5 ms·

If that was the case, they could sell a TV with 5 HDMI ports with a Chromecast pre-plugged into one of them. But I suspect after a year or two people would buy

by mnutt 10y ago

If that was the case, they could sell a TV with 5 HDMI ports with a Chromecast pre-plugged into one of them. But I suspect after a year or two people would buy a new $35 Chromecast, rather than replacing their entire TV.

dogma1138 10y ago
They can still do it, most people don't use Chromecast most people want the YouTube, NetFlix, W/E logo on the box. And they sell a TV with 5 HDMI ports because their competitors sell 4, this what happens when you have a features arms race, there are only what 2-3 panel makes so most TV's are pretty identical (like Cars that you only have a few chassis/wheelbase for each price range) so to have the advantage they load the TV's with other features like more ports, better WIFI, more this more that (just like cars which sell you BS things you don't need).
- int_19h 10y ago
  Chromecast doesn't have to be a literal Chromecast. It just has to be some kind of dongle that uses a standard interface (e.g. HDMI, and maybe USB for remote command handling), and can be upgraded on its own. Of course, the TV manufacturers don't want to do that, because they profit when you have to upgrade the entire TV.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    They don't want to do it because the consumer would not accept it as a solution because the minute that their competitor ditches that dongle and puts those features internally they have the "advantage". Sunny sells you dongles that take a port, buy symsyng and have all your ports for other devices. If you are an advanced enough user that you can use a streamer/dongle/set top box or w/e it doesn't matter what the TV has as long as it comes with display input ports. For the majority of the shopping channel BIG BOX mart consumers this isn't really an option and they want one box that does everything even if it's not the most optimal solution. What you are asking for is simply something that the TV maker has no reason or interest to do not because they are greedy but because they don't want to deal with that. They aren't stopping you from buying whatever dongle you want so what exactly is the complaint? The majority of the cost of the TV is still the tuner, panel, and LED and optical assembly the 11$ SoC they use for the smart features won't make the TV's cheaper. If somehow removing those features would allow them to focus on more important things I would understand but in reality it doesn't add up to much if anything.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      >the 11$ SoC they use for the smart features won't make the TV's cheaper And that's the good news in all this. I can buy and use the TVs of my choice and the reality is that I don't really need to pay a material premium because they have YouTube which may or may not continue to work after some day in the future. So I can choose to ignore those features if I want. It's not really a choice between buying SmartTV for $X and DumbTV (which is otherwise equivalent) for $X/2.
      - Silhouette 10y ago
        My concern about the "smart" TVs isn't things I can ignore, it's things I can't. For example, I don't want a TV with its own network connection, a built-in camera and microphone, and hideously insecure firmware right in my living room. Literally the only controls I ever use on my TV are power/standby, volume, and input selector. Everything else already comes from external sources like a set top box or PVR or Chromecast, and it's not like only A/V nerds have that arrangement. I just want good video, good audio, and decent manufacturing quality and longevity. How on earth did we lose the plot as badly as we seem to have with the "smart" marketing?
        dogma1138 10y ago
        Then you want to buy a display not a TV they are sold as their own product there is a link somewhere below. And even still if you buy a smart TV you do not have to plug it into the network, a streamer will work regardless of what the TV can do.
        Silhouette 10y ago
        Unfortunately, being able to see and hear the actual model you're thinking of buying is rather important if you care about audio and visual quality, and certainly in my city, even the relatively high-end stores have been full of "smart" models lately. Also, the next logical step for "smart" devices is to establish their own wireless connections via alternative channels if they aren't connected to a household network. Privacy is fast becoming a thing of the past if you let anything with sensors onto the premises, and short of wrapping their home or office in a Faraday cage, there is disturbingly little anyone can do about it as more manufacturers reach agreements with network providers to handle their phone-home data needs.
  - rietta 10y ago
    Because there is absolutely nothing that confuses many people more than having more than one remote! My mother still cannot figure out how to change the volume on my dad's home theater setup.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - scurvy 10y ago
      HDMI CEC fixes that. It works remarkably well.
      - toast0 10y ago
        What devices do you have where HDMI cec works remarkably well? (and what year did they come from) My experience was that cross brand interop is not quite there, but the experience is so inconsistent it doesn't matter. If configured to do it, turning on the blu ray player would consistent turn on the tv, but only sometimes set the right input. That kind of thing.
        scurvy 10y ago
        All 2016 and all Sony. You gotta stay in the same family. It's like the Apple ecosystem.
  - faragon 10y ago
    They already do: DLNA. Which is pretty much like what Chromecast, and its clones, do.
    - IntelMiner 10y ago
      Going from (what would now be considered "old school") an original Xbox running XBMC to a friends Playstation 3 with DLNA felt like a monumental step back With the Xbox, I simply mapped a Samba share (something like \\NAS\XBMC\) full of content and it brought it up without issue and simply played it DLNA meanwhile every time something changed, I'd have to restart the whole thing to regenerate the "index". It also played maybe half the file formats XBMC did, despite being newer and an order of magnitude more powerful Things have finally more or less come full circle again, these days I can run "Plex" on my NAS to just spew out media to everything, as long as it runs the Plex app anyway (which covers my Xbox One and Phone, at least). The only downside is having to pay for it, of course

by mnutt 10y ago

dogma1138 10y ago

They can still do it, most people don't use Chromecast most people want the YouTube, NetFlix, W/E logo on the box. And they sell a TV with 5 HDMI ports because their competitors sell 4, this what happens when you have a features arms race, there are only what 2-3 panel makes so most TV's are pretty identical (like Cars that you only have a few chassis/wheelbase for each price range) so to have the advantage they load the TV's with other features like more ports, better WIFI, more this more that (just like cars which sell you BS things you don't need).

