17 ms·

Please make your products work with URLs

343 points by anderspitman 7y ago

mrr54 7y ago
Is this rendering Markdown to HTML on the fly in my web browser? Just render the markdown to HTML once on the server and upload it for the love of God. That being said, the article is entirely correct.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Because then when you edit the markdown you have to take an additional step.
  - danaris 7y ago
    That depends entirely on how you have your workflow set up.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      Sure, it's a matter of how complicated you want your workflow to be. The way things are right now, the author can edit the markdown file directly and be done with it. It's simple and straight-forward, low-effort and low cognitive load.
      - danaris 7y ago
        I would imagine it would be possible to set up their system such that they could edit the Markdown file, and a helper process would immediately pick up that the file had been edited and re-run the local rendering to static HTML.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        Yes, great, now you've complicated the workflow. What if the service fails to run? Or fails to pick up the changes? Now you've got another thing to think about. Is the overengineering so ingrained in the average HN user that they cannot see why someone might not bother with that?
        danaris 7y ago
        In the everyday active workflow—the actions the author actually has to take each time—it doesn't add any complication. It merely adds complexity in the processing, which is certainly something worth considering. However, in a case like this, the alternative—as we can already see—is to add complexity for every single reader on the front-end. So there's not really a perfect solution here—either the author or the reader has to deal with some complexity.
- anderspitman 7y ago
  Please see my explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862
  - droithomme 7y ago
    IMNSHO, it would be better to fix your site rather than post "please see explanation" over and over in multiple comments. Don't you think?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
pba 7y ago
Maybe this was the whole point of the author's post.. but I'm fairly certain the reason the author's use case is not easily workable is because the OEMs mentioned are deliberately discouraging the ability to play anything that is not inside some sort of DRM control. They don't want you to just be able to play any URL. Its not a technical problem, its a content management problem.
- valiant55 7y ago
  When I first bought a Chromecast I was disappointed how much of a pain it was to play content I already had on my computer. I shouldn't have to spin up a Plex server just to get acceptable streaming capabilities.
  - psanford 7y ago
    These days you can cast with VLC which makes this much easier.
  - lozaning 7y ago
    The VideoStream chrome plugin is spectacular for this. Of all the chrome plugins I've installed over the years, this is still the only one I continue to donate towards. https://getvideostream.com/ https://getvideostream.com/
  - odensc 7y ago
    You can do this natively with Chrome. Just go to the overflow menu in the top right > Cast... > Sources > Cast file.
- babypuncher 7y ago
  AirPlay doesn't have this design philosophy and wouldn't have given this user a problem. Unfortunately AirPlay itself is proprietary and only supported by Apple devices and some TVs.
  - mbreese 7y ago
    You know, I was going to reply that the AppleTV isn't a good comparison here because they specifically wanted something that worked with URLs. But then I thought about it, and the URL thing is a red herring. That's not what they really want -- that's an implementation detail. What they really want is the ability to play something from their local server on their TV. This is totally do-able in the Apple eco-system. The URL thing is exactly what you don't want. Who wants to type a URL into their TV using their phone as a virtual keyboard or not? (Which the AppleTV + iPhone combo does this great too...) The best option is where you could "cast" any video/media you're watching on a phone or computer up to a TV. The AppleTV + iPhone (or Mac) combo does this great.
moondev 7y ago
drag mp4 to browser then cast it?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  You can't cast arbitrary things like that except through desktop/whole screen casting, which is not at all what the author is talking about (because it sucks).
  - bhandziuk 7y ago
    You can cast files from your computer though, right? Which is different than desktop/full screen casting.
jchw 7y ago
I hate smart TVs with a burning passion. They accomplish literally the bare minimum to keep people happy and sometimes not even that. Samsung’s Tizen OS is the most genuinely frustrating experience I’ve had with a consumer device outside of printing. Advertisements on my home screen that can’t be disabled, dubious privacy, bugs that require me to reboot my TV, and of course security so bad that they recommend installing a virus scanner? Yeah, that’s great. It’s got a web browser at least, though that’s the only positive thing I can really say about the web browsing experience. Can it run software? If you can find it! There’s no app ecosystem here, just the big apps it absolutely had to have to be worthy of shipping. If you want to watch Twitch.TV streams for example you are SoL. There was an unofficial Twitch app, but it was removed from the store. I tried to set up development for Tizen. Yeah not gonna try that again. I always thought getting started with development on Android or iOS was a little cumbersome but it really doesn’t compare. Even getting into developer mode was challenging since I had trouble finding the instructions that were pertinent to my model of TV, and that was the last thing I accomplished successfully. So I’ve got a desktop computer hooked up to my smart TV and now I am contemplating paying more for a TV so I can get one that doesn’t have any of this dumb crap on it. The only downside? You can’t really run many 10 ft versions of things, and there’s not many good casting solutions. Lame, but every time I run into a new pathological case with the TV OS and its set of subpar apps I reconsider how much it’s even worth to have fancy 10ft interfaces and smart phone integration. (If you are looking for a casting solution for an HTPC running Windows, I tried Reflector 3 briefly and it looks pretty good. But I personally do not run Windows on my own HTPC, so I’m stuck in the dark.)
- bagacrap 7y ago
  Can't you just remove the smart TV's internet access (no wifi pw, no Ethernet) and treat it as dumb? Then attach a Chromecast or whatever "smart" dongle you think has the best UI.
  - jchw 7y ago
    This is definitely one approach, but I would actually just prefer a full computer, because I do sometimes run other software that is simply not available on any dongles. One downside though is that I only have a couple HDMI ports to work with, so between a Nintendo Switch and a full desktop PC I'm already using all of the ports. Also, even though I love the NVIDIA Shield, I find it does not really integrate as well as I hoped via HDMI CEC. It's a bit clunky to be honest, and though it's cool I can use the TV remote over CEC, it is definitely not as good as using the Shield remote, due to latency and some weird behavioral differences. So there are also downsides like that, too...
dredmorbius 7y ago
Irony: blank page w/o JS, fails in Outline.com.
- AndrewStephens 7y ago
  Well this is one way to write a web page. <body> <div id='rain-container'></div> <div id='root'></div> <script src='/deps/marked/lib/marked.js'></script> <script src='/deps/highlight.js/src/highlight.js'></script>  <script type='module' src='/components/core.js'></script> <script type='module' src='/components/tutorials.js'></script> <script type='module' src='/components/about.js'></script>  <script type='module' src='/index.js'></script> </body>
  - egeozcan 7y ago
    It's doing, ...interesting stuff, like rendering markdown on the client, but at least all the required assets are self-served. So it works with uMatrix. Hey, that's something in 2020! 15 years ago we were complaining about the .doc files, now we have the XML based .docx files that are at the very least parseable but we lost the XML based web in between. Now every website implements their own document format which needs to be opened with the executable it sends next to the content. You can try to parse the markup bits but you'll get zero semantic content, that's for sure.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    From the site: I am a data visualization software engineer. Based on this web site, this is a definition of "software engineer" of which I was previously unaware.
    - gberger 7y ago
      Presumably, he makes _data visualization software_. For example Tableau.
      - 7y ago
jxramos 7y ago
HTTP is the lingua franca of the internet. When you build stuff, please make it work with simple URLs. Can't argue with that can we?
- droithomme 7y ago
  Or even alternatively "When you build stuff, please make it work with HTML."
  - zzo38computer 7y ago
    When you build stuff, what to make it work with depend what it is, I think. HTML is not suitable for all uses, and URLs is not suitable for all uses, and PNG is not suitable for all uses, etc.
egdod 7y ago
Please make your stuff work without JavaScript. This is a simple text-only web page (in courier new ffs) and it refuses to load with JavaScript disabled. There is no valid reason for this.
- gred 7y ago
  I had the same thought. From the article: > Here is my plea: when you build hardware/software, please make it support the primitive, simple case.
- anderspitman 7y ago
  Please see my explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862
  - zzo38computer 7y ago
    One possibility is to fix it so that there is a <noscript> block which contains a link to the Markdown source (or if the way it is set up makes that difficult, instructions for accessing it). I highly suggest doing this if you do not want to prerender it on the server. (I saw another comment which mentioned the Markdown file, and was able to read it from that.)
    - anderspitman 7y ago
      Done
imhoguy 7y ago
VLC for Android (TV) can stream from URLs nicely.
Animats 7y ago
So you can't watch porn and anime?
skybrian 7y ago
I haven't kept up with the state of video streaming, so for me this raises more questions than answers: - How inefficient is video streaming when you're downloading chunks of a compressed, static file over a flaky Internet connection? - Was it worse before? Would it work better with QUIC or HTTP/3?
