'Smart' TV Tests

My Dell didnt have speakers, I just bought an inexpensive sound bar to go with it. As far as connections go, it has USB, HDMI, DVI and a couple of other things I can’t remember right now. And its quite old. I think most monitors these days at the very least come with the capacity for sound addition, if they dont already have it, and most have a shedload of connection points. HDMI is sufficient for me, usually.

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Realistically if a monitor supports HDMI-in then it must either have built-in speakers or an audio-out port of some kind (and some monitors have both). That does not apply if a monitor has DVI-in but not HDMI-in (would be an older monitor).

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I dont know what you are saying here? I’m wrong? What?

http://www1.la.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/snp/topics/monitor-dell-u2410?c=pr&l=en&cs=prbsdt1

I’m not either contradicting you or agreeing with you. Just adding information.

In this case, for a Dell U2410 the answer would appear to be that it has an audio out port (classic light green 3.5 mm connector). http://www.qed-productions.com/downloads/dell/dell-u2410_manual.pdf

It does. Its what i use.

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I have a 2017 model 65" LG OLED TV and I tried to post comments on the most recent CHOICE TV Review but it was rejected on the grounds that my review did not refer to the 2020 OLED model. In my defence, what I was trying to do was to warn other consumers about what I see as a hidden disadvantage of ALL LG OLED TVs and any TV that uses the clunky user-unfriendly LG OS. I have no complaints about the picture quality or audio quality on my LG TV , BUT (big BUT) I can’t ay the same about the operating system (LG OS) developed by the company. Many TV manufacturers pay Google a licence fee to adapt one of the Android OS for their ‘Smart’ TVs. Not LG - they had to invent their own for a TV that is claimed to provide access to the World Wide Web and to various search engines in streaming services. Anyone who has laboriously pecked their way through an on-screen alphabet to input a lengthy URL into a search engine will quickly become frustrated - especially when you have clicked on a comma instead of a full stop and the search engine say it can’t find the site and you have to input everything all over again. Nowadays, many peripheral manufacturers, like Logitech and Microsoft offer ‘Media Keyboards’ that connect to Android TVs and enable facile input of alphanumeric text. NOT LG! having spent HOURS vainly trying to connect six different Logitech media keyboards to my LG OLED (which is running the latest 2021 update of LG OS) I contacted LG customer support twice to try and find out how to connect a Logitech media keyboard to my OLED TV (the Logitech website claims that LG OLED TVs made in 2017 and later years are all compatible with LG OLED TVs). I received two different replies from LG Customer Support - one from a Technician in Australia that was plainly WRONG as he claimed that two of the Logitech keyboards I had failed to connect (the K400 and the K600) would pair wirelessly: the second reply from a female technician somewhere in Asia told me that ONLY ONE wireless keyboard was compatible with LG OLED TVs. And guess what! It is a keyboard made by LG itself!!! The LG Rolly 2 keyboard, a keyboard that is NOT AVAILABLE IN AUSTRALIA that was specifically designed for LG mobile phones and is now OUT OF PRODUCTION. Fortunately a US seller is selling old stock of the LG Rolly 2 keyboard on eBay and I have ordered one, but it has yet to arrive. Pictures of the Rolly 2 on the web show that is of the older type that lacks a touch pad - a great disadvantage when surfing the web on a TV. So the moral of this long sad story is CONSIDER! If you are about to ‘hit your plastic’ with a $5K - $8K debt are you prepared to ‘suffer’ the clunky unfriendly LG OS for the MARGINAL better picture quality of OLED over the most recent iterations of LED - such as QLED. I don’t know what operating systems are used by Sony, Panasonic or Loewe who reportedly marry LG OLED screens to their own electronic smarts, but it is certainly a factor worth considering before making your decision final.

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Hi @douglaspaine, That is a bummer. As for posting comments on the Choice reviews it has been problematic for a few years where comments were for ‘not the product reviewed’ and thus irrelevant for the review, even if well intended or important issues; and the comments section does not cater for general comments such as your own.

You might post your experience on productreview.com.au if you have not already done so.

I moved your topic here that includes general discussions of smart TVs. FWIW prior to smart TVs I had a Sony that could play media files from a server on the home network. It had a wired ethernet connection and could do WiFi, but only with a Sony manufactured WiFi dongle that was about 8X overpriced and even then was a large fraction of the cost of the TV itself.

Numerous manufacturers are moving to AndroidTV, some are still welded to their proprietary efforts, and some offer each in different models.

It is worth noting the operating system has nothing to do with the quality of the screen technology (OLED, QLED, LCD, whatever) but the apps that drive the TV function could.

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Many thanks PhilT - much appreciated. I shall follow your recommendation and post on productreview.com.au as well.

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LG should be commended for doing this. Paying Google is a horrible solution. Just my choice of course. You are free to pimp yourself to Google.

It’s not something that I have tested recently but as many TVs these days have a USB port, it is worth just plugging in a regular USB keyboard and seeing what happens. I know that this did not work 10 years ago but I expect that support has improved since then.

Whether you need a special “media keyboard” is up to the customer. It depends on what level of functionality you need. If all you need is to type in URLs or search terms then an ordinary keyboard is adequate. If you want to be able to control the TV (volume, channel, pause, rewind, fast forward, … etc.) then you will need a special keyboard and one that is also compatible with the TV.

