difinity Posted March 23, 2015 Posted March 23, 2015 Avoid the Panasonic A300 range. Once the makers of the best TV you could buy, the Kuro, they are now just rebranding Vestel rubbish.
LosOjos Posted March 23, 2015 Posted March 23, 2015 (edited) I agree and picture quality was why I opted for something a little more premium than your own brand Tesco one etc... Problem I find with HTPC especially those like the one I have in my lounge that runs Kodi is that the app's are lacking a bit, to have the four big players iPlayer, 4od, ITV Player and Demand 5 are quite important to me as I regularly miss TV so like to catch up. All I have found so far that works on Kodi is iPlayer and that can be a bit hit and miss sometimes. Well it's a tiny bit of self promotion* but I developed a program called BertUI [The 10-foot UI for Windows] which basically creates a nice big UI to launch whatever you want from. Adding an item is as simple as adding a row to a CSV file. It's far from perfect and could do with rewriting in something lighter than .NET, but it does what I need it to. I coupled it with a few AHK scripts I wrote and can now launch whatever 'app' I want from the desktop - so for Netflix, there's a button that launches Chrome full screen, for Minecraft there's a script to launch joy2key and log Minecraft in - sort of like a big quick launch. I did it because I found some of Kodi's apps lacking and buggy, Netflix in particular. Oh and it works with the 360 pad (and probably others) as that's what I mainly control my HTPC with. If you're interested, you can download it from my website (yeah I know it links to an empty github, I've never quite gotten around to tidyin up the source to put online but if anyone wants a copy I'm happy to share): BertUI - the 10-foot UI for Windows http://www.geekjosh.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/BertUI-1024x576.png * but not really because I'm not selling anything! EDIT: undocumented feature alert: if you put a pund sign ('#') before the launcher's title, it won't display the title. You can just leave the title blank of course, but I added this in as a way of enabling labelling in the CSV without the neccessity to display the text on the button, as I'm using images that clearly identify their purpose) Edited March 23, 2015 by LosOjos 1
AdamzB Posted March 23, 2015 Posted March 23, 2015 Avoid the Panasonic A300 range. Once the makers of the best TV you could buy, the Kuro, they are now just rebranding Vestel rubbish. Erm the Kuro was made by Pioneer.
abillybob Posted March 23, 2015 Author Posted March 23, 2015 @LosOjos that looks great. You can even link it to open a webpage so 4od etc is possible to configure? Sounds like just what I've been waiting for. I have downloaded it all mate though I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to csv files and stuff would you mind just giving me a step by step instruction on what to do? Never created one before!
garethEds Posted March 23, 2015 Posted March 23, 2015 I have an LG SmartTV and it's brilliant. I can download apps. Only last week did I download an IPTV app to play streams that can be found on the internet. A Google search will show you the channels you can get ;-) I'm close to cancelling a certain pay tv provider and just sticking with Freeview. GJE
the_one_that_cant Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 I have just taken the step to canceling Sky TV. Last ever month. I feel good.
garethEds Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 I have just taken the step to canceling Sky TV. Last ever month. I feel good. I'm nearly at that point. My kodi box does the job but convincing Mrs E that it is the way forward is the pain. All comes down to training I guess. I use Andy's Community Build (4.1 as of yesterday) and it's fab. I can see why people pay a lot of money for paid satellite services as they are so easily layed out - but again it comes with using the system over and over again. It's just getting too expensive. The box sets on satellite are good - but they are available elsewhere. Gareth
LosOjos Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 (edited) @LosOjos that looks great. You can even link it to open a webpage so 4od etc is possible to configure? Sounds like just what I've been waiting for. I have downloaded it all mate though I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to csv files and stuff would you mind just giving me a step by step instruction on what to do? Never created one before! You can make them in Excel, but to be honest they're so basic it's just as easy to use Notepad. The file to create/edit is in the base directory of the EXE, called launchers.csv Takes four fields, each separated by a comma: Title, EXE Path, Arguments, Image Path Each launcher goes on it's own line. Pretty self explanatory but as a for instance, if you wanted two launchers, one of which launched Steam in big picture mode and the other launched Chrome full screen on Netflix, your CSV would look something like this (in Notepad): Steam,C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe,-tenfoot,steam.png Netflix,C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe,www.netflix.com --kiosk,netflix.png The title is optional, whatever you put there will be printed as a label for the launcher button. You