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If anyone is interested, I wouldn't mind collaborating to create a privacy oriented SmartTV or PC for devs or simply an industrial grade dumb TV. I have experie
by pupdogg 5y ago
If anyone is interested, I wouldn't mind collaborating to create a privacy oriented SmartTV or PC for devs or simply an industrial grade dumb TV. I have experience designing and building 70" industrial displays that utilize Samsung LCD panels. These "industrial" panels are normally twice the price of consumer grade ones but are designed to operate 24/7 with a MTBF of 100k hours (approx. 11 years) and are usually twice the brightness of normal ones (a very noticeable difference). I also have direct relations with Samsung for sourcing. Displays I've designed and built: https://bit.ly/3vV9jVm https://bit.ly/3vV9jVm
- 1970-01-01 5y agoAn extremely interesting prospect you've got here. What's stopping you from doing it right now?
- danuker 5y agoI would guess the massive investments needed for a hardware startup.
- pupdogg 5y agoNothing. I just realize that as I age, there's only so much a single person can do ;)
- 1970-01-01 5y agoI would definitely spend time and money contributing to a "Universal Dumb Display" (UDD?) Consider making this a kickstarter!
- justicezyx 5y ago+1
- remir 5y agoI agree, Kickstarter seems the way to go!
- danicgross 5y agoThat’s interesting. Can you make something that’s higher end than the most high end consumer TV? (If Tesla had to be “a better car that’s also electric”, I think this would need to be “a better TV that’s also private”.)
- pupdogg 5y agoHigher-end can mean a lot of things, especially when talking consumer grade. I generally translate consumer grade high-end as being more aesthetically pleasing vs operationally. My expertise are more aligned with industrial grade equipment where size is typically not the limit. I've deployed a 16ft x 9ft high-res LED display for a customer in the past. That's something you don't normally find at BestBuy or even at their Magnolia outlets.
- throwaway8581 5y agoHow much does something like that go for?
- reportingsjr 5y agoI was involved with a project that had an approx 2m x 7m LED sign as part of it, and that portion cost roughly $500k. It used the same components that you'd find in the LED billboards alongside highways in the US.
- pupdogg 5y agoapprox $75k with control system for a 5mm pixel pitch. The control system is required for source input mapping/transformation onto the display. Here's footage from 4ft away https://bit.ly/3y5AuhW https://bit.ly/3y5AuhW running at 30fps 60hz.
- justicezyx 5y agoLet's say: Something that can match LG OLED CX 77 2020 model priced $3,099.99 I'd be happy to pay at the same price without the smart features.
- asimpletune 5y agoCan it support AirPlay? I hate how AirPlay enabled devices can be so expensive.
- URSpider94 5y agoyou'd have to plug in an AirPlay-capable device, most likely. For a device to support AirPlay natively, you have to sign up to a complex and expensive licensing process with Apple that includes a ton of validation testing.
- asimpletune 5y agoI was hoping that someone out there has reverse engineered it
- pupdogg 5y agoSure, I'd just use a $99 Apple TV for that whenever needed. edit: I am getting old. AppleTV used to be $99 and it seems prices have gone up a little since. Either way, AppleTV would be my goto method whenever AirPlay is required.
- sneak 5y agoYou can't set up an Apple TV without providing a phone number to Apple (because it requires an Apple ID, and Apple IDs require a phone number during setup).
- pupdogg 5y agoI think OP was concerned about AirPlay which would assume he already has an AppleID. You could setup a Raspberry PI with AirPlay capabilities as well...or, use one of the many SMS receiving sites online to setup a new/private AppleID ;)
- sneak 5y agoThis subthread is about avoiding the privacy issues of smart TVs. They're worse with an Apple TV and Apple ID. Is there a good Raspberry Pi SD image for the Pi 4 that can be used to receive 4k airplay streams and output to HDMI? I ask because I don't think that is a viable solution compared to the ATV4k.
