CreepingNet's World

A GUIDE TO MODERN SMART TVS
Modern A/V Nightmares

It's no secret on this website that I'm very oldschool. I like my televisions big, woodgrain, and with a CRT in em'. I like them to not require firmware updates, or a connection to WiFi. I also don't think there's a bloody thing on TV in 2023 that's really all that great - except maybe Castlevania and One Piece.

But alas, life goes on, and so does the rampant march of "Garbage in, Garbage Out". I've been mucking about with the family TV since I was six years old. When I was six, you bought cable service from a LOCAL cable provider for about $25/mo. for basic cable. You got about 12 channels, and you had to manually program them into your TV using a remote - if you had a nice TV like ours. Everything "accessory" (game systems, VCRs, LaserDisc players, silly kid toys with video output, Camcorders) - all were typically located on Channel 3 or Channel 4 - whichever gave the least interference - and life was simple. Want VCR? Go to the Weather Channel (Channel 4) and then stick in a VHS tape and hit play. Want to play Atari? Just slide the switch in back to "Game", tune in to 2 on Antenna B,a nd then slip in a cartridge, a controller, hit power, and then hit reset. Easy as Pie.

But today's Television landscape is not so cut and dry. Now we have large, delicate, flat-panel TVs that weigh only 25 LBS and have a screen 4x aas big as that huge woodgrain Mitsubishi that weight 50LBS and only had a 20" screen. These TV's don't just pull analog stations from cable (Analog TV died in 2007). The TV is basically a comptuer with a permanantly attached, extra large monitor - it needs connected to your WiFi, it needs a connection to your Cable provider if you're going to use them for their channels, it needs multiple devices plugged in, some with adapters, especially if legacy. Each input needs different color and geometry settings for each device - especially if you live in my mixed-media, mixed-generation household of digital technologies.

Let's talk about who makes what and what kind of OSes that their TVs use (and how to recognize them).

TVs are More Like Computers Now

Each Television uses it's own Operating system - just like your computer. They may not be familiar to you though, because it's not a part of the marketing jargon like on a computer. But it's there, and it has an interface, and a look.

NAME Screenshot	BRANDS	DESCRIPTION
ROKU	`Roku Sharp TCL`

Different OSes offer different apps and streaming services on them, so if you can't find a certain one, it might not be available. I believe my Samsung 4K UHD Smart TV from 2017 has Tizen OS. And while I have YouTube and some other stuff, I don't have HBO Max or some of the other applications I have on my Roku TVs.

Apps as a Concept on a Smart TV

If you use nothing else on the TV, if you don't have cable through your ISP, or any other provider for that matter, and you don't use anything other than the TV itself - here's what you have as options....

OTA - Over The Air Television still exists, though in digital format. Typically you get it by purchasing a flat piece of plastic for an antenna with a Coaxial connector on the bottom. This will help you get better reception over the air. It's totally free, and there are local channels you can recieve. However, it's not a popular choice because you don't get to pick and choose when your shows come on, or when you get to see them. You could probably record it using the TV or an app on it - but there are other options for this that don't involve analog over the air.

Free TV Apps - These require an ISP and a WiFi Connection and include things like Pluto. However, you have to be careful about legit apps apparently because it seems there some fakes out there.

Internet Streaming Apps - ie YouTube and Odysee. Again, WiFi or Wired network from your ISP is needed to recieve them, but these too are free platforms and you can use, and you can even create content for yourself if you'd like.

Paid Streaming Apps - Ie, you shoudl know these, Hulu, Netflix, HBO Max, Disney Plus, all that stuff. Basically you pay them a set fee a month for access to their stuff.

Home Hosted Streaming - Ie, like I have, Plex Media Server. Basically what I did for this, was rip all my wife's DVDs and capture all of our VHS movies over to AVI/MOV/ETC format and then put it on our server so we can watch. You CAN share with other people - BUT - keep in mind this is a grey area, and downright illegal if oyu make it fully available for free over the internet.

Connecting Old Stuff to a Modern TV

Probably the most useful part of this page, if nothing else, is here. So now we're going to deal with old-school A/V connections - things like Coaxial Cable, A/V (RCA aka. Composite), Component, and VGA devices.

PICTURE	DESCRIPTION
	Spade Connections - The oldest connections you will ever find. You won't find these on any modern Televisions at all! These were used by oldschool Analog "Rabbit Ears" Antennas, loop antennas, and for connecting early video players and video game systems such as an Atari 2600, Pong system, Intellivision, or Colecovision - using that ubiqutous little metal switchbox with TV/GAME or TV/COMPUTER on it. A lot of the devices that used such a connection today can bypass it entirely by using the RCA output connector plugged directly into the Coaxial cable connection via a Coax to RCA converter. This is how my Atari 2600 is hooked into the 4K TV we have.
	Coaxial Connections - Coaxial cables were thick cables with a thick, solid, copper wire running down the center, and then a screw-on connection (usually). They screw into terminals that are threaded and have a tiny pinhole in the middle for the prickly wire to poke into for contact. Coaxial became popular starting about the early-mid 1980's and continued to be in heavy use until very recently when Fiber became popular. First you got it through your local Cable TV provider, then you got it through your Broadband internet provider with cable internet, such as Spectrum or Comcast.
	RCA/Composite - aka A/V - RCA/Composite started to appear some in the 1970's but was not commonplace on TVs until the very very end of the 1980's or early 1990's - even though some devices had this capability as early as 1983 or 1984. How it works is the yellow plug is for video signal, and the white and red plugs are for your audio signal. It was likely this way so that people with a nice TV could plug the audio output into an even nicer stereo system. Today it's still provided on some TV's as a backwards compatibility feature but are generally minimized in the variant of what we have below...
	1/8" A/V - 1/8" A/V jacks look exactly like a 1/8" headphone jack. That's because they are, but wired for video and audio. These started to be a thing on tiny portable 5" B&W TVs back in the 80's and 90's, but now are being brought back for your modern HD 4K UHD SmartTVs as a way to save money and space on the back of the set by reducing 3 plugs to one. This requires a special 1/8" to AV converter cable.
	Component - Component picked up popularity toward the beginning of the 2000's as it could give a better video signal using RGB than A/V could, which was important as DVDs were starting to out-ship VHS video formats, and video games were moving into the 3D age. Most modern TV's try to combine their A/V jacks and Component jacks, as the audio signal uses the same plugs, but one of the plugs for video is dual use, usually by half the plug being green and the other being yellow.
	VGA (Video Graphics Array) - Some later TV's started to host DVI and VGA computer graphics ports on it for the purpose of hooking up an "Entertainment Center" PC. These ports work with most computer systems, including even older MS-DOS gaming machines surprisingly, but they are seldom, if ever, found on modern 4K UHD SmartTVs except for high end models intended for a conference room at a business - rather than as a daily stream-n-binge model you'd get at Best Buy or Wal-Mart.