now it’s a pocket TV for the kitchen

I change my phone every two years and I use it for almost everything possible (I’m not much of a gamer), but with tablets it’s another story: we have it at home and we use it It’s mainly used to browse the internet, watch something and respond to emails on a screen larger than the phone’s. We could say that The use of the tablet is rather basic and residual.

In fact, the tablets in my house don’t die because they fall or run out of battery, but rather they end up obsolete and retired collecting dust in a drawer. But just because they’re old doesn’t mean they’re no longer useful and in fact, with our old Samsung Galaxy Tab A (2016), we achieved an aspiration: use it as a mini TV for the kitchen.

The golden retirement of a tablet: using it as a TV

Using an old tablet to watch content is something that I already knew would do wonders and in fact, that was the fate of my mother-in-law’s tablet with ATV Launcher, but the reality is that we normally watch content series and films on our Smart TV. In the kitchen, in reality, what I always liked was having the television in the background, which kept me company, as was the case in the family home. Good now What keeps us company in the background is our old tablet that acts as a television..

There are some applications and services to watch DTT channels, TDT channels are an example, but personally I like the experience and interface of Tivify better, which in its free version has an application with over 200 free channels and the ability to watch them from the start

if you catch them, you’ve started. The Tivify free plan works for me because I use it mainly to watch ETB and practice Basque while cooking, but you have to keep in mind that it has advertising, lacks control functions, viewing content from the last seven days or recording… but traditional television didn’t have that either.

We have the tablet with a case with stand and its natural place is on the shelf, next to the toaster, but if for some reason I’m interested in seeing something, I put it on the counter. We thought about placing it on the wall, but since we just wanted to enjoy it without spending a single euro, we ruled out the possibility of buying a frame or someth ing similar for this purpose.

Tivify usage doesn’t have much history: I downloaded the app from Google Play Store and installed it. Although in theory registration is not required, since the login screen appears from time to time, I created an account and am still logged in.

From there, just enter the Tivify application and for the sake of agility, I go from the main screen (for my taste, too many options) and press the three lines in the upper left corner to access channels. All I have to do is scroll to what interests me, tap it and that’s it: I can now watch TNT on my old tablet while I cook. I actually haven’t been able to get the interface to adapt to the horizontal layout when I’m browsing the platform, but surprisingly it does when I’m viewing content.

Although the tablet is already eight years old and has a very old and simple Exynos 7870 accompanied by 2 GB of RAM, experience is delivered where it counts: Typically it takes a few seconds to open apps and load them, but once you start playing a channel it works great, delivering audio and video through its 10.1-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1200. It’s not a resolution or a diagonal to talk about, but as before: neither is the small television that my parents have in their kitchen.

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