Laptops Get Noisy Around TVs
If you've been trying out one of the video download services and/or using the DVD player in your laptop to play DVDs on your TV, you may have noticed your laptop making little announcements from time to time, complete with whoosing and dinging sound effects. Once or twice is cute, but three times or more is no fun.
What is happening is that your laptop's infrared ("IR") system is detecting the infrared signals from your TV remote or, sometimes, from your TV itself. This can happen with any laptop, Windows or Mac, that has it's infrared service turned on and it's supporting software set to alert you when it discovers another IR device nearby.
You can try to turn off the alerts but, unless you postively know that you have a need for IR support, it's probably better to just turn off the IR system in your laptop altogether. Doing that gets rid of the noise and it eliminates an unneeded drain on your battery.
It's easy to turn off the IR hardware on your laptop. For Mac OS-X, go to "Security" in System Preferences and select "Disable remote control infrared receiver”. "OK" out and you're done. (This is how it is in OS-X 10.4, but if not the same then it's pretty close to that in other OS-X versions. In OS-9, you'll have specific IR tools to turn off in the control panel.)
In Windows XP (it's similar in other IR equipped Windows PCs); go to "Wireless Link" in Control Panel. Wireless Link will be in the "Printers and Other Devices" in the category view but will just appear by itself in the icon view mode. You'll see a tab in the box for "Infrared" -- usually selected by default. On that tab, if your PC is equipped for infrared you'll see a check box that says "Do not use this device". Check that and "OK" out. All done.
Your laptop, Macintosh or Windows, will now stop crowing whenever it gets around a TV. Yay!
If you do have a remote control for your laptop and you actually use it, then, of course, this solution is going to make it so that you can't use the remote. You can turn the support back on anytime or just decide to live with the alerts when your computer "sees" your TV remote talking.
There's another noise that can happen when your computer gets close to your TV -- that's from the little bit of radio-frequency ("RF") noise that gets through the shielding on your PC. If this happens it could be squeals and/or pops and/or crackling "static" sounds from your TV speakers or even some interference distortion in the TV image. The solution for this is to move your computer further from your TV. You may also need to acquire a higher quality cable between your computer and your TV -- a cable that provides better shielding and/or less blocking to the flow of the high-frequency signals. Usually just moving the computer is enough.
