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> Someone on HN recently floated the idea of a company that would make quality, non-smart electronics and appliances that would also be easily serviceable. I wi

> Someone on HN recently floated the idea of a company that would make quality, non-smart electronics and appliances that would also be easily serviceable. I wish this existed and would pay significantly more for products like this. You know, I've wanted something like this as well for a while. I know next to nothing about startups or companies, but I wonder how hard it would be to create a hardware startup around this. On one hand, you arent really designing anything new, you're more or less creating a version of an existing product, with existing technologies, except removing undesirable parts. On the other hand, I have mo idea how someone could get started without previous experience in TV design / manufacturing.

cameronbrown 6y ago
Doubt it would work. Hardware is commoditized and low margin. That's why TVs are embedding internet advertising, to make fat stacks from their otherwise barely profitable products.
- lscharen 6y ago
  Wouldn’t that work in _favor_ of the startup idea? If the hardware is a commodity and the market is for a bare-bones, self-serviceable “just a TV”, then the startup should have significantly lower engineering costs and benefit from the low component costs. Given that people on this thread are stating that they would pay a premium for such a product makes it seem even more viable. Maybe other people have different “serviceability” definitions, but I once replaced the main board of a broken Vizio smart TV —- there were only two components —- a power board and the main electronics board. The hardest part was tracking down a replacement board, but $35 and a few screws later and I had a working TV again. That met my definition of self-service.
  - tialaramex 6y ago
    Maybe. There can be a problem with the size of that premium. Suppose end consumers think fixing this is worth $50 but not worth $100. If the outfit selling a "SmartTV" gets $80 lifetime value from the "SmartTV" features like forced advertising and margins are slim you probably find you can't offer this "dumb TV" for $50 extra without losing money, and you have no customers and go out of business. On the other hand, it could go pretty well. We know advertisers see people who buy premium products (which such a "dumb TV" would be since it costs extra) as more valuable in a lot of categories, so maybe you charge $50 extra for the dumb TV and - as it takes off - that undercuts the advertising income of the existing products, so they have to raise prices to remain profitable and that actually improves your affordability compared to the market. Or else they make advertising even more intrusive and pervasive to keep the revenue up, and it makes your $50 premium appear a bargain by comparison for those sick of advertising.
  - cameronbrown 6y ago
    What people on HN say they would pay for, and what people actually pay for, are very different.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      There's both a time lag and the influence of manipulative product offerings. "Revealed preference" is just code for exploitation of vice.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    * They're not going to buy it for the most part. They just like saying "I would buy it". Ultimately, price will determine almost all. You can see this when the already committed market for open source phones just didn't materialize when the device arrived. Turns out when people say "I want an OSS phone" they mean "I want a phone that is exactly like this top of the line phone but the software should all be OSS and it should not be a penny more expensive". In this case, you can judge by the fact that these already exist and when people say "significantly more" they mean "5% more" because they don't actually buy the thing. * You can't compete on price because the TV guys are selling access to the data they collect for ad targeting / attribution. But don't let anyone stop you from doing it. None of us thinks this is worthwhile, so you might be on to a Thiel Truth.
- hinkley 6y ago
  Not all hardware is commoditized. I do not understand why so many other markets have a number of luxury/craftsman brands and in computers we only have Apple. Cars have tons. Even woodworking has 2 built-to-last brands and 2 others that like to flirt with that moniker. You will have to pay though, if you want the company to stick around. If you buy something that lasts 3x as long then they get less revenue from you, and the smaller volume means every sale includes paying off the initial R & D. I recall when Lian Li first came onto the scene and the notch-up in ergonomics of computer cases that followed. Maybe we need something like that for consumer electronics. The problem is that people like small and clean, which is where Apple excels (to the exclusion of accessibility), so I wonder what bomb-proof consumer electronics built for modification would look like.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > I wonder what bomb-proof consumer electronics built for modification would look like. Starfleet technology. Sleek and sturdy, but opens up when pressed the right way, and generally can be completely disassembled with ease, have pieces of it replaced, and then put back together. It's fictional, but it shows the way.
coldpie 6y ago
I've thought about this, too. I don't know if you could sustain a company on this idea. The profit margins on consumer tech are miniscule, and if you do it well, you will have very few repeat customers. But I think it could do well as a one-off Kickstarter thing, if you have the knowledge & reputation to back up your claims, or in small, infrequent batches. Buy a bunch of flat panel displays, slap 10 HDMI ports on the back; an optical audio out; and TV tuner; write up some extremely fast and barebones software to switch inputs. Market it to gamers and tech nerds like us. Hell, open-source the software and make it easily upgradable. I dunno. I think it could work.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  You might do better with a modular system. A single port on the display, a separate box that handles rapid switching and HDCP. HDMI switch boxes exist, but they seem to forward HDCP responsibility to the display, so switching is still slow. A broadcast quality switch/crossfade box would rock.
shavingspiders 6y ago
I'd think that a fancy looking website for a group-buy, where you manage a relationship with a manufacturer to build to your spec & you build (or get them to build) the software behind it would give it what you want. Kind of like https://www.weargustin.com/ https://www.weargustin.com/ or a Massdrop?

