Hi Stephen,
Been out of town so sorry for the late reply. “I just feel that we are under-using our LG UHD TV.” I’m not sure what features your LG UHD TV has – how “smart” of a SMART TV it is – but if it is anything like our Samsung you should be able to do most of what you describe just from the TV – with just ONE remote control !! Our TV is certainly not “high end” (from memory just under $750 on clearance from JB Hi-Fi) but it joins our home network, will play movies/TV stored on our iMac, access SBS On Demand, iView and all the other similar streaming TV apps and access YouTube and Netflix (not that we have a subscription). We also have a USB drive plugged into one of its USB ports which lets us pause live TV or record TV shows and it has more than one USB port so if we choose to plug-in some other drive with media loaded onto it, we can play that directly from the drive. The TV also has a web browser – though the iMac offers a much better browsing experience – which I mainly find useful for a quick check on something relating to what I have just been watching – program info/episode list/cast list or what else I might have seen a cast member in etc. I haven’t really bothered to explore all the other “smart” options but I did discover one app which lets you search and view TED lectures. Our SMART TV is now a few years old – I would imagine that they SHOULD have got smarter now ;o) Have fun! Cheers Neil -- Neil R. Houghton Albany, Western Australia Tel: +61 8 9841 6063 Email: [email protected] From: <[email protected]> on behalf of Stephen Chape <[email protected]> Reply-To: WAMUG <[email protected]> Date: Sunday, 21 July 2019 at 18:04 To: WAMUG <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Apple TV 4K - possible new model in September Thank you for your input Neil. I mostly use my Apple TV Gen 2 to play Home Videos. I have spent quite a few years using my Camcorder and iMovie to record and edit grand kid events. Or sometimes we will watch a movie I downloaded from iTunes (Netflix is very slow to add new movies). But now the grand kids are older it is just the occasional trip down memory lane. Which I guess I could just as easily do on my iMac (as they are all stored in iTunes) So you are probably right …. perhaps we don’t need a new Apple TV. I can buy a Panasonic UHD Player for $199.00. It is cheaper to do this than replace my Panasonic BluRay Recorder. We use the recorder a lot (for TV shows we might miss) so will stay with that. Only trouble is I hate adding extra remote controls and this will mean another one. I just feel that we are under-using our LG UHD TV. My wife sees them in the electronic stores and says “why doesn’t our picture look that good?” I have to explain that they are playing UHD and we don’t yet make use of that on ours. Oh dear …. more pondering to do !!!! On 21 Jul 2019, at 12:50 pm, Neil Houghton <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Stephen, I think it will all depend on what you want to watch, how you want to watch it and how many times you want to watch it. Back in the day I had a DVD player and an Apple TV (whatever version sold in late 2010) hooked up to my TV. Once the initial enthusiasm for playing with the Apple TV wore off, I found that I rarely used it – it seemed to be too much hard work and very limited viewing options at the time. I am aware that the viewing options will have increased exponentially in the last 9 years but I never got around to hooking it up to my new (4 year old?) TV and never find myself with so little to view to warrant dusting it off. Similarly, I bought lots of DVDs full of enthusiasm for the opportunity to have collections of movies & TV series on tap to view at my convenience. Even though it is many years since I bought the last one, many are still unwatched and almost none would have been watched multiple times. For a while I used an Eye TV to record programs and have an archive of these – but again some are still unwatched and I can’t remember the last time I browsed this. For a while (pre Smart TV) I had a system whereby I could download iView programs and built a good archive of some of my favourites – but, again, I cannot remember the last time I browsed it. The major game changer for me was the combination of a Smart TV and an internet plan giving me up to 500GB/ month for less than my old 10GB plan! Our TV viewing now includes very little direct TV broadcast. Nearly all our viewing would be iView and SBS on demand. We do not subscribe to any paid streaming services. Recently I have been finding less good viewing on iView but this has been more than covered by the expanding SBS offerings. I find I periodically browse the offerings and add anything that appeals to my “my favourites”. When I sit down to watch TV I can then go to “my favourites” and quickly choose a movie/program/series which suits my mood/time available. Once watched I will remove it from my favourites. My main problem seems to be adding more programs to favourites than I actually have time to watch ;o) Of course, my viewing habits/taste are probably a long way from the Australian norm – no sport for starters and a predilection for foreign language film & TV series. With more specific focus on your question – I would suggest thinking about how much content you need to store: 1. Temporarily, until your viewing convenience. 2. As a library to be visited and re-visited. If you do have the requirement for a substantial video library, one way to do it is to use a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device – as with all storage, these seem to be getting cheaper all the time. One other consideration is that many NAS can be set-up to be stand-alone media servers – always accessible over your network without needing to fire up your computer – the idea being that your smart TV gets the content directly from the NAS. I believe a NAS media server can offer the simplest operation – once it is all correctly set-up – but you would need to research systems and confirm compatibility for your particular TV. Just some thoughts. Neil -- Neil R. Houghton Albany, Western Australia Tel: +61 8 9841 6063 Email: [email protected] From: <[email protected]> on behalf of Stephen Chape <[email protected]> Reply-To: WAMUG <[email protected]> Date: Saturday, 20 July 2019 at 16:35 To: WAMUG <[email protected]> Subject: Apple TV 4K - possible new model in September Hi folks. I am keen to move on from my Gen 2 Apple TV. I have an LG 4K UHD Television that is not yet being utilised for UHD. I came close to buying an Apple TV 4K about a month ago. But then saw rumours that a next Gen 4K may be released about September. Around the time that Apple TV Plus is released. Has anyone heard any more about this please ? Also I cannot decide if I should buy a UHD Disk Player and begin replacing my BluRay Disks with UHD Disks. Or wait for a possible next Gen Apple TV and download UHD Movies from iTunes instead. I guess if I go down the iTunes path I may need to move my iTunes Library to an external drive. Because my iMac has an internal 500GB SSD that will soon fill up. Any thoughts would be most welcome please. Regards, Stephen Chape -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - Guidelines - Settings & Unsubscribe - -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> Regards, Stephen Chape -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - Guidelines - Settings & Unsubscribe -
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