- pjc50 7y ago
  Inefficient compared to what? Fundamentally you have to shift the same N bits per second at a reasonably uniform speed regardless of how the transfer is done. Your main enemy in this process is, as usual, middleboxes, which may be a bigger problem for the advanced protocols. This is why Apple created the bizarre but effective HLS system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming
  - skybrian 7y ago
    Inefficient compared to whatever optimized, adaptive, video-oriented protocols Netscape, YouTube, and Chromecast are using. I'm wondering how much you lose by doing it the simple way?
    - anderspitman 7y ago
      I'm assuming most video streaming is done over HTTP these days, as sad as that is. But now you have me wondering if the big boys are using something different.
stefan_ 7y ago
URLs are an utter failure, normal people don't understand them, the only protocol they are ever used for is HTTP, special characters are a mess, IPv6 turns the insanity up to 11. The one other use of URLs has been tricking unwitting users into launching vulnerable applications with malicious input, because applications registering themselves for protocols was a thing once added, then never critically thought about, ever. URLs are simply not the forward case.
- zzo38computer 7y ago
  URLs are used for protocols other than HTTP(S), although it is most common with HTTP(S). Other URI schemes are sometimes used where a URL is needed to make a link to something else (such as in a HTML document, or a Gopher menu item that links to something using a protocol which Gopher does not support linking to (HTTP being one of these protocols), or opening local files or other stuff in a web browser, or for some uses in RDF). But I agree that IPv6 makes it messy. (I had my own idea which is version 10 (numbers 7, 8, 9 are unusable) which uses the same format like version 4 but with sixteen octets instead of four, and some other differences too.)
SnowingXIV 7y ago
Please make your stuff work with reader view.
- anderspitman 7y ago
  Please see my explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862
calvinmorrison 7y ago
warning: this page will not load without javascript
- anderspitman 7y ago
  Please see my explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862
- zzo38computer 7y ago
  Anyways, it has been fixed with a link to the Github source to access the text in case you do not have JavaScript, so you can just use that.
unnouinceput 7y ago
Quote "HTTP is the lingua franca of the internet. When you build stuff, please make it work with simple URLs." Says the one who can't have a simple HTTP only site and I had to enable JS on NoScript in order to read his rant.
- mtarnovan 7y ago
  Looks like you're mistaking HTTP for HTML... The article makes no mention of HTML/JS.
  - mbreese 7y ago
    No, this is very much an HTTP thing. When you request a resource over a URL, you should get the resource... instead with their site you get an HTML page with a bunch of javascript includes... that then retrieves content. It works, but it is opposite of what they are arguing for. Now, this is this person's personal site... they can do what they want. But it's pretty ironic to put a rant about working with URLs on a site with a design like this that doesn't work with simple URLs.
    - anderspitman 7y ago
      The URL does work. I don't say anything in the post about reading what's on the other end. What you're saying would be like if I had said in the article that I should be able to give the Roku a video format it doesn't support and expect it to work. My website should work for anyone using a browser with default settings. I never claimed it was a static HTML site. It's an interactive JavaScript application.
      - mtarnovan 7y ago
        That's exactly my point. It's a website. It's meant to be consumed by browsers, so it's fine if the served resource is a SPA that renders the content lazily or whatever. The claim that SPAs somehow violate HTTP seems weird to me.
kelnos 7y ago
Yes, please. I was at an Airbnb in Austin last week, which had a Roku device attached to the TV. I usually bring along a Chromcast (or at least the proper adapters to get HDMI out of my laptop) when I travel, but this time I forgot. I just wanted to play a video file I had on my laptop. I googled around, found that Roku appears to support DLNA, and tried to use Universal Media Server on my laptop. The Roku did find the media server, but kept claiming that there were no files available. Not sure if it was a video format issue (main-profile h264, ac3, and mkv are listed as supported by Roku) or something else, but at the end of the day I just couldn't get it to work, and I was bummed and frustrated. Maybe play-this-URL functionality wouldn't've helped, but at least I would have felt more confident that it was a format issue rather than just some dumb problem with the huge DLNA tech stack.
throwaway55554 7y ago
Please render your markdown on your server and not my client. You're wasting my battery, man. Shame on you!
- manicdee 7y ago
  Quite the oversight for someone wanting TV manufacturers to lift their game huh :D
reggieband 7y ago
> However, there doesn't seem to be any widely implemented standard for playing plain URLs, only walled gardens like the YouTube app. I've had experience overseeing the implementation of a simple Chromecast application. It was a relatively painless process and worked pretty flawlessly with minimal code. It may not be a standard but it is totally accessible to anyone with a bit of Javascript experience. I could imagine an evening hack session that would be a Chromecast application (maybe a browser extension) that you can paste urls into and it would play that way. Without even bothering looking, I would bet such an extension already exists in the Chrome Web Store.
deanebarker 7y ago
I wrote this five years ago, and it actually made from the front page of Hacker News back then. "We Suck At HTTP" >"We have broken HTTP. We’ve done it for years in fits and starts, but apps have completely broken it. HTTP was a good specification which we’ve steadily whittled away." https://gadgetopia.com/post/9236 https://gadgetopia.com/post/9236
- anderspitman 7y ago
  This is a great post. Thanks for sharing.
mumblemumble 7y ago
> Here is my plea: when you build hardware/software, please make it support the primitive, simple case. Says a webpage that is just a couple empty divs w/o JS, and, with JS, is 4 hyperlinks, a few paragraphs of text, and absolutley nothing (aside from google-analytics) that ever needed any JS in the first place, let alone 5 or 6 files' worth of it. But, I think that conflict really speaks to the funamental issue, here: Thinking about the primitive, simple case is often, from the creator's perspective, more work than it's worth.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- derp_dee_derp 7y ago
  As much as HN wants to whine about it, the truth is that Javascript is a primitive, basic, use case of the internet.
  - madeofpalk 7y ago
    I mean, if you're going to wax lyrical about how what your making should support that basics, you should at least first make sure you're doing the same thing. Otherwise, you're just demonstrating exactly why Roku doesn't have a way to input a URL to play media.
  - whatisthiseven 7y ago
    JS can be a highly supported tool, but it isn't itself a primitive use-case. It is an enabler of use-cases and, to OP's point, JS for the sake of loading JS isn't useful if the content of the site really didn't need it.
  - ysavir 7y ago
    The very purpose of JavaScript is to be dynamic and changing. "Primitive" and "Basic" are not apt adjectives, especially when the page in question is entirely static.
  - nkrisc 7y ago
    How is JS related to a page with only text and hyperlinks?
cookiecaper 7y ago
I have two standalone Rokus that are a major PITA because of this. There's no way to connect to an NFS share, SMB share, or other local storage directly from the system itself. There's no VLC app for Roku. The best you can do is use the rudimentary "Roku Media Browser" to page through a DLNA server, which means you have to set up either something like Plex (which sucks for a lot of reasons) or at least miniDLNA to access files. It's really disappointing. I've recently installed Jellyfin and even put the Roku in "Developer Mode" so I could install the Jellyfin Roku app from GitHub. This is better because unlike Plex, it won't transcode arbitrarily, but it's far worse because the Jellyfin Roku app crashes frequently, has only basic page-based navigation ("go to page 23 for media that starts with 'T'"), and it requires running a heavy media server for no real reason. I'm still reluctantly using Plex for the time being. When I need something that I haven't put in Plex, I fall back to the Android interface on the FireTV and use VLC to access the NAS over SMB. It still rankles that Roku won't allow an easy way to access local media.
zokier 7y ago
Few minutes of googling found this, and few other similar thingies that send urls to chromecast just fine. http://movies.foamsnet.com/url/ http://movies.foamsnet.com/url/ discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7365256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7365256
- anderspitman 7y ago
  I don't have a Chromecast. I have a Roku TV. One of the implied points of this article is that the solution I'm suggesting would work for any device as a fallback, let them implement whatever other fancy protocols they want.
  - zokier 7y ago
    > However, there doesn't seem to be any widely implemented standard for playing plain URLs, only walled gardens like the YouTube app. But chromecast is essentially that standard you ask for, otherwise "apps" like I linked wouldn't work. Heck, as far as I know (I'm not really a Chrome user), Chrome has this functionality built-in, so you can send URLs directly from browser to a chromecast device.
    - anderspitman 7y ago
      As I said in the post, I'm all for these technologies. I'm just asking for a copy-paste style alternative for when they don't work.
X-Cubed 7y ago
This is the sort of use-case that the DLNA specification was intended for. It's not quite as simple as the author might want, but it is well supported. The TV can act as a Renderer for content pushed to it, or as a Player for content pulled from a Server. All the smart TVs I've used implement this functionality. VLC and Kodi support this too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Alliance#Specification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Allianc...
