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Blank turns your TV screen black until you press any button on a remote
- andrei 4y agoHow is this different than just turning your TV off? I feel like I'm missing something
- piperswe 4y agotvOS allows you to play audio in the background - Blank allows you to blank the TV while still having the background audio playing from the speakers.
- DHowett 4y agoMost televisions do not continue playing audio when they are turned off. From the project page: "That second paragraph hints at why this is important, despite the app’s simplicity." and the second paragraph on the simulated display: "Use this app when you want to listen to a podcast or music without seeing artwork or a screensaver."
- andrei 4y agofacepalm I read that paragraph, but my brain skipped that sentence for some reason. Thanks for clarifying
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- skyyler 4y agoA lot of setups route audio through the TV so if you turn it off you turn off music / podcasts which a lot of people use to sleep. (including the author, as noted in the article)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jtsiskin 4y agoThat’s the joke :)
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- dt2m 4y agoThis is a great example of how bad the UX has gotten for at-home music playback.
- graypegg 4y agoI noticed a little while ago that A-B repeat is just gone from every media player (soft- and hardware) that I own. I think VLC is the last place it exists. I understand why; it’s not exactly the most useful feature, but it used to be pretty ubiquitous: iTunes, Winamp, every DVD player, some CD players. We lost all the fun features! I want to hear the last 4 minutes of Freebird on repeat sometimes!
- ThrowawayTestr 4y agoThe Emby player has all the usual repeat and shuffle options.
- kachnuv_ocasek 4y agoA-B repeat works just fine in mpv.
- tshaddox 4y agoThat’s interesting. I have occasionally been annoyed that I don’t have an easy way to play audio from my phone to my home theater audio system without having the TV on. If I turn my TV off it automatically turns my receiver off, and the only way to disable that would also disable turning the TV and receiver on automatically which is a crucial flow. There might be a way to build a little HDMI CEC controller that could block certain control sequences, but I haven’t looked into that yet.
- OJFord 4y agoSome TVs and AVRs certainly support individually enabling one direction or the other. (Some also 'support' it accidentally of course!)
- iruoy 4y agoWhen I turn on my TV my receiver also turns on, but when I turn on my receiver my TV doesn't. My apple TV (connected through the receiver) turns on both. Same goes for off in all cases.
- mlindner 4y agoAt least for my case, turning on my receiver doesn't turn my TV on, though turning my TV off turns the receiver off, in such cases I just turn the receiver back on again, or never turn the TV on in the first place.
- graypegg 4y agoSo I think this is to be used where turning off the TV (the display device, not the Apple TV) would also turn off the audio right? (Built in speakers, or a sound bar that routes thru the TV etc) Simple solution! I’d lead with the problem though, had to think about why you might want this.
- 6d6b73 4y agoBest way to keep your room dark - remove tv and other electronic devices from that room.
- SkyPuncher 4y agoThis is actually awesome. Occasionally, I like to fall asleep on the couch with Spotify playing off the TV. Problem is Spotify can be really bright. This solves that issue. Yes, I could play music a different way. However, this is really convenient.
- captn3m0 4y agoThe old dumb TV I had earlier had a simple "Screen Off" button on the remote. It was very helpful, for exactly these usecases. Especially at home-events, where a display could be distracting.
- SkyPuncher 4y agoIn my case, I only use the AppleTV remote then rely on HDMI-CEC for everything else. I've found it far simpler than explaining remotes to people.
- Waterluvian 4y agoI wish my chromecast could turn my tv back off when done with it. It can turn it on. And then when done with an app it wastes power telling me the weather with random photos of graffiti and mountains.
- shahar2k 4y agomy chromecast absolutely can turn the TV off (seems like standard cec stuff no?) I use it all the time to turn the tv off via google assistant when I walk out of the house
- Waterluvian 4y agoWhaaaaa. How? I need to check again.
- roywashere 4y agoHDMI CEC is great if it works, but that is not always (although support got much better in the last 5 years from TV vendors)
- shahar2k 4y agomy perticular setup is chromecast connected to a soundbar (vizio) connected to the TV (LG) I use the chromecast to turn the pc on remotely. chromecast is registered with google home and all I have to do is "ok google - tv on" or "tv off" and it all just works...
- neogodless 4y agoGiven I wasn't the only person confused, I suspect this web page could be improved by just coming out and saying "sometimes I want audio to come from the TV, but want the screen to be blank." The tiny screenshot was too hard for me to read, so I skipped over it, and was a bit confused about the purpose of this project.
