My mum is approaching being bed ridden so I want to get her a small TV for the bedroom – 22″ maybe. Also there’s no antenna in there but she has good WiFi. Any advice on models, solutions? I haven’t tried to run, say, Freeview over wi-fi. Is it even possible? Smart TV etc?
ATM Small TV question
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You can stream BBC content live on iPlayer but it will eat up the bandwidth unless she has an unlimited download internet package.
My mum gets round that by having a BT TV box under her telly, the data comes free.
You could try a powered indoor digital tv aerial. I’ve got one I use occasionally for work and it just depends on your location. Worth a try if you buy it from somewhere with a good returns policy. You may want to consider a big button remote too. The All In One brand does different ones for tv, satellite boxes etc, very easy to set up. I’d definitely go and look at TVs in a store to make sure the menus aren’t too confusing. I’ve had to try and talk my dad through them a few times over the phone with a downloaded manual in front of me and he just doesn’t understand what most of it means.
Freeview Play looks confusing and seems to rely on different broadcaster’s players. I’d probably avoid, unless anyone knows differently.
Get an amazon fire stick there’s an app that lets you play free view as well as iPlayer, itv player etc.
Yes I’ve got the ethernet version. Not sure you can get Freeview with it?
I think any branded TV will be fine these days for that size screen. You can get an app “TVPlayer” for Apple TV, Amazon fire stick or Android which has most freeview channels, for a small subscription you can get more channels. You will need unlimited internet or at least a few 100GB a month if she would watch all the time. Failing that, try an indoor antenna with an amp as suggested or see if you can place one in the attic or on the roof. You can also set up a satellite dish for free channels.
Indoor aerials are generally awful with digital TV unless you live really close to the transmitter.
That’s certainly been my experience.
I live in a ground floor flat in a block which is surrounded by other blocks. There is no TV aerial on the block and I cannot get a terrestrial TV signal at all in my flat. I’ve tried all sorts of powered signal boosters and high-gain aerials but cannot even get a poor-quality signal.
All of the flats were pre-wired for cable when built. The lease forbids external aerials or dishes on the building, so it’s cable TV or Internet data only. I use the various iPlayer-alike apps and I have both Amazon Prime and Netflix.
I’ve used a Roku box to connect a TV without signal to the wi-fi. It’s not a Freeview like solution but provides the vaious BBC, ITV, C4, C5 apps that allow live viewing or limited time playback, plus Netflix, Prime etc. Real simple to set up.
As stated above, probably better to use one app such as “TVPlayer” rather than messing around with all the individual ones especially as an older person may find it a lot easier.
@Twang I’ve got a decent Kodi box here doing nothing – if you want to try that route, I can post it on to you tomorrow.
Thanks all I’ve sprung for a smart TV which allegedly connects to the WiFi and you’re good to go. Shove a memory stick in the USB port and it has PVR functions too. If it’s as good as it professes to be it’ll be a bargain at 150 sovs.
Thanks all
That sounds as if you’ve got everything covered there.
Depending on how tech savvy your mum is, I would suggest unboxing & setting it up with her “So we both get to know how it works.” Also, find the best sound setting for her. My parents used to frequently mistake volume for clarity.
Enjoy your/her new toy.
Yeah, I bought my mum a Sound Bar to go under her new telly – the speakers in flat-screen TVs are shocking – and she’s pretty deaf, even with her hearing aids in.
What soundbar did you go for, may I ask? The ones I’ve tried seem to be “all about the bass”, whereas my deafness seems to prefer hgh treble. A “tinny” sound is what I’m looking for.
My wife uses hearing aids and doesn’t deal with bass well. We have a Sonos Beam which is good but she still prefers to have subtitles on for films as the soundtracks seem to favour sound effects over dialogue. American films are noticeably worse, voices being buried way down in the mix.
Yep, I use subtitles always. I’m very thankful that I didn’t lose my hearing until the age of subtitles.
Sony HT-SF200 which is “2.1 channel” apparently. There’s a tiny drive unit (3″, maybe) underneath and a bass reflex port in one end.
The HT-SF150 does not have the ‘bass reflex’ but was out of stock.
I got it cheap ‘cos the carboard box was damaged. It’s, well, alright. Quite pleased I didn’t pay full price.
BTW, I connected it to the TV by the HDMI socket marked ARC (audio return channel). This means the TV remote control adjusts the soundbar volume. There was a delay/echo with both it and the TV speakers on. Finding out how to turn the TV speakers off took about an hour of menu searching.
A small flat head screwdriver would have done that in 30 seconds.
That’s the plan!
You may find that you need an external USB drive rather than a stick for the PVR to work. That was certainly the case with our Samsung. I looked at Amazon reviews to confirm that the one I bought would work although actually using it is quite clunky, even to pause live tv so we almost never do.
And go carefully with the external drive you use. My advice is to repurpose an old one from a dead lappy/desktop to see if the TV behaves with a disc attached first.
I stuck an old but perfectly functioning 500Gb drive onto our Philips telly ostensibly to allow live TV pausing. Couldn’t get the pause thing to work, gave up and left it there anyway because it did at least record live stuff straight off air. Never used it though.
Weeks later spotted one night that the blue drive LED was illuminated when the telly was on standby, and wondered what was on the thing. Attached it to a lappy only to discover that the drive had been rendered bricklike by the telly at some point. LED functioning, but nothing else. No spin up, no data, no chance. Bin.
Caveat USBer.
Eddie Izzard ? Probably a big taller than 22” though.