LG Smart TV and External HDD

[Harry Bloomfield]

I have just taken delivery of our first smart TV, an LG. It has/had a lot to learn, but so far all working and I am very impressed with all the new facilities I have found in it so far.

It needs some sort of external storage for some of its facilities to work and it seems that can be a USB stick or a USB HDD. The largest stick I could find was 1Gb, which the TV rejected as too small, besides which I have read somewhere that sticks don't last very long in TV type use due constant write/read - is that true?

I had a spare 2.5 HDD USB powered, in a caddy, bought some 5 years ago, so I am trialing that. It all works as you would expect, apart from it not seeming to power down when not in use. When the TV is put to standby, it powers down, but seems to run when in use or not, despite enabling it to go to standby in the TV's menu. When the TV is put to standby, the HDD continues to flash for several seconds after the TV goes to standby, then goes off with a reassuring clunk as it parks.

On live TV, its LED flashes constantly. When I watch something streamed from the Internet (BBCi), the LED shows lit steady.

LG's helpdesk, seem to be suggesting that my HDD may not support going into standby - me, I cannot see how it might decide to go to standby, with the HDD being constantly accessed, as evidenced by the LED flashing - but what/why is it accessing the HDD?

[RJH]

Yes, me too - the WebOS is pretty good. Just wish they'd spent a few pennies more on a more powerful processor.

I think it's just in 'pensive' state while the TV is on but not obviously doing anything with the HD. Flipping source to TV would need the HD to spin up - causing lag? Dunno.

FWIW I put a WD Green 120GB SSD in a cheap USB powered caddy - saves the minor irritation of mechanical disk clatter.

[John Rumm]

I can't see lifetime being an issue - modern flash devices have substatial write cycles, which when combined with over capacity in the drive, and wear levelling mean you can write the full capacity of the drive every day for years. Also 16GB drives are almost free with corn flakes these days, so if it fails, replace it with another.

Yup, that's the main issue with mechanical drives in this application - you can usually hear them in a quiet room.

Tuck it round the back of the TV and stick some tape over the LED ;-)

[John Rumm]

Gives em a way to encourage people to buy the higher end sets with more computational oomph...

[Robin]

Does your model record whatever broadcast programme you are currently watching (so you can pause whenever you want, for example, a loo break)? If it does then the HDD will be in use all the time.

[Harry Bloomfield]

RJH explained :

Its a LG 49UJ630V, I have not noticed any processor slowness. I did have problems with the default audio and vision settings - Its Smart Sound Mode, was causing the level to vary all over the place. Likewise vision was set up with far too muh contrast (100%), some scenes far too dark, others far to bright an washed out. I reduced that to 50% and increased the brightness to 70%. Overall, I am very impressed and delighted with it.

Its feet, one at each end of the screen, proved to be far too far apart to fit the corner unit I built long ago for the a/v equipment, so I have had it propped in place since it arrived last week. The cantilever wall bracket I ordered, was delivered yesterday so it is now mounted on that.

It replaces an ancient 42" 1080p plasma, which weighed 3x as much and consumed 240w. This one uses 67w, so should quite quickly pay for itself in saved energy.

I have no idea what make/model of HDD it is, but it is inaudible to me. Just the very slight clunk as it parks as the TV is turned off.

I actually bought the HDD to go with my old sat system. It came with a very short USB lead and I tried various longer leads and extensions, but never managed to get it to operate on the sat, or the TV, with any but that short lead..

[Harry Bloomfield]

Robin has brought this to us :

I have not got my head around everything it does yet, but yes I just tried it and it pauses whatever you are watching live and even live, you can rewind 15 somethings (minutes? seconds?).

On the BBC channels you can click green and it will play the live program from the beginning, if you switched on midway. ITV etc. seem not to have that facility, or none I have yet found..

[Harry Bloomfield]

John Rumm wrote on 26/10/2018 :

No, I cannot hear this one at all, unless I put it next to my ear.

That is what I think I will end up doing - its just my 'mechanical sympathy' concerned at it running constantly and puzzled by the HDD standby setting in the TV's settings.

