Televisions used to need an aerial. Now they need a wi-fi password, an account, and occasionally a software update, which is not what anybody signed up for when they bought a television.
This is the second most common thing brought to the clinic after wi-fi itself.
Start with what your television actually is
Every smart television runs somebody’s software, and which one decides what you can install. It will be one of a handful: Roku, Fire TV, Android or Google TV, or the maker’s own, as Samsung and LG both have.
You do not need to care which, except for one thing: if an app you want is not on your television’s store, no amount of searching will conjure it up. That is the point at which a small box is the answer rather than a new television.
The apps most people want
In this country, most people want iPlayer, ITVX, All 4 and My5, which are free and only need an account with an email address. Then Netflix, Prime Video or Disney if you pay for them.
The free ones catch people out because they still make you register. It feels like a trick. It is not: it is how they know which region you are in. Use an email address you can get into, because they will send you a confirmation.
When an app disappears
This happens and it is upsetting, because the television is working perfectly and something you used yesterday has gone.
Usually one of three things:
It was removed by the maker. Older televisions stop being supported, and the app is withdrawn rather than broken. Nothing on your end will bring it back.
It needs an update the television cannot install. Same outcome, different route.
You were signed out. This is the good one, because it is fixable. Open it and sign in again.
The fix nobody suggests
If your television is more than about six years old and the apps have started dropping off, do not replace the television. The screen is fine.
Buy a streaming stick or box, thirty to fifty pounds, plug it into a spare HDMI socket, and use that instead. It has a current app store, it gets updated, and it turns an ageing television into a current one for the price of a takeaway.
You then use the box’s remote rather than the television’s, which is the only real adjustment. A lot of people find the box’s remote simpler anyway, because it has about six buttons instead of forty.
Making it easier to live with
Put the apps you use on the first screen and move the rest off. Every one of these systems lets you rearrange them, and it turns a wall of icons into four things you recognise.
Turn off autoplay previews if the noise when you pause on something drives you mad. It is in settings and it is the single most complained-about feature.
Write the passwords down and keep the paper near the television. You will need them again after any update, and hunting for them while a room full of family waits is nobody’s idea of an evening.
If the picture stalls
That is almost always the wi-fi rather than the television, and televisions are usually the furthest thing in the house from the router.
If it is stalling regularly, a cable from the router to the television is a complete cure. Unglamorous, about eight pounds, and it never drops out.
Bring the make and model to the Friday clinic and I will tell you what your set can and cannot do, and whether a box is worth it. If you would rather I came and set it up, that is a home visit and usually about an hour.