Under this influence, I naturally ran to the store with the anticipation of "well, now, from the sofa, I will be the king of the media space."
But it was not there. Stumbling through a meager menu, a bitter disappointment and a feeling of divorce awaited me as a person with an engineering education. The implementation of a seemingly quite natural idea in practice turned into a complete profanation. There were no complaints about the TV function, but the Smart function did not even turn out to be called such.
"Well, okay" - I thought then, I am a retrograde person, from the whole list of these Smart "opportunities" I was only interested in the possibility of watching YouTube on TV.
But, after a short time, the first unpleasant surprise awaited me. The corresponding widget has been removed with the comment that your "modern" TV no longer supports this feature.
The feverish "smoking" of the forums of fans of these types of TVs showed that it cannot be cured in any way. The only way to watch YouTube is through the built-in browser.
“Okay,” I said to myself again: “We will look through the browser”. By the way, he had a very useful feature. Due to the fact that the browser was also outdated, it did not play most of the ad inserts while watching videos, so I had the happy opportunity to watch YouTube with almost no ads with "pleasure" reading angry comments under the video, like: "How annoying this ad has already been." ...
But now 2020 has come and my happiness has once again come to an end. Now my browser, which has been loved by this time, told me that I will not show you YouTube anymore, and I again had a seemingly simple problem of watching this wonderful video host on TV.
I once again rushed to the Internet to look for solutions from the "experienced", but all my searches were in vain. I haven't found a ready-made and convenient solution for me.
The easiest option was naturally to buy a new TV. I immediately abandoned this idea with an angry thought: "No, I was already bred once, now I am a grated roll."
The second decision that suggested itself was the purchase of a TV set-top box. Climbing forums with lovers of these devices convinced me that this thing is, in principle, similar to the built-in SMART function, but only in a separate device and with its own software. Thus, we again find ourselves dependent on the manufacturer of this "magic" box. Participants of the respective forums zealously chased new firmware for their devices, discussing the bugs found and asking how to treat them.
There was also a third solution - to watch through the phone by broadcasting to the TV via WiFi. I used this function only for the duration of the fourth one, which will be discussed below. Naturally, for my retrograde soul, such a family of telephones and televisions turned out to be unacceptable. In one hand, the IR remote control from the TV to the other phone, look there, read the comments there, plus the widget on the TV slows down (lags - in modern slang).
In general, after about a week of ordeal and it was already, having begun to accept the third option, his Majesty's chance came to my aid. Thanks to all the well-known events of 2020 at work, of course, everyone was expelled to work remotely, and even here, showing my conservatism, “heroically” visited the office. And somehow a colleague who is at a distance calls me and asks me to restart my computer, since he cannot connect to it. I look under the table to see him and instead of the usual system unit I see a small box. At first I thought: “Oh, well, this is a thin client”, and a colleague to me: “No, this is a desktop, but only in this version”. I am completely confused with the feeling that apparently for some time, our ball was spinning without me, I was running to Yandex, I was looking at what kind of unknown "animal" it was and with the feeling of a person who finally foundI understand the last card that covers the solitaire that has not been matched for a long time: "This is the solution of all my wishes."
Well, everything, the artistic part is over, now on the case.
Formulation of the problem. It is necessary to view YouTube and, in the future, other video hosting services on an existing TV controlled by its own IR remote control. Why one remote control, but because I want to lie on the bed / sofa after a "hard" day at work, in the twilight by touch on the usual remote control, using 2-3 buttons to find some "blogging talking head" telling about spaceships plying the open spaces The Bolshoi Theater and under its monotonous muttering expect the arrival of Morpheus.
To implement the above task, I see two options, which I conditionally named:
- Expensively rich
- Cheap-angry
The Expensive-Rich option includes the following equipment list:
- TV with HDMI input and native IR remote control
- Nettop for every taste
- IR receiver for computer control (Flirc USB, flirc.tv/more/flirc-usb )
- Brave Browser
Accordingly, in the option "Cheap and cheerful":
- TV with HDMI input and native IR remote control
- Any system unit with HDMI output (be sure to have a built-in COM port or the port must be on a PCI card, not a USB-COM adapter)
- Homemade IR receiver for COM port or microphone input using winlirc.sourceforge.net software
- Brave Browser
I myself have implemented the option "Expensive and rich", I am happy as an elephant, so I hasten to share my experience with those who are interested. The option "Cheap-Angry" can be implemented by almost anyone whose hands are growing out of the right place and with a computer he is "on your toe".
In the "Expensive-Rich" option, the most confusing thing is buying and configuring the Flirc IR receiver. I covered the whole Internet, but for some reason even the Chinese did not consider it necessary to make such a device. They have options, but with their own remote controls, and I only wanted a learning IR receiver. A couple of our projects were also found, but unfortunately they are already dead or it will be a homemade product to order. Therefore, I had to order the Flirc device from our American comrades. Although there is nothing outstanding about it. Any novice fan of programming microcontrollers can assemble one on Arduino. At first I myself wanted to take it, since I was an ardent radio amateur in the past, but I stopped the upcoming fuss with stuffing it all into a beautiful case (I'm getting old, however).
