"Smart" TVs are dumb, by design, in their very conception. TVs get upgraded perhaps once a decade or so. They don't need to have software in them, and shouldn't. Leave that to people and companies who actually know how to produce software. TVs should display an image. That's it. Nothing else.
Wow, well I guess the issue is closed. I wish they had contacted you from the start, otherwise this multinational, multi-billion dollar corporation could've avoided the entire market. /s
I mean are you intentionally being dense? It has been a LONG time coming to supplant the multiple devices I have to keep around my TV just to use cable, streaming services, etc. Now I don't need to fire up the Wii if I want to watch Hulu or Netflix, movies off a media drive or USB. If only I could integrate the cable box into the TV, then it would really be a game changer.
I don't know about you, but I consider myself an above-average tech consumer and I value simplicity and if companies can manage to keep my TV functional for the next 5-7 years with all of my services, then it is money well spent.
I agree with your well-placed sarcasm -- this is not a black and white issue.
However, I disagree that there is fundamental value in built-in TV software supplanting third-party devices. That is, unless a software company is making the software.
I have a Roku, and built-in software from Sony on a blu-ray player (on separate TVs). The Roku is so much better that it's painful to use the TV without it:
- The buffering is much worse on the Sony. When it switches between ads and the video it takes several seconds to rebuffer.
- The delay between menus is measured in seconds, while the Roku is almost instantaneous
- It's almost like Sony didn't even have one UX designer working on their project. It will do idiotic things like when Hulu opens, create a modal dialog that says "The internet content is ready" and I must click OK to proceed.
- The remote and other menus are slow and hard to decipher just like you'd expect from built-in software.
The point is that building the user experience of a video client is not trivial. I can't even blame Sony, really -- a non-software company will never do a good job at that kind of thing.
The Roku is a world of difference and until a company like that is building the built-in software, the mainstream of the market will be in third-party devices.
>The point is that building the user experience of a video client is not trivial.
No, but "Sony" have done it before and it's been fine. PS3. (I've not tried the PS4's media player.)
>I can't even blame Sony, really -- a non-software company
Sony Vegas? ACID? Sound Forge? Sony is not short of software production, "Sony Creative Software" makes a few software products most people here would have heard of. Not to mention SCE, they've made quite a bit of software and no-doubt have some UI engineers.
They bought every single one of those, from Vegas and from Sonic Foundry, Sony was not responsible for their design or creation. The UIs were AFAIK fully in place before Sony ever owned them, though I am sure some changes have been made.
> - It's almost like Sony didn't even have one UX designer working on their project. It will do idiotic things like when Hulu opens, create a modal dialog that says "The internet content is ready" and I must click OK to proceed.
This really sounds like a design failure + rushed development. It sounds like the sort of thing that you would throw in during rapid development with the idea to replace it later, only it never ends up on a TODO list, and there is no one looking at the 'big picture' to make sure that these things are caught.
The Youtube app on Samsung SmartTvs is pretty good. I'm not sure who does it, but it has quite deep integration with the Youtube Android app and site, so it could be done by Google.
For example, you can pair your TV with your phone or computer, and then use the device to navigate Youtube but the TV to display videos.
It's YouTube's html5 leanback experience. So it's Google, but they license the interface to a lot of vendors. Google can in theory push updates out this way too.
This is also what Netflix increasingly does (Hulu Plus and Pandora too).
If a smart TV or set top box has a good version of WebKit embedding in it and uses html5 rather than embedded versions of code, they can stay up to date much better. Samsung's newest TVs are designed this way, but there might be a provision check for the Samsung website as was the case in this thread, which is just bs.
The problem was the first two generations of "smart TV"software were highly proprietary embedded systems with custom apps from a service. It took 7 years, but most have moved to html5.
You do still run into hybrid solutions. Even the Roku3 and TiVo Roamio have html5 for some apps and custom old-ass shit for others.
For the fire TV, Amazon uses html5 for its own apps but android apps for other services (except YouTube, who doesn't offer its app outside of google play, so it's the html5 version Roku and some of the TVs use). In that case, I wish for companies with great html5 solutions for those with them (pandora, Netflix, Hulu Plus)
> I don't know about you, but I consider myself an above-average tech consumer and I value simplicity and if companies can manage to keep my TV functional for the next 5-7 years with all of my services, then it is money well spent.
