The "Internet of Things", a strange phrase but one that came home literally over the holidays when I got myself a new Samsung television. Yes it has internet and apps and it's a thing. I found it a bit tricky to use the standard remote to enter text/etc and being an infrared remote i still have to point it towards the TV. Once you've tried a wifi remote and turned up the volume in the garden you never want to go back. Anyway all this reminded me years ago I had a Nokia phone with embedded infrared and a symbian app to remote control my television. It was more a gimmick than a functional solution but it impressed me at the time. Funny how its taken all these years for me to now get back to using my mobile phone (& now tablet) to control my television.
I've found a couple of free apps that work quite nicely on iOS for controlling the Samsung TV:
- Samsung Smart View - this app is really just a remote, it doesn't pretend to do much more, it works well.
- ZappoTV - this app allows you to share/stream content from your device or from the internet to the tv.
At first I couldn't seem to get the apps to connect, but after I restarted my router no problemo! I've also tried youtube's pairing & queuing offering which is nice on a session by session basis but takes time each use to set it up.
