Published on 12, July, 2020
PLease treat me like I've just landed from another planet or time zone as I really don't understand and people seem to delight in confusing me more.
I'm thinking of getting a smart tv and know little about how they work, what they do and what would be suitale for me?
Are they wireless in connecting to broad band or would I have to have some sort of cable?
Would I have to have a box like my current humax box so as I could record stuff I don' want to watch imediately?
Would I have to have some sort of subscription, like sky or something to get any thing?
What is watching on catch up, is it Iplayers and the like?
This would have to be fairly easy for my soon to be 90 year old, even worse at tech than me, Mum to use, at least for her to switch on and find stuff. Please remember that I am based in the UK, so stuff that works or is available in other countries might not work or be available to me. I dont' live in the south of the UK and services are more old fashioned here than there. We have no cable connections on the island. We have BT as our broad band provider, we are limited on who does provide here and they all seem fairly equal in service quality, in other words great when they work and crap when they don't. I'm reluctant to change providers as we'd still have to pay for a BT landline and I'm not paying twice.
Thanks in advance for any help you feel able to offer.
TheCatWoman said:I'm thinking of getting a smart tv and know little about how they work, what they do and what would be suitale for me?
Smart TV’s are full of features, most are preinstalled with apps such as Netflix, and YouTube. Some of these apps require a subscription but some are free. Most smart TVs you can also browse the internet, look at photos, play music, play games… there are hundereds of other apps you can install. You can watch all your free view channels like normal.
TheCatWoman said:Are they wireless in connecting to broad band or would I have to have some sort of cable?
smart TV’s connect wirelessly broadband router/hub, you don’t need a cable but there is an option to connect by an Ethernet cable if you’d like.
TheCatWoman said:Would I have to have a box like my current humax box so as I could record stuff I don' want to watch imediately?
You won’t need a box such as a humax box to record live tv, but you will need a hard drive to record onto. Some TV’s have a built in hard drive so you can record and pause live TV without needing anything else, otherwise if the TV doesn’t have built in hard drive, you can buy an external one which you plug into the TV by USB. Check that the TV includes the option to record, which I believe most do.
TheCatWoman said:Would I have to have some sort of subscription, like sky or something to get any thing?
You don’t need a subscription for your normal Freeview channels. Just a tv licence if watching live tv. Some apps, such as Netflix, which will likely come preinstalled on the Tv, require a subscription. But you don’t need to watch Netflix, and you can just enjoy normal free TV.