can leave it blank, or precede it with a # to hide it. All paths are relative to the BertUI EXE, so in the above example, the two PNG files would need to be in the same folder a the EXE. You can of course use absolute paths if they're elsewhere. EDIT: should have added, the "arguments" field are command line arguments for whichever EXE the launcher is for, not for BertUI itself. So whichever program you want to launch, Google it's command line arguments to find out what options to set at launch for the desired effect. EDIT2: should also mention that it auto scales the buttons to your screen resolution, the idea being the buttons will be the same size regardless of resolution. I had planned to make this tweakable, but have never got round to that (it was one of those projects I had loads of ideas for but stopped developing as soon as it did what I wanted it to do ). It'll add rows if you add too many buttons to fit on a single row. If there's much interest in this, I'll pick up development on it again Edited March 24, 2015 by LosOjos 1
Earthling Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 I bought an LG 42" Smart 3D in January. TBH, I haven't even looked at half the smart apps, I didn't buy it for that. The council have just put in new digital aerials all over my block and I wanted Freeview HD so that I could cancel my Virgin subscription which has just gone up to £75 for no extra channels or provision. They offered me the immediate £25 off per month, if I sign a new contract, but I'm not going for that. The lack of some OD channels and Catch-up, iPlayer, 4OD, etc, doesn't bother me in the slightest. If I miss something, it's rarely good enough to bother catching up with. In fact, I rarely watch broadcast TV. Everything I want to watch I down off the Inter. Vikings, for example, just on series 3. I've never seen it on broadcast TV, don't know what channel it's on or which day or time and not interested anyway, but every Sunday, there's another episode available for , somewhere or another. TV provider boxed sets? I get them all off the you-know-where. Movies? 3D Movies? Same same. Even when Spurs aren't on Sky Sports or BT SPort, I can watch their game on the i******t. The LG Smart Share app for playing PC content on the TV works, but it's not the most reliable of applications and has to have its arm twisted to update the content if I add new stuff to the shared content folder, but nothing's ever perfect, is it.
Garacesh Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 The technology to watch film and 'TV' (whatever that means now) is changing so fast that so called Smart TV's make little sense. Decouple the service access from the hardware and you won't be too disappointed. I've never quite been able to put into words why I hate the idea of 'smart' TV's. Thank you for doing it for me Ninja Edit: That and all the security holes they've got..
matt40k Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 I have just taken the step to canceling Sky TV. Last ever month. I feel good. Never get Sky. Phone them up, can I have a new box, no, its £100. OK, I give notice. Missus orders Sky, gets new box for £0, butt loads of vouchers, gets to 12months then just repeat. Why would anyone stay with Sky for more then 12months when they treat existing customers so bad? Mind boggles 1
the_one_that_cant Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 To be fair, I have only ever paid 1 month full whack, at £116 (I think - I forgot to ring up and get an offer). Had the full Package, HD, Free Broadband and Line Rental, Sky Go etc - all on main box and 2x multiroom. All for approx. £56 per month for the last 4 years, so not really a bad deal in hindsight. But we are looking to move and cannot be chewed getting tied down to another contract. 1
gsk Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 For TV 'Smartness' the PS3 can be got new for about the £120 mark and includes BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4OD, Demand5, NowTV, Netflix, Amazon, SkyGo, YouTube, DLNA streams, supports BluRay and 3D, and as a cool bonus plays some very fancy video games (if you like that sort of thing). I no longer use either the Freeview or the FreeSat tuners built in to my TV. Most of the time it's YouTube with some Netflix and iPlayer as the mood takes me, NowTV subscription is still running though not sure why - should I cancel it? I beat a non Smart TV costs more than £120 less than its 'Smart' equivalent... If that's not an exaggeration and you do only watch catchup tv then you could stop paying the licence fee.
MatthewL Posted March 24, 2015 Posted March 24, 2015 I was after a nice big TV when I moved in here last year, not particularly after smart, just wanted one I could watch. I ended up with a LG 47" smart because it was cheaper to get a smart than none and I am quite happy with LG, will be the 3rd I've owned. At the same time I wanted a 19" which turned out to be a Samsung that was smart, not impressed with it, does for the TV side of things but other than that I don't use the functions. A few people have asked about TV's and 4k, I don't see the point yet, not enough is filmed in 4k yet and to be honest I don't notice much different in quality going to HD for normal TV!!!!!
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