- Wistar 4y agoI have wished many times that I could just “mute the picture” but not the audio, especially when I am trying to fall asleep. Wish there was something like this for Roku.
- bayindirh 4y agoOur Sony TV has a "Screen off" mode under quick-settings menu. Everything goes off related to screen, incl LEDs. We use it a lot while listening to music via Spotify and other services. The beauty is, volume buttons don't turn the screen back on either, so it truly becomes a connected speaker.
- Wistar 4y agoSounds like a well-considered implementation. Wish I had it.
- xp84 4y agoMy old one had a remote button for “PIC OFF”! What year roughly was yours made? I’m wondering if my new one has that buried somewhere. Mine is running the “Google TV” OS
- bayindirh 4y agoMine is a Sony X900H[0] (or its equivalent in EU), and runs Android, too. The feature is under the (Sony specific) quick settings menu accessed by the gear icon on the remote control. [0]: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/sony/x900h https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/sony/x900h
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rtsil 4y agoSome TVs (LGs for instance) allow you to turn off the screen while keeping the audio on. Perfect for podcast or songs.
- basicoperation 4y agoSony Bravia also allows this.
- Arrath 4y agoYeah, a dedicated button right on the remote for it. Love it, comes in very useful. It was also handy to annoy my GF with, before she cottoned on to it.
- isatty 4y agoWhile true, I barely even know where the TV remote is. AppleTV + it’s remote is all I need. I also airgap the TV and distrust any smartTV software.
- joshmanders 4y agoI'm genuinely curious if anyone reads things thoroughly or just sees no use for it in their workflows or life and immediately thinks everyone else is just like them and has no use for it either...
- ThrowawayTestr 4y agoI'll admit using a TV as a podcast player seems excessive but everyone's use case is different.
- alex_young 4y agoThis is the real reason to buy a soundbar IMO.
- neogodless 4y agoFor my uses, no. The soundbar was a compromise between tiny, terrible built-in speakers and all the space and wiring needs of a proper surround sound system. We got a soundbar which mounts to the wall, and has detachable satellite speakers if we really want "surround." And it comes with a wireless subwoofer, so we still get the boomy sound for action movies.
- alex_young 4y agoYeah, I meant it enables one to listen to whatever without the display on, for some definitions of whatever..
- KMnO4 4y agoI think the confusion is that that’s not the “real reason” to get a sound bar; just one of the reasons. The more common reason is still: it sounds better than your TVs built in speakers.
- JLCarveth 4y agoIt's wild the type of rudimentary software than sometimes ends up on the front page.
- graypegg 4y agoSoftware doesn’t have to be complex to be useful. Rudimentary-ness isn’t really a good barometer for “interesting-ness to the sorts of people that browse HN”
- triyambakam 4y agoHow common is it to not own a TV? I had a contractor over the other day for an estimate and in our living room he said, "wow, no TV" I hadn't really considered it would be a surprise. We consume lots of media, just on laptops and tablets instead.
- yardstick 4y agoHave you used a TV in the last? Don’t you miss the larger screen and not having to squint when there’s some tiny text within the show that’s hard to read on small screens etc?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 4y agoI’m more curious the last time you saw a show with significant text on screen. It seems far more common to have essentially no text or “complicated-science gibberish-for-the-geek”. Everything else is read by a character.
- yardstick 4y agoText messages on phones in The Night Agent. Watched a week ago.
- sho_hn 4y agoIt's partially cultural. At some point I realized that when American friends say "I've watched that", they more often than not mean it was running off to the side or in the background while they were doing other tasks. Previously I was mystified why anyone would watch certain type of content that wouldn't be able to hold anyone's attention span. It seems quite common in the US to have TVs in several rooms and have them run in the background for long stretches of day. This is far less common in the cultures I've lived in where sitting down to watch TV alone or together is more of an occasion and modal, and TVs have no place outside the living room. This is to say the use case different folks have for TVs also varies widely. Now, when I do sit down at the TV, I generally appreciate the nice big screen.
- wodenokoto 4y agoIt is pretty crazy you can turn down the sound but not the picture on almoost every TV
- jnwatson 4y agoYou can with LG TVs. It makes sense. LG and Samsung want the TV to act as the media hub. You can even control smart home devices from the tv now.
- Mindwipe 4y agoAnd Sony TVs, you go into the action menu and hit screen off.