cameronbrown 6y ago

Doubt it would work. Hardware is commoditized and low margin. That's why TVs are embedding internet advertising, to make fat stacks from their otherwise barely profitable products.

lscharen 6y ago
Wouldn’t that work in _favor_ of the startup idea? If the hardware is a commodity and the market is for a bare-bones, self-serviceable “just a TV”, then the startup should have significantly lower engineering costs and benefit from the low component costs. Given that people on this thread are stating that they would pay a premium for such a product makes it seem even more viable. Maybe other people have different “serviceability” definitions, but I once replaced the main board of a broken Vizio smart TV —- there were only two components —- a power board and the main electronics board. The hardest part was tracking down a replacement board, but $35 and a few screws later and I had a working TV again. That met my definition of self-service.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  Maybe. There can be a problem with the size of that premium. Suppose end consumers think fixing this is worth $50 but not worth $100. If the outfit selling a "SmartTV" gets $80 lifetime value from the "SmartTV" features like forced advertising and margins are slim you probably find you can't offer this "dumb TV" for $50 extra without losing money, and you have no customers and go out of business. On the other hand, it could go pretty well. We know advertisers see people who buy premium products (which such a "dumb TV" would be since it costs extra) as more valuable in a lot of categories, so maybe you charge $50 extra for the dumb TV and - as it takes off - that undercuts the advertising income of the existing products, so they have to raise prices to remain profitable and that actually improves your affordability compared to the market. Or else they make advertising even more intrusive and pervasive to keep the revenue up, and it makes your $50 premium appear a bargain by comparison for those sick of advertising.
- cameronbrown 6y ago
  What people on HN say they would pay for, and what people actually pay for, are very different.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    There's both a time lag and the influence of manipulative product offerings. "Revealed preference" is just code for exploitation of vice.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  * They're not going to buy it for the most part. They just like saying "I would buy it". Ultimately, price will determine almost all. You can see this when the already committed market for open source phones just didn't materialize when the device arrived. Turns out when people say "I want an OSS phone" they mean "I want a phone that is exactly like this top of the line phone but the software should all be OSS and it should not be a penny more expensive". In this case, you can judge by the fact that these already exist and when people say "significantly more" they mean "5% more" because they don't actually buy the thing. * You can't compete on price because the TV guys are selling access to the data they collect for ad targeting / attribution. But don't let anyone stop you from doing it. None of us thinks this is worthwhile, so you might be on to a Thiel Truth.
hinkley 6y ago
Not all hardware is commoditized. I do not understand why so many other markets have a number of luxury/craftsman brands and in computers we only have Apple. Cars have tons. Even woodworking has 2 built-to-last brands and 2 others that like to flirt with that moniker. You will have to pay though, if you want the company to stick around. If you buy something that lasts 3x as long then they get less revenue from you, and the smaller volume means every sale includes paying off the initial R & D. I recall when Lian Li first came onto the scene and the notch-up in ergonomics of computer cases that followed. Maybe we need something like that for consumer electronics. The problem is that people like small and clean, which is where Apple excels (to the exclusion of accessibility), so I wonder what bomb-proof consumer electronics built for modification would look like.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > I wonder what bomb-proof consumer electronics built for modification would look like. Starfleet technology. Sleek and sturdy, but opens up when pressed the right way, and generally can be completely disassembled with ease, have pieces of it replaced, and then put back together. It's fictional, but it shows the way.

coldpie 6y ago

I've thought about this, too. I don't know if you could sustain a company on this idea. The profit margins on consumer tech are miniscule, and if you do it well, you will have very few repeat customers. But I think it could do well as a one-off Kickstarter thing, if you have the knowledge & reputation to back up your claims, or in small, infrequent batches. Buy a bunch of flat panel displays, slap 10 HDMI ports on the back; an optical audio out; and TV tuner; write up some extremely fast and barebones software to switch inputs. Market it to gamers and tech nerds like us. Hell, open-source the software and make it easily upgradable. I dunno. I think it could work.

nitrogen 6y ago
You might do better with a modular system. A single port on the display, a separate box that handles rapid switching and HDCP. HDMI switch boxes exist, but they seem to forward HDCP responsibility to the display, so switching is still slow. A broadcast quality switch/crossfade box would rock.

shavingspiders 6y ago

I'd think that a fancy looking website for a group-buy, where you manage a relationship with a manufacturer to build to your spec & you build (or get them to build) the software behind it would give it what you want. Kind of like https://www.weargustin.com/ https://www.weargustin.com/ or a Massdrop?