[OTH] Blanking Screen and Powering Off Screen inconsistencies

[GorgiGR]

I don't know if I am the only one here but I am kind of confused regarding this issue. I will try to describe my experience:
OS power settings for screen timeout and system sleep are both set to "Never", so there is no "interference" from the OS.
Let's say I have LGTVCompanion configured in a way that UIM should "screen blank" after 5 Minutes.

• If the screen blanks (and has not powered off) and I move my Mouse then it "unblanks" again which is exactly what I want✅
• If I power off the TV via e.g. the remote and move the mouse it does not turn on which is also exactly what I want, since screen blanking and powering off the TV are two separate things. So far so good.✅
• However if I power off the TV via the remote as I did in the previous step and first wait 5 Minutes (so that presumably the UIM "screen blanking" kicks in) and after that I move the mouse, the TV turns itself on! Which certainly is NOT what I want since I explicitly turned it off via the remote, and want it to stay that way, regardless of accidental mouse movements.❌

@JPersson77 is it possible that the "unblanking" of the screen involves also a power-on of the screen? Can you shed some light on this? Also, do you see any room for improvement here? IMHO screen blanking and unblanking should be totally separate from TV power off and TV power on. Ideally they should both be separately configurable.

[JPersson77]

Hi @GorgiGR what you are experiencing is "by design".

Let's discuss. What is the relevant use case for not powering on the TV when you move the mouse? Usually moving the mouse indicates that you want to use the PC. There is already protection built in for accidental mouse-moves.

[GorgiGR]

OK @JPersson77 , TBH I thought that this was probably implemented like this on purpose. But hey, yeah, let's discuss 😀

You are right in that moving the mouse one usually wants the monitor to power on. However since OLED TVs are involved we are not talking about desktop PCs in an office but rather about living room PCs. There are many scenarios where the mouse can be moved accidentally, by you moving on the couch, by the toddler or cat pushing the mouse, guests having a seat etc. Hell, one time I was just vacuum cleaning and the TV turned on! If there is accidental mouse movement protection built in it did not work form me 🤷‍♂️ Maybe an option/checkbox to not react on mouse moves but rather on e.g. left mouse click or even better left and right mouseclick combined could make this more reliable?
Another thing to consider is the inconsistent behavior. If the TV turns off by its energy settings or by you hitting the power button on the remote, it does not turn on again when moving the mouse immediately after. However after a while and only when UIM timer has passed and you move the mouse suddenly it turns on. One would either expect the TV to always turn on when the mouse moves or not. Current state is kind of a little bit confusing.

I think generally, it is not a stretch to say that blanking the screen and turning the TV off or on are completely different things and should be kept that way (even separate timers come to mind). However I also understand that for many people your implementation works as is. So maybe an option/checkbox to "wake TV when unblanking the screen", (preselected to maintain compatibility) could be an approach? Or maybe the aforementioned checkbox for mouseclicks could be also something to consider?

That's my 50 cents on the issue, thanks either way for this great piece of software!
It is a great tool and it keeps our expensive OLED toys in shape ❤

[JPersson77]

Thanks for the kind words! :)

And the input! Aggregating what you said I think I come to the below understanding of suggestions for redesign and / or feature requests:

1. Treat the remote power button as a "master switch" for enabling or disabling the automatic management of the TV, i.e. so that when you power off the TV manually it will remain off.

Ok, this is kind of in accordance with the overall design goals of the app, i.e. to replicate behavior of a desktop monitor (and then some). There are indeed some regular monitors that are hard shut off when the power button is pressed.

I've not really considered adding it though since it seems like a fringe feature. But also, there are some challenges with OLEDs (except for not being hard powered off )- the biggest factors being that they have built in timers turning them off after X hours of use and that reading the state of the TV programmatically, or via callback - can only be done when it is already ON, progressing from ON to OFF, and sometimes during OFF if TV is using "Always Ready". There is actually no General Surefire Way to know the ON/OFF state of the TV at any given time. Of course it can be approximated quite well with keeping track of states in combination with querying or pinging frequently etc, but I've tried to stay clear of ambiguities. I don't think this will be implemented in the way you see it due to the above as it may create issues with other situations, f.e. when a timer turns off the TV after 8 hours, and would require uncomfortable "what if"-type decision trees implemented in the code.

Workaround: create two shortcuts (and with keyboard shortcuts too if you need 'em) to commands in the LGTVC CLI that you use instead of the remote. One shortcut to turn off the TV and disable automatic management and the other to power on the TV and enable automatic management. Maybe you'd like to press SHIFT+F11 to trigger one shortcut and SHIFT+F12 to trigger the other?

2. Increased control over detection of user activity.

The current protection for accidental mouse-moves require that the mouse is moved over a short amount of time (40ms if I remember correctly). This prevents issues with cats and cars passing by (yes I have cats and cars passing by). But of course not situations where the mouse is tipping off the couch. It is possible to add some configurability and it is not in opposition of the design goals. I think maybe a user configurable option to disallow either the mouse/keyboard and/or controllers from waking the PC (but not to keep it in a busy state) might be beneficial to some. I'll add that to the feature requests list.

workaround: probably same as Pt 1 for your use case

3. User configurable option to select whether the TV should (also) be powered on when unblanking.

There are some issues with this is too - primarily that most TV's cannot be communicated with when off like noted above, which mean that when attempting to communicate there will be an inevitable wait for a timeout before being able to process the next "command". This in combination with the fact that some TV's will be awoken when querying for power state and/or sending commands create ambiguities that I, again, think has the real potential of creating more trouble than benefit.

And then some comments on the inconsistencies you have noted. When the TV turns off by its' energy settings (i.e. the TV's turn off after X hours) or by the user hitting the power button on the remote, there is indeed a corner case situation where User Idle Mode detection will not turn the TV on again immediately when moving the mouse thereafter - because of the situation with the ambiguities mentioned in Pt 1. Remember that since UIM is completely separate from windows power settings the primary way to work around the issue would be to send Power On messages on EVERY mouse input, (or once per second in an optimised state maybe). The secondary way would be to try and keep track of states internally. Neither are good solutions as the first will generate unnecessary CPU and network usage and the second will never work 100% for reasons mentioned above.

So... this is why it is generally recommended to:

<tl;dr>

• Disable the TV's internal energy settings
• Put the remote in the drawer and let it be
• Use the CLI to achieve what you need in terms of disabling automatic management and custom functionality