- pjc50 7y ago
  DLNA is slightly maddening because it's clearly supposed to be the solution, but was built by set-top-box UI people and therefore has terrible UX. Basically Chromecast exists because DLNA is too fiddly for the average user.
- anderspitman 7y ago
  Any idea how to do this on a Roku TV with a video URL? Because I couldn't figure it out.
jefftk 7y ago
I think it should be possible to do this with the browser and the Chromecast protocol, since my understanding is "play a video from this URL" is the core of the protocol. Someone could build a website following https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/chrome_sender/integrate https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/chrome_sender/integr... where you paste the URL of a video and are given the option to "cast" it to the TV. This would be some work, but only one person would need to do it and then anyone could "cast" a URL. (Disclosure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)
- rahimnathwani 7y ago
  Right, someone already built it :) https://chromecast.link/ https://chromecast.link/
  - bruckie 7y ago
    It looks like https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rabidgremlin.web2cast https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rabidgreml... may be the equivalent in Android app form.
    - rahimnathwani 7y ago
      Does it work with videos? The product description mentions HTML and static image formats. Neither the description nor any of the reviews mention videos. I guess I could just spend 99 cents and 2 minutes to find out...
  - Martin_Scrafalo 7y ago
    :(
mongol 7y ago
> However, there doesn't seem to be any widely implemented standard for playing plain URLs, only walled gardens like the YouTube app. Actually, I think the standard is UPnP / DLNA. After setting up a UPNP server I can "cast" most things from Android by using the share button, and then choosing a UPnP app, such as Bubble UPnP. I don't know if the author's tv supports this, but many do.
- anderspitman 7y ago
  Why should I have to run a separate server to play a video from URL?
mayneack 7y ago
There's an android/roku app that makes this fairly seamless in all the instances I've tried. It even does a good job of finding videos in a web page if you don't have a direct link. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instantbits.cast.webvideo https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instantbit... http://www.webvideocaster.com/ http://www.webvideocaster.com/
- anderspitman 7y ago
  Yup, that app got me really close. It even worked for about a minute, but I was unable to reproduce the success (that was infuriating).
  - mayneack 7y ago
    Hmm, that's weird. I use it for hours at a time on most Sundays. I'm sort of surprised how well it works.
ryanbrunner 7y ago
I have a love / hate relationship with Chromecast. When it works, it works well, and it is nice to just press a button and whatever I'd like to use is up on my TV. It does feel a little magic. But even when you're using compatible tools / devices that should work together, sometimes they mysteriously don't, and there's absolutely no way to know what's going wrong. Approximately 25% of the time, my Chromecast device just doesn't seem to exist according to my computer. Both my computer and the device have network connectivity, but there's just no ability to cast. I'm reduced to randomly restarting things in a vain hope that things will work.
- Spivak 7y ago
  The intermittent connectivity problem might be the result of a chatty network. mDNS is really sensitive to this and clients don’t wait very long before deciding that they got all the responses from devices. If you stick your Chromecast and your phone in their own broadcast domain I think the problem would disappear. Unfortunately it’s not a solution to whatever is spamming your network but it would tell you that that’s the problem.
  - coda_ 7y ago
    Any suggestions on how to determine what is causing the chatty network?
    - namibj 7y ago
      Wireshark should help. Otherwise, it's a pretty open-ended question.
- foobarandgrill 7y ago
  What often happens to me is my chromecast audio doesn't show up on my desktop chrome but does on my other devices and I have to reconnect my computer's wifi and restart the browser for the chromecast to appear. Really wish they have a simple "refresh" button that lets you try checking for more chromecasts.
boutad 7y ago
As a workaround, can't you load the URL in Chrome and then cast the tab or load the URL in VLC and cast from that?
somishere 7y ago
I don't use chrome BUT I'm sure you can cast urls directly from chrome, even from the local filesystem. A walled garden perhaps, but no need for YouTube.
Waterluvian 7y ago
Smart TV's are trying to be walled gardens, no? I would love a tv that trivially played media from an http server.
unwiredben 7y ago
You might want to try http://devtools.web.roku.com/#stream-tester-tool http://devtools.web.roku.com/#stream-tester-tool as a way to test specific media files and streams without having to code a full channel.
anderspitman 7y ago
Author here. Sorry for those having trouble viewing the site. That's obviously never the intention. The current incarnation is actually a bit of an experiment. Unfortunately, my blog is only occasionally tested against front page traffic so I don't always get a feel for what's not working. That said, I assure you I am intimately familiar with the tradeoffs of different methods of delivering HTML. TL;DR it's my personal site and I'll do what I want with it. It's for fun. The previous version of this site used a static site generator I wrote myself[0]. I switched to client-side JS rendering for several reasons. First, having a build step creates a dependency on both the build tool and a specific action. If you clone my blog[1] (with submodules) you should be able to host it exactly as-is from the repo. No build step required. I hold a fairly extreme view[2] on dependencies. Second, I wanted user interactions within my site to be very fast[3]. After the initial load, subsequent navigations are much faster (and consistent) than retrieving a new static HTML page. Obviously once the HTML is cached that's no longer true, but I'm optimizing for first-time visitors. Though I should give more consideration to the fact that most of you are only going to look at the one linked page. Also, I plan to eventually add some quirky little things to the site which require maintaining state between navigations. For example, I thought it would be fun to integrate a little 2D adventure game with a character you can move around to scroll the content. EDIT: I should also acknowledge that while I defend the use of JS on my site, I concede that supporting non-JS use cases would be far more true to supporting "the simple case" as fallback. Simply supporting browsers in the default configuration isn't a very high bar. Browsers are incredibly complicated VMs. I would actually argue that my text-heavy content should be accessible via curl, like my other[4] projects[5]. I've never tried making a site browseable with curl before. That might be a fun experiment. EDIT2: <noscript> should be working now, with a link to the raw content on GitHub, per danShumway's suggestion (thanks Dan!). [0] https://github.com/anderspitman/assg https://github.com/anderspitman/assg [1] https://github.com/anderspitman/anderspitman.net https://github.com/anderspitman/anderspitman.net [2] https://anderspitman.net/11/dependencies/ https://anderspitman.net/11/dependencies/ [3] https://anderspitman.net/13/64-ms/ https://anderspitman.net/13/64-ms/ [4] https://patchbay.pub/ https://patchbay.pub/ [5] https://emauth.io/ https://emauth.io/
- layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
  >I'm optimizing for first-time visitors As a first-time visitor I had a very bad experience while waiting for your JS to download and generate the content - in the meantime I was looking at a completely empty black screen. Optimizing for first-time user experience means giving your visitors the content they came for as soon as possible, which is not what you’re doing.
bhauer 7y ago
Yes, agreed. In fact, I agree so much that I just use a big monitor with a computer attached for my "living room" television consumption. It turns out computers can consume URLs pretty well.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- zzo38computer 7y ago
  That look like good enough, but do you have a IR receiver for the computer? If I have to touch the TV monitor itself to switch on/off it is OK (and I would prefer it this way rather than using a remote control, I think), but would like to have a remote control to pause and rewind and so on.
crazygringo 7y ago
I don't believe I've ever, once, in my entire history of browsing the internet, come across a direct hyperlink to a video file to play in the browser. Virtually universally, videos are embedded in webpages, and occasionally a link is provided that downloads rather than plays a video. So I think this is just a use-case issue: the average user is exceedingly unlikely to ever want to watch a raw video file specified by a URL, because you just don't come across them in the wild. So therefore Roku didn't build that feature. And that's 100% justifiable for a consumer product. There's no philosophical reason why a consumer product should support computational primitives like URL's or files when the use case is rare or non-existent for the target market. I mean, if this were a command-line utility then it would be a different story... but it's not.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  Before Youtube this was a thing, just as streaming radio was a thing before Pandora. You'd get a URL and the URL would stream radio or video instead of being a website. Obviously the protocol descriptor would be different from HTTP/HTTPS.
  - Izkata 7y ago
    It wasn't even just "a thing", it was the main way to share video on the web before youtube made flash players ubiquitous.
  - zeta0134 7y ago
    With JavaScript and the ability to request partial content, the protocol descriptor can also be bog-standard HTTP. The player is doing the "streaming" work at that point. Most of the existing players are far more fancy, and will try to dynamically switch to a stable quality based on the connection, but if you're streaming a small video anyway, it can be really simple.
  - crazygringo 7y ago
