Brainstorming how to optimize use for portable PC

[unphased]

I have been using this tool and it is very convenient and makes my gaming pc a real joy to use with my LG C1 compared to before. Now I barely need to fetch the remote most times.

However my setup is unusual in that my gaming PC is a portable SFF computer and I occasionally physically unplug it and carry it into my office. The TV is the centerpiece of the living room, rather than employed as a monitor for the PC. I know that when I bring the PC away from the TV, any time it powers on or off it will probably interfere with the living room in a severe way: If I power on or wake my computer in the office, it will turn on the living room tv which will alarm people there. If my computer sleeps or shuts off in the office, people watching content on the tv may have it shut off on them. This would be far worse. So far this has prevented me from doing this. I would like to explore a few ideas for streamlining the behavior.

1. We could have the software try to detect the connected displays from windows and do some reasonable logic such as only perform the action of waking and turning off the LG TV if one is seen to be connected over HDMI. However my suspicion on this is that it could only ever work for half of that equation: If the TV is currently off, as far as Windows would be concerned the HDMI is not connected and there would be no way to find out what type of connection it has. Similarly this reasoning would kill things such as detecting whether e.g. an Nvidia HDMI Audio Out is present on the system. One would not be if the TV is currently off, which means it would never be able to turn on.

   All that said, I think this approach could still have legs in simple cases like mine where I basically only ever plug HDMI in to this computer if it is this LG TV and the rest of the time it is using DisplayPort. So being able to configure the companion to control the TV if the HDMI port has something, anything, plugged, could be very viable. (still not a 100% solution, though, because I do sometimes ALSO make use of HDMI with a different monitor on this computer...)

2. perhaps it's possible to do something good from the other direction. Maybe I could designate that the PC is the only thing I would plug into HDMI 1. So, if HDMI 1 is unconnected on the TV, have the companion not control the TV. Again though I am not sure that the API would allow for this. If the TV is off or sleeping does it even have the ability to know if HDMI 1 is connected to a PC or anything? I poked around and the Process power and screen off events only when the display input source is set to HDMI: may be precisely this, so I might be able to get by with this. Unfortunately sometimes I do use HDMI 1 with a different device but that is a habit easily adjusted. I'm also unclear whether the setting would apply to any of the HDMI inputs, in which case it wouldn't be a solution if HDMI3 was in use by an Apple TV, or indeed when HDMI 2 is always in use by a WiiM amplifier for HDMI ARC audio.

3. Perhaps it could be feasible at least to try to address the worst scenario, to prevent someone using the TV from having the TV randomly shut off by my computer (not outputting to the TV) going to sleep. I think this might be doable because I hope that the companion would be able to check whether the TV is displaying an HDMI input or running an app, and in the case of the latter prevent turning the TV off.

4. (last resort) designate a key that if held down during startup/shutdown would be checked by the companion as a way to override it to prevent it controlling the TV. I would need to train myself to use this, but it shouldn't be too bad as I would only need to do it on the initial time I move the computer away from the TV. Once I get into windows I can just go in and disable the companion at that point.

Keep in mind overall that I'm just trying to streamline the workflow. My computer goes to hibernate after some time, and I'd like to be able to just waltz into the living room and unplug my computer from the LG TV and use it from my office, I just want to be able to reliably avoid waking the TV up or shutting it off with the PC when it is used separately instead of needing to power it on first to shut off the companion before doing this. The part I'm not sure about is the extent to which it is possible to detect this "separation"...

[unphased]

I think the issue #158 already covers everything on this topic. But I'll leave it open in case anyone has additional input.

I do like the suggestion of keeping things simple and binding a key using some separate tool to trigger the companion to switch the TV, but not only is that possibly challenging to implement in the windows login screen (since we really sorta need the TV on so we can see our password/pin being typed in), it also seems hard to do for the shutoff flow. I'd need to carefully hit the hotkey to shut off the tv just before clicking the windows shut off confirmation I guess. Maybe it's not that bad.

[unphased]

Maybe I'm overthinking it because spurious TV turn ons aren't the end of the world (it shuts itself down anyway after 15 mins or so) and as long as I'm thoughtful enough, when I use the computer initially after disconnecting from the TV I should be able to remember to disable the companion.