Smart Users for Smart Technology

Smart Users for Smart Technology

Tech Talk
By Tak Sato

Have you been TV shopping lately?

You’ve probably noticed that it’s nearly impossible to find one without the label “smart TV” attached to the description. Smart is everywhere. From LED light bulbs to the battery-powered watch on your wrist, adding “smart” to a product has become the norm because the internet has changed the way we do things.

How Smart?
You may wonder what makes a LED lightbulb — which uses far less energy than an incandescent bulb  — a smart bulb? What makes it smart?

The answer is simple for both light bulbs and other electronic items with a “smart” prefix. The term means that the device has electronic circuits that allow it to connect to your wireless internet network (Wi-Fi). The internet connection lets the device send and receive information through your internet.

Let’s say you bought a $1,000 smart TV. When you get it home, you connect your cable TV box to the smart TV’s HDMI port with a cable. If you want to play your old DVD/CD collection on your smart TV, you use another cable and another HDMI port to connect your Blu-ray Disc (BD) player (for example) to the new TV.

Here’s what should happen next and what makes the TV smart. When you turn the smart TV on for the first time, it will provide onscreen, step-by-step prompts to connect it to your Wi-Fi network. When it connects itself to the internet, not only will you have access to your cable TV channels and your Blu-ray/DVD/CD collections but you’ll also be able to stream programs from the internet.

Streaming means a device receives broadcasts that are transmitted through the internet. You need a smart TV, computer, smartphone, tablet, or a “streamer” (more on this at the bottom) to receive content. This is the same concept as needing an antenna to receive broadcasts transmitted over-the-air (OTA) or a cable TV box for receiving broadcasts transmitted through the cable TV system.

Sidenote: Many channels that come through OTA and/or the cable TV system can also be streamed via the internet. When their viewing needs are met through streaming, many people “cut the cord” and drop their traditional cable TV package. A future Tech Talk column will explain how cutting the cord may or may not work for you.

So is a $1,000 smart TV worth the investment?

Just like any tech item, a smart TV is far more like a computer than a traditional TV of yesteryear. While not as short-lived as a computer, the smartness of a smartTV makes it prone to the built-in obsolescence that all tech devices eventually succumb to. The smartness that enables it to stream content from the internet will show its age (incompatibility, slowness) after several years, despite still displaying excellent picture quality.

The good news is that you can replace the aged smartness of a smart TV for around $20 by buying a streaming device such as  Google’s Android TV, Amazon’s Fire TV Stick, or a Roku Streaming Stick. You simply attach it to another HDMI port and connect it to your Wi-Fi, just like you did when you connected your smart TV initially to the internet.

This means that a non-smart or dumb TV or a computer monitor with an open HDMI port can become smart and stream shows. Our nonprofit company uses a $19 streaming stick for our classes to illustrate that you don’t need to replace a TV — smart or dumb — if the picture quality is still good.

Cheers to all of us becoming smarter users as we navigate technology’s smart world.

About the author

Tak Sato, author of Boomer's Tech Talk column, is a founder of the Cleveland-area nonprofit, Center for Aging in the Digital World (empowerseniors.org). The organization teaches digital literacy to people 50+ through the free Discover Digital Literacy program.

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