Turn your TV into a PC
Intel’s Compute Stick can add some smarts to your TV, reports
If you’ve looked enviously at the multitude of smart televisions hitting the market, then don’t worry. It’s getting easier to turn your ‘‘dumb’’ TV into something much smarter, all you need is a spare HDMI socket.
Some devices let you stream movies and the internet, while others, like Intel’s Compute Stick, can do much more.
It is a full PC crammed into an enlarged USB memory stick. it plugs into a spare HDMI socket on the back of a TV (or computer screen) and delivers full PC functionality.
It’s an easy way to turn your big screen into a Windows computer.
This is the second generation of the Compute Stick and it offers increased performance along with two USB ports, allowing you to connect a wireless keyboard receiver and external storage.
Once connected, the only hint that you’ve upped your TV’s smarts is a power brick plugged into the power outlet. Visible clutter is near zero.
Under the hood
Intel designed the Core M chip for mobile hardware, aiming to deliver reasonable performance without hurting battery life.
The company has used this tech in its stick, and it delivers enough power to transform a dumb TV into a multimedia powerhouse.
The original Compute Stick copped a bit of flack owing to its lack of connectivity. With just one USB port, connecting both a keyboard/mouse and storage was near impossible. The latest generation Compute Stick has two USB ports, a MicroSD card slot and a USB-C port for power.
In use
Hooking up a wireless keyboard/ trackpad combo, I connected the Compute Stick to my TV. After jumping through the usual Windows 10 installation hoops, my TV became a Windows 10 PC.
While some may want the Compute Stick as a low clutter PC solution, I wanted to add smarts to my ageing Samsung TV.
Doing this was straightforward. I Installed the rather excellent (and free) Kodi media centre. This gave me an elegant sofa-friendly interface for streaming media ripped and stored on a network drive over wi-fi.
While using Kodi was possible using a keyboard/trackpad, it proved cumbersome.
Adding a Windows media remote and infrared receiver via the remaining USB port solved this.
The Compute Stick has enough grunt to render 1080p video without any hiccups. The few 4K clips I tested also worked fine.
Verdict
While Intel did well by adding a second USB port and upping performance, storage is still an issue. With just 64GB (plus a microSD card), things get pretty cramped, pretty fast. Thank