The problem with "smart TV" is that it's inherently a conflict of interest. It would be great if Samsung sold a TV with SamsungOS on it and if I don't like it or they stop supporting it I could easily replace it with Android or Ubuntu, but they don't sell that. Because they want to spam your TV with ads and force you to buy a new one on their schedule.
It's obvious why they want to sell it that way. It's not obvious why anyone should want to buy it that way.
What makes Smart TV's basically useless long-term is that throwaway line you put on the end about the cable box.
The same is true of AppleTV, playstation, xbox and every game console in existence. Some of this is obviously hardware based, but a lot of it is about differentiation. CableCard has existed for at least a decade now, but good luck trying to get your cable company to admit it. Every single one of these guys wants you to stay in their particular ecosystem, and "smart" TV is just another ecosystem Samsung wants you to buy into with the associated limitations -- either introduced by Samsung or the other vendors (lockout).
What people really need is better integration between all the devices they hook to their TV. It's bizarre (but like I said, not totally unexpected) that a consumer electronics device is so hard to use that way compared to a radically more complex personal computer (plug most usb devices from a big box store into a mac or pc and it'll just work for its intended purposes without a hassle nowadays).
One way to accomplish that is to shove all the functionality into one device, but as I mentioned above, it doesn't actually work except for a few limited cases. Honestly, the closest you get to a true "smart" experience is a top-end harmony remote -- and that's obviously not that close at all.
My basic objection to smart tv is that I have the same experience using a harmony remote, it adds nothing. And the smart features are virtually guaranteed to whither away long before the actual tv outlives its usefulness. It's like the digital channel tuner on the same set -- useful in odd circumstances, but practically useless having long been long surpassed by cable tv.
So have the TV on its own for 5 years or so and then supplement it with a new box connected by HDMI. Also the manufacturers are hoping for revenue from the online services and can attract more services with a large user base so it is in their interest to at least keep supporting the existing services.
> Also the manufacturers are hoping for revenue from the online services and can attract more services with a large user base so it is in their interest to at least keep supporting the existing services.
That may or may not be the case depending on the company and/or the strategy the person in charge at the time is pursuing. One CEO might completely agree with your strategy and make sure all old models are supported, another might just care about how many new TVs sold he can tell the shareholders. Then there are companies going out of business or being acquired and the acquiring company not caring about supporting any models made by the acquired company.
The same might happen with any add on box, (it may even be more likely). I wouldn't pay a large premium for built in Internet services (I don't want smart just connected with Netflix, DLNA, iPlayer) but I would throw the TV away if they stopped working either.
4 year old Sony TVs have internet services that still work fine, I like not turning on the PS3 with fan noise and power consumption, I like not buying an extra box and needing to manage an extra remote and interface. I record TV on a MythTV box and I like watching it over DLNA using the TV's decoder and scaler which are better than those provided out of the box by MythFrontend. Yes it may fail at some time in the future but for the $13 or so added to the BOM (for Wifi which I don't actually use) it is a definite win for me even if it stops working tomorrow and I need to get an extra box or rely on the PS3.
...otherwise this multinational, multi-billion dollar corporation could've avoided the entire market. /s
(Shrug) They could always focus on making the best TV display they possibly can, and see how that works out for them. Nobody asked them to build the next-generation WebTV.
I agree. Worse, the software is crap from the start. I have one of these Samsung TVs. It is offline and will be forever in its lifetime.
Not only is the software that comes with it really useless, it phones home the first time you do connect it and installs a sh*tload of crapware, depending on your region. In my case lots of useless stuff around sports and tabloids. These apps are then prominently featured in the TV's menu.
No, you cannot diaable or remove them, nor reclaim that screen estate and put something else there. You install a couple things and have to scroll to find those, while the absolutely insane garbage sits in the middle of the screen. Only way back: Factory reset, never connect it again. Smart..
But if the OP article is correct, you can prevent the TV from phoning home in the first place by spoofing the other way -- say, configuring the DNS that the TV sees to automatically return "no answer" for www.samsung.com. The question is, will the TV still see your local network? If so, you can stream to it from a DLNA server, as someone else upthread pointed out.
Maybe, yes. Potential issues: You probably need to repeat the 'firmware reset, connect again' step a couple of times (like the author in the post required multiple tries). There might be uncaught requests that, for example, update the full thing.
