buying a television

[elpollodiablo]

With TVs with onboard Wifi, like the Vizio XVTs, can you stream directly to the device over your home network, like from a media server to the TV? Or is it more of a walled garden, Netflix & Hulu-only type situation? I've had trouble determining what these things can actually do from reading the manufacturer information.

Anyone have any insight on this? I've found this next to impossible to research, for some reason; I'm almost to the point of going to a store and asking an employee. Though I'm also pretty certain that would result in a response of "Oh uh I dunno you can watch Netflix on it, it says on the box"

[Little Sixes Little Nines]

i seriously doubt they can, but neither i nor herman cain have the facts to back this up.

[Good Intentions]

If it's got a wifi connection and runs software, then it's almost certainly possible to jailbreak them, though. I've never heard of the things, so I can't give any concrete advice, but knowing the internet there's probably a small enthusiast community doing things like that.

[jebreject]

What os are you running on the media server?

It seems highly unlikely that you can do so w/o buying some extra hardware

[jebreject]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/142702/stream_media_from_your_pc_to_your_hdtv.html

[Good Intentions]

Technologically, there's no reason you'd need more hardware. If it can take in data from the internet, it can take in data from a local network as well. Your computer is more than powerful enough to do anything a separate box would, including the type of signal processing to address the issues with direct connections they point out in that article. It's just a matter of how much persuading you need to do to make it do what you want - it might turn out that you think it's not worth your while. But all the tools you might need are already there.

[Little Sixes Little Nines]

While technically that's true, I'm betting that internet TVs are hell of restrictive for what you can and can't do with them, and I'm also betting local streaming is one of the things you can't do. Yeah, it'll be possible to jailbreak, but unless it's a major brand name, I doubt you'll find someone who has bothered to figure it out.

[milly balgeary]

I recommend a Roku device. For $60, you are the king of streaming media. Also, it's possible streaming over a TV enabled network device will result in poorer quality streaming than you can get from an add-on device.

[Good Intentions]

Yeah, it'll be possible to jailbreak, but unless it's a major brand name, I doubt you'll find someone who has bothered to figure it out.

You don't seem to know what tech enthusiasts are like.

Anyway, I checked out the Vizio XVT's stats and it seems built form the ground up to connect directly to a computer - some models even have VGA cable connections! If your computer is HDCP compliant, which it should be, doing this would be a cakewalk.

[Good Intentions]

I recommend a Roku device. For $60, you are the king of streaming media. Also, it's possible streaming over a TV enabled network device will result in poorer quality streaming than you can get from an add-on device.

The drop in quality would occur if the TV fiddles with the incoming signal, stretching it or overscanning or doing some other silly thing. The ones pollo are talking about don't seem to do that, and even if they did, a set-top box is just a computer: anything you can do with one of those can be done with the far more powerful computer you'd be streaming from.

[dieblucasdie]

Man, one of these days they're finally going to figure out how to stop piracy, and I'm going to have to learn how to navigate all this bullshit, huh?

[elpollodiablo]

THAT DAY IS NOT THIS DAY

Anyway yeah I've got a decent media server/torrent box running XP that can (and will) be hooked up directly to the TV, but I was just curious as to what the capabilities of a TV with Wifi are. It seems that if you've got a device with onboard Wifi, it should be able to stream directly over your home network, since I can hook up an Xbox to it and do essentially the same thing, only with the added (and needless) step. But I don't expect TV manufacturers to necessarily make things simple or logical.

This all started because we wanted to stream Netflix to the TV but I let my Xbox Live account lapse (and the media server is just a *bit* too underpowered to run fullscreen HD streaming video). Considering I don't game any longer, it seemed asinine to reactive Live just so I could use Netflix on the Xbox. We've been considering replacing our TV for a little while, anyway, and I figured I'd get one with onboard Wifi if it meant more options in terms of streaming media over the internet *and* over our home network, but I'm not sure the premium you pay for a "smart" device is worth just having access to Netflix and Hulu and whatever other half-assed content services there are baked into those things.

[elpollodiablo]

We got this guy because it was on sale at Wally World: http://www.amazon.com/VIZIO-SV422XVT-42-Inch-Class-Internet/dp/B0036DDHSU

Watching TV at 1080p is actually kind of creepy. Sort of an uncanny valley thing going on.

[elpollodiablo]

Oh yeah and to answer my original question: no.

[cold before sunrise]

to buy a television:

1. look up dealers in the yellowpages and write down the address of the location with the largest ad.
2. go there.
3. the professional way to test tv sets is with a swift and direct shot to the centre of the screen with the sledgehammer you have brought with you for this purpose, if it fails quality control then you don't want it. (note: most fail but keep trying, test every demo.)
4. leave quickly. in case of security, know judo or whatever.
5. move on to the next location.

happy hunting!