This begs the question, why not actually use a USB-COM adapter plus a homemade IR receiver on a COM port. As I understand it, Winlirc calculates the pulse duration by processor clock, so you need system access to the COM port, not emulated via USB. By the way, I tried this circuit on my knee - it really does not work. Winlirc just gets a different sequence every time you press the same button on the remote control, just as I didn't try to keep the remote close to the IR receiver and smoothly press the button.
If you do not have a COM port and do not want to bother buying Flirc, then you can use the microphone input of the sound card, collecting just such a simple circuit winlirc.sourceforge.net/audioreciever.html I did not check it myself, but it will work - I saw a video with the implementation of this scheme ...
For those who decide to buy Flirc, it will take a little tinkering with the setup. The software that comes with the device, for some reason, does not support the setting of the numeric keypad, namely, there are the keys that are used to control the mouse using the keyboard (these are keys 2, 4, 8, 6, 5). Fortunately, on their forum (by the way, it is very popular) there is a post on how you can configure them.
In short. On the command line, we give the command:
( )\flirc_util.exe record_api 0 code where code is the code of the key on the keyboard
For the numeric keypad:
Code 89 - key 1
Code 90 - key 2
Code 91 - key 3
Etc.
Example of a command to configure key 2 on the numeric keypad:
C:\Program Files\Flirc\flirc_util.exe record_api 0 90After giving the command, there will be a message asking you to press a button on the remote control. Click the one you want to assign. Then we repeat for the rest of the buttons on the numeric keypad. Thus, we need to configure the keys of the numeric keypad 2, 4, 8, 6, 5.
The keys of the main keyboard (for example PgUp, PgDown) can be configured through the program interface, everything is interactive and simple there.
On the remote control, respectively, select those buttons that do nothing in the HDMI input mode. For example, in my case, the OK button on the remote control, on which I wanted to hang a mouse click, calls a pop-up info menu. I had to use the REC button, since it is not used at all and is in a convenient place.
General procedure for both options:
1. We buy Nettop. Any one according to your budget will do (the main thing is that it has an HDMI output and the option that will be used to access the Internet - LAN input or WiFi. Well, there is also a USB input on the front side, where you will need to plug Flirc). In the case of the "Cheap-angry" option, it will be any system unit that fits in your TV bedside table, with an HDMI output on the video card and a COM port built into the motherboard. It is advisable to choose a video card with passive cooling and choose a power supply unit with a low noise level (well, if you are sensitive to extraneous noise like me. Nettop is ideal in this regard, since it is completely passive in terms of cooling).
2. In the case of Flirc, install it into the USB input on the front panel, install the drivers and teach the IR remote control buttons from the TV as described above. To surf in the browser, you need to configure the numeric keypad buttons (keys 2, 4, 8, 6, 5) to control the mouse and assign two more buttons to the PgDown, PgUp keys for vertical scrolling on Web pages.In the
case of a homemade IR receiver, we assemble a circuit, push it into the case. Install the Winlirc software and teach it the remote control buttons.
If you are assembling a circuit with a COM port connection, then in the program it will be DCD Device (that is, reading data from the DCD COM port leg) Here is the diagram and setup procedure www.zoonman.ru/library/winlirc.htm
This is www.tb-electronic. de / vdr / lirc / lirc_rx.htmla more canonical DCD Device circuit with a level converter, for those who like to do everything right.
If we use a circuit with a connection to a microphone input, then select the AudioCapture.dll item in the modern version of the Winlirc program and configure the remote control buttons.
3. In Windows, enable the function of controlling the mouse using the keyboard and display the shortcut of the virtual keyboard on the taskbar so that you can quickly get to it.
Also in the display settings, you can disable the "display off" function and adjust the time for you and the computer to go to sleep. By the way, this turned out to be another very convenient function. As soon as you blissfully fall asleep in front of the TV set, the computer will fall asleep after a predetermined time, and after it the TV will turn off, since the video signal will disappear at its HDMI input.
In the case of Flirc, the nettop wakes up by one of the configured buttons on the TV remote control and you find yourself on the page that you left last time.
The last point is to use the Brave browser. Why do you ask? The most important thing is that it has built-in ad blocking and is like 2 drops of a copy of Chrome, plus it supports extensions written for it. Stumbled upon this browser by accident and am delighted with it.
What we got as a result of the implementation of one of the proposed options:
- Completely independent devices from the firmware of the manufacturers and their protective policies of using all third-party or alternative.
- Flexible choice of customization of everything for yourself from a wide range of software written for Windows and Linux (Flirc and WinLirc have Linux versions)
- On the same computer / nettop, you can configure a DLNA server. In parallel, download torrents on it and watch them from it.
- No more messages "Your device is no longer supported, buy a new one" at least for the foreseeable future.
- Puppy joy because all this is assembled and configured independently.
What we lost in the course of implementation - yes, actually nothing, well, perhaps a little financial and time to put it all together and make it work, Well, if you use your own flea market or a la Avito, then the option "Cheap-angry" will be simple for ridiculous money.