# How to put something on a TV screen today > The fastest honest route from nothing to a TV showing your prices, timed end to end. Plus what a USB stick, a laptop on HDMI and casting from your phone are each still better at. Source: https://channelos.tv/academy/put-something-on-a-tv-today Published: 2026-10-29 Track: Get something on the screen today Lesson 1 of 4 Plan: Free plan Time: about 10 minutes Author: The ChannelOS team **To put something on a TV screen today, open play.channelos.tv in the television's own web browser, scan the six-character code it shows with your phone, then describe the show you want and press Publish to send it to that screen. The TV is the player, so there is no stick to format and no laptop left plugged in behind the panel. Changing it later happens from your phone.** --- ## The short version, in 6 steps 1. On the TV, open its web browser and go to play.channelos.tv. 2. On your phone, scan the QR code the TV is showing, or type the six-character code. 3. Sign in or create a free account, then confirm Pair screen. 4. Open New show and describe in one sentence what the screen is for. 5. Check the drafted slides and fix any price or spelling the draft got wrong. 6. Press Publish and pick the screen you just paired. --- The prices went up on Monday, the printed card by the till is already wrong, and there is a TV on the wall showing a blue "no signal" box. Search for how to fix that before lunch and the answers are a USB stick, a laptop wedged behind the panel, or casting from a phone. All three work. All three mean somebody walks over to the TV every time anything changes. **The faster route is to open a web page on the TV itself.** The browser already built into the set becomes the player, you pair it from your phone in under two minutes, and after that the screen follows what you change on your phone. Nothing is plugged in and nothing is installed. Here is the whole thing with the clock running. ## How do I put content on a TV screen, start to finish? Ten minutes is our estimate rather than a measured figure, so time your own run. Two of those minutes are the computer's and the rest is you reading what it drafted. 1. **On the TV, open its browser and go to `play.channelos.tv`.** Most Android TV, Google TV, LG webOS and Fire TV sets have one. The page shows a six-character code and a QR code. That is minute one. 2. **On your phone, scan the QR code.** Or type the six characters if the TV is across the room and the camera will not focus. You sign in or create an account, press **Pair screen**, and that television is now yours to control. 3. **Press New show and describe it in one sentence.** Something like "coffee shop price list, flat white $3.40, filter $2.80, cream background, big dark type". AI drafts the slides in about a minute. You can also build it by hand in the editor, which takes longer and is the right call when you already know exactly what it should look like. 4. **Read the draft and fix what it got wrong.** This is the part that actually takes time, and it is time well spent: a drafted price is a guess until you check it. The result is a real editable show, not a flat export, so nothing here is one-way. 5. **Press Publish and pick the screen you paired.** The TV changes while you are looking at it. ![Pairing a screen: the TV shows a code, the phone claims it](/shots/flow-pair.webp) The free plan holds three slides per show, which for a price list or opening hours is usually one slide too many rather than too few. Which television you use matters less than people expect, though it is worth knowing [which panels and which TV menu settings cause trouble](/blog/how-to-turn-your-tv-into-digital-signage) before you mount anything permanently. ## Can I just use a USB stick instead? Yes, and for some jobs you should. A stick needs no wifi, no account and no monthly anything. If the screen is in a storage unit with no network, or it shows the same thing for the next year, or your IT policy will not let an unknown web page run on the display, the stick is the correct answer and this lesson is the wrong one. What it costs you is every future change. The stick holds a flat picture, so a new price means editing the image, copying it back and walking to the TV. If that is the only thing you need, our [free price list maker](/tools/price-list-maker) will give you a 1920x1080 PNG with no account and no watermark, and you can put that straight on a stick. That is a real recommendation, not a step toward anything. ## What about a laptop on HDMI, or casting from my phone? Both are better than this for short things. A laptop on the HDMI port is right for a one-off: a meeting, a talk, a figure you need on the wall for the next hour. It is a bad permanent arrangement because the laptop is now furniture, it sleeps, it updates itself overnight, and the first person who needs a laptop takes the screen down with it. Casting from a phone is right for ten minutes. It holds your phone hostage for as long as it runs, it drops when you walk out of range, and nothing comes back by itself afterwards. The trade in one line: those three put something on the glass faster than anything, and none of them survive you leaving the building. ## What happens after I walk away from the TV? The screen keeps a connection open and takes its picture from your show as it stands right now. Change a price on your phone at the counter and the wall is already right. There is no publish step to remember, no device to sync, and nothing cached on the television to go stale. That is the mechanism, and it is the only claim on this page worth testing: edit the show, watch the TV change. If it does not, the answer is almost always the network rather than the show. Screens also reload themselves when there is a new build, so nobody has to climb to the TV to update anything. ## When is this the wrong answer? Three cases, plainly. **A screen that must survive a long outage on its own.