- fossuser 5y agoI think there’s a market for this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26290427 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26290427 “Make it OLED, dumb TV, instant on, Apple TV box plugs in. Separate box with front facing ports that connects to screen with one cable. A remote designed by someone who thought about it for ten seconds (why do modern TVs have dozens of buttons no one ever uses?). This entire market is in desperate need of someone to make something decent. The best available option today is LG and it’s still laden with ads and takes a few seconds to boot up.” I would buy one at least, there’s definitely some low hanging fruit. I'd probably even lean into it and name the company 'dumb electronics', plus there's a nice sort of symmetry to the word 'dumb' and 'db' would be a decent logo.
- enos_feedler 5y agoI am 100% in on making this. Another recent thread where I chimed in on making something with fewer buttons. I also lament about the latest LG offerings. I even propose ditching a first party remote in favor of just connecting with your favorite one. Why add to the problem of too many remotes by adding yet another one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26993846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26993846 I would love to chat with someone who knows more about the hardware side. How do you get a panel with a "dev kit" where you can load on the copy protection and all the modern stuff needed to play DRM content? I would be up for building a new OS from scratch.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoMy 2020 Samsung TV remote has only 3 or 4 buttons (I still don’t use it)
- enos_feedler 5y agoYes thats why I am saying just get rid of these remotes :)
- xwdv 5y agoWhen you finally do make such a TV, you must sell it for more than a smart TV to be taken seriously, and only use the highest quality materials.
- cactus2093 5y agoWould this dumb tv support things like eARC and HDMI CEC? It would be nice to buy a TV without the builtin streaming apps (and the inevitable advertising and phoning home that comes along with it), because I prefer to use a separate device like an Apple TV anyway. But there are some useful features in modern TVs that do seem to require the processing power of a smart TV.
- lettergram 5y agoI’d buy one
- rswail 5y agoIs that something like this: https://displayy.studio/ https://displayy.studio/ I remember seeing them on HN a year ago, I assume that they haven't moved that far because COVID etc?
- mjsir911 5y agoA while back it was called ironcast! The rename confused me a bit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21302825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21302825
- pupdogg 5y agoSure, that use case can easily be satisfied. For digital wall art, we'd need to use a different model LCD panel which has a very small bezel all around (approx. 0.125in)
- rswail 5y agoI meant their IronCast display that's designed to be basically just a display that takes whatever feed you want. But they don't seem to have updated their info for a year. What I'd like is a 55" 4K monitor display that is minimal bezel and has a bunch of HDMI inputs and support HDCP etc. Displays should be to video like speakers are to audio. I can connect multiple sources to speakers without the speakers imposing their own idea of what to do other than make sound.
- pupdogg 5y agoYes, that's easily doable. However, unlike consumer grade displays, it's much harder to find dumb controllers with multiple HDMI inputs for industrial displays. A new growing trend in the industrial sector is to move towards dumb controllers having 1x HDMI input and 1x IPTV (ethernet) input. This might fit your requirements as you could easily put the display and your streaming devices on the same VLAN and stream directly to your display.
- clairity 5y ago
- goda90 5y agoAn interesting product could be a TV with swap-able boards. One could be a simple dumb board with inputs, or you could switch it out for a board with privacy oriented smart features. There could also be a gaming targeted board with more even more power. I don't know much about driving LCD/OLED panels, but maybe it could also be useful for updating specs, like you could just upgrade the board when there's a new HDMI version or HDR standard, or to add hardware acceleration for a new codec.
- jonatron 5y agoSearch for "Universal LCD TV Controller" or similar, it's sometimes already possible.
- pupdogg 5y agoThe gallery I showcased is already semi-swappable in that sense. You are able to change the driving board out for another board or LVDS compatible PC/RaspPi. However, if I'm understanding what you're saying, I think you mean swapping capability similar to a rackmount server hard-drive. Sure, that can be designed and implemented with some effort...let's say 2-3 weeks time.
- joerickard 5y agoThat does sound interesting! It's a bit outside my wheelhouse, but I'm looking for a new project. Feel free to send me an email (in bio) if you want to chat about this more.
- jcims 5y agoDealing with industrial panels for a large fast food chain menu system was pretty enlightening. There was a surprising amount of management and environmental/telemetry information available from the embedded system on the panel.