int_19h 10y ago
Chromecast doesn't have to be a literal Chromecast. It just has to be some kind of dongle that uses a standard interface (e.g. HDMI, and maybe USB for remote command handling), and can be upgraded on its own. Of course, the TV manufacturers don't want to do that, because they profit when you have to upgrade the entire TV.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  They don't want to do it because the consumer would not accept it as a solution because the minute that their competitor ditches that dongle and puts those features internally they have the "advantage". Sunny sells you dongles that take a port, buy symsyng and have all your ports for other devices. If you are an advanced enough user that you can use a streamer/dongle/set top box or w/e it doesn't matter what the TV has as long as it comes with display input ports. For the majority of the shopping channel BIG BOX mart consumers this isn't really an option and they want one box that does everything even if it's not the most optimal solution. What you are asking for is simply something that the TV maker has no reason or interest to do not because they are greedy but because they don't want to deal with that. They aren't stopping you from buying whatever dongle you want so what exactly is the complaint? The majority of the cost of the TV is still the tuner, panel, and LED and optical assembly the 11$ SoC they use for the smart features won't make the TV's cheaper. If somehow removing those features would allow them to focus on more important things I would understand but in reality it doesn't add up to much if anything.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    >the 11$ SoC they use for the smart features won't make the TV's cheaper And that's the good news in all this. I can buy and use the TVs of my choice and the reality is that I don't really need to pay a material premium because they have YouTube which may or may not continue to work after some day in the future. So I can choose to ignore those features if I want. It's not really a choice between buying SmartTV for $X and DumbTV (which is otherwise equivalent) for $X/2.
    - Silhouette 10y ago
      My concern about the "smart" TVs isn't things I can ignore, it's things I can't. For example, I don't want a TV with its own network connection, a built-in camera and microphone, and hideously insecure firmware right in my living room. Literally the only controls I ever use on my TV are power/standby, volume, and input selector. Everything else already comes from external sources like a set top box or PVR or Chromecast, and it's not like only A/V nerds have that arrangement. I just want good video, good audio, and decent manufacturing quality and longevity. How on earth did we lose the plot as badly as we seem to have with the "smart" marketing?
      - dogma1138 10y ago
        Then you want to buy a display not a TV they are sold as their own product there is a link somewhere below. And even still if you buy a smart TV you do not have to plug it into the network, a streamer will work regardless of what the TV can do.
        Silhouette 10y ago
        Unfortunately, being able to see and hear the actual model you're thinking of buying is rather important if you care about audio and visual quality, and certainly in my city, even the relatively high-end stores have been full of "smart" models lately. Also, the next logical step for "smart" devices is to establish their own wireless connections via alternative channels if they aren't connected to a household network. Privacy is fast becoming a thing of the past if you let anything with sensors onto the premises, and short of wrapping their home or office in a Faraday cage, there is disturbingly little anyone can do about it as more manufacturers reach agreements with network providers to handle their phone-home data needs.
- rietta 10y ago
  Because there is absolutely nothing that confuses many people more than having more than one remote! My mother still cannot figure out how to change the volume on my dad's home theater setup.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - scurvy 10y ago
    HDMI CEC fixes that. It works remarkably well.
    - toast0 10y ago
      What devices do you have where HDMI cec works remarkably well? (and what year did they come from) My experience was that cross brand interop is not quite there, but the experience is so inconsistent it doesn't matter. If configured to do it, turning on the blu ray player would consistent turn on the tv, but only sometimes set the right input. That kind of thing.
      - scurvy 10y ago
        All 2016 and all Sony. You gotta stay in the same family. It's like the Apple ecosystem.
- faragon 10y ago
  They already do: DLNA. Which is pretty much like what Chromecast, and its clones, do.
  - IntelMiner 10y ago
    Going from (what would now be considered "old school") an original Xbox running XBMC to a friends Playstation 3 with DLNA felt like a monumental step back With the Xbox, I simply mapped a Samba share (something like \\NAS\XBMC\) full of content and it brought it up without issue and simply played it DLNA meanwhile every time something changed, I'd have to restart the whole thing to regenerate the "index". It also played maybe half the file formats XBMC did, despite being newer and an order of magnitude more powerful Things have finally more or less come full circle again, these days I can run "Plex" on my NAS to just spew out media to everything, as long as it runs the Plex app anyway (which covers my Xbox One and Phone, at least). The only downside is having to pay for it, of course