My current best bet would be [1]. But so far I'm using a Pi, with xbmc. There's no way the TV stuff can improve on that.
your suggestion implies that the system is built rationally and to a standard. Who's to say something in that config file isnt used as a hardcoded setting somewhere in the code?
You might be able to spoof the DNS to the TV without changing anything on the TV. However, it's quite possible that the code inside the TV is sufficiently insane that what I suggested would not be possible, even if you spoofed DNS externally; that's why I was wondering if anyone had tried experimenting.
yep, this post laments the problems when "smart" automation often goes wrong - also touching on automating tasks where people need to pay attention at the same time, such as driving or aviation:
While I agree with some parts with that post, I think the conclusion is wrong. I believe the root of the problem are the wrong terminal values. "Smart" technology is not put there to really solve a problem, but to drive sales. Providing real utility for users is secondary, as long as the new feature has big marketing value. Therefore I see the problem not with engineers and designers, but with salesmen giving orders and marketing-driven development.
As for lessons for driving, I see only two ways - either do actually train drivers like they should be, just like pilots are trained, or automate them out completely. Current level of training required for getting a driver's licence is a complete joke, and the attitude of most of the people who took or are taking the exam is just plain scary.
Eh, no. The single most useful tv I have ever owned is my current one, a 2011 Samsung, with a built-in dlna client. Fuck mucking about with two, three or more remotes, set-top boxes, and all that. I'm never going back to that.
The TVs aren't "Smart" for the consumers. They are "Smart" for the producers/advertisers/etc that want to data mine your television consumption (now including various streaming services).
Wow, I had no idea this[0] was a real thing. This actually makes me more nervous than Kinect webcam thing which is just small piece of duct tape away from getting resolved.
Absolutely agree. Computers should only be used to crunch numbers for particle scientists and not for sharing information, let alone for entertainment.
Right. Because the currently 'Smart' TVs are at the cutting edge of user interface design...
If Samsung/Sony/etc thought that they had chops to make a good device to connect a TV to the Internet, then maybe they wouldn't feel the need to package it with the display device, and just release it stand-alone.
I tend to agree with you, with one minor exception. If you're going to put an ethernet jack on a TV anyway because people seem to like having Netflix apps on their tv, I'd love it if there were some basic "dumb" software as well, like an RTSP/RTMP client.
At work, we have five of these Samsung Smart TVs and if I want to get a video signal from my control room on to one of them, I have to send it via HD-SDI into the main video router, then run coax from the router to the tv, then use an SDI to HDMI adapter (the cheapest of which is the monoprice $100 one). The picture ends up looking great, but it doesn't exactly feel like 2014.
Thanks for suggesting DLNA! (Stuff like this is why I keep coming back to HN)
I spent the afternoon trying various different approaches with my Sony Blu-Ray player that has DLNA support. It appears to only want to play files, not live streams. That said, I haven't exhausted all options yet and will have more tools to test with at the office. And from a video engineering perspective, RTSP/RTMP or even HLS as native formats would be way easier.
Despite the other commentators' views, I completely agree. My Panasonic's YouTube app cannot ffwd or rewind. WTF! For a video streaming app! Unbelievable.
What I do is fire up the XBox. It's a brain-dead app there too+, but at least I can rewind a few seconds if I missed a word or two.
+ Titles truncated too much; no comments viewer; unresponsive UI.
The problem is that the TV industry has l lagged behind the monitor industry in this understanding. A monitor knows it's justa screen... It does nothing without an attached system. I want a TV like that. Let the attached device control the on/off of the TV and the volume, and if you need to attach a peripheral, then it attaches to the device.
TV ports are digital now, they could power and give control to another device. Just stick a port on the back for the box . I actually love the stick form-factor that's growing now, let's you hide the device and get the sleek appearance of a smart TV without the cruft.
Define "attach peripheral". Is wireless display over DLNA ok?
Smart TVs actually have many nice features many people don't know about, dlna being the most prominent. Universal remote being another of them, with my TV I just say I have device x on hdmi2 and the TV remote will then be able to do almost anything I need to control on that device.
The built in apps are usually crap but I do see the value in having the ability to install them, why should I have to buy yet another device if I just want to watch Netflix, the TV already has the processing power to do so. Although arguably a chromecast is practically free compared to the price of a TV.
