6 ms·

As anyone who has used a Vizio TV knows, the software is really of no particular value. Input lag abounds. They should dump it all out on Github and move on as

As anyone who has used a Vizio TV knows, the software is really of no particular value. Input lag abounds. They should dump it all out on Github and move on as the software could not possibly be construed as any kind of moat for them.

ryandrake 5y ago
There are many hardware companies where their embedded software is not actually a crucial moat or even value-add, compared to open source options. Look at WiFi routers: Do any of them have software that is better than OpenWRT or Tomato? Why do they even try? If I were Netgear or ASUS, I'd get rid of 90% of our software developers and just use one of the great open source options. Why is anyone spending money developing bespoke router firmware? I've worked as a software engineer writing embedded code, at several hardware companies, and nearly all of them see software as just another line item on the BOM, like a bolt or a screw, to make as cheap and quickly as they can. "We need to source 32 screws, 50 resistors, 45 capacitors, a waterproofing gasket, oh, and this 'software' thing. Make some 'software,' and ensure we fasten it to the product at station 25 on the assembly line." That's almost certainly how Vizio thinks of its software.
- _fat_santa 5y ago
  > I've worked as a software engineer writing embedded code, at several hardware companies, and nearly all of them see software as just another line item on the BOM It kind of blows my mind that this is the case. Do these companies not realize that bad software can easily tank their product?.
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    It is not a problem until someone comes along with a significantly better experience (eg. Apple). Until then, the mass market cares more about price.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    They don't seem to realize, nor care. I mean, my cable box's UI is horrendous. Icons that look like they were cut/pasted from a "Download Powerpoint Clipart" web page, complete with obvious aspect ratio bugs. 16x8 pixel bitmap fonts straight out of 1988, UI elements not centered, not padded/inset consistently, silly full-saturation colors (like someone literally picked 0xff0000, 0x00ff00, and 0x0000ff for their color palette), poorly translated error messages ("feature not invoke"), button presses take 1-3 seconds to take effect, channel changing takes 2 seconds. It's like a 15 year old's HelloWorldGUI project made it into production. At some point during development, some non-software person at the subcontractor looked at the software, checked some checkboxes and said "Yup, this horrible thing our devs cobbled together in a frantic rush meets the minimum criteria that were spelled out in the contract we signed with TvManufacturer. Ship it!"
- daniel-cussen 5y ago
  > I've worked as a software engineer writing embedded code, at several hardware companies, and nearly all of them see software as just another line item on the BOM, like a bolt or a screw, to make as cheap and quickly as they can. "We need to source 32 screws, 50 resistors, 45 capacitors, a waterproofing gasket, oh, and this 'software' thing. Make some 'software,' and ensure we fasten it to the product at station 25 on the assembly line." That's almost certainly how Vizio thinks of its software. Yeah to my knowledge that's exactly right, that is how they think about software. In Japan especially, outside of some places like Nintendo, that is how they think.
- netr0ute 5y ago
  > Do any of them have software that is better than OpenWRT or Tomato? What about Cisco and Mikrotik?
  - genmud 5y ago
    What about them? Cisco software would regularly crap the bed and the only thing I would trust mikrotik for would be l2 stuff. I remember some choice bugs where Cisco failover would constantly flap and take our external routers down when using certain gbics that were bought and labeled from Cisco. Their TAC was like, yea, we found those to be incompatible and refused to replace anything, until I showed them our new juniper routers. It’s been a couple years since I have used Cisco but have a bunch of friends that manage large deployments and it doesn’t seem to have improved since I was doing my deployments.
squarefoot 5y ago
> the software is really of no particular value Agreed. They probably only want to hide how they use Open Source software to spy on people. https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/14/still-the-product/#vizio https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/14/still-the-product/#vizio

ryandrake 5y ago

There are many hardware companies where their embedded software is not actually a crucial moat or even value-add, compared to open source options. Look at WiFi routers: Do any of them have software that is better than OpenWRT or Tomato? Why do they even try? If I were Netgear or ASUS, I'd get rid of 90% of our software developers and just use one of the great open source options. Why is anyone spending money developing bespoke router firmware? I've worked as a software engineer writing embedded code, at several hardware companies, and nearly all of them see software as just another line item on the BOM, like a bolt or a screw, to make as cheap and quickly as they can. "We need to source 32 screws, 50 resistors, 45 capacitors, a waterproofing gasket, oh, and this 'software' thing. Make some 'software,' and ensure we fasten it to the product at station 25 on the assembly line." That's almost certainly how Vizio thinks of its software.

_fat_santa 5y ago
> I've worked as a software engineer writing embedded code, at several hardware companies, and nearly all of them see software as just another line item on the BOM It kind of blows my mind that this is the case. Do these companies not realize that bad software can easily tank their product?.
- nebula8804 5y ago
  It is not a problem until someone comes along with a significantly better experience (eg. Apple). Until then, the mass market cares more about price.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  They don't seem to realize, nor care. I mean, my cable box's UI is horrendous. Icons that look like they were cut/pasted from a "Download Powerpoint Clipart" web page, complete with obvious aspect ratio bugs. 16x8 pixel bitmap fonts straight out of 1988, UI elements not centered, not padded/inset consistently, silly full-saturation colors (like someone literally picked 0xff0000, 0x00ff00, and 0x0000ff for their color palette), poorly translated error messages ("feature not invoke"), button presses take 1-3 seconds to take effect, channel changing takes 2 seconds. It's like a 15 year old's HelloWorldGUI project made it into production. At some point during development, some non-software person at the subcontractor looked at the software, checked some checkboxes and said "Yup, this horrible thing our devs cobbled together in a frantic rush meets the minimum criteria that were spelled out in the contract we signed with TvManufacturer. Ship it!"
daniel-cussen 5y ago
> I've worked as a software engineer writing embedded code, at several hardware companies, and nearly all of them see software as just another line item on the BOM, like a bolt or a screw, to make as cheap and quickly as they can. "We need to source 32 screws, 50 resistors, 45 capacitors, a waterproofing gasket, oh, and this 'software' thing. Make some 'software,' and ensure we fasten it to the product at station 25 on the assembly line." That's almost certainly how Vizio thinks of its software. Yeah to my knowledge that's exactly right, that is how they think about software. In Japan especially, outside of some places like Nintendo, that is how they think.
netr0ute 5y ago
> Do any of them have software that is better than OpenWRT or Tomato? What about Cisco and Mikrotik?
- genmud 5y ago
  What about them? Cisco software would regularly crap the bed and the only thing I would trust mikrotik for would be l2 stuff. I remember some choice bugs where Cisco failover would constantly flap and take our external routers down when using certain gbics that were bought and labeled from Cisco. Their TAC was like, yea, we found those to be incompatible and refused to replace anything, until I showed them our new juniper routers. It’s been a couple years since I have used Cisco but have a bunch of friends that manage large deployments and it doesn’t seem to have improved since I was doing my deployments.

squarefoot 5y ago

> the software is really of no particular value Agreed. They probably only want to hide how they use Open Source software to spy on people. https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/14/still-the-product/#vizio https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/14/still-the-product/#vizio