    Oh sure, I remember RealPlayer used streams like rtsp:// and mms://. Man, takes me back. But that all died out, it seems. So I get that history could have continued in that direction... but it didn't, I guess. It sure would have been interesting if it had, though.
chungy 7y ago
> The way this type of thing is usually accomplished in 2020 is to open the video on your phone, then tap a "cast" icon and tell it to send the video to your TV. Is that really typical? I just put a file on a USB drive, and plug it into the TV to play.
tengbretson 7y ago
Related to what the author experienced, has anyone ever actually gotten Miracast or WiDi to work from android to a smart tv? I've tried it now on multiple different phones and televisions and it seems to me to be completely broken in all implementations. Am I missing something obvious here?
cronix 7y ago
My 70" Samsung TV is just being used as a dumb monitor. It's hooked to a small windows 7 HTPC box. I use Media Center to get my DRM cable using $1.50/month cable cards from the cable company (comcast), so don't need to rent their equipment (except the cheap cable card). I can play 100% of everything and don't have these "smart tv" issues. Skip the smart tv stuff and just use it as a dumb monitor. The TV isn't even hooked to the net. No update notifications, ads, or anything else. Everything works seamlessly with macros on a single Logitech remote that is now about 7 years old. I love this setup. I can access anything from anywhere in the house on any device and it always "just works." It has been for many years. Recently MS ditched their program guide, which sucks, but there are alternatives that make it work and hopefully live on another 10 years.
jdblair 7y ago
There's a reason that Smart TVs (and set top boxes, and streaming sticks) usually don't allow you to load an arbitrary URL: it increases the attack surface by allowing you to load any arbitrary endpoint on the Internet. When you "cast" from an app on another device you are casting something that app understands is not a generic endpoint, but reference to an object in the app's library. You can disagree with this reasoning. It should be possible to safely load arbitrary endpoints and not ever execute an attack embedded in it. But then it wouldn't be called an exploit, would it?
blackhaz 7y ago
Or is it the general trend of moving away from the centralized Internet, the force of deglobalization? Instead of upholding standards and cherishing RFCs it seems that so many people and corporations are trying to invent the next protocol, the next flow, often poorly documented and proprietary. Even Linux is proud to be not Unix. I know, it has never been, but we can remember times when READMEs had lists of supported operating systems, and stuff did compile. Everyone's excited about ARMs and non-Intel stuff. I don't mind diversity, but it feels almost like celebrating fragmentation. I wonder if we are heading towards something like a pre-Internet era, with CompuServes and Prodigies, incompatible formats, with countries investing into their own future independent and incompatible architectures?
causality0 7y ago
The lack of direct video-out on modern smartphones is something I often find infuriating. Some of them support OEM smart docks, but imagine if the only way to output video on your laptop was a $250 HDMI cable. Sure you can cast, but there's enough lag to make you look slightly inept if you're pausing a presentation for a question and to make gaming impossible. Some phones support standards like DisplayLink but in addition to being unable to charge the phone it also generates a tremendous amount of heat and runs the phone's battery down.
skizm 7y ago
Anyone have a recommendation for high quality 4k dumb TVs that are truly offline? I have a media center PC I plug into my TV and don't want or need any of the "apps" or "homescreens", just give me a few inputs to HDMI cables, maybe USB slot, and I'm good.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  “Dumb TVs” essentially don't exist AAA product category; you need either a “commercial display” or a “monitor”.
  - skizm 7y ago
    I think you're right. Dell actually has a few "conference room monitors", which come close. There is a 55 inch version for $850, and a 70 inch version for $3,000. I've considered the 55 inch version, but it is just a bit small for the room I watch TV in, and I'm not sure I'm willing to shell out 3 grand for a living room TV.
- dewey 7y ago
  Can't just you just...not connect it to the internet? That's what I do (my Apple TV is connected to the internet). A nice side effect is that you don't get ads in the TV's home screen that way.
  - skizm 7y ago
    True, I guess I'm just worried it might hit my neighbors unsecured wifi or somerthing. I live in an apartment complex so it is tough to monitor all the connections all the time since people move in and out.
    - dewey 7y ago
      Don't think it would auto-connect to unsecured networks but could always set up an offline access point and force the TV to connect to it to be extra sure. Probably not worth the hassle though.
kbenson 7y ago
As of at least 5-6 years ago when I was doing independent development on the Roku there have been apps/channels in the Roku channel store that can accomplish what the author is trying to do, and many for free.[1] Perhaps the author should have looked into the applications that area available? 1: https://channelstore.roku.com/browse/apps https://channelstore.roku.com/browse/apps
- anderspitman 7y ago
  I tried. The point of the post isn't that solutions don't exist. It's that I couldn't find one before I had to give up from time constraints.
dewey 7y ago
Apple TV and VLC works exactly like that, I use it all the time. 1) I copy some URL on my phone or computer 2) I open the VLC app on my Apple TV and select the URL field 3) My phone buzzes because it recognizes an input field 4) I paste the url and press play The nice part is that you can also use that to watch Acestream content if you run some Acestream container on your NAS / Computer exposed via a http proxy and just paste that URL into VLC on the TV.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
Alternative solution: Build your own Roku app. Last time I checked it looked pretty easy; set up a JSON manifest file and a bit of JS on a web server that can also serve video, or something like that. I don't remember how easy it was to install your app on your own Roku but I seem to recall there was a way to do so for testing purposes.
- peteforde 7y ago
  It's not quite as easy as you're making it sound (when it is ever?) but BrightScript is indeed an option. However, there's no concept of an HTML primative so everything has to be a bit of a hack. I have faked more than a few browser-like UIs in Roku apps, and every detail has to be handled by you. Think: offset math and debouncing key events.
Martin_Scrafalo 7y ago
Bulleted list: Please make your _stuff_ work with URLs. And I use that word ~~~lightly~~~ However, there doesn't seem to be any widely implemented standard for playing plain URLs, only walled gardens like the YouTube app. -- this is fucking annoying The Roku app for Android allows you to use your phone as a keyboard for the TV, rather than the awful [physical remote UX for input]. This is a great feature which I appreciate. -- whose standard are you using{?} I should be able to copy a URL from my phone (possibly obtained from scanning a QR code), paste it into the Roku Android app, and the Roku ;should; attempt to play the file at the URL. This is clunky, awkward, and :not particularly easy:. But it is simple, obvious, and intuitive. -- whose voice? Here is my plea: when you (_)don't(_) build hardware/software, but merely send your flying junk my way, please make it support the primitive, simple case. By all means implement the slick Chromecast style when sending good highfalutin stuff. It's OK when it works. HTTP is the lingua franca of the internet (and I use that word ~~~lightly~~~). When you build stuff, please make it work with (simple or complicated) URLs, as in myblog.com*, idiotsite.net or studiolo.fortdiurbino.net. Edited by Federico P.S. Fuck all y'all
SergeAx 7y ago
I've got the most dumb TV in the world at home. It's about 10 years old, biggest one for sane price at the time, 50" 1080p. When I want to watch a movie - I download it onto a thumb drive and just watch it from there, plain and simple. When I want to watch a YouTube there for some cryptic reason - I connect it to notebook via HDMI cable. I feel that I soon will have to change it for some more fancy set, like 65” 4K HDR OLED. I will make my best to dumb it down and keep using it in the same manner. And I definitely will not connect it to the internet!
a1369209993 7y ago
> This site requires JavaScript to function.
peteforde 7y ago
While I agree with this post essentially in its entirety, it's weird that he didn't mention the most significant fact regarding his request: the Roku doesn't have a web browser, and the development environment has no hypertext primatives. To that end, there's essentially no way to browse web pages on a Roku unless you literally render the page somewhere else and serve it as an image. (!)
emmelaich 7y ago
Relatedly - see https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rabidgremlin.web2cast https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rabidgreml... I saw a recommendation for it here or on Reddit recently.
droithomme 7y ago
8 hours in and Spitman's site is still a black page, even with JS enabled.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
anderspitman 7y ago
Update: My site now has a text-only version, and it even works with just cURL: https://anderspitman.net/17/curlable/ https://anderspitman.net/17/curlable/ Thanks for all the feedback!
jscholes 7y ago
Amen to this article. Concise and right on point. My parents have a Roku streaming stick hooked up to their (relatively dumb) TV, but are not tech-savvy. A bunch of times, they've asked if I know how they can watch X, and I do. I have an HTTP URL to an HLS playlist or similar ready to go. But good luck getting it to play it if no fancy app wrapper exists. In the end, I set them up a Plex server, which I can securely remotely drop things into. But that comes with its own fair share of ridiculous concerns.
MattyRad 7y ago
I think there's some hypocrisy on the author's part: https://anderspitman.net/txt/feed https://anderspitman.net/txt/feed > If your browser was redirected here, it's because you have JavaScript disabled. To navigate the text version, simply paste one of the following URLs into your browser, or the entire cURL command into your terminal. If you're looking for a specific post, check the list on the Feed page.