Samsung seems to understand that TVs get upgraded at a slower rate than the TV's smarts evolve and that software updates can only get you so far. They have started to ship something named the Evolution Kit. For around $200 it allows the user to unscrew the CPU module from their existing TV and install a more modern CPU/software combo.
Completely worthless. The CPU in a TV is never the problem. That's why they use such low powered CPUs to begin with. Nobody even makes a TV with a Core i7 even though there is no technical reason why they couldn't, because there is no demand for it. All anyone cares is that it can decode video at the native resolution, which the original CPU will be able to do until all the pixels wear out.
Well, power is a huge concern. We were looking at CPUs embedded in TVs, and 10 watts was about the limit for the processor board.
Regulations (esp in the EU) get into the game as well.
Life is better as a component that attaches with a cable. You can't really put a gaming console in a TV, not yet (not one you'd want to actually use, anyway).
No software? So hard coded firmware like on CRTs? Personally I like having TV guide functionality, the ability to browse USB media and stream content from iView straight from my TV.
Of course there are exceptions. My girlfriend being one of them. She's not capable of switching and input and using a different remote to control a different device - or even a universal remote to control both devices, for that matter. If she cannot get to Netflix with the push of a button, then I get a call every time she wants to watch Netflix when I'm not home. Smart TVs make technology accessible, and that's why they are popular.
Totally disagree. I love the fact that I can watch Netflix without some box or computer connected to my screen and an extra remote control. Having just the Smart TV is a cheaper and simpler solution, and is easier to set up.
The fact that Samsung haven't gotten things quite right with their Smart TVs doesn't mean I'm going to buy an Apple TV or some other box.
The whole idea of using phones to "call" people is absurd, practically barbaric. No one even does that anymore, having to do your own talking, memorizing numbers... it's too much work. This so-called 'feature' should be removed from all future phones and replaced with an app which correlates the social media posts from your friends and translates them to audio using natural speech synthesis.
Au contraire. They know how to produce software, they just don't seem to get networking at all and that's an issue I've seen on my developers out there.
Also, I'm sorry guys, but most of you don't really get advanced networking concepts. Just like I don't get many advanced software architecture topics. It's a matter of specialisation.
Unfortunately, the non-smart choices pretty much leave you with tv's that have a real lack of connectivity since they appear to be the 'lower end' now.
but then how would they phone home with automatic content recognition fingerprints so that samsung could tool up its secret tv-retargeting department? oh, wait...
I bet Samsung knows how to do software, it is just a minor wrong practice of implementation, it should have another URLs for failsafe. SmartTV s makes some tasks easy, at least it allows you to Skype someone on a nice and huge screen.
By your logic the cellphones should not be smart too, they should only call people, nothing else.
No. Please don't put words in my mouth. :) Cellphones are an entirely different product in several ways. Most notably, they are portable, need to stand alone without other helper devices, function as complete computers, and are upgraded approximately every 1-2 years by most users. TVs possess none of these attributes.
That's why it's great for a cellphone to run a full modern OS, and why it's NOT great for a TV to do so. TVs last across multiple tech generations. They should contain the bare minimum of software needed to display whatever content you pump into them. Nothing else.
'Most notably, they are portable, need to stand alone without other helper devices, function as complete computers, and are upgraded approximately every 1-2 years by most users. TVs possess none of these attributes.'
Each of these statements could equally apply to TVs (except, possibly, portability) and the fact that they haven't is merely circumstantial.
Yes, for the first 50 years of television's existence people tended to keep the same TV around for half a decade or more. But that's because fundamental changes happened between fifteen and thirty years apart - the switch from black and white to color, then the switch from broadcast to cable and satellite. The rate of innovation, and thus the turnover rate of individual devices, is increasing - just like with the telephone, which remained basically the same for the first several decades of its existence as well, until modern computer technology was invented.
Come to think of it the same thing is possibly true of desktop computers. My family was on the same computer between 1984/85 and 1993 - a Mac 512k. Then in 1994 or 95 we got a Performa 475. That lasted for about 5 years until I got a Mac clone - a Motorola Starmax 3000, which had a PowerPC processor. This laster about 2 -3 years. Then I built my first PC - that lasted for about two years. And each year since then I've used the same computer for 1 to 2 years at a time. The turnover period halved exponentially as computers got more and more sophisticated.
That TV above still has all the bare minimum to display whatever content you pump into it; the only part that's not functional in this post is its self-pumping, so to speak. As long as the TV can still function in dumb mode, having a smart mode is extra gravy that makes life so much easier.