You might also want a wireless keyboard for convenient use, which would either be a Bluetooth keyboard (if the TV supports Bluetooth) or a keyboard that comes with a USB dongle for wireless use (like a Logitech Unifying Receiver).

So the first step I recommend is just to plug in a USB keyboard. If that works then I would try a keyboard with a USB dongle for wireless use (since that presents to the host i.e. the TV as just a regular USB keyboard). The most challenging option to get working would be Bluetooth i.e. a keyboard that is solely Bluetooth or trying to pair a keyboard that supports Bluetooth without using the USB Bluetooth dongle that is provided for those hosts that don’t have Bluetooth support.

You should fault isolate all keyboards by confirming first that it works correctly on a regular computer.

It may help to link us to the manual for this TV, to set expectations about its capabilities and what might work.

I have 2 AndroidTV TVs. I am happy to ‘pimp myself’ because they work very well, the apps will probably be supported long after the proprietary OS versions are abandoned, and intuitive for anyone who has an Android phone. For better or worse one can turn the TV on the first time, and if so inclined enter their google account details and ‘everything happens by magic’ including compatible apps on the phone get installed. ‘Pimping’ myself is the price for that convenience and functionality.

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And therein lies the problem.

You are free to make an informed choice. Many customers though are not making an informed choice.

The important point though was that the suggestion that we should all use Google should not go unchallenged.

Perhaps we can get back to the customer’s keyboard problem? :wink:

Did I post that?

Rather than a keyboard problem per se, I interpreted the problem to be LG’s decision to only support their own specific keyboard - eg proprietary only products.

He has a solution, ‘in the mail’.

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No, the previous poster implied that.

That is a problem (when it occurs) - although sometimes the difference between “support” and “works” is important. Proprietary vendor lock-in is a well known anti-consumer practice and you are right to highlight that. I just don’t know whether that applies here (and I don’t have an LG TV to test).

I really though need to go and test some keyboards with TVs … (rest assured, no Google TVs here).

I agree! I will never have an Android based TV, simply because I don’t trust the software not to phone home to google, even if I don’t activate the smarts. I’ll continue to search out a UHD dumb TV.

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Rest assured I have checked that all the ‘media keyboards’ I have tried on my LG OLED TV do work on both Widows 10 PC and on Mac OS 11 after failing to get them recognised by the TV. I’m not a newbie to computer peripherals! having had well over 20 years experience with both Windows and Macs. A for posting the manual, here is the link to the page about the LG Keyboard: http://kr.eguide.lgappstv.com/manual/w17_mr/dvb/Apps/w3.5_mr_a02/a_eng/settings.html
And to save you time here is what it says: ‘Supported keyboard, LG Rolly Keyboard’
Yet if I migrate to the Logitech website info on their Media Keyboards https://www.logitech.com/en-au/promo/k600-tv/smart-tv-compatibility-checker.html
it has the following image:
LGOLED
6 = 2016 - your TV is compatible
7 = 2017 - your TV is compatible
8 = 2018 - your TV is compatible
Other models are not compatible.
So I interpret that as imply Logitech think an OLED65C7T is compatible as the other letters correspond to LG TVs sold in other countries - Logitech do not operate a specific site for Australia.

If you have a smart phone/tablet, have you tried one of the LG remote apps which have a keyboard? One can link your device to the TV and use the device to control the TV. It might be worth trying the LG app, as well as LG compatible apps.

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I trust that it will, extensively, about everything that I do.

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So to be clear, you plugged an ultra-basic USB keyboard into a USB port on the TV and it was not recognised?

Many thanks for for the suggestion. I have indeed downloaded an app for my iPhone that has a keyboard - the tiny one on the iPhone and sometimes it works, sometimes not in that the text I type in the app appears on the phone, but only sometimes in the appropriate area on the TV. If I then hit return on the app sometimes it causes Google Search (for example) or Netflix Search to react, other time not. Quite confusing really. One advantage of the app that I’ve found is that my iPhone is better than the LG remote at turning the TV on and off. I have an LG sound bar that has to be positioned directly below the TV obscuring perhaps the bottom 3cm of the screen and, I suspect, the IR sensor for the LG remote (assuming it isn’t WiFi). This means I have to take my laptop off my lap and stand up if I wish to turn the TV off which is just plain inconvenient. That isn’t a problem with the iPhone app so maybe it is Wifi. My main gripe with LG is that such a large high tech company that has obviously devoted billions of dollars to bring OLED technology onto flat panel screens up to 88" and beyond have devoted so little effort in updating their OS to ensure that the smarts on their TVs work conveniently and effortlessly. Apple succeeded in the days of DOSn largely with the mantra ‘It just works out of the box’. Well surfing the web on an LG TV does NOT JUST WORK out of the box. As I understand matters LG have the only factor for making TV sized OLED screens in the world and sell these screens to other consumer electronic giants like Sony, Panasonic and Loewe. Yet their proprietary TV OS seems to be so lacking. I would not even mind paying an LG premium for one of their keyboards if it was on sale in all the countries where they sell TVs AND included a touch pad. Instead, LG have not updated their keyboards since the early days of mobile phones when touch pads didn’t exist AND have now apparently stopped manufacturing them. Very poor customer service IMO.

Yes, several!