Christmas decor hacks you need to see
It’s the start of the holiday season, and people are unwrapping their trees, putting up lights, and doing the same old Christmas decorating as last year and the year before that.
But we are geeks and we have old electronics. This includes older TVs and monitors, meaning you can do something a little more creative thanks to the infinite reach of the screen.
Turn it into a festive, looping art exhibit
Even if you don’t have a smart TV, you can probably easily set up Christmas-themed visuals to create a Santa-friendly ambiance in your home.
If you have a flat-screen TV from before the smart TV revolution, it probably has a USB port and can play common formats like MP4 video. All you have to do is go to a site like Pexels and download free Christmas videos. Then put them on a USB drive in a folder and set your TV’s player to repeat the videos at the end.
Unfortunately, since different “dumb” TVs have media players with different conventions and controls, you’ll have to check how yours works or experiment with it.
If you have an old smart TV or spare streaming box that you can connect to your old “dumb” TV, you can either use your own video files on a USB stick (unless it’s an Apple TV) or combine them with a video player app. Alternatively, Christmas-themed video compilations should not be missing on services like YouTube and last for hours. I like this Christmas atmosphere video
Of course, if you don’t have YouTube Premium, your video might be interrupted by ads, but maybe it’s worth paying for just one month?
If you have an old CRT TV, you can make something with an even more comfortable aesthetic. I use an HDMI to composite converter to connect my Chromebook to my Sony Trinitron CRT TV and the results are pretty nice.
Use it as a virtual fireplace
I live in a part of the world where it’s summer while on vacation, so even though I have a fireplace, I can’t really use it during that time. Plus, Santa has to come down my chimney, and I don’t want him spreading ashes and wood all over my home library. Even if you live where it snows at Christmas, you may not have a fireplace at all, but luckily we can still get those vibes using a virtual fireplace.
If you are a Netflix subscriber, you can choose one of the professionally recorded fireplaces in the Fireplace in your home series. These sound great if you have a good set of speakers to connect to your old TV. Of course, YouTube also has plenty of options, like this incredibly popular fireplace video recorded in 4K/60, making it incredibly realistic!
If you use an old spare TV for this purpose, you can place it low on the floor, at the same height as a real fireplace, perhaps next to your Christmas tree, with very little risk of burning it and all the presents underneath.
Creating a dedicated list of Christmas music videos
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without proper music, and these days most of us listen to mega streaming playlists with music to set the mood in the background. However, if you have an old TV to dedicate to your work, why not play a list of Christmas music videos instead?
Again, YouTube has plenty of options such as this Vevo music video playlist with top Christmas hits starting with (I’m so sorry) Mariah Carey All I want for Christmas is you.
I also found that the Spotify app on TVs has excellent quality music videos and there are many awesome community-compiled video playlists, including for Christmas.
Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from taking the time to put together your own list of Christmas songs. You can take a shortcut or really put your heart into it.
Use it as a rotating photo frame for family vacations
Perhaps the easiest thing you can do with that old TV for Christmas is to load it with family photos and place them on a carousel or slideshow. If you have family visiting during the holidays, you can ask everyone to contribute photos. Hell, maybe it’s even better if you ask people who can’t be with you over the holidays to send photos too, so they can be there in spirit.
As for how you can achieve this, there are many options. With stupid old flat screen TVs, you can usually just copy a bunch of photos onto a USB drive and use the same media player function you used for videos. If you have an old smart TV, there are various apps that work as slideshow players, and you can often connect them to cloud photo accounts like Google Photos. This makes it much easier to create what is essentially a huge picture frame.
While you’re at it, if you have smart speakers, you can use them to spice up Christmas, and don’t forget that with more people (and kids) over for the holidays, you can still use that old TV to watch classic Christmas movies.
