Recording from Panasonic smart TV

[John Rumm]

Could you clarify what you mean by "You can pick up all terrestrial channels"? Do you men all the catchup services, is it able to stream live TV content from the internet?

[Steve Walker]

But that is available on an attached box anyway. Smart box providing the functions rather than relying upon those built into the Smart TV.

SteveW

[Steve Walker]

I like the voice control on the Amazon Firestick - it is only active while you hold the button down on the remote.

In the future, I might consider a 24/7 voice control system, but only if it is running on my home server and not relying on external servers.

SteveW

[Steve Walker]

You can install Kodi onto the Firestick and use that to access the media on your NAS - which may allow you to do away with the Android players if you wanted to.

SteveW

[Steve Walker]

Did you enable CEC on the TV as well as the BT box?

I don't know the BT box, but with our Technomate (and the normally usused Humax) we leave the TV volume alone and change the output from the boxes' own volume settings.

Don't use the boxes' remotes to control the TV by IR. Use them to control the boxes and allow the boxes to use CEC to control the TV via the HDMI connection.

We can turn the TV on/off, change inputs, etc. from dedicated buttons on our Humax remote, but we don't. We simply turn the Humax (or Technomate or Panasonic Blue-ray) box on and let it turn the TV on and select the right input over the HDMI connection. The TV volume is always left the same and we change the volume on the box that we are using instead.

No need to use any remote to control the TV itself.

SteveW

[Gareth's was W7 now W10 Downst]

... except when the Humax Freeview box is recording three things, the Humas FreeSat box is recording another***** and the Toshiba VHS/DVD/HDD box is recording yet another and there is still something else you want to watch.

Agreed, it doesn't happen that often that I want to record 5 programs while watching a sixth!

***** Only one antenna feed, the other two feeds from the satellite dish go to my wife's Freesat box up the other end of the lounge!

[Chris Hogg]

Er...no! Didn't know I had to - the instructions for the BT remote didn't mention it. My own TV (Samsung) must have it enabled by default or some-such, as I certainly didn't enable it, nor for the DVD player, or the Hi-Fi. I will investigate further (again!).

That's what I expected, but it didn't happen. Probably because of the above.

That's the objective. Not got there yet.

[Dave Liquorice]

So they say... B-)

There's voice control for the infotainment system in the car. It works but is very clunky, the worst aspect is having to wait for the beep before responding to it, the delay is three or four times that one would naturally leave in a conversation.

The voice reply app I have for responding to SMS's (that are read out) when driving also has a similar delay before the "speak now" beep.

Are things like the firestick or alexa, siri able to keep up with naturally paced responses?

[Steve Walker]

Our Technomate TM-Twin OE (Enigma 2) box is supposedly capable of recording 7 channels at once, while watching one of them or playing back a recording (and streaming to a PC), as long as they can be accomodated on two tuners (matching high or low band, horizontal or vertical polarisation). It can however automatically request the Mutant 1500 box in the kitchen to use one of it's tuners to record something - which the Mutant stores on the Technomate's shared hard-disk anyway. You can also plug in USB terrestrial or satellite tuners as well for more flexibility.

SteveW

[Chris Hogg]

I have seldom, if ever, been successful with the voice control on my Firestick, and yes, I do hold down the button. It never seems to recognise what I say (perhaps I've got a French or German one!). I just manually navigate, but as I mostly use it for BBC Iplayer, that's simple enough to do. Is there a list of commands it understands, anywhere?

[Steve Walker]

No commands. Just hold the button and say the title of what you want to watch and it searches for it. I've not used it for a while, so can't remember whether it searches iPlayer, ITV hub, etc. as well as Amazon's own services.

SteveW

[Dave Liquorice]

Powering

happen.

CEC control is between boxes connected via HDMI cables. Here, power up the PVR press guide to force it to want to display something and the TV powers up, the speakers either see that the TV has powered up or they are told to power up by the TV. Put the TV into standby and the speakers switch off and the PVR powers down. I'll have to play to see if putting the PVR into standby also causes the TV etc to power down, it may only do that if instructed to power up by the PVR and maybe only if the TV has not be switched to another source since then.

It maybe that the BT box doesn't impliment any CEC control stuff. Though I'd expect at least the basic stuff, power, volume, channel to be part of the HDMI spec,

Yes, you're telling the remote to use a particular set of IR LED flashing sequnecies. The TV sees these sequencies and responds accordingly, it has no means of knowing if the IR has come from it's remote, a universal remote or an IR LED driven by something else.

The programming codes are specific to a remote.

[Jack98]

Yep, and google home too.

[Brian Reay]

Thank you.

That could be useful if you can put a proxy in it so as you can use it when traveling. We have a satellite system but the dish isn?t large enough to work in the South of France. Plus, some pitches just don?t have a clear line of site to Astra.

[The Natural Philosopher]

yup. No ened of east enders etc etc.

[Andrew]

On 13/07/2019 15:44, Chris Hogg wrote: <snip>

My Humax HD FOX T2 only has one tuner so I have the same issue.

I have a 2.5 bus-powered disk plugged into the boxes USB port and it records fine, but it also objects to a USB stick.

If I am recording an HD program then I can still watch any other of the 5 HD channels, incl ITV and C4.

Ditto, when recording something from BBC radio I can still watch BBC4 and other BBC SD programs.

[Andrew]

It's a 'Currys only' model of this TV, but if it only has a single tuner, then that means you have to be careful with program clashes.

[Andrew]

I was in JL yesterday looking at stuff while the women were all glued to Wimbledon, and a 32 inch Samsung caught my attention.

It was a UE32N5300 and it was showing the wheelchair doubles final.

The court looked unreal, as if coconut matting had been laid all over the bare bits, which I assumed was over zealous sharpening, yet each wheelchair+person was obviously surrounded by a halo of unsharpened image. Most bizarre.

Naturally the resident Sony guy said 'our TV's don't do this', pointing to the 32 inch WE756 sony TV which had a much better picture (but only has iPlayer and not much else)

Later I noticed that a 43 inch WF663 sony tv had the same aberation, so I went back to the Samsung and found the sharpening setting and turned it right down and that improved things very obviously.

I wondered if the Sony guy had deliberately changed the settings of rival tvs on display to give them garish, oversharpened, speckly displays ?.

[newshound]

Not *my* only attached box, which is a Humax.

[newshound]

Wouldn't be at all surprised.

We've all learned to be suspicious of advertisements and of salesmen. It seems to me that too many people fail to apply this to social media (in particular) as well as other sources.