343 points by anderspitman 7y ago

Is this rendering Markdown to HTML on the fly in my web browser? Just render the markdown to HTML once on the server and upload it for the love of God. That being said, the article is entirely correct.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Because then when you edit the markdown you have to take an additional step.
- danaris 7y ago
  That depends entirely on how you have your workflow set up.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    Sure, it's a matter of how complicated you want your workflow to be. The way things are right now, the author can edit the markdown file directly and be done with it. It's simple and straight-forward, low-effort and low cognitive load.
    - danaris 7y ago
      I would imagine it would be possible to set up their system such that they could edit the Markdown file, and a helper process would immediately pick up that the file had been edited and re-run the local rendering to static HTML.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        Yes, great, now you've complicated the workflow. What if the service fails to run? Or fails to pick up the changes? Now you've got another thing to think about. Is the overengineering so ingrained in the average HN user that they cannot see why someone might not bother with that?
        danaris 7y ago
        In the everyday active workflow—the actions the author actually has to take each time—it doesn't add any complication. It merely adds complexity in the processing, which is certainly something worth considering. However, in a case like this, the alternative—as we can already see—is to add complexity for every single reader on the front-end. So there's not really a perfect solution here—either the author or the reader has to deal with some complexity.
anderspitman 7y ago
Please see my explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862
- droithomme 7y ago
  IMNSHO, it would be better to fix your site rather than post "please see explanation" over and over in multiple comments. Don't you think?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

pba 7y ago

Maybe this was the whole point of the author's post.. but I'm fairly certain the reason the author's use case is not easily workable is because the OEMs mentioned are deliberately discouraging the ability to play anything that is not inside some sort of DRM control. They don't want you to just be able to play any URL. Its not a technical problem, its a content management problem.

valiant55 7y ago
When I first bought a Chromecast I was disappointed how much of a pain it was to play content I already had on my computer. I shouldn't have to spin up a Plex server just to get acceptable streaming capabilities.
- psanford 7y ago
  These days you can cast with VLC which makes this much easier.
- lozaning 7y ago
  The VideoStream chrome plugin is spectacular for this. Of all the chrome plugins I've installed over the years, this is still the only one I continue to donate towards. https://getvideostream.com/ https://getvideostream.com/
- odensc 7y ago
  You can do this natively with Chrome. Just go to the overflow menu in the top right > Cast... > Sources > Cast file.
babypuncher 7y ago
AirPlay doesn't have this design philosophy and wouldn't have given this user a problem. Unfortunately AirPlay itself is proprietary and only supported by Apple devices and some TVs.
- mbreese 7y ago
  You know, I was going to reply that the AppleTV isn't a good comparison here because they specifically wanted something that worked with URLs. But then I thought about it, and the URL thing is a red herring. That's not what they really want -- that's an implementation detail. What they really want is the ability to play something from their local server on their TV. This is totally do-able in the Apple eco-system. The URL thing is exactly what you don't want. Who wants to type a URL into their TV using their phone as a virtual keyboard or not? (Which the AppleTV + iPhone combo does this great too...) The best option is where you could "cast" any video/media you're watching on a phone or computer up to a TV. The AppleTV + iPhone (or Mac) combo does this great.

moondev 7y ago

drag mp4 to browser then cast it?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
You can't cast arbitrary things like that except through desktop/whole screen casting, which is not at all what the author is talking about (because it sucks).
- bhandziuk 7y ago
  You can cast files from your computer though, right? Which is different than desktop/full screen casting.

jchw 7y ago

I hate smart TVs with a burning passion. They accomplish literally the bare minimum to keep people happy and sometimes not even that. Samsung’s Tizen OS is the most genuinely frustrating experience I’ve had with a consumer device outside of printing. Advertisements on my home screen that can’t be disabled, dubious privacy, bugs that require me to reboot my TV, and of course security so bad that they recommend installing a virus scanner? Yeah, that’s great. It’s got a web browser at least, though that’s the only positive thing I can really say about the web browsing experience. Can it run software? If you can find it! There’s no app ecosystem here, just the big apps it absolutely had to have to be worthy of shipping. If you want to watch Twitch.TV streams for example you are SoL. There was an unofficial Twitch app, but it was removed from the store. I tried to set up development for Tizen. Yeah not gonna try that again. I always thought getting started with development on Android or iOS was a little cumbersome but it really doesn’t compare. Even getting into developer mode was challenging since I had trouble finding the instructions that were pertinent to my model of TV, and that was the last thing I accomplished successfully. So I’ve got a desktop computer hooked up to my smart TV and now I am contemplating paying more for a TV so I can get one that doesn’t have any of this dumb crap on it. The only downside? You can’t really run many 10 ft versions of things, and there’s not many good casting solutions. Lame, but every time I run into a new pathological case with the TV OS and its set of subpar apps I reconsider how much it’s even worth to have fancy 10ft interfaces and smart phone integration. (If you are looking for a casting solution for an HTPC running Windows, I tried Reflector 3 briefly and it looks pretty good. But I personally do not run Windows on my own HTPC, so I’m stuck in the dark.)

bagacrap 7y ago
Can't you just remove the smart TV's internet access (no wifi pw, no Ethernet) and treat it as dumb? Then attach a Chromecast or whatever "smart" dongle you think has the best UI.
- jchw 7y ago
  This is definitely one approach, but I would actually just prefer a full computer, because I do sometimes run other software that is simply not available on any dongles. One downside though is that I only have a couple HDMI ports to work with, so between a Nintendo Switch and a full desktop PC I'm already using all of the ports. Also, even though I love the NVIDIA Shield, I find it does not really integrate as well as I hoped via HDMI CEC. It's a bit clunky to be honest, and though it's cool I can use the TV remote over CEC, it is definitely not as good as using the Shield remote, due to latency and some weird behavioral differences. So there are also downsides like that, too...

dredmorbius 7y ago

Irony: blank page w/o JS, fails in Outline.com.

AndrewStephens 7y ago
Well this is one way to write a web page. <body> <div id='rain-container'></div> <div id='root'></div> <script src='/deps/marked/lib/marked.js'></script> <script src='/deps/highlight.js/src/highlight.js'></script>  <script type='module' src='/components/core.js'></script> <script type='module' src='/components/tutorials.js'></script> <script type='module' src='/components/about.js'></script>  <script type='module' src='/index.js'></script> </body>
- egeozcan 7y ago
  It's doing, ...interesting stuff, like rendering markdown on the client, but at least all the required assets are self-served. So it works with uMatrix. Hey, that's something in 2020! 15 years ago we were complaining about the .doc files, now we have the XML based .docx files that are at the very least parseable but we lost the XML based web in between. Now every website implements their own document format which needs to be opened with the executable it sends next to the content. You can try to parse the markup bits but you'll get zero semantic content, that's for sure.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  From the site: I am a data visualization software engineer. Based on this web site, this is a definition of "software engineer" of which I was previously unaware.
  - gberger 7y ago
    Presumably, he makes _data visualization software_. For example Tableau.
    - 7y ago

jxramos 7y ago

HTTP is the lingua franca of the internet. When you build stuff, please make it work with simple URLs. Can't argue with that can we?

droithomme 7y ago
Or even alternatively "When you build stuff, please make it work with HTML."
- zzo38computer 7y ago
  When you build stuff, what to make it work with depend what it is, I think. HTML is not suitable for all uses, and URLs is not suitable for all uses, and PNG is not suitable for all uses, etc.

egdod 7y ago

Please make your stuff work without JavaScript. This is a simple text-only web page (in courier new ffs) and it refuses to load with JavaScript disabled. There is no valid reason for this.

gred 7y ago
I had the same thought. From the article: > Here is my plea: when you build hardware/software, please make it support the primitive, simple case.
anderspitman 7y ago
Please see my explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862
- zzo38computer 7y ago
  One possibility is to fix it so that there is a <noscript> block which contains a link to the Markdown source (or if the way it is set up makes that difficult, instructions for accessing it). I highly suggest doing this if you do not want to prerender it on the server. (I saw another comment which mentioned the Markdown file, and was able to read it from that.)
  - anderspitman 7y ago
    Done

imhoguy 7y ago

VLC for Android (TV) can stream from URLs nicely.

