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Sigh. I kind of miss the old, heavy, dumb-as-rocks TV I grew up with. It turned on instantly. Switching channels was instantaneous - none of this five second

by douche 10y ago

Sigh. I kind of miss the old, heavy, dumb-as-rocks TV I grew up with. It turned on instantly. Switching channels was instantaneous - none of this five second Comcast delay - although you did have to get up and punch the physical buttons on the cable tuner[1]. I don't think it even had coaxial input; I remember there were two leads[2] that were held on with a couple screws, so if the picture got snowy, you'd jiggle the wires around to get a better connection. edit: footnotes [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Push_button_cable_box.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Push_but... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin-lead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin-lead

torrent-of-ions 10y ago
I really don't understand how TVs are so bad. You can spend thousands of pounds on one and the interface will be incredibly slow, buggy and take ages to change channels. A £5 raspberry pi is capable of running a faster interface and my old DVB-t cards for PCs were able to switch muxes almost instantly. What is so difficult about putting this capability inside a television?
- 9point6 10y ago
  Because it's rare for hardware manufacturers to be good at software and also that those hardware manufacturers don't want to spend to license something better that 95% of their customers wouldn't really care about. To be fair in the current situation, it's not worth buying a TV for it's smart capabilities because they'll rapidly fall out of date. It makes more sense to buy something like the Nvidia Shield which can be swapped out without replacing the panel should it be needed
- c3833174 10y ago
  Even a cheap external digital tuner has a more features and a more usable interface than (dumb) TVs with builtin tuner. Samsung TV (2010): takes longer than a CRT to "warm up", remote died within 4years Sony TV (2008): half the screen gets covered by program info popup for some seconds every time some decoding error happens, remote died within 4years Telefunken TV (early 90's) + external tuner: original remote still works, screen turns on automatically when decoder is turned on and it also has built-in DVR and tetris
- coldpie 10y ago
  This is a market I've daydreamed about trying to enter. Build a high quality, dumb-as-shit TV and couple it with a small line of high quality receivers with beefy ARM processors and well written software. How hard can this possibly be?
  - heeen2 10y ago
    you would be surprised. For how many languages do you plan to localize? How many date-formats for the built-in clock? What about a virtual keyboards and input methods? do you support EPG? hbbtv? a rudimentary browser and everything that goes along with that? So you want to support netflix, are you ready to be certified by them, including system security and are you ready to give up everything lpglv3/gplv2 because of the anti tivoization clause? Will you support multi-tasking? wayland, x11 or something entirely different? You will want to make it usable from some kind of remote. Do you have QA to test all of that and are they knowledgeable about all the internationalization issues? You will need a specialist on tuning and decoding of ATSC, DVB, hdmi inputs, upsampling (motion interpolation) to 100hz, 120hz and above. color enhancements, dynamic brightness, the list goes on and on.
    - coldpie 10y ago
      Well, the receiver would also be pretty dumb. Definitely no networking. You'd hook a Chromecast (PS4, Xbox, etc.) into it to actually stream stuff. The receiver would provide UI for TV tuner switching, arbitrary audio/video routing, an equalizer, that kind of stuff.
madengr 10y ago
It did take a few seconds to warm up, but you'd get the nice crackly static charge on the screen, warm glow of the tube heater, and barely audible coil whine. My mother in law has a classic floor console tube (wood cabinet) hooked to google fiber.
bpicolo 10y ago
I got a new LG SmartTV about a week ago. Before it, I actually was on the same side of being annoyed by SmartTVs, but this one is actually a pretty smooth experience. I tossed out my Fire stick. I think TV manufacturers are, necessarily, going to keep working on the kinks. I don't think SmartTVs are an inherently bad idea, they just needed polish.
- lighthazard 10y ago
  An issue like OP posted shows the problem with SmartTVs - they need to be updated. If your SmartTV manufacturer wants to stop supporting an 'app', or can't handle the new specs for said app, you need to buy a new TV to keep your expected functionality. Whereas, if your FireTV stopped supporting an app, you could upgrade your FireTV for a fraction of the cost of upgrading your entire TV.

by douche 10y ago

torrent-of-ions 10y ago

I really don't understand how TVs are so bad. You can spend thousands of pounds on one and the interface will be incredibly slow, buggy and take ages to change channels. A £5 raspberry pi is capable of running a faster interface and my old DVB-t cards for PCs were able to switch muxes almost instantly. What is so difficult about putting this capability inside a television?

9point6 10y ago
Because it's rare for hardware manufacturers to be good at software and also that those hardware manufacturers don't want to spend to license something better that 95% of their customers wouldn't really care about. To be fair in the current situation, it's not worth buying a TV for it's smart capabilities because they'll rapidly fall out of date. It makes more sense to buy something like the Nvidia Shield which can be swapped out without replacing the panel should it be needed
c3833174 10y ago
Even a cheap external digital tuner has a more features and a more usable interface than (dumb) TVs with builtin tuner. Samsung TV (2010): takes longer than a CRT to "warm up", remote died within 4years Sony TV (2008): half the screen gets covered by program info popup for some seconds every time some decoding error happens, remote died within 4years Telefunken TV (early 90's) + external tuner: original remote still works, screen turns on automatically when decoder is turned on and it also has built-in DVR and tetris
coldpie 10y ago
This is a market I've daydreamed about trying to enter. Build a high quality, dumb-as-shit TV and couple it with a small line of high quality receivers with beefy ARM processors and well written software. How hard can this possibly be?
- heeen2 10y ago
  you would be surprised. For how many languages do you plan to localize? How many date-formats for the built-in clock? What about a virtual keyboards and input methods? do you support EPG? hbbtv? a rudimentary browser and everything that goes along with that? So you want to support netflix, are you ready to be certified by them, including system security and are you ready to give up everything lpglv3/gplv2 because of the anti tivoization clause? Will you support multi-tasking? wayland, x11 or something entirely different? You will want to make it usable from some kind of remote. Do you have QA to test all of that and are they knowledgeable about all the internationalization issues? You will need a specialist on tuning and decoding of ATSC, DVB, hdmi inputs, upsampling (motion interpolation) to 100hz, 120hz and above. color enhancements, dynamic brightness, the list goes on and on.
  - coldpie 10y ago
    Well, the receiver would also be pretty dumb. Definitely no networking. You'd hook a Chromecast (PS4, Xbox, etc.) into it to actually stream stuff. The receiver would provide UI for TV tuner switching, arbitrary audio/video routing, an equalizer, that kind of stuff.

madengr 10y ago

It did take a few seconds to warm up, but you'd get the nice crackly static charge on the screen, warm glow of the tube heater, and barely audible coil whine. My mother in law has a classic floor console tube (wood cabinet) hooked to google fiber.

bpicolo 10y ago

I got a new LG SmartTV about a week ago. Before it, I actually was on the same side of being annoyed by SmartTVs, but this one is actually a pretty smooth experience. I tossed out my Fire stick. I think TV manufacturers are, necessarily, going to keep working on the kinks. I don't think SmartTVs are an inherently bad idea, they just needed polish.

lighthazard 10y ago
An issue like OP posted shows the problem with SmartTVs - they need to be updated. If your SmartTV manufacturer wants to stop supporting an 'app', or can't handle the new specs for said app, you need to buy a new TV to keep your expected functionality. Whereas, if your FireTV stopped supporting an app, you could upgrade your FireTV for a fraction of the cost of upgrading your entire TV.