- pupdogg 5y agoBased on the application, some manufacturer do create custom controllers that monitor/capture environmental data in order to safeguard the equipment from experiencing catastrophic failure or performing triggered/scheduled reboots, brightness adjustments, etc based on specific events like local temp, fan speed, on-time hours, etc.
- jcims 5y agoThese were NEC MultiSync panels and yep, had a fairly rich set of op codes (page 26) - https://assets.sharpnecdisplays.us/documents/usermanuals/external_control_p-v-x-series.pdf https://assets.sharpnecdisplays.us/documents/usermanuals/ext...
- bkovacev 5y agoHow would one go about contacting you?
- pupdogg 5y agoMy username at gmail
- gjsman-1000 5y agoThat's very interesting. I wonder if you would consider doing something like the (unicorn) new Google TV devices which have the ability to turn off the smart features entirely - except with Kodi or stock Android for the UI. Heck, even if it was a Smart TV that could run an open-source Android build instead of the proprietary bootloader-locked stuff there'd be a niche for that too.
- teekert 5y agoYeah, or perhaps build it on Ubuntu Core (their transactional/IOT version of the OS)
- gjsman-1000 5y agoUbuntu actually made a "Ubuntu TV" almost a decade ago that was based on Unity. It never had a TV actually go for sale with it (as far as I know) and the project was abandoned.
- teekert 5y agoNow that you mention it I remember! But Ubuntu core is IMO better suited for this. I find it sad to see it go nowhere (visible to me at least), the value proposition is pretty clear to me, coupled to the snap store and with easy rollback and transactional updates it has all the tech to take it up with Android and WebOS.
- pupdogg 5y agoSure. I think it would be best to keep the solution platform agnostic by utilizing an embedded PC and developing a browser based portal (which could work offline as well) for managing playback of various services. With WebRTC in play these days, I'm sure some very interesting solution could be developed.
- jpm_sd 5y agoI think successfully partnering with streaming services might be the tricky bit of a "privacy oriented SmartTV" project? How will you get Amazon, Netflix and Hulu on board?
- gjsman-1000 5y agoYou might consider talking to PlayOn. They've found a way to record video from streaming services locally and stream encrypted video to DNLA/UPnP devices without encryption for over a decade - despite operating in the US. The Video Stream is only 720p, but it's better than nothing. With their software, you can record Netflix/Hulu/Peacock/Disney+/Whatever to your computer or stream videos from those services to a Kodi box. They've never been sued from any of these services because of their (interesting) legal argument. If you could integrate their services or techniques, you wouldn't need any approval from the streaming services.
- cptskippy 5y agoPlayOn on the PC is on life support at this point it seems. It uses Internet Explorer and may still have dependencies on Flash, though I think that was more a provider dependency. It's very fragile and almost like they use Selenium or some other automation tester for UI then just screen cap the whole thing. I say this because it breaks frequently when providers change their UI. Plugins constantly come and go and stop working. They amount of support required to keep it going is tremendous and they're pushing the cloud as a service to support and maintain it.
- tehwebguy 5y agoIf you make this happen consider making them more easily serviceable too. My guess is TVs are a big landfill problem because they are too inexpensive for most people to bother getting repaired. Personally my ~8-10 y/o Samsung LED has a periodic problem that I’ve been diagnosing with YouTube, it seems like a lot of issues are caused by something simple like loose connectors inside.
- pupdogg 5y agoExcept for the LCD panel itself, everything else (the controller, PSU, wire harnesses, connectors, etc) are already easily serviceable. If you can build a computer, you can service this display. A big bonus with my industrial design would be that the casing itself is made out of metal and harder to damage than plastic casing of most large format displays. For your specific case, is that a consumer grade panel? What issues are you having?
- 8ytecoder 5y agoMy LG display went black. The panel itself was working fine because the logo shows up when it powers up. When I checked online it said it’s the controller. I looked into the cost of replacing it - it was more expensive than the price I paid for the tv itself. Ended up replacing the tv entirely. I don’t care much about the panel issues - a few dead pixels I can live with and anything worse I’d rather replace it. But everything else should be easily swappable. Also, I’m assuming you’d at the minimum support HDR and preferably Dolby Vision and Atmos. How easy/hard is that?