Animats 7y ago

So you can't watch porn and anime?

skybrian 7y ago

I haven't kept up with the state of video streaming, so for me this raises more questions than answers: - How inefficient is video streaming when you're downloading chunks of a compressed, static file over a flaky Internet connection? - Was it worse before? Would it work better with QUIC or HTTP/3?

pjc50 7y ago
Inefficient compared to what? Fundamentally you have to shift the same N bits per second at a reasonably uniform speed regardless of how the transfer is done. Your main enemy in this process is, as usual, middleboxes, which may be a bigger problem for the advanced protocols. This is why Apple created the bizarre but effective HLS system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming
- skybrian 7y ago
  Inefficient compared to whatever optimized, adaptive, video-oriented protocols Netscape, YouTube, and Chromecast are using. I'm wondering how much you lose by doing it the simple way?
  - anderspitman 7y ago
    I'm assuming most video streaming is done over HTTP these days, as sad as that is. But now you have me wondering if the big boys are using something different.

stefan_ 7y ago

URLs are an utter failure, normal people don't understand them, the only protocol they are ever used for is HTTP, special characters are a mess, IPv6 turns the insanity up to 11. The one other use of URLs has been tricking unwitting users into launching vulnerable applications with malicious input, because applications registering themselves for protocols was a thing once added, then never critically thought about, ever. URLs are simply not the forward case.

zzo38computer 7y ago
URLs are used for protocols other than HTTP(S), although it is most common with HTTP(S). Other URI schemes are sometimes used where a URL is needed to make a link to something else (such as in a HTML document, or a Gopher menu item that links to something using a protocol which Gopher does not support linking to (HTTP being one of these protocols), or opening local files or other stuff in a web browser, or for some uses in RDF). But I agree that IPv6 makes it messy. (I had my own idea which is version 10 (numbers 7, 8, 9 are unusable) which uses the same format like version 4 but with sixteen octets instead of four, and some other differences too.)

SnowingXIV 7y ago

Please make your stuff work with reader view.

anderspitman 7y ago
Please see my explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862

calvinmorrison 7y ago

warning: this page will not load without javascript

anderspitman 7y ago
Please see my explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862
zzo38computer 7y ago
Anyways, it has been fixed with a link to the Github source to access the text in case you do not have JavaScript, so you can just use that.

unnouinceput 7y ago

Quote "HTTP is the lingua franca of the internet. When you build stuff, please make it work with simple URLs." Says the one who can't have a simple HTTP only site and I had to enable JS on NoScript in order to read his rant.

mtarnovan 7y ago
Looks like you're mistaking HTTP for HTML... The article makes no mention of HTML/JS.
- mbreese 7y ago
  No, this is very much an HTTP thing. When you request a resource over a URL, you should get the resource... instead with their site you get an HTML page with a bunch of javascript includes... that then retrieves content. It works, but it is opposite of what they are arguing for. Now, this is this person's personal site... they can do what they want. But it's pretty ironic to put a rant about working with URLs on a site with a design like this that doesn't work with simple URLs.
  - anderspitman 7y ago
    The URL does work. I don't say anything in the post about reading what's on the other end. What you're saying would be like if I had said in the article that I should be able to give the Roku a video format it doesn't support and expect it to work. My website should work for anyone using a browser with default settings. I never claimed it was a static HTML site. It's an interactive JavaScript application.
    - mtarnovan 7y ago
      That's exactly my point. It's a website. It's meant to be consumed by browsers, so it's fine if the served resource is a SPA that renders the content lazily or whatever. The claim that SPAs somehow violate HTTP seems weird to me.

kelnos 7y ago

Yes, please. I was at an Airbnb in Austin last week, which had a Roku device attached to the TV. I usually bring along a Chromcast (or at least the proper adapters to get HDMI out of my laptop) when I travel, but this time I forgot. I just wanted to play a video file I had on my laptop. I googled around, found that Roku appears to support DLNA, and tried to use Universal Media Server on my laptop. The Roku did find the media server, but kept claiming that there were no files available. Not sure if it was a video format issue (main-profile h264, ac3, and mkv are listed as supported by Roku) or something else, but at the end of the day I just couldn't get it to work, and I was bummed and frustrated. Maybe play-this-URL functionality wouldn't've helped, but at least I would have felt more confident that it was a format issue rather than just some dumb problem with the huge DLNA tech stack.

throwaway55554 7y ago

Please render your markdown on your server and not my client. You're wasting my battery, man. Shame on you!

manicdee 7y ago
Quite the oversight for someone wanting TV manufacturers to lift their game huh :D

reggieband 7y ago

> However, there doesn't seem to be any widely implemented standard for playing plain URLs, only walled gardens like the YouTube app. I've had experience overseeing the implementation of a simple Chromecast application. It was a relatively painless process and worked pretty flawlessly with minimal code. It may not be a standard but it is totally accessible to anyone with a bit of Javascript experience. I could imagine an evening hack session that would be a Chromecast application (maybe a browser extension) that you can paste urls into and it would play that way. Without even bothering looking, I would bet such an extension already exists in the Chrome Web Store.

deanebarker 7y ago

I wrote this five years ago, and it actually made from the front page of Hacker News back then. "We Suck At HTTP" >"We have broken HTTP. We’ve done it for years in fits and starts, but apps have completely broken it. HTTP was a good specification which we’ve steadily whittled away." https://gadgetopia.com/post/9236 https://gadgetopia.com/post/9236

anderspitman 7y ago
This is a great post. Thanks for sharing.

mumblemumble 7y ago

> Here is my plea: when you build hardware/software, please make it support the primitive, simple case. Says a webpage that is just a couple empty divs w/o JS, and, with JS, is 4 hyperlinks, a few paragraphs of text, and absolutley nothing (aside from google-analytics) that ever needed any JS in the first place, let alone 5 or 6 files' worth of it. But, I think that conflict really speaks to the funamental issue, here: Thinking about the primitive, simple case is often, from the creator's perspective, more work than it's worth.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
derp_dee_derp 7y ago
As much as HN wants to whine about it, the truth is that Javascript is a primitive, basic, use case of the internet.
- madeofpalk 7y ago
  I mean, if you're going to wax lyrical about how what your making should support that basics, you should at least first make sure you're doing the same thing. Otherwise, you're just demonstrating exactly why Roku doesn't have a way to input a URL to play media.
- whatisthiseven 7y ago
  JS can be a highly supported tool, but it isn't itself a primitive use-case. It is an enabler of use-cases and, to OP's point, JS for the sake of loading JS isn't useful if the content of the site really didn't need it.
- ysavir 7y ago
  The very purpose of JavaScript is to be dynamic and changing. "Primitive" and "Basic" are not apt adjectives, especially when the page in question is entirely static.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  How is JS related to a page with only text and hyperlinks?

cookiecaper 7y ago

I have two standalone Rokus that are a major PITA because of this. There's no way to connect to an NFS share, SMB share, or other local storage directly from the system itself. There's no VLC app for Roku. The best you can do is use the rudimentary "Roku Media Browser" to page through a DLNA server, which means you have to set up either something like Plex (which sucks for a lot of reasons) or at least miniDLNA to access files. It's really disappointing. I've recently installed Jellyfin and even put the Roku in "Developer Mode" so I could install the Jellyfin Roku app from GitHub. This is better because unlike Plex, it won't transcode arbitrarily, but it's far worse because the Jellyfin Roku app crashes frequently, has only basic page-based navigation ("go to page 23 for media that starts with 'T'"), and it requires running a heavy media server for no real reason. I'm still reluctantly using Plex for the time being. When I need something that I haven't put in Plex, I fall back to the Android interface on the FireTV and use VLC to access the NAS over SMB. It still rankles that Roku won't allow an easy way to access local media.

zokier 7y ago

Few minutes of googling found this, and few other similar thingies that send urls to chromecast just fine. http://movies.foamsnet.com/url/ http://movies.foamsnet.com/url/ discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7365256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7365256

anderspitman 7y ago
I don't have a Chromecast. I have a Roku TV. One of the implied points of this article is that the solution I'm suggesting would work for any device as a fallback, let them implement whatever other fancy protocols they want.
- zokier 7y ago
  > However, there doesn't seem to be any widely implemented standard for playing plain URLs, only walled gardens like the YouTube app. But chromecast is essentially that standard you ask for, otherwise "apps" like I linked wouldn't work. Heck, as far as I know (I'm not really a Chrome user), Chrome has this functionality built-in, so you can send URLs directly from browser to a chromecast device.
  - anderspitman 7y ago
    As I said in the post, I'm all for these technologies. I'm just asking for a copy-paste style alternative for when they don't work.