[Muddymike]

I use a SSD with my LG telly. Yes it records all the time you are watching live TV in case you want to wind back.

Mike

[Muddymike]

Green button on BBC takes you to BBC iPlayer.

Mike

[Harry Bloomfield]

Muddymike wrote on 26/10/2018 :

I see, so it is downloading the content.

[Robin]

They usually record a couple of hours (space permitting). And you may be able to turn off that functionality altogether. But I don't see why you'd want to do so: you never know when you might be called out by a person on business from Porlock :)

[Andy Burns]

Does it, I thought pressing green cancelled the annoying "press red" popups?

[RJH]

Mine's the LG 43UJ670V. It's not dog slow, and some of it could be due to data grab (although it is connected via fast ethernet). And it has crashed (out of memory) watching HD Youtubes a couple of times. Anyhoo, greater hardships :-)

I spent a while sorting various settings - settled on a mild variation of Expert/Dark Room. The HDR is steadfastly *off* - took me a few minutes to realise what it was, and that I didn't like it. Sound is just optical out to a sound box.

That sounds fine then. I only, more or less, used an SSD because I could :-)

[Jethro_uk]

Little tip: get a cheap USB hub, plug that into the TV (once) and then plug your devices into the hub (also works for PCs in general).

WRT to the HDD ... we use both an HDD and memory sticks (that hub is already paying for itself). Never had any issues - but then any *writing* is done off-TV.

FWIW our hub has a little "on/off" switch, which means that when you aren't using the HDD, you can simply switch it out of the circuit. Which means when you do want to use it you switch it in, which seems to wake it up anyway.

Really, I'd like to dispense with all that malarkey, and simply stream over WiFi. But for some reason it struggles with very big HD files. (Not for the first time do I curse not having the foresight to cable the house up when the heating engineer had all the boards up.)

[Harry Bloomfield]

Jethro_uk laid this down on his screen :

I cabled the place up with coax LAN, TV antennas piped all round and phone sockets in the mid 80's, then in the 90's replaced the LAN coax with RJ45/CAT5 to most places, plus wifi filling in the gaps.

What ever you do, it will be out of date tomorrow.

[alan_m]

Are you sure that on live TV the disk isn't being used for timeshift? Timeshift is the ability to pause and scroll back, say, a couple of hours of the programme/channel you are watching. To scroll back a couple of hours of live TV the channel you are watching has to be recorded in a (circular) buffer on the hard disk. In this mode the disk will always be used for recording.

In IPTV mode I would assume that the disk is being used a temporary buffer storing data as it arrives and then reading it back out at a slower rate. Perhaps local timeshift is also being applied to IPTV data.

A disk that is constantly being used for timeshift functions cannot go into standby.

On my STB timeshift operates in two optional ways. i) the hard disk is only used for recording when the pause key is operated and subsequent viewing of the delayed programme This means when not in use it can go to sleep. The disadvantage with this mode of operation is with live TV you cannot scroll back before the time when you pressed the pause button. ii) the disk is always being used to record what you are watching. This means you can pause a programme and then immediately scroll back a minute or perhaps a few hours of the live broadcast. Usually this recording is limited to a few hours with the most historic stuff getting constantly over-written. This recording buffer is usually cleared/reset when changing channels

LG may call timeshift "time machine"

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its possibly using iplayer and the internet to do that

[Brian Gaff]

If your set supports instant record, then it has to run all the time as spinning up and finding its fat etc will take time. As for sticks. I feel that is poppycock unless you are very unlucky. We use sticks on a weekly turn around at our talking newspaper and they seem none the worse for it at all. Most failures are mechanical, like user or post office mishandling with size 9 boots.

I think you may find 4 gig is about the smallest that you need for that tv Lots around very much larger than that of course and not that expensive.

Brian

[Max Demian]

HDDs will run continuously for five or more years without problems.

(I leave my laptop on all the time as sometimes the HDD doesn't boot. It's been on for 18 months or so now.)