- altairprime 4y agoMy various smart TVs have all have a Picture Off function. It's a menu button and third down from the top on the current Sony TV. I suspect this feature is far more widely distributed than anyone realizes, and this app is certainly a valid response to that. Samsung - All Settings, General, Accessibility, then Picture Off; or Bixby "Picture Off On" (heh). Sony - Remote button Quick Settings (gear), then Picture Off. Vizio - Remote menu button, Timers, then Blank Screen. LG - Full settings, Energy saving, then Turn screen off (I think?); or voice command "Turn screen off". etc. But these are all atrociously unusable. I would say I don't even know what they were thinking, except I'm certain it's "if we give people a button to turn off the screen, they'll call tech support after they turn off the screen" — which, having worked in tech support, is completely valid. It'd be nice if the HDMI CEC folks would add a command "turn screen off but maintain audio playback/passthrough", but as of HDMI CEC 1.4b, they assume that all streams are video, and so provide (and mandate) the Display On commands when a source is active.
- dirtyid 4y agoI just want dedicated remote buttons for brightness
- yellowapple 4y agoThis situation is why I continue to keep a receiver between a TV and the things connected to it, even when the receiver's gonna be hooked up to absolute shitboxen of speakers I picked up at the thrift store for a dollar each. Being able to turn off the TV without disrupting the audio is a godsend. Nowadays receivers have HDMI inputs, too (on top of the gazillion other inputs available on a typical receiver), so it's entirely unnecessary to ever do anything on the TV except turn it on or off and it's absolutely wonderful.
- rcme 4y agoDon't many TVs communicate bidirectionally with receivers now? When I turn off my TV, my receiver turns off as well. Which is usually what I want. If I want to only use the receiver, I can connect my laptop of phone to the receiver directly via bluetooth. No need to involve the TV.
- izzydata 4y agoThe TV should have a setting for this which you can turn off.
- soylentcola 4y agoYep. Should be labeled CEC unless the TV's UI hides that behind "user friendly" naming. I also have mine set to turn on/off the AV receiver with the TV, but it can be disabled. Only drawback is that you then need to remember to turn off the receiver.
- zerocrates 4y agoThough the device on the other end may not cooperate, like if it's playing something that uses HDCP it might stop playing when there's no display on the other end of the connection to handshake with. No idea if this is a problem with an Apple TV though.
- yellowapple 4y ago
- amne 4y agoAn older LG tv I had used to have a quick setting for "Screen off". A newer model has this buried deep in 3 layers of eco mode settings. "Screen off" should be a button on the remote. By law.
- antnisp 4y agoYou can move it to the first layer. I can do it without looking at the remote now. I don't remember how I dit it though.
- dr_kretyn 4y agoSo, what happened with that "anti-flashlight"?
- myhf 4y agoContext: the same author created a notable flashlight app in the early days of the iOS App Store: http://files.iconfactory.net/archive/safetylight/ http://files.iconfactory.net/archive/safetylight/ There are a large number of low-effort apps in this space that flood the App Review process and resulted in a policy that apps must have a minimum level of functionality.
- karolist 4y agoI have listened to random YouTube content and podcasts to fall asleep for years now. When I live alone I simply use a tablet or phone, with screen facing down before YT Premium, now with the screen simply off. If someone is sleeping in the same room or besides me, I put in a single 2nd gen AirPod to the ear facing up, sometime near the morning I find it in the bed and put it to charge. In case I don't fall asleep for long I change the AirPod to let the other one to charge. No wireless earbuds before plain AirPods did it for me, the sealing ones (i.e. pros) are not comfortable to me.
- freeplay 4y agoI do exactly the same as you described to fall asleep. If you ever want to save the money on youtube premium, the Brave browser on iOS lets you listen to YouTube content in the background or with the screen off. Just make sure you enable that feature in it's settings. It also blocks all of the pre/mid/post ads.
- 0_____0 4y agoublock also does this on FF/Android.
- croes 4y ago>If you want to listen to music or a podcast before going to bed, it’s impossible to avoid a bright now playing screen or animated screen saver. Use something other than a TV? Isn't the power consumption pretty high compared to devices like a smartphone especially if you only want audio without any video display?
- alsetmusic 4y agoIt's addressed near the bottom: > An additional benefit became apparent after we started using Blank: it significantly lowers the energy consumption of the screen. > All modern TVs have circuits that detect a blank signal and turn off LEDs to reduce the power required by the device. If you’ve ever felt heat coming off your big screen, Blank makes that go away. > So besides improving your sleep, you’re also helping out our ever warming planet.
- croes 4y agoIt's still more energy consumption compared to smartphone and if you don't have a modern TV it could even be you consume more energy with blank screen.