X-Cubed 7y ago

This is the sort of use-case that the DLNA specification was intended for. It's not quite as simple as the author might want, but it is well supported. The TV can act as a Renderer for content pushed to it, or as a Player for content pulled from a Server. All the smart TVs I've used implement this functionality. VLC and Kodi support this too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Alliance#Specification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Allianc...

pjc50 7y ago
DLNA is slightly maddening because it's clearly supposed to be the solution, but was built by set-top-box UI people and therefore has terrible UX. Basically Chromecast exists because DLNA is too fiddly for the average user.
anderspitman 7y ago
Any idea how to do this on a Roku TV with a video URL? Because I couldn't figure it out.

jefftk 7y ago

I think it should be possible to do this with the browser and the Chromecast protocol, since my understanding is "play a video from this URL" is the core of the protocol. Someone could build a website following https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/chrome_sender/integrate https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/chrome_sender/integr... where you paste the URL of a video and are given the option to "cast" it to the TV. This would be some work, but only one person would need to do it and then anyone could "cast" a URL. (Disclosure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)

rahimnathwani 7y ago
Right, someone already built it :) https://chromecast.link/ https://chromecast.link/
- bruckie 7y ago
  It looks like https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rabidgremlin.web2cast https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rabidgreml... may be the equivalent in Android app form.
  - rahimnathwani 7y ago
    Does it work with videos? The product description mentions HTML and static image formats. Neither the description nor any of the reviews mention videos. I guess I could just spend 99 cents and 2 minutes to find out...
- Martin_Scrafalo 7y ago
  :(

mongol 7y ago

> However, there doesn't seem to be any widely implemented standard for playing plain URLs, only walled gardens like the YouTube app. Actually, I think the standard is UPnP / DLNA. After setting up a UPNP server I can "cast" most things from Android by using the share button, and then choosing a UPnP app, such as Bubble UPnP. I don't know if the author's tv supports this, but many do.

anderspitman 7y ago
Why should I have to run a separate server to play a video from URL?

mayneack 7y ago

There's an android/roku app that makes this fairly seamless in all the instances I've tried. It even does a good job of finding videos in a web page if you don't have a direct link. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instantbits.cast.webvideo https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instantbit... http://www.webvideocaster.com/ http://www.webvideocaster.com/

anderspitman 7y ago
Yup, that app got me really close. It even worked for about a minute, but I was unable to reproduce the success (that was infuriating).
- mayneack 7y ago
  Hmm, that's weird. I use it for hours at a time on most Sundays. I'm sort of surprised how well it works.

ryanbrunner 7y ago

I have a love / hate relationship with Chromecast. When it works, it works well, and it is nice to just press a button and whatever I'd like to use is up on my TV. It does feel a little magic. But even when you're using compatible tools / devices that should work together, sometimes they mysteriously don't, and there's absolutely no way to know what's going wrong. Approximately 25% of the time, my Chromecast device just doesn't seem to exist according to my computer. Both my computer and the device have network connectivity, but there's just no ability to cast. I'm reduced to randomly restarting things in a vain hope that things will work.

Spivak 7y ago
The intermittent connectivity problem might be the result of a chatty network. mDNS is really sensitive to this and clients don’t wait very long before deciding that they got all the responses from devices. If you stick your Chromecast and your phone in their own broadcast domain I think the problem would disappear. Unfortunately it’s not a solution to whatever is spamming your network but it would tell you that that’s the problem.
- coda_ 7y ago
  Any suggestions on how to determine what is causing the chatty network?
  - namibj 7y ago
    Wireshark should help. Otherwise, it's a pretty open-ended question.
foobarandgrill 7y ago
What often happens to me is my chromecast audio doesn't show up on my desktop chrome but does on my other devices and I have to reconnect my computer's wifi and restart the browser for the chromecast to appear. Really wish they have a simple "refresh" button that lets you try checking for more chromecasts.

boutad 7y ago

As a workaround, can't you load the URL in Chrome and then cast the tab or load the URL in VLC and cast from that?

somishere 7y ago

I don't use chrome BUT I'm sure you can cast urls directly from chrome, even from the local filesystem. A walled garden perhaps, but no need for YouTube.

Waterluvian 7y ago

Smart TV's are trying to be walled gardens, no? I would love a tv that trivially played media from an http server.

unwiredben 7y ago

You might want to try http://devtools.web.roku.com/#stream-tester-tool http://devtools.web.roku.com/#stream-tester-tool as a way to test specific media files and streams without having to code a full channel.

anderspitman 7y ago

Author here. Sorry for those having trouble viewing the site. That's obviously never the intention. The current incarnation is actually a bit of an experiment. Unfortunately, my blog is only occasionally tested against front page traffic so I don't always get a feel for what's not working. That said, I assure you I am intimately familiar with the tradeoffs of different methods of delivering HTML. TL;DR it's my personal site and I'll do what I want with it. It's for fun. The previous version of this site used a static site generator I wrote myself[0]. I switched to client-side JS rendering for several reasons. First, having a build step creates a dependency on both the build tool and a specific action. If you clone my blog[1] (with submodules) you should be able to host it exactly as-is from the repo. No build step required. I hold a fairly extreme view[2] on dependencies. Second, I wanted user interactions within my site to be very fast[3]. After the initial load, subsequent navigations are much faster (and consistent) than retrieving a new static HTML page. Obviously once the HTML is cached that's no longer true, but I'm optimizing for first-time visitors. Though I should give more consideration to the fact that most of you are only going to look at the one linked page. Also, I plan to eventually add some quirky little things to the site which require maintaining state between navigations. For example, I thought it would be fun to integrate a little 2D adventure game with a character you can move around to scroll the content. EDIT: I should also acknowledge that while I defend the use of JS on my site, I concede that supporting non-JS use cases would be far more true to supporting "the simple case" as fallback. Simply supporting browsers in the default configuration isn't a very high bar. Browsers are incredibly complicated VMs. I would actually argue that my text-heavy content should be accessible via curl, like my other[4] projects[5]. I've never tried making a site browseable with curl before. That might be a fun experiment. EDIT2: <noscript> should be working now, with a link to the raw content on GitHub, per danShumway's suggestion (thanks Dan!). [0] https://github.com/anderspitman/assg https://github.com/anderspitman/assg [1] https://github.com/anderspitman/anderspitman.net https://github.com/anderspitman/anderspitman.net [2] https://anderspitman.net/11/dependencies/ https://anderspitman.net/11/dependencies/ [3] https://anderspitman.net/13/64-ms/ https://anderspitman.net/13/64-ms/ [4] https://patchbay.pub/ https://patchbay.pub/ [5] https://emauth.io/ https://emauth.io/

layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
>I'm optimizing for first-time visitors As a first-time visitor I had a very bad experience while waiting for your JS to download and generate the content - in the meantime I was looking at a completely empty black screen. Optimizing for first-time user experience means giving your visitors the content they came for as soon as possible, which is not what you’re doing.

bhauer 7y ago

Yes, agreed. In fact, I agree so much that I just use a big monitor with a computer attached for my "living room" television consumption. It turns out computers can consume URLs pretty well.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
zzo38computer 7y ago
That look like good enough, but do you have a IR receiver for the computer? If I have to touch the TV monitor itself to switch on/off it is OK (and I would prefer it this way rather than using a remote control, I think), but would like to have a remote control to pause and rewind and so on.

crazygringo 7y ago

I don't believe I've ever, once, in my entire history of browsing the internet, come across a direct hyperlink to a video file to play in the browser. Virtually universally, videos are embedded in webpages, and occasionally a link is provided that downloads rather than plays a video. So I think this is just a use-case issue: the average user is exceedingly unlikely to ever want to watch a raw video file specified by a URL, because you just don't come across them in the wild. So therefore Roku didn't build that feature. And that's 100% justifiable for a consumer product. There's no philosophical reason why a consumer product should support computational primitives like URL's or files when the use case is rare or non-existent for the target market. I mean, if this were a command-line utility then it would be a different story... but it's not.

jschwartzi 7y ago
Before Youtube this was a thing, just as streaming radio was a thing before Pandora. You'd get a URL and the URL would stream radio or video instead of being a website. Obviously the protocol descriptor would be different from HTTP/HTTPS.
- Izkata 7y ago
  It wasn't even just "a thing", it was the main way to share video on the web before youtube made flash players ubiquitous.
- zeta0134 7y ago
  With JavaScript and the ability to request partial content, the protocol descriptor can also be bog-standard HTTP. The player is doing the "streaming" work at that point. Most of the existing players are far more fancy, and will try to dynamically switch to a stable quality based on the connection, but if you're streaming a small video anyway, it can be really simple.
- crazygringo 7y ago
  Oh sure, I remember RealPlayer used streams like rtsp:// and mms://. Man, takes me back. But that all died out, it seems. So I get that history could have continued in that direction... but it didn't, I guess. It sure would have been interesting if it had, though.

chungy 7y ago

> The way this type of thing is usually accomplished in 2020 is to open the video on your phone, then tap a "cast" icon and tell it to send the video to your TV. Is that really typical? I just put a file on a USB drive, and plug it into the TV to play.