Now if I could pair a Bluetooth keyboard with it...
No. The part that's not functional is everything else. "Smart" TVs tend to have all kinds of idiotic things like splash screens (what? why?), ads (seriously? ads on my TV that I paid for? no thanks), stupid software vulnerabilities and instability that a TV has no business having (see the topic this thread is based on), and all kinds of other nonsense.
Add in the fact that good TVs are basically always made by the companies who are the Very Worst at software (Samsung most prominently), and you have a recipe for digital heartburn.
No thanks. Dumb TVs forever.
Also, to respond to another comment, there's no correlation between a TV being "smart" and achieving a simple A/V setup with a single remote and a minimum of hassles. Unless you mean a negative correlation. It's very simple to achieve single-remote nirvana with a dumb TV. Plus you're not stuck with a dumb company's remote and software; you can pick your own, because a dumb TV will work with anything and not get in your way.
Singled out for especially thorough beatings are those TV makers who put actual physical buttons on their remotes for websites that might be gone next week. Seriously? No.
I can sympathize with the fact that Smart TVs have a worse overall experience for you. The ads and crapware that you can't get rid of just mess up what was once a simple experience of turning on the TV. However I think smart TVs are a good idea because the way that people consume visual media is changing. More people are ditching cable and turning to services like Netflix. If HBO ever decouples itself from cable, I'd imagine this trend would increase more so. Why should I watch YouTube on my computer screen when I can watch it on a larger screen (and in a more comfortable room)?
I don't think the problem is with Smart TVs, I think it's just the current execution of the idea.
Currently, yes. I don't think that excludes the option of someone creating a smart TV that doesn't require an additional device to plug into it though.
Such a smart TV would have to be really well done in order to justify keeping the same privacy-invasive firmware around for the 5-10 year life of a TV.
Why should it even have to check a Samsung URL? Why not just let each "app" decide if it can get to what it needs to?
Imagine if your Samsung phone couldn't do anything that required an internet connection because Samsung's site was down. This is pretty much the same thing, IMHO.
Samsung's site being down or unreachable should have no bearing on the performance of the Netflix app whatsoever.
Which servers do you think your Apple or Google smartphones ping to check for internet connectivity? ;-) It's true that apps generally perform reachability tests on their own sites but global reachability checks can still affect the preference of wifi over cellular, for instamce. And the preferred method on Android to check for reachability, unlike iOS samples, uses the phone's checks rather than pinging a host of your choice.
So just for fun I turned off the WAN connection on my router. Effectively, I had no internet access but I do have a wireless LAN with some local devices.
Safari on iOS did not tell me "you don't have internet connectivity", but it did say that servers were unreachable (not surprising) and it let me use local servers without issue. iOS seems to prefer WiFi to cellular when it's available as it didn't fall back during my limited test.
This is the behaviour that I'd expect from the Smart TV. Just because it can't get to Samsung doesn't mean it can't get to Netflix.
When you connect to a Wifi network, iOS checks http://www.apple.com/library/test/success.html to see if you're in a captive portal (and pop up a full screen webview to let you log into the wifi, or cancel to fail out of it)
I imagine if Apple's DNS settings got screwed up or their server was throwing up something other than "Success" due to an error, iOS devices around the world would claim their Wifi needed a login and wasn't working.
I have to agree with the parent post, at least partially, current smart TVs are useless. But.. next gen? Maybe they'll get better.
Smart TVs that exposed ubiquitous hardware - like i386 did for desktops and laptops - where you can choose to run Windows/Linux/BSD would be ideal.. I'd choose a mix of Plex and XBMC given the choice... They provide real value atop the TV platform. Samsung and friends have a huge amount of catch-up to do before they are real contenders when it comes to having the best software (and even then .. Plex/XBMC need to double down on their "Mom" useability..)
(I have a Samsung TV, and recommend them, but always tell people to avoid the SmartTV gimmick. Plex and a Chromecast give a 1000x better experience for those who download, and Netflix etc + Chromecast cover those who don't)
> Plex/XBMC need to double down on their "Mom" useability..
I happen to disagree. Post installation Plex is literally a pleasure to use if you use your smartphone/tablet as a remote and just beam content to your TV.
I've yet to see any semi-open system as powerful, functional, yet user friendly.
There are no exceptions.