Undocumented and stupid Samsung TV sound settings for HDMI input

I am currently the owner of a Samsung UA22ES5000 TV which is a small (22") TV, probably the smallest Samsung TV made. Since I purchased this TV originally, it has almost exclusively been used as a PC monitor, without connecting the internal speakers for sound.

The TV has the following inputs: HDMI, VGA, component and composite video, analogue audio (RCA and minijack) and the following outputs: analogue and optical audio. The TV features the ability to rename these inputs, and somewhere along the way I chose to rename the HDMI input as "DVI PC" as that reflected what the input was being used for.

All was fine until I very recently signed on to a satellite TV service and connected the set top PVR to the TV using the HDMI input. My intention was that the sound from the PVR would come over the HDMI cable to the TV and then the speaker output from the TV would be connected to external speakers for better sound quality. This was done so that I didn't need to have switch boxes or other complications to connect the PVR to my existing sound system and would also enable me to have both the media PC and the PVR playing back both video and audio at the same time. (Last night I did in fact watch two programs simultaneously in this way, both of them were Hillsong Church broadcasts and I was able to keep track of both of them simultaneously :)

On doing the installation it was discovered that the TV would not produce sound from the HDMI input and although it is possible to run a separate sound cable to the minijack input (as would be the case if a computer was connected with a DVI cable), I preferred to use the HDMI cable, partly because I suspected the digital audio output would not work with the analogue audio input and partly because I wanted to be sure the TV was not actually faulty.

After going through every menu and setting and the instruction manual it appeared the only option I had was to try hard resetting the TV and after this was done and the initial setup procedure had been completed and the TV had retuned all the channels, the sound was working from the HDMI input.

But that still left the mystery of how the sound came to be turned off in the first place and as there was no clear setting or instructions I eventually Googled this and eventually found a thread on, of all places, the Ubuntu forums. Here it is.

The gist of this is that if you use the input rename feature of the TV and change the name of the HDMI input then it changes where it gets its audio signal from. In particular if you rename this input to "DVI PC" which is one of the preset names, then the sound comes from the DVI/PC minijack input and not from the HDMI input. If you leave the input at its default (no) name, then the sound comes from the HDMI input and not the DVI/PC minijack.

As I noted above there is no documentation of this feature by Samsung in the instruction manual for the TV and I had not had cause to use any of the audio inputs of the TV up to this point since it was connected to computers which had separate speakers. That has now changed as, not only is this the correct display to use with the PVR (which has TV type resolution settings like 1080p and 720i in its options, and not computer monitor resolutions like 1680x1050), we are also getting Shine TV on FreeviewHD in a few days time and I will also watch that channel on the TV. So it will be used as a TV for two channels, Shine TV and Hillsong Channel. And if I could really be bothered there are about 10 other Christian channels between the two signal sources 

Linux So Far [3]

Well the household still has 3 PCs - but they are all in the same room now. The idea is that I can drive the display in the lounge off a bedroom PC using VGA over Cat5 adapters and a wireless keyboard / mouse, and this means I can cap the number of the computers in the house at three while making maximum use of them all the time. That has benefits to me in the bedroom where I do most of my computing, as it means I can go back to having the two best computers both running Xubuntu (one for general work and one just for video playback) and just a small lower powered computer doing the occasional Windows tasks (scanner and cameras, DVD ripping, some image editing and stuff like that).

Bluetooth is one of the features in Xubuntu that is nicely implemented. I bought this dodgy USB bluetooth adapter a couple of weeks ago called a Bluemate 4. The problem was that the (Windows) software runs in evaluation mode and doesn't actually come with a license. Apparently the answer to this problem is to buy the Bluemate 5 which does come with a license and sells for the same price. As it turns out when I took the adapter out of the Windows computer and put it into a Xubuntu PC, the built in bluetooth in Xubuntu worked straight out of the box and lets me do file transfers to my tablet, which is all I really wanted it for, just fine. Kudos to the retailer (Ascent) for giving me a credit on the price of it as well. It sort of makes up for that Dick Smith gift card being dishonoured at the beginning of this year when they went into receivership.

So putting Xubuntu back on the Ivy Bridge (B75) computer was as usual really fast once it could be booted - sometimes the boot gets hung up, or you have to try UEFI boot, or the regular boot, just whatever works. And that computer will be hooked up to the little TV I have in that room, and it will also be connected on its VGA output from the 2 head $50 video card it has, to the display in the lounge, which at the moment is an old one that only has VGA inputs.  But sound could still be an issue and I have to figure out whether to get a converter that also puts sound down the same cable.

