How to watch Netflix and streaming on your TV, made simple

Everyone talks about streaming as if it is obvious, and if nobody ever explained it, it is not. The word, the apps, the extra remote, the mysterious "input" button: it adds up to something that feels harder than it is. In plain terms, streaming is just television that comes through your internet, so you can watch what you want when you want. This guide explains it without jargon, shows you how to get it on your TV whether the TV is new or old, and makes the whole thing as simple as pressing one button and choosing a show.

What streaming actually is

Streaming means watching shows and films over the internet, instead of waiting for them to be on a channel or putting in a disc. A service like Netflix keeps thousands of shows, and when you choose one, it sends the picture down your internet connection to your TV, right then. That is the whole trick: the television comes through your internet, and you pick from a menu rather than a timetable. Nothing is downloaded to keep, and nothing is complicated underneath. It is just choosing, and watching.

Do you need a new TV? Almost certainly not

This is the worry that stops people, and it is usually unfounded. There are two situations, and both are easy:

• If you have a smart TV, which most TVs from the last several years are, the streaming apps are already built in. They are sitting in the TV's own menu, waiting to be opened. You may already own everything you need.
• If you have an older TV, you do not need to replace it. A small, inexpensive device called a streaming stick plugs into a socket on the back, the HDMI socket, and adds all the same apps. It turns any ordinary TV into a smart one for a modest one-off cost.

So the honest answer to "do I need to buy a new telly" is: almost never. Either your TV can already do it, or a little stick teaches it how.

Getting Netflix, or any app, onto the screen

Once you have a smart TV or a streaming stick, the steps are the same and you only do them once. You open the app you want, Netflix, or any other, from the TV's menu, and it asks you to sign in with the email and password for that service. You type it in that first time, and the TV remembers you from then on. After that, watching is simply: open the app, choose a show, sit back. You only ever sign in again if you get a new TV or stick, which is rare.

That first sign-in is the fiddliest moment, typing a password with a remote is nobody's favourite job, and it is exactly the kind of one-time setup we are happy to do for you so you never have to.

The 'input' button, demystified

Here is the single thing that confuses more people than anything else, and it is genuinely simple once explained. Your TV can show a few different things: the regular channels, a streaming stick, maybe a DVD player. A button on the remote, labelled Input or Source, tells the TV which one to show. If you plug in a streaming stick and get a blank or "no signal" screen, the TV is almost always just showing the wrong input.

The fix is to press the Input or Source button, and keep pressing until the streaming menu appears, like flipping to the right page. It is not broken, it is just looking at the wrong thing. Once you know that button exists and what it does, a blank screen stops being alarming and becomes a two-second fix.

Making it easy to live with

The secret to enjoying streaming rather than fighting it is to cut it down to the few buttons you actually use. In practice that is: the button that wakes the TV, the Input or Source button if you use a stick, and the arrows and the OK button to choose a show. Everything else on the remote can be happily ignored. Many people we help keep a small written note by the TV with just those steps, and after a week they do not need it. If a fiddly extra remote is the problem, there are simpler ones, and we can often set the TV so a single remote does the lot.

Let us set it up and show you

If streaming has felt like a locked door, we will open it gently. We set up the TV or a streaming stick, sign you in so you never have to type a password with a remote again, and show you the two or three buttons that are all you really need. Get in touch and we will have you watching what you want, when you want, without the fuss. New to all this? Start with our guide on where to start with tech help.