Samsung Smart TV - how to enter the address of imatchviewer into the browser?

[ad1965]

Dear all,

I try to tun IMA on a Samsung smart TV. However, I am not able to enter the imatchviewer address into the browser. It always assumes that the adress is a search term and google (or bing) comes up with silly search results. In the settings I cannot stop it using a search engine. I can only choose between google or bing. But I just want to enter the address directly - I don't want to search for anything!
I hope that you understand my quesion and that anybody can help me.

Thanks in advance & best regards
Axel

[Jingo]

Most "smart" TV's aren't really that smart... they offer searching via a locked down browser but they aren't full chrome browsers.

I would recommend you look into a PC on a stick style computer... I use an older NUC box attached to the TV via HDMI... switch inputs and voila - I have a full blown PC up on the big screen.  I use this for browsing, watching Youtube, Zoom meetings and most importantly, showing off my photos to the family using IMA. 

They aren't that expensive either because you don't need much computing power for these task... Good luck!

[Mario]

TV vendors get money from Google/Bing for integrating their search engines - so they make it difficult or impossible to turn that off.

If you cannot even input a simple IP address without the browser overriding it with a search result, you're probably stuck.
Maybe there is an option to turn off the searching from the address bar?
Desktop browsers have this, but usually mobile / TV browsers have not - the idea is to send your query to Google/Bing so they can monetize it and send you ads in return.

[ad1965]

It is, unfortunately, not possible to switch off the search engine from the address bar - at least, I couldn't find any settings. One could choose between bing or google - that's it.

Showing off the photos on the large TV screen to friends & family was the main purpose for testing IMA. It looked so simple, just entering the IP address into the browser, no extra hardware, that's it. But if I have to buy additional hardware it's not really worth it. In the past I just connected the notebook to the TV and showed pics directly out of IMatch.
My daughter has a Fire TV stick and I will look if a browser is included that will do the job.

I will also contact Samsung support for an idea to enter the IP address, however, w/o much of hope.....

Axel

[Mario]

That's really unfortunate 
And a reason why I stay away from smart TVs when possible.

The browser on a FireStick can connect to IMatch Anywhere, but may have some usability issues. Since Mozilla no longer develops for FireTV, you're stuck with the browser Amazon includes.

I have a small box PC attached to my TV. The size of a cigar box.
It has a quite fast 4-core Intel CPU, 8GB RAM and is absolutely noiseless (no fan!).
It runs Windows 10 and Linux Mint in a dual-boot configuration.
I control it with a small bluetooth keyboard with a touch panel. Works a treat and gives my TV all the smarts I'll ever need.
While being under my control and not phoning home or sending info about every movie or TV show I watch to the TV vendor and probably hundreds of other listeners.

I can run a real web browser (Firefox, Chrome, ...), have access to all standard applications, can run Kodi with my video collection, Disney, Netfilx, Prime in the browser when I need them.
And it will not stop working in two years when the warranty of the TV runs out and the TV vendor no longer cares for the "old" apps shipped two years ago. Or just switches of the servers.

[mastodon]

Share your phone screen. I do it, when I want to watch sport in a browser window.

[Jingo]

That's really unfortunate 
And a reason why I stay away from smart TVs when possible.

The browser on a FireStick can connect to IMatch Anywhere, but may have some usability issues. Since Mozilla no longer develops for FireTV, you're stuck with the browser Amazon includes.

I have a small box PC attached to my TV. The size of a cigar box.
It has a quite fast 4-core Intel CPU, 8GB RAM and is absolutely noiseless (no fan!).
It runs Windows 10 and Linux Mint in a dual-boot configuration.
I control it with a small bluetooth keyboard with a touch panel. Works a treat and gives my TV all the smarts I'll ever need.
While being under my control and not phoning home or sending info about every movie or TV show I watch to the TV vendor and probably hundreds of other listeners.

I can run a real web browser (Firefox, Chrome, ...), have access to all standard applications, can run Kodi with my video collection, Disney, Netfilx, Prime in the browser when I need them.
And it will not stop working in two years when the warranty of the TV runs out and the TV vendor no longer cares for the "old" apps shipped two years ago. Or just switches of the servers.

The same for me - I can't tell you the number of times I've used this small PC for things - they are very cheap now and still quite powerful.  Also, makes a great emulator system for playing all the old stuff on the big screen when guest and friends pop over!

[PaulS]

I have a 2018 Samsung smart TV with Samsung Smart TV web browser version 2.1.3.0721073 (TizenBrowser)

It does allows me to manually enter local IP addresses and access my router home page as well as my NAS home page without first going to a search engine.  Unfortunately I do not yet have IMA and so I cannot test it.

Of course there are many Samsung TVs, so mine may be different than yours, but here is what worked for me:

- select the "Internet" tile/ app
- enter the URL manually into the search bar starting with http:// or https://
    - example http://192.150.0.27
- select done