tengbretson 7y ago

Related to what the author experienced, has anyone ever actually gotten Miracast or WiDi to work from android to a smart tv? I've tried it now on multiple different phones and televisions and it seems to me to be completely broken in all implementations. Am I missing something obvious here?

cronix 7y ago

My 70" Samsung TV is just being used as a dumb monitor. It's hooked to a small windows 7 HTPC box. I use Media Center to get my DRM cable using $1.50/month cable cards from the cable company (comcast), so don't need to rent their equipment (except the cheap cable card). I can play 100% of everything and don't have these "smart tv" issues. Skip the smart tv stuff and just use it as a dumb monitor. The TV isn't even hooked to the net. No update notifications, ads, or anything else. Everything works seamlessly with macros on a single Logitech remote that is now about 7 years old. I love this setup. I can access anything from anywhere in the house on any device and it always "just works." It has been for many years. Recently MS ditched their program guide, which sucks, but there are alternatives that make it work and hopefully live on another 10 years.

jdblair 7y ago

There's a reason that Smart TVs (and set top boxes, and streaming sticks) usually don't allow you to load an arbitrary URL: it increases the attack surface by allowing you to load any arbitrary endpoint on the Internet. When you "cast" from an app on another device you are casting something that app understands is not a generic endpoint, but reference to an object in the app's library. You can disagree with this reasoning. It should be possible to safely load arbitrary endpoints and not ever execute an attack embedded in it. But then it wouldn't be called an exploit, would it?

blackhaz 7y ago

Or is it the general trend of moving away from the centralized Internet, the force of deglobalization? Instead of upholding standards and cherishing RFCs it seems that so many people and corporations are trying to invent the next protocol, the next flow, often poorly documented and proprietary. Even Linux is proud to be not Unix. I know, it has never been, but we can remember times when READMEs had lists of supported operating systems, and stuff did compile. Everyone's excited about ARMs and non-Intel stuff. I don't mind diversity, but it feels almost like celebrating fragmentation. I wonder if we are heading towards something like a pre-Internet era, with CompuServes and Prodigies, incompatible formats, with countries investing into their own future independent and incompatible architectures?

causality0 7y ago

The lack of direct video-out on modern smartphones is something I often find infuriating. Some of them support OEM smart docks, but imagine if the only way to output video on your laptop was a $250 HDMI cable. Sure you can cast, but there's enough lag to make you look slightly inept if you're pausing a presentation for a question and to make gaming impossible. Some phones support standards like DisplayLink but in addition to being unable to charge the phone it also generates a tremendous amount of heat and runs the phone's battery down.

skizm 7y ago

Anyone have a recommendation for high quality 4k dumb TVs that are truly offline? I have a media center PC I plug into my TV and don't want or need any of the "apps" or "homescreens", just give me a few inputs to HDMI cables, maybe USB slot, and I'm good.

dragonwriter 7y ago
“Dumb TVs” essentially don't exist AAA product category; you need either a “commercial display” or a “monitor”.
- skizm 7y ago
  I think you're right. Dell actually has a few "conference room monitors", which come close. There is a 55 inch version for $850, and a 70 inch version for $3,000. I've considered the 55 inch version, but it is just a bit small for the room I watch TV in, and I'm not sure I'm willing to shell out 3 grand for a living room TV.
dewey 7y ago
Can't just you just...not connect it to the internet? That's what I do (my Apple TV is connected to the internet). A nice side effect is that you don't get ads in the TV's home screen that way.
- skizm 7y ago
  True, I guess I'm just worried it might hit my neighbors unsecured wifi or somerthing. I live in an apartment complex so it is tough to monitor all the connections all the time since people move in and out.
  - dewey 7y ago
    Don't think it would auto-connect to unsecured networks but could always set up an offline access point and force the TV to connect to it to be extra sure. Probably not worth the hassle though.

kbenson 7y ago

As of at least 5-6 years ago when I was doing independent development on the Roku there have been apps/channels in the Roku channel store that can accomplish what the author is trying to do, and many for free.[1] Perhaps the author should have looked into the applications that area available? 1: https://channelstore.roku.com/browse/apps https://channelstore.roku.com/browse/apps

anderspitman 7y ago
I tried. The point of the post isn't that solutions don't exist. It's that I couldn't find one before I had to give up from time constraints.

dewey 7y ago

Apple TV and VLC works exactly like that, I use it all the time. 1) I copy some URL on my phone or computer 2) I open the VLC app on my Apple TV and select the URL field 3) My phone buzzes because it recognizes an input field 4) I paste the url and press play The nice part is that you can also use that to watch Acestream content if you run some Acestream container on your NAS / Computer exposed via a http proxy and just paste that URL into VLC on the TV.

dreamcompiler 7y ago

Alternative solution: Build your own Roku app. Last time I checked it looked pretty easy; set up a JSON manifest file and a bit of JS on a web server that can also serve video, or something like that. I don't remember how easy it was to install your app on your own Roku but I seem to recall there was a way to do so for testing purposes.

peteforde 7y ago
It's not quite as easy as you're making it sound (when it is ever?) but BrightScript is indeed an option. However, there's no concept of an HTML primative so everything has to be a bit of a hack. I have faked more than a few browser-like UIs in Roku apps, and every detail has to be handled by you. Think: offset math and debouncing key events.

Martin_Scrafalo 7y ago

Bulleted list: Please make your _stuff_ work with URLs. And I use that word ~~~lightly~~~ However, there doesn't seem to be any widely implemented standard for playing plain URLs, only walled gardens like the YouTube app. -- this is fucking annoying The Roku app for Android allows you to use your phone as a keyboard for the TV, rather than the awful [physical remote UX for input]. This is a great feature which I appreciate. -- whose standard are you using{?} I should be able to copy a URL from my phone (possibly obtained from scanning a QR code), paste it into the Roku Android app, and the Roku ;should; attempt to play the file at the URL. This is clunky, awkward, and :not particularly easy:. But it is simple, obvious, and intuitive. -- whose voice? Here is my plea: when you (_)don't(_) build hardware/software, but merely send your flying junk my way, please make it support the primitive, simple case. By all means implement the slick Chromecast style when sending good highfalutin stuff. It's OK when it works. HTTP is the lingua franca of the internet (and I use that word ~~~lightly~~~). When you build stuff, please make it work with (simple or complicated) URLs, as in myblog.com*, idiotsite.net or studiolo.fortdiurbino.net. Edited by Federico P.S. Fuck all y'all

SergeAx 7y ago

I've got the most dumb TV in the world at home. It's about 10 years old, biggest one for sane price at the time, 50" 1080p. When I want to watch a movie - I download it onto a thumb drive and just watch it from there, plain and simple. When I want to watch a YouTube there for some cryptic reason - I connect it to notebook via HDMI cable. I feel that I soon will have to change it for some more fancy set, like 65” 4K HDR OLED. I will make my best to dumb it down and keep using it in the same manner. And I definitely will not connect it to the internet!

a1369209993 7y ago

> This site requires JavaScript to function.

peteforde 7y ago

While I agree with this post essentially in its entirety, it's weird that he didn't mention the most significant fact regarding his request: the Roku doesn't have a web browser, and the development environment has no hypertext primatives. To that end, there's essentially no way to browse web pages on a Roku unless you literally render the page somewhere else and serve it as an image. (!)

emmelaich 7y ago

Relatedly - see https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rabidgremlin.web2cast https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rabidgreml... I saw a recommendation for it here or on Reddit recently.

droithomme 7y ago

8 hours in and Spitman's site is still a black page, even with JS enabled.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

anderspitman 7y ago

Update: My site now has a text-only version, and it even works with just cURL: https://anderspitman.net/17/curlable/ https://anderspitman.net/17/curlable/ Thanks for all the feedback!

jscholes 7y ago

Amen to this article. Concise and right on point. My parents have a Roku streaming stick hooked up to their (relatively dumb) TV, but are not tech-savvy. A bunch of times, they've asked if I know how they can watch X, and I do. I have an HTTP URL to an HLS playlist or similar ready to go. But good luck getting it to play it if no fancy app wrapper exists. In the end, I set them up a Plex server, which I can securely remotely drop things into. But that comes with its own fair share of ridiculous concerns.

MattyRad 7y ago

I think there's some hypocrisy on the author's part: https://anderspitman.net/txt/feed https://anderspitman.net/txt/feed > If your browser was redirected here, it's because you have JavaScript disabled. To navigate the text version, simply paste one of the following URLs into your browser, or the entire cURL command into your terminal. If you're looking for a specific post, check the list on the Feed page.