How to make a SmartTV

So I have a Vizio 32" TV in my bedroom. It isn't a smart TV, just a normal dumb one.

My Vizio in the living room is a smarttv, well kinda smart, I mean I can watch Amazon Prime movies on it, and Hulu and YouTube, and Netflix and a bunch of others, but it doesn't have a web browser for true surfing. But it does enough I guess to get by.

So I'm thinking I might try to turn my TV in the bedroom into a smartTV by plugging in a computer into the VGA port. Or I might use a thin client. Or I might use an Android tablet with a mini-HDMI output.

What do you think? Opinions and experiences welcomed....

In no order:
1) Intel Stick PC + XBMC Kodi
2) Google Chromecast
3) NUC + XBMC Kodi
4) Old PC in a media centre or SFF case + XBMC Kodi
5) ITX motherboard in a ITX case + XBMC Kodi
6) Raspberry Pi running OPENElec (slow but does the job with Kodi)
7) Amazon Fire stick
8) Fruit TV

I have IPTV at home using a 5 DVB, 1 HD, 1 freeset HD tuner TV server running DVBLink which connects to assorted Windows/Linux/Android Kodi installs and a couple of disk arrays with TV recording and photo's/video/music storage allows all devices to have the same content experience all of the time.

My setup is pretty complex, but works really well!

I have a Chromecast. To tell the truth, I was disappointed in the functionality of it. I use my regular old laptop plugged into the TV with a HDMI cable. I use a wireless mouse and keyboard to control it. That is how we watch Supergirl and the Blacklist among other shows. We have Roku's for netflix/amazon prime.

I believe many of the game systems also have browsers now. They also have blueray players.

I use Apple TV and Nexus Player.

They're both pretty cheap, if you aren't going the DIY way.

I think Raspberry Pi 2 will be pretty good for a smart TV, but what about the paid contents, I'm thinking...

For the RPi
http://openelec.tv/ (see half way down http://openelec.tv/get-openelec )
http://mymediaexperience.com/integrate-netflix-and-hulu-into-xbmc/

You can learn a lot of stuff from you guys, you know? Well the key word for me is CHEAP!

So I had an HP T5630 and tried it via wireless USB stick. Terrible, choppy video. Tried it with Ethernet hard wired...still the same, terrible choppy. It would work okay for a web browser, but not to stream video. And even audio was not good on some sites.

So I bought a newer thin client, an HP T5740. Almost double in cpu speed. It came with 2GB RAM and 2GB of ROM. I added a second 2GB chip for a total of 4GB of RAM, even though only 3.24GB is usable. Problem solved. It streams video fine without a glitch that I can tell. Tried watching an Amazon Prime movie, no problem, watched YouTube till I couldn't stand it any longer too. Works great.

Added wireless mouse and keyboard, and I now have a very smartTV. Actually better for web surfing than my big screen in the living room.

I see that most of you use your USB TV sticks to watch normal TV with. I have this stupid Charter Cable with a zillion channels. I mean I already get every channel on earth just about, plus On Demand everything from HPC, Showtime, Epix, Cinemax, and more. The only thing I don't get are any adult channels.

My bedroom TV can now access those channels from the internet that contain those videos that make me feel inadequate.

Another thing I discovered that I didn't know...the thin clients have 4 mounting holes on them, and they match perfectly to the mounting holes on my TV, so all I had to do was take the case off, screw it onto my TV, and then snap the case covers back on. Really makes for a clean installation without wires and cables everywhere.

Pictures below show old slow T5630 client good for surfing only. And better T5740 mounted on my TV.

Lastly, if I had kids...they would each have a thin client in their bedrooms and not a computer. That way they could use my computer as a server and I could have total control of what they watched and could easily track where they went to on the internet. Even the best of kids are still kids and are always curious...and they don't need to be exposed to the trash out there in smutland.







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t5630.jpg (184KB - 0 downloads)
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Very nice setup, Rich!

It was cheap...thin client was $12 on ebay...already had memory chip and power supply.

I love how the motherboard on that has a 16x PCIe slot that you'll never be able to use

As it is XP based, you might get XBMC 12 running on it which might be worth playing with if you wanted to use a remote control. If you managed to get newer Windows on it you can run Kodi. It also can boot openelec it seems https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=T5740+openelec&gws_rd=cr,ssl&ei=LTHEVqWfFMW6UcOtifAF if you wanted to modernise it.

Do you think it would run kodibunto?http://kodi.wiki/view/Kodibuntu

Wow! Nice deal! And with memory chip & power supply!

I wonder where the seller stocked it from, lol. Maybe it was from office use?

That's basically what OpenELEC is, just without the shell. So I don't see why not.

OpenELEC will run from UFD too.

Have you thought about throwing a cheap SSD in Rich?

Don't really need it as I see....I mean I have a 32GB flash drive in the internal USB slot to store crap on and use like a HD.

I use a very cheap AMD E-350 laptop with mine via HDMI (it's about 4 years old). The video rendering is excellent, but I limit myself to 720p. I usually use the browser. XBMC is installed but is kind of slow on this computer.

Anyways, to me, the secret for a happy Windows/TV combination is the Lenovo N5902 remote. If you can get one, I highly recommend it. The optical pad and scroll sensor are genius.

My other major tweaks have been to set the computer to sleep after two hours of inactivity, and wake on USB, so you just have to press a button or use the optical pad on the remote to get going. Oh, and there's an add on for Firefox that turns your bookmarks into a start page, which is pretty handy.

Edited by Mobi 2016-02-18 4:07 PM

Lenovo N5902 : in-ter-est-int!