- JustSomeNobody 4y ago> As you get older, a good night’s sleep becomes harder to achieve. One thing that works well for my wife and me is to lower light levels before bedtime. Blackout curtains and put tape over any obnoxious LED light.
- kingsloi 4y agoI wish there was a button to temporally turn off video & sound, in 30 second increments, without losing the position of where you are (contrast/brightness -100%?), mainly to get around watching ads.
- dfxm12 4y agomainly to get around watching ads This is probably precisely why this feature won't find its way into a lot of new smart tvs
- jcalx 4y agoI've always thought that a button to "blur" the video and audio (the latter using a low-pass filter or similar) would be a more effective way of doing this. You can still infer enough detail from the video and audio to know when the ads are over, but you wouldn't subject yourself to the higher-frequency, information-dense content of those ads.
- evandale 4y agoThis reminds me of an Arduino project I started but never finished! I bought an IR LED and made a dumb TV remote webapp that could change the volume and channels and mute the TV and had the mute time be 30 configurable. The Arduino just sat on my coffee table pointing at the TV and was connected to my wifi. I ultimately wanted to detect how loud my TV was and lower the volume automatically when I watched Avengers or something because I was constantly fiddling with the volume when some parts were excessively loud. I wanted to extend this to ads too so that when they came on my TV would mute automatically but I got the microphone and kinda lost passion for the project.
- taumoeba 4y agoFinally! I've been wanting this for years. I have my living room surround sound system hooked up to my Apple TV and it's super annoying to have to leave the screen on when using the Apple TV for music because turning off the TV turns off the surround sound. There may not be many people who need this app, but it's appreciated by those of us who do.
- zimpenfish 4y ago> but it's appreciated by those of us who do. It will definitely be appreciated around these parts. I use the sound bar to listen to music whilst pottering about (it's easier than headphones or carrying a speaker around with me) and I never need any visuals.
- tapvt 4y agoI’ll be installing this tonight! Spotify on my Apple TV is my go-to for winding down before bed. I’ve always wanted what I call “video mute.”
- halflife 4y agoQuick solution to this is to save a 100% black image in your iCloud Photo Library , and set that image as your Apple TVs screen saver. I use that in both my Apple TVs and I can listen to music while the screen is completely black. Bonus points is that you get notifications of song changing on top!
- dfxm12 4y agoI wonder what this does for the lifetime of the TV. Is the the video really off? Is it just showing a black screen, but the screen is still on? Is there a difference between the two from a wear & tear standpoint?
- capitainenemo 4y agoFrom TFA. "An additional benefit became apparent after we started using Blank: it significantly lowers the energy consumption of the screen. All modern TVs have circuits that detect a blank signal and turn off LEDs to reduce the power required by the device. If you’ve ever felt heat coming off your big screen, Blank makes that go away."
- mlindner 4y agoI'd note that only high end TVs actually have that functionality, and only if it's relatively new. Though it's especially true for an OLED TV, where a black pixel is a pixel drawing no power at all.
- post_break 4y agoMy receiver supports airplay and spotify so I can have the TV off while listening. But I suppose this is a decent hack.
- mlindner 4y agoBTW, if you happen to have an OLED device, when you display a black image on your display, other than the electronics that run to render the image, it's equivalent to actually having the screen functionally off. Unlike an LCD display where dark versus white pixels use approximately the same power, on an OLED display black pixels use no power.
- mattmar96 4y agoThis also applies to local dimming screens. Just tested it on mine and its fully dark.
- scrollaway 4y agoWhile some people are asking “oh why don’t you do X”, I’d like to know if this exists on the nvidia shield.
- xp84 4y agoMy older Sony TV had a “PIC OFF” button on its remote that did this. I really miss that, it’s not on my “new” (2021?) one. Note: neither were fancy models, both are the slightly above entry level grade stuff.
- Nevermark 4y agoFTFY, TLDR; Sometimes you want to see your TV, but without sound. Your TV remote has a "MUTE" button, just for that. Sometimes you want to listen to music or other audio from your AppleTV, but without the brightness or distraction of video. Introducing the "BLANK" app, just for that. Hit any remote button to restore video.
- halflife 4y agoReplying on to thread because I’ve seen multiple people ask this. If you’ve got Apple TV there’s an easy solution without downloading any apps: Quick solution to this is to save a 100% black image in your iCloud Photo Library , and set that image as your Apple TVs screen saver. I use that in both my Apple TVs and I can listen to music while the screen is completely black. Bonus points is that you get notifications of song changing on top!