All my tv's go straight to the HDMI input when I turn them on. LG, sony, samsung, vizio, all of them. Regardless of OS or if the internet is connected on it. Both new and older models.

 

Most TVs have a setting for what do on power up. Many default to the home screen. Lg you can set it to last used input. Others you can say power up on HDMI 2 for instance. You just have to check for the settings for whichever TV you are considering.

 

yes some tvs and do that but you don't even have to do that. Just use the remote for the device you're using rather than the tv remote. With CEC on it will turn on the device, tv, whatever audio device you're using and go directly to it's input. It will control volume and turn it all off. No need for the tv remote anymore and no need for any special features in the TV.
Other than CEC which they should all have. Even my ancient budget samsung tv I got for free with an xbox one deal does it.
I primarily use apple tvs but I also have a shield and fire stick and some other devices. I don't see a TV menu unless I need to dive into the TV to play with settings.

 

It really depends CEC doesn't always work well. Coincidentally, I was just at a customer's yesterday that was frustrated with her LG TV. She is an 80+ year old woman and complained that her TV would go back to the TV menu or bring up a message saying are you sure you want to stay on this input yes or no. Then she would have to use the LG remote and use that stupid wand to point at the input with her cable box or point at the yes button to the input question and try to click that scroll wheel to select it. I hate those LG point remotes, imagine an 80+ year old woman trying to use it. I changed the menu to power on to last input. It now works as she hopes. Presses 'System On' on cable remote and it comes on to the input, I put the LG code in the cable remote so she can control volume with it. All is aligned in her world again. Two second change, I didn't even charge her.

 

The thing I don't like about the "Last Input Used" is that if the tv and HTS is off, and you turn it on for an external device (like an AppleTV for example), everything will turn on as expected, only the tv will default to the last HDMI input used. So, in that scenario, if the cable box was the last input used, the tv will default to that HDMI input and not the AppleTV 4k or optical player HDMI input until you request the device again. Once that initial startup is done, it's easy to switch back and forth between inputs. LG remote or Harmony remote doesn't seem to matter.

 

I have tvs from LG(BG and C1), sony(a80j, x93l), samsung(s90c, don't recall the other model) and vizio(2016, don't recall the model) and haven't had that on any of them. CEC works great for me. And if one is just using a TV and a device and no other sound system I would not expect any issues with that basic setup. But yes, using the setting to return to last input that many tvs have could be used here as well.
But I still use that devices remote to turn everything on and off and control volume, etc.

My setup is more complicated as I have a lot of components in my dedicated theater room though in my living room i'm just using a soundbar but CEC works fine on all of it. In any of my cases I never see a TV OS unless I want to.

I have my mom setup using a fire stick max on a vizio tv. She can't handle changing inputs so everything just needs to work. She also has a bose soundbar. Luckily it's been flawless for her. She uses the amazon remote and it turns the tv on, goes to the input, turns on and controls the soundbar. And one click turns it all off. She only uses the fire stick remote.

 

I agree. In this case the cable box is the only device in the system. So, it won't get switched. I would prefer it had the option to turn on to a set input instead of last used. But this TV doesn't have that option, only Home screen or last input used.

 

Sigh. I just spent half a day testing a 2025 Samsung 8000F, that I thought would do this. At first it went automatically from the startup menu to the HDMI source (I used a Roku Ultra 2019 box), though it took maybe 5-10 seconds. But then it started telling me that no antenna was connected, and it needed a complicated sequence on its own remote. There seemed to be a setting that might have made it work - but a message on the screen said one would have to buy an extra-cost add on remote to access that menu.

Sigh.

OK, I'm back to looking for a non-smart used TV.

 

the antenna is connected to the tv itself? If you're using a roku AND an antenna on the tv you're now using 2 sources and that changes things. If you only use the roku then you'd just use the roku remote to turn everything on and off and control volume and not touch the TV remote.
But if you have to switch to another input(antenna) then you'd need to use the tv remote and it adds more complexity. What you can do, and what I do, is I use a network tuner that the antenna is connected to. Then you can watch that antenna on the roku without having to switch inputs on the tv.

 

With a TV based on Google TV (not Samsung or LG) for example Sony, Hisense, TCL during initial setup it is possible to set it up with the option "Set Up Basic TV" to not use the Google OS and act like a non-smart TV (no apps). They also have a setting to power up to the last input instead of the home screen. So after enabling that setting, just select the appropriate cable box HDMI input (like HDMI1) and then power off the TV. When it powers up again it should start on that same input unless you change it manually.

Here are full details at this webpage:

How to make your smart TV a dumb TV with Google TV Basic Mode

In a world where everything is connected, it's time to take back some control.

www.digitaltrends.com

 

No antenna was involved. And that is what the TV was complaining about. And where the TV is eventually to be used, OTA reception is impossible because of terrain blocking.

But my thought is that if I connected the antenna input to something - e.g., the RF modulator output of the cable box - the TV would stop complaining.

 

No antenna was involved. And that is what the TV was complaining about. And where the TV is eventually to be used, OTA reception is impossible because of terrain blocking.

But my thought is that if I connected the antenna input to something - e.g., the RF modulator output of the cable box - the TV would stop complaining.

that is rather unusual. I have a samsung with no antenna connected and i've never seen that. Seems more like a settings issue. Was an antenna connected to this tv at one point and later removed? If so it may need to be disabled in settings.

 

I install a lot of TVs and I often recommend the Roku TVs for people if ease of use is their priority. They can be set to turn on to whichever input you choose. We don't carry Roku TVs where I work but I still recommend them for ease of use. Their picture quality is decent for their comparative inexpensive price points.

