4 ms·

BTW, it's a Free Software issue. "Smartness" of the TV is not the problem. It's the fact that it forces on you software with anti-features, and you can't do any

by pornel 6y ago

BTW, it's a Free Software issue. "Smartness" of the TV is not the problem. It's the fact that it forces on you software with anti-features, and you can't do anything about it.

swiley 6y ago
Sure but a free smart TV would just be a TV with a built-in PC and that's a bit silly. There's something attractive about the abusive software in devices like these.
- pornel 6y ago
  There's nothing silly about it. Chipsets these days are so cheap and common, that it'd be really hard to find one that can't be a "PC". Modern HDMI with HDR/Dolby/compression is already pretty complex and requires quite a bit of software/firmware. Even if most of the processing was done with DSPs, I assume it'd be hard to manage all of that without any CPU. And if you wanted anything nicer, like streaming media straight from a NAS, "casting" to the TV, or Bluetooth speakers, then it'd need a non-trivial OS anyway (and there's nothing wrong with such features when they're not used as an excuse for DRM and surveillance).
selfhoster11 6y ago
Tivoization and Free Software are orthogonal issues. Having full system sources means nothing when the TV most likely locks out any third party OSes.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  > Tivoization and Free Software are orthogonal issues. Not really. Tivoization actively hinders software freedom, namely because... > Having full system sources means nothing when the TV most likely locks out any third party OSes. ...of this exact reason.
  - selfhoster11 6y ago
    Buying from a narrow list of supported hardware to use open source software has been a common thing for ages.
- pornel 6y ago
  To me software freedom is a bigger issue than minutiae of GPL v2 vs v3. The overall problem is still that you don't have the ability to control the software that your TV runs, regardless of how this realized technically and legally.
  - selfhoster11 6y ago
    You could run a (hypothetical) proprietary third party full-stack TV implementation on non-Tivoized hardware just as well as a corresponding open-source implementation, because the TV just wouldn't care what's running on it. That's why I said they are orthogonal.

by pornel 6y ago

BTW, it's a Free Software issue. "Smartness" of the TV is not the problem. It's the fact that it forces on you software with anti-features, and you can't do anything about it.

swiley 6y ago

Sure but a free smart TV would just be a TV with a built-in PC and that's a bit silly. There's something attractive about the abusive software in devices like these.

pornel 6y ago
There's nothing silly about it. Chipsets these days are so cheap and common, that it'd be really hard to find one that can't be a "PC". Modern HDMI with HDR/Dolby/compression is already pretty complex and requires quite a bit of software/firmware. Even if most of the processing was done with DSPs, I assume it'd be hard to manage all of that without any CPU. And if you wanted anything nicer, like streaming media straight from a NAS, "casting" to the TV, or Bluetooth speakers, then it'd need a non-trivial OS anyway (and there's nothing wrong with such features when they're not used as an excuse for DRM and surveillance).

selfhoster11 6y ago

Tivoization and Free Software are orthogonal issues. Having full system sources means nothing when the TV most likely locks out any third party OSes.

yellowapple 6y ago
> Tivoization and Free Software are orthogonal issues. Not really. Tivoization actively hinders software freedom, namely because... > Having full system sources means nothing when the TV most likely locks out any third party OSes. ...of this exact reason.
- selfhoster11 6y ago
  Buying from a narrow list of supported hardware to use open source software has been a common thing for ages.
pornel 6y ago
To me software freedom is a bigger issue than minutiae of GPL v2 vs v3. The overall problem is still that you don't have the ability to control the software that your TV runs, regardless of how this realized technically and legally.
- selfhoster11 6y ago
  You could run a (hypothetical) proprietary third party full-stack TV implementation on non-Tivoized hardware just as well as a corresponding open-source implementation, because the TV just wouldn't care what's running on it. That's why I said they are orthogonal.