Turn screen off when listening to music through apple tv

There's no reason you can't turn your TV off when playing back music, or use another input, but if the sound is going through HDMI you're likely to lose that.

There's no way to just turn the video display black, though I can understand why you might not want distracting graphics if listening to music through the TV.

An alternative if using HDMI if your TV has audio jack inputs might be to use both HDMI and audio out from the AppleTV to the TV, and then switch to another video input with no signal - the audio in via the jacks might still sound if the TV thinks you've connected analogue audio for that source but not a video source. It may or may not work. If you use component video and stereo audio jacks then just pulling the component leads leaving audio connected would achieve the same but is hardly practical.

A workaround I suggest is this:

Create several 'dummy' photos which are pure black (or any other desired colour), sync them and set them as the screensaver with a short delay - not perfect but would still allow visual control when you need it via the remote.

AC

I agree it's not the most environmentally friendly thing if you're just listening to music through the TV speakers, but I think the option to power down the display and hear the audio is something the TV manufacturer would have to implememnt as an option - it's not something AppleTV can do, unless HDMI allows for it. AppleTV could blank the display to black but the TV screen would still be on.

Alternatively if you don't want to hook AppleTV up to a hi-fi (all audio outputs are active not just one at a time, which is far better IMO in terms of flexibility) and turn the TV off when not navigating, how about a small pair of powered speakers to hear the music with the TV turned off? Not the tidiest option though.

AC

Christoph

I do not see how AppleTV could disable the plasma/tube/LCD display itself unless there's some obscure HDMI spec for this. If I turn off my HDMI devices, the Panasonic plasma still outputs a black image with the HDMI logo showing the source - the whole thing dims after a while but doesn't turn off.

I don't really see it as an AppleTV energy efficiency problem.

It would be nice to be able to select only black as a screensave option as sometimes I don't want the visuals with music, particularly when I forget to turn the plasma off!

AC

Message was edited by: Alley_Cat

It would be interesting for some devices though to know if black displayed consumes less energy than anything else.

CRTS and plasmas wouldn't need to 'excite' the black bits, but LCDs would just have the backlight blocked out by opaque pixels.

AC

if the audio is connected to a stereo
i would asume it would not stop playing
if you turned off the tv ?

Yes, ATV was clearly not constructed with low energy consumption in mind. Despite all the "green Apple" talk.

F1 F1 F1 F1(The dim button)... until it is balck