The home menu is easy to go through and remove all the apps they don't need. Turn off suggestions and other stuff in the Home settings menu, so people aren't accidentally installing apps. Arrange the icons so if they do get messed up, it is easy to get back. A little time to set up but definitely better than Google/Android TV, Fire TV and the other propietary ones for ease of use. If you are using Roku anyway this seems like a no brainer.

 

Ah, but apparently Roku TVs can't directly display from HDMI without going through menus every time you turn them on - at least that is what someone from Best Buy claimed.

Also, Rokus add a lot of extra ads, if you use them to stream.

 

Not True!!! If you connect something to an HDMI port it has a setting in the menu to turn on to whichever HDMI port you choose. Other TVs only let you turn on to last input. The Best Buy guy probably does not set these up except in the store.

ALL the streaming TVs have ads on the home screen. I find the Roku TVs the least offensive. The ads take up a much smaller portion of the screen, especially if you set the tile size (icon size) to large. You can also go into the Roku menus and hide its suggestions and other features like what to watch, featured free, sports, daily trivia, my offers, shortcuts, recommendation rows, etc. Hide it all! Because while they sound like they might be helpful they are not. If someone selects any of these it will add apps. Like sports doesn't show you what's on for sports of the services you already subscribe, it shows it for all services and people accidentally install apps they don't want. I always hide all that stuff but it is on by default.

The other TVs usually have on horizontal row of icon apps usually small and sometimes inputs. Some have the icon with the little arrow indicating inputs. Like most average people know what that symbol means. They also don't let you hide a lot of their stuff. As a generalization the younger generation has no problems navigating Google TV, Fire TV, etc. The older generation, Roku has definitely been the best for ease of use, but you have to spend time to customize it. Because out of the box it has a lot of useless stuff just like the others. Delete the apps they don't use. Organize the ones they do in order of most frequently uses. Or if they are still using a cable or Sat box, set it to turn it on to that input. I set up a lot of these. Do it all the time.

No offense to a lot of the Best Buy Geek squad. But many of them are about getting in and out as fast as possible. Not all, they do have some good techs as well. My elderly neighbor just stopped me yesterday while I was walking my dog to help her. The Geek Squad was there this weekend. A Best Buy salesman sold her an LG OLED TV, said it would be much brighter than her old TV (as she complained with her eyesight she can't see the TV well. She got them to deliver and install it. Who would sell any LG TV with that horrible remote to an elderly person. I don't care if it is the best looking TV in the world. I had an older remote kicking around my house and programmed for her to make her system easy to use. I didn't charge her but she insisted on giving me $40 because she said I have to pay you something. I spent about an hour there.

 

with google tvs you can put them in a apps only mode that gets rid of a lot of that stuff.

 

The Samsung U8000F that I looked at did, according to the manual, if I understand it's somewhat ambiguous phrasing, have a way to directly display the HDMI, and stay that way without needing menus. But to set it up, you had to buy an extra cost remote, that was different from the one that is shipped with the TV! Kind of like buying a car, then finding out you need to buy an extra pedal to use the brakes.

I do appreciate that the Roku is a little closer to being self evident. But in this case, for a 100+ year old lady, it needs to be a lot simpler. She is too forgetful to learn to control two devices (the cable box and the TV,), even if I write out the directions. E.g., the cable company guy set up the box so that she could switch between the 4 channels she watched by hitting the up and down arrow keys. But she couldn't remember to do that.

It's a shame that as technology has advanced, the user interfaces haven't stayed similar. You see much the same thing in cars. The controls used to be relatively simple, and it was all done with knobs of different sizes and shapes, so you could feel whether you were touching the right thing. Now it's frequently all on a touch screen, so you have to take your eyes off the road to do it. And it used to be very easy to control cars - there was an accelerator, a brake peddle, and a steering wheel that all did exactly what you controlled them to do. Now cars second guess you with some sort of AI, and they sometimes do something different than what you try to control them to do.

 

The Samsung U8000F that I looked at did, according to the manual, if I understand it's somewhat ambiguous phrasing, have a way to directly display the HDMI, and stay that way without needing menus. But to set it up, you had to buy an extra cost remote, that was different from the one that is shipped with the TV! Kind of like buying a car, then finding out you need to buy an extra pedal to use the brakes.

I do appreciate that the Roku is a little closer to being self evident. But in this case, for a 100+ year old lady, it needs to be a lot simpler. She is too forgetful to learn to control two devices (the cable box and the TV,), even if I write out the directions. E.g., the cable company guy set up the box so that she could switch between the 4 channels she watched by hitting the up and down arrow keys. But she couldn't remember to do that.

It's a shame that as technology has advanced, the user interfaces haven't stayed similar. You see much the same thing in cars. The controls used to be relatively simple, and it was all done with knobs of different sizes and shapes, so you could feel whether you were touching the right thing. Now it's frequently all on a touch screen, so you have to take your eyes off the road to do it. And it used to be very easy to control cars - there was an accelerator, a brake peddle, and a steering wheel that all did exactly what you controlled them to do. Now cars second guess you with some sort of AI, and they sometimes do something different than what you try to control them to do.

You really shouldn't need a special remote. As was suggested factory reset the tv. Then you'd only use the remote for the device you want to use and not the tv remote. You can also set to come up to last input. That device will then always come up and you'll never see the TV's OS again.
As I mentioned, it works this way on samsung, lg, sony and vizio because I own all these tvs. Some quite old. Comes up to the device 100% of the time.

 

I agree!! While technology has improved the interface hasn't always followed suit.

When my dad was alive, we tried to get him a smartphone and ended up having to go back to a flip phone. All he wanted to do is make phone calls and there was no way with the smart phones to just have the phone app come on when you hit the power button. He used to say; "I am too dumb for a smartphone" 🤣