So she now has around 50 channels compared with 25 she had on old Sky box and ability to watch pre-recorded films if I set it up. Also any pictures that I take to her to view. I tried the record function and it did work and the format is readable by the PC but the internet access is very poor. She gets weather and google maps that is about it. However it has done what I wanted I can now show her films etc. Not really impressed with the "Icecrypt S3250CCIHD Set-top Box" but good enough for what I wanted.