The tricky question is where to put the satellite set top box when it gets installed in a week or two. In the bedroom where I do the most watching, or in the lounge where it is nicer to sit on the couch? If it has only HDMI output, can it be adapted to VGA easily?

UPDATE: Well the latest solution has been a lot more radical and that was to move the computer desk out of the bedroom and into the living room. I found the idea of linking between rooms with cable to be relatively impractical and also the satellite box will be in the living room so it makes sense to bring everything together in one place. Still waiting on the satellite TV company to arrange the install and will be chasing them up this week to see where it has got to.

Is Apple abandoning the professional creative marketplace?

The idea that Apple might seek to abandon the professional market segment altogether having decided to focus on the consumer marketplace has gained ground with the focus of their recent product updates becoming clearer. In fact this trend has been obvious for some time with a growing range of pro/business equipment being dropped over the last decade.

I have more than a passing interest in this segment of the IT marketplace due to the interface of my musical interests with education and church scenarios over many years. Due to the previous efforts made by Apple to support professional music production, Apple hardware is very prevalent in many educational settings particularly classroom music suites, and also in church settings where these days contemporary worship environments are making major use of their products.

The trend is obvious however that Apple has been losing interest in the professional end of the marketplace for some considerable time. In one sense this is welcome as it has been blindingly obvious for some time that the snobbery and elitism that seems to be inherent in the choice of Apple hardware by default (and the willingness to fork out large sums of money for the nice bells and whistles unquestioningly) has, unfortunately, carried over to Christian circles where the self serving aspects of Apple's business model are something we should be more willing to challenge, and it is most regrettable that I have had people in church circles attempt to paint Apple gear as inherently superior and better than anything else out there.

The main interest Apple has these days is making a lot of money and the trends in hardware have seen Apple gear not only become more expensive over time, but sacrifice serviceability as well. Witness that it is now virtually impossible to make any user upgrades to the Macbook laptops, while the Mac Pro is frozen in time to 2013 in hardware spec and lacks internal expansion capabilities; and that the newer versions of the Imac are basically impossible for anyone other than the repair centre to open up for service as they are similar to a tablet in design and manufacture. All of this serviceability sacrificed in the name of superior visual elegance in the form of thinner, lighter product means they are very expensive to repair and once out of warranty may in fact be considered almost throwaway due to the high costs of servicing.

Leaving that aside it is now time to focus on viable alternatives. These are of course Windows and Linux. By and large it appears the mainstream commercial focus has shifted to Windows, but MS's attempts since Windows 10 to maximise revenue by virtually taking over the control of the computer from the end user (witness the default update settings which are to MS's convenience rather than user's, which cannot be turned off in the Home editions and which in the Pro and higher editions are deliberately hidden from the Start Menu user interface) have alienated many expert users such as myself, which is why almost all my computers now run Xubuntu. However there is a growing base of commercial creative software being produced and in schools the Windows alternative to the likes of GarageBand and even Logic has been achieved with packages like Mixcraft and a lot more besides. Adobe shifted its focus to Windows some years ago and has a very good range of software now available for the platform, and a lot of worship presentation packages are well supported on both platforms.

Linux is a bit of a dark horse when it comes to the pro-creative market segment but is steadily gaining ground - my views must be tempered with the reality that I have not actually been involved in production activities at any level except for worship multimedia presentation. Hence I am reliant on the knowledge that the operating system's customisability to an extent virtually impossible with Windows or macOS giving the ability to ensure high stability and reliability is what attracts growing support from segments of the music community and in fact there are two particular distros that are now produced, AVLinux and KXStudio, that are aimed squarely at the needs of musical creatives. It is a verifiable fact that Linux is now extensively used in motion picture production studios as the OS of choice for the big commercial hardware vendors like IBM and HP who produce the hardware of choice for movie production. This started with graphics rendering and Linux is steadily making inroads into other areas like video editing. One big advantage for Linux is its overall compatibility with Unix which was the previous market leader for the high end hardware needed at this level of production. meaning a lot of the software used has been readily ported over.

The biggest advantage Linux has is its ability to run on virtually the same hardware as PCs, something Apple has missed with their reversion to hardware lockdown since the clone Macs were discontinued in the mid 1990s. Since there is not that much difference between macOS and Windows it will be relatively easy for Apple to exit the desktop marketplace and switch its entire focus to laptops and handheld devices. It only remains therefore for its professional segment fans to find something else that will meet their requirements for the future. I think that future is very likely to be in Linux/x86.