Viewing a coppermine gallery on a smart TV.

[sharpo]

I'm probably way behind on modern TV sets but have just bought a smart TV with a 43" screen. Probably many of you have had them for ages and with a bigger screen, but 43" is adequate for us. As it connects via wifi to the internet I was curious to see how my gallery looked on the screen. I tried the first time using the built in browser and the pointer arrows on the handset, not very easy to do!!

Then I decided to try a wifi keyboard and mouse - and it was much easier to move the cursor with the mouse, but a bit delayed, compared when viewing using a pc.

When I first started my gallery web space wasn't exactly cheap and pc screens were much smaller and 957x638 pixels seemed about right for displaying the full size image. As the years passed by I began to think that image size was too small but to change to a larger size for later images wouldn't work - as I like things to be a standard size such as when viewing thumbnails or browsing full size images.

Getting back to the smart TV, I was amazed at the size and quality of the full size images when viewing a gallery with Lightbox plugin. The images are displayed at about 26 inches by 16 inches and the quality is very good. My wife never looks at photos in my gallery on a pc but last night we spent about half an hour browsing various albums sat comfortably on the settee. Navigation with Lightbox was easy moving to the next image using the mouse or just tapping a key on the keyboard. She enjoyed it, so did I.

Later on, I wondered what the Coppermine demo gallery looked like and gave that a try. It didn't look very good at all, I know it's just a demo and the images are small, but if anybody who had never tried Coppermine before gave it a try I don't think they would've been very impressed and moved on to something else.

Is it time to think beyond computers and more to a smart TV for visitors wishing to view your galleries? Adding images, descriptions etc. is more of a computer job but would it be a good idea to include something like Lightbox in the basic gallery download for displaying the full size image the way I have done as described above?

If you've got a smart TV that can browse the internet give YOUR gallery a try and see how it looks. Mine aren't easy to navigate if you don't know them, and have largely been ignored in the last 5 years since I started using a camcorder, but I'm really looking forward to cropping more images from my videos and uploading them, same with the older forgotten photos.

Would be interesting to know what others think, not about my photos or galleries - but the idea of making the Coppermine gallery more compatible for viewers with a smart TV. Just think of all those extra "hits" you might get!!!!

[gmdavid]

I think the same that you!

[sharpo]

Thanks!!

To give others some idea of how it looks, the same image along with a teddy bear to give some idea of the difference in size. The bear is flat against the screen both times and I'm sure you can tell which screen is which. The pc screen is 21" wide and the displayed image 10" wide. On the TV the image is 25" wide, and I suppose the larger the TV the larger the image would be. Not bad quality for a 957x638 image and cropped from a video, not a photo!!