Settling in with my smart TV

I did some online searching and found a fix for the “insufficient memory” interruptions I was getting on my Fire TV, apparently a common problem for that model. It’s a glitch from an application called Amazon Photos, and you just have to disable it, according to this page. That fix worked, so I haven’t needed to buy a memory stick.

The TV’s been working pretty well since, though the display glitch on the home screen happened again yesterday and I had to reboot. Also, the Hulu app froze at one point, but another web search told me how to go into the settings and force stop a frozen app. I only noticed afterward that the enclosed sheet of basic setup instructions included a web address to download the full manual, but it turns out the manual doesn’t actually go into any of these details, so it’s not that helpful.

A few days ago, the TV started prompting me to enable some kind of activity tracking for tailoring ads, every time I turned the set on. The only options it gave me were “Enable” and “Ask Again Later,” which is really obnoxious. I finally got rid of it by going into settings and turning the tracking on and off again. I’m hoping it won’t bug me again for a while.

The replacement remote I ordered on eBay finally arrived, although the old remote’s volume buttons weren’t as completely worn out as I thought when I ordered it — just as well, since it took a couple of weeks to arrive. The replacement is designed to work on several different models of Sony receivers, and it has 54 buttons of which I only need 4 (power, volume up/down, and mute).

I debated whether I wanted to buy Bluetooth earphones for the TV, since I tend to be an early riser at my age and might occasionally want to watch something in the early morning without bothering the neighbors. I have an old pair of corded headphones that plug into the 1/4-inch jack on my receiver/amplifier, but the cord is just a bit too short to reach the couch. So I decided to buy a short extension cable, which was cheaper than new earphones. After trying it out, though, I realized those old headphones don’t have very good sound quality. What I should’ve done instead was to get an extension cable for my corded earbuds, since I already have a 3.5mm-to-1/4″ jack adapter. Fortunately the cables are cheap.

Now that I’m spending more time in front of the TV again, I decided I needed a clock there. There’s a clock on the front of my VHS-to-DVD dubbing deck (whose DVD tray is malfunctioning so it’s just a VCR at this point), but it’s dim when the deck is turned off, and it’s complicated to reset it whenever the power goes out, so I’d just left it blank for a while. I remembered a battery-powered clock that I’d written off as unusable and shoved in a drawer years ago. On a whim, I decided to take it out and verify whether it was functional, and it turned out that it still works perfectly; it just had a lot of green corrosion residue inside the battery compartment. I guess I was afraid the corrosion was toxic, though now I know it just needed to be cleaned out, which I did as best I could. So I’m glad to have a clock there again, without needing to buy a new one. (It can set itself automatically from the NIST time signal, but I can rarely get a good signal from my apartment, so I had to refresh my memory of how to set it manually. Luckily, I always keep the instruction booklets. Except for the dubbing deck, since it turns out I somehow ended up with the instruction book for a completely different brand of dubbing deck.)

Speaking of the dubbing deck, it belatedly occurred to me to check whether it had an HDMI output, which would save me a step in switching to it to reset the clock. I dragged it out of its cubbyhole and turned it around until I could see that it did indeed have an HDMI port in back — after which I noticed that it says “HDMI” on the front, so I could’ve saved myself a bit of effort. I wasn’t sure the shorter HDMI cable I had was long enough to reach, but I tried it and it worked, although the cable’s short enough that I’ll have to unplug it from the TV first if I need to pull out the player again. Although in this case, turning the player on doesn’t automatically turn the TV on the way the Blu-Ray player does, although turning off the TV does turn off the player. Not sure if that’s a function of the players or because it’s in HDMI 2 instead of 1. The bigger issue is that I can’t set the aspect ratio to 4:3 on the HDMI feed, at least for the VHS player; it stretches out the image to fill the screen. I tried all the video settings on both TV and player, without success. So if I want to watch a VHS tape, I’ll have to go through the RCA cables like before; but I’m keeping the HDMI connected since it will make resetting the clock easier. But neither of those things will be frequent occurrences anyway.

With fall-season shows premiering now, I finally had a chance to try watching live TV off the digital antenna, and it worked pretty well, except somehow the picture and sound aren’t always in sync (a problem that went away when I changed the channel and came back). I read somewhere that there was a sound mode setting you could adjust on the HDMI audio if it was out of sync (which happened at one point with the DVD/Blu-Ray player), but I couldn’t find that setting on the sound options for the antenna feed. It turns out that the NBC app won’t let me watch new episodes the morning after, only a week later; I thought I’d been able to fix that by signing in with my phone/internet company as a content provider, but apparently it doesn’t entitle me to next-day viewing. (I guess I’d need to pay more for a TV plan from my provider, or something.) So I did need the antenna after all. Glad to know that wasn’t a waste of money, at least.