# Display photos on HD TV



## eschurr (Feb 7, 2016)

I want to display my JPEGs on my HD TV and am looking for a clever, easy way to do it.

Some background:  i currently have a 27" monitor connected to my PC in my kitchen.  When the screen saver kicks in, i have it randomly display photos from a directory on my PC that contains over 30,000 JPEGs that are my "final works of art."  After i edit my photos i use LR's publish capabilities to send them all to this directory.  My family and i love seeing random photos from over the years, and our guests like seeing cool places that we've visited.  If i want to display just certain photos, i use LR to export them to a directory and point my screen saver to that directory.  It's easy and works well.

We're moving and my PC will no longer be connected to a monitor in the kitchen.  My main PC will be a Surface Book that will be roaming around the house. We're installing a TV on the wall in the kitchen and I'm excited about showing my photos on it.  It will look bigger and better than my 27" monitor.

Now i'm looking for suggestions as how to easily display my photos on the TV.  It will be new, so of course it will have HDMI and all the other new tech.  My design parameters are:
-- need to be able to pick photos from a particular directory or location.  Would be ideal if that could be a NAS device without a PC running, but that's not essential.
-- would like it to be always running so all that's required is to turn on the TV and the photos would be "right there."
-- would like it to have some nice transition effects (fade, etc)

I've thought about AppleTV and such but not sure it works anymore with a PC.  The Apple website only mentions Apple devices.  i'm betting there's something else out there. I've done some research but really value the opinions of this group.

thanks.


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## clee01l (Feb 7, 2016)

Does your HD-TV have internet capability?  Does it have free HDMI ports? AppleTV connects to any TV device via an HDMI port.  ChromeTV is about half the price of an AppleTV. It also connects to a free HDMI port. And is probably better suited since it needs no special mount to fit behind the wall mounted TV.

What is commonly called a TV is nothin more than a monitor with a built in Tuner.  If you get your TV viewing thru the local OTA channels the Monitor is set to display the feed from the built in tuner.  If you, as most do, use a cable company and a set-top box, you wasted money on the tuner part of the expensive "TV".  The cable company's set-top box usually plugs into an HDMI port on the "TV" and when selected as an input, streams your cable programs.  If you use ChromeTV or Apple TV, these appear on your "TV" menu as another input.  The Chrome TV can use your local internet and see the NAS. Apple TV can access you music if it is on the NAS or you can point your Apple device (iMac, iPhone etc.) to the AppleTV as a display.


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## Victoria Bampton (Feb 7, 2016)

Googling to find out about the Apple TV (that was my first thought too), I can across this: http://www.techlicious.com/tip/5-easy-ways-to-view-your-photos-on-your-tv/


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## eschurr (Feb 7, 2016)

clee01l said:


> Does your HD-TV have internet capability?  Does it have free HDMI ports? AppleTV connects to any TV device via an HDMI port.  ChromeTV is about half the price of an AppleTV. It also connects to a free HDMI port.



i haven't bought the TV yet, but it will certainly have free HDMI ports and probably internet capability.  I've tried reading about Apple TV and ChromeCast, but all i could find was general gee-whiz! marketing content rather than specific details like "can you easily tell the device what directory to pull photos from?"  The Apple TV pages only state that it works with Apple devices; no mention of PC or Windows.


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## RonBoyd (Feb 8, 2016)

With Internet capability, you can access your images anywhere with Plex on any display device -- https://plex.tv/.


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## tspear (Feb 8, 2016)

I have giving a few https://www.nixplay.com/ to friends and family they like them. I have the older ones which use a simple SD card.
My parents have the Kodak Pulse system, and they like it. 

Tim


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## Woodbutcher (Feb 8, 2016)

I host my good images on Smugmug.  There is a Roku app for smugmug.  The Roku is similar to the Chromecast, but I don't know if the chromecast has an app for smugmug.  Looks like Roku has a Photobucket and Flickr app too.


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## eschurr (Feb 15, 2016)

thanks for all your replies.  i have 40K images, so i'm not really interested in putting all of them on a service like Smugmug. i really hope i can find a way to display them from my PC or a NAS on my home network.  I'm going to look into ChromeCast...


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