- pupdogg 5y agoI believe that consumer grade displays are inherently designed to be replaced vs serviced whenever they go bad. But, if your mind is wired-up to learn more and tinker with things, you can generally figure out a way to prop it open and fix it yourself. I don't know much about your exact LG model but I am pretty sure you could drive it with another more generic controller off AliExpress.com. What makes consumer grade displays a bit more interesting is that they generally come with the audio component. If that wasn't a big concern, you could easily drive it using another generic controller or an LVDS compatible mini-itx motherboard.
- zschuessler 5y agoI don't know if this falls in your vision or not, probably not, but I'll say I would pay top-dollar for an Android TV that was veritably privacy focused. I purchased a Sony TV that runs Android and adore it. I initially purchased it because it was a no-nonsense take on Android with high-rated privacy support. Sadly, over the past year they have begun introducing ads, promotions, and privacy policy readjustments that I don't agree with. An unlocked Android store would be great value. I can currently sideload Android apps on my TV. I can SSH into it if I want to, run my own server, etc. It has a high powered processor and good RAM so I can even multitask apps in it. I love everything about the TV except the privacy changes. Anyway, best of luck - I love the idea of dumb/privacy focused TVs :-)
- gjsman-1000 5y agoI don't think it'd be that hard. There are these cheap Android chips from China all over the place from companies like Allwinner which can be bought in almost any quantity (even extremely small quantities from an industrial perspective). You take one of those (which currently have reverse-engineering efforts for drivers ongoing with Sunxi project) and simply run a stock Android AOSP without any code signing. The end user would need to install the Play Store and video wouldn't play above HD for the lack of Hardware-supported DRM, but then you would just model your remote control to work like a Game Controller (which Android supports decently).
- gjsman-1000 5y agoAlso, further thoughts on this, an example would be the Pine64 series of Boards. They're open source, they've got reverse-engineered drivers coming slowly, they've got Android support already. Basically just take their board, wire the HDMI connector and instead wire that into the TV controller, and you've already got stock Android as long as you can get CEC over HDMI working (for the remote).
- cptskippy 5y ago> The end user would need to install the Play Store At that point you're back to square one though right?
- greggman3 5y agoI'd buy one. Is this something you can do like Drop where you take orders and only release if you get enough orders to make it worth while? I guess you have to deal with bad units and other stuff but just wondering. I think people will have different ideas of "dumb". For example. * A TV with only 1 input. If you want more inputs get an external switch etc... * A TV with no audio. If you want audio use external speakers * A TV with no remote. With the 2 things above all you need is on an off? And/Or maybe just support whatever the protocol is so that other devices can control it. Just thinking out loud, I'm sure there's a big disagreement on what's the minimal features.
- stanmancan 5y agoI could be wrong, but I would imagine most people consider a dumb TV to be exactly how pre-smart TV's worked: Screen, speakers, multiple inputs, and a remote.
- pupdogg 5y agoI think a survey would be needed to correctly understand definition of a dumb tv. To me, a dumb tv is actually equivalent to a dumb monitor but with a remote and without a tuner or audio IO/speakers.
- stanmancan 5y agoAll that stuff is easy to not use. Anecdotally, everyone I’ve spoken to wants a fully functioning TV that they can plug their own devices into since they’re going to plug an AppleTV/XBox/PlayStation/Roku/Chromecast into it anyways. If you want to use your own speakers or external video input switcher or whatever then you can still do that, just like you could before, but not including multiple inputs or speakers on a dumb set makes it an incredibly niche product. The TVs coming out today are great if they just ditched the smart aspect of it.
- CuriousSkeptic 5y agoI just want a display. No speakers please. No buttons or menus to fiddle with to select output.
- forgingahead 5y agoThrow up a Patreon or Kickstarter and I'll commit immediately to a set from the first run production.
- t0mmyb0y 5y agoDumb tv is already a large market.
- mdorazio 5y agoTo you and all the people replying to you: have you actually searched for this already? Sounds like a lot of MOM Test fails in here. For example, [1]. [1] https://helpatmyhome.com/best-non-smart-tv/ https://helpatmyhome.com/best-non-smart-tv/
- sayhar 5y agoMOM test?
