How to use tv in display

[Mike wentzel]

Hey guys I have been seeing some videos with people using tv in their displays like playing scenes from movies. How do I go about this do I need to put a MP3 player hooked up to a tv. Also how do you guys protect the tv from rain or snow

 

[jdesign21]

This can help you get started.
https://youtu.be/qXn1-Vl__Oc

 

[Stormyblade]

As the video linked above shows, it's not super hard to get your video to display on a TV. The discussions I've seen revolve mostly around using a Raspberry Pi as it has a built-in HDMI port, plus the ability to store the media on an SD card.

As far as protecting the TV goes, you'll most likely need to design a frame/box that's big and strong enough to support the TV. I would say you'll need some 1"x4", 1"x6", or even larger dimension lumber. And, most of us use a large piece of acrylic or Plexi to protect the screen and keep the elements out. Personally, I'm thinking very hard about going to a 55" TV because after only 2 years, I have about 20-25 dead pixels on my 20 panel matrix across several panels, and I already had to have 4 panels replaced the first year that had 30+ dead pixels in just those 4.

 

[1pet2_9]

This can help you get started.
https://youtu.be/qXn1-Vl__Oc

Great video. It's clearly very easy, but is there more context before that? He just dragged on a matrix and hit Discover, and that just worked. His pixel count certainly didn't match his TV's. There must be more that happened before that.

 

[jdesign21]

This was the first part.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEpRxWh7H1I

Here is another good video for TV and Projector.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4NvHM9QqBA&ab_channel=LearnChristmasLighting

 

[terrevue]

It's pretty trivial to add the TV. Last year was the first year I did a tv based "Tune-to" sign and all I did was:
- Create quick video in AfterEffects that has the Tune-to text and some Christmas animation videos borrowed from Youtube behind the text
- Load that video onto a USB drive
- Grab a Raspberry Pi Zero
- Load the image from here: https://videolooper.de/
- Plug it in and when it starts it automatically loads and loops whatever video(s) are on the USB drive
- Install cec-utils: https://www.endpointdev.com/blog/2012/11/using-cec-client-to-control-hdmi-devices/
- Set up a cron job to turn on tv and start the looper at the beginning of your show and stop the loop and turn off the TV at the end.

This year I moved everything to FPP with hopes of doing overlays and stuff but never got around to it. The steps above will get you up and running pretty quickly. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do what I can to help.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[1pet2_9]

I think jdesign's video is good, because part of the idea is to configure a matrix widget in Xlights. The whole thing is certainly much easier if you decouple the TV from Xlights.