** A playing screen keeps playing if the wifi drops, and it keeps the show's pictures and clips in the browser's own storage so they are not re-fetched every loop. But the page and the show are fetched fresh when the screen starts, so after a power cut it needs the connection back before it can come up again. If that is unacceptable, a vendor who sells a media player with local storage is the better answer and that is a genuine reason to buy hardware. **A television with no usable browser.** Older sets and some budget models either have no browser or have one that cannot render a modern page. A streaming stick you already own fixes it, and so does the Android TV app, which is a direct download rather than a Play Store install. [What you need on the TV itself](/academy/what-you-need-to-start) goes through both. **A screen where no ChannelOS branding is acceptable.** The free screen is free because it carries a disclosure: a ChannelOS banner sits along the bottom, and about every two minutes that banner opens into a full ChannelOS slide for roughly 30 seconds naming what ChannelOS is, then folds back. Any paid plan removes both, from $5 per screen per month billed annually. If a customer-facing screen cannot show that, the free plan is a way to try the product rather than a way to run it. Scheduling is the other line worth knowing before you plan around it. Publishing straight to a screen is on the free plan; channels, which is how you get a breakfast board and a dinner board on one screen by hour and weekday, start on Solo. ## What should I do next? Pair the screen first, before you write a single slide, because a paired TV in front of you changes what you decide to put on it. [The two minute version of pairing](/academy/pair-your-first-screen) is the next lesson, and the one after it covers what you want written down before you open the editor. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do I put content on a TV screen? Give the TV something to render and a way for you to change it. The quickest route on a set made in the last few years is its own web browser: open play.channelos.tv on the TV, scan the code on screen with your phone, then build and publish a show. The TV becomes the player, so nothing is plugged in and nothing is installed. The slower routes are a USB stick with images on it, a laptop on the HDMI port, or casting from a phone, and all three need somebody standing at the TV to change what it shows. ### Can I show photos on my smart TV? Yes, and most sets will do it from a USB stick or a phone with no account anywhere. That is genuinely the right answer for holiday photos at Christmas. It is the wrong answer for a price list, because the stick holds a flat picture: when the price changes you edit the image, copy it back onto the stick and walk to the TV. A web-based show is the same photos with the editing done from your phone instead. ### How do I create a photo slideshow on my Samsung TV? Samsung sets will loop images from a USB stick through their own media player, and newer models have an ambient or art mode for the same job. Both are device features: the pictures live on the TV or the stick, so the TV is where you go to change them. If you want the slideshow to be changeable from somewhere else, run it as a web page in the set's browser instead and keep the pictures in an account. ### Can I play PowerPoint on my TV using a USB drive? Usually not as a .pptx file. Most TV media players read JPEG, PNG and MP4 and will not open a PowerPoint deck, so the common workaround is exporting each slide as an image or the whole deck as an MP4 and putting that on the stick. You lose the ability to edit it, and the export has to be redone for every change. Rebuilding those slides as a show keeps them editable. ### What app can I use to display content on my TV? On Android TV, Google TV and Fire TV there are signage apps in the store, and most TVs have a built-in media player for a USB stick. ChannelOS needs no app at all on a set with a browser: play.channelos.tv is a web address. There is an Android TV app for sets whose browser is poor or missing, and it is a direct download from channelos.tv/tv.apk rather than Google Play, on Android 8.0 or newer. ### How long does it actually take the first time? About ten minutes on a free account, and most of that is you reading the drafted slides rather than waiting on anything. Pairing is under two minutes. The slowest part is deciding what the screen should say, which is why it helps to have the prices or the opening hours already written down somewhere before you start. ## Next lesson [What you actually need before you put anything on a screen](https://channelos.tv/academy/what-you-need-to-start) ## Further reading - https://channelos.tv/blog/how-to-turn-your-tv-into-digital-signage - https://channelos.tv/blog/no-media-player-required - https://channelos.tv/blog/digital-signage-player-do-you-need-one The whole curriculum: https://channelos.tv/academy and https://channelos.tv/academy.md