- aaronax 5y agoMaybe this? https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/dp/1492180742 https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/... You shouldn't ask your mom about the viability of an idea because she will be biased towards thinking good things about you (and your ideas). Similarly (sort of...), Hacker News will be biased towards wanting your product and not say anything bad about it.
- Lgbhcqpahi 5y agoWhy does anyone want a smart TV at all or any other device? Almost everyone I know has an old tablet or laptop that they don't use at home. Get a dumb tv / projector (or even a smart tv but don't connect it to your network and use its smart features), plug the old laptop/tablet in using HDMI and use a bluetooth keyboard with a trackpad as a remote. You get everything you want with it - browser to login and watch whatever you want to, much much better experience typing in login/passwords than your tv remote, install whatever adblocks/security software you want. Added bonus, instead of buying another device you'd be using an old laptop/tablet you'd discard otherwise.
- mbesto 5y agoI'm 100% in to buy this. Even better if you can do an OLED copy of this without all of the crap, I'm 150% in: https://www.crutchfield.com/p_68965CXP/LG-OLED65CXPUA.html?tp=9201 https://www.crutchfield.com/p_68965CXP/LG-OLED65CXPUA.html?t...
- axaxs 5y agoOut of curiosity, how much would such a thing cost? I'd love a 'dumb' display, but it would be hard for me to justify dropping thousands to have one, when I'm perfectly satisfied just leaving the internet disconnected from my $400 'trash tier' TV. This isn't knocking the idea, it's a genuine question that also kinda ties into the question of how much money mfgs are making from this privacy invasion.
- o___ 5y agoAmazon Sidewalk enables your "disconnected" Smart TV to phone home using a neighbors network.
- thrav 5y agoGrab anyone else in this thread interested, and pitch it to Wyze as a new product division. Granted, their products aren’t dumb, but they seem to be very consumer and quality focused. I have loved everything they’ve done.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- CuriousSkeptic 5y agoI think I would be interested in a dumb device to plug some Apple TV in. Would it not be hard to secure licenses for HD-playback for a small player with privacy focus for a smart tv? One concern on “dumb” though. It’s one thing to skip apps and streaming, but I suppose some smarts are required to support things like upscaling or advanced frame interpolation ( https://blurbusters.com/frame-rate-amplification-technologies-frat-more-frame-rate-with-better-graphics/ https://blurbusters.com/frame-rate-amplification-technologie... )
- pupdogg 5y agoDisplay controller solves that part. If the demand is high enough, a custom controller can be developed to match controller on-board Apple Pro XDR while keeping the price point significantly cheaper.
- yumraj 5y ago1) you should have some contact info in your profile so that people can actually contact you. 2) I'll suggest you setup a website with info regarding this with more details and so on, again so that people can get in touch with you, you can measure interest and perhaps even build a few one off TVs for some people to kick start. Rest will follow..
- pupdogg 5y agomy apologies. i thought my email was visible in my profile. i updated the about section. thx
- big_big_data 5y agoi'd be interested in collaborating. I'm a data engineer but familiar with toying with raspberry pi type work as well. Currently just really frustrated using my roku, which has insanely bad latency and occasionally reboots for no reason.
- mcculley 5y agoTake my money! Seriously, I don't want any screens in my home that don't respect the user. This means privacy. It also means I don't want any branding. I don't want any logos visible, either on the case or when the screen powers on. I want the screen to be completely controlled by my Apple TV. It should implement HDMI-CEC or whatever protocol is necessary such that it does not ship with a remote control of its own. (I have had trouble with various displays requiring me to keep their stupid remote control around.) It should have no visible lights on the case. When the screen is off, I don't want any lights at all distracting me. How much do I need to pay for this? Every time I ask a genius at an Apple store, they have no idea.
- turtlebits 5y agoThey already exist (I'm sure you probably know about them). About 10 years ago I bought one from Panasonic, essentially a display with swappable input boards, including an embedded PC. No speakers, no legs. I bought it because back then I wanted DVI on my TV.