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This rings so incredibly true to me. Bundle solutions seem to offer more issues than they offer simplicity. Like you, I own a ~30 year old amplifier which does

This rings so incredibly true to me. Bundle solutions seem to offer more issues than they offer simplicity. Like you, I own a ~30 year old amplifier which does only does a few simple things thing: running my speakers, switching between two inputs, and supplying power to my PS3 (bluray player). The two inputs are my TV and 3.5mm audio jack (for phones), my TV handles digital input, namely my PS3, my laptop, a RaspPi, and eventually a Chromecast when I get around to it. My laptop makes my TV an audio visualisation screen (Project M), a Netflix screen (Chromium-Pipelight), a YouTube screen (Chromium/Minitube). A multipurpose media screen, without any smart-TV'esque clunkiness. Chromecast is one of those things that is either purposely or coincidentally replicating this kind of setup for a more average user. You can use your tablet (extremely practical) to do pretty much everything I described above. Once again I find Google trying to be my (huge and scary) buddy, instead of hugging me to death by ecosystem lock-in. (Yes, I see the irony of Android with that statement.)

ufmace 13y ago
> PS3 (bluray player) Hoo boy, speaking of proprietary issues, I unplugged mine over a year ago, and haven't missed it. I used the PS3 for Netflix and sometimes DVD/Bluray playing. The trouble is, you never knew when it would decide that it needed to update itself. Every update takes like half an hour to run, can't be postponed or run in the background, and your device can't do much until you run it, since naturally, you can't use your Netflix account, which ought to be completely separate, without logging into a PSN account that I have no use for. And of course, the Netflix interface is slow and terrible, and it doesn't really support anything else. I replaced it with a Roku that does everything better and is a third of the price. Being tiny and taking almost no power are nice too. If it updates at all, it does it silently in the background, which is how I like it.

ufmace 13y ago

> PS3 (bluray player) Hoo boy, speaking of proprietary issues, I unplugged mine over a year ago, and haven't missed it. I used the PS3 for Netflix and sometimes DVD/Bluray playing. The trouble is, you never knew when it would decide that it needed to update itself. Every update takes like half an hour to run, can't be postponed or run in the background, and your device can't do much until you run it, since naturally, you can't use your Netflix account, which ought to be completely separate, without logging into a PSN account that I have no use for. And of course, the Netflix interface is slow and terrible, and it doesn't really support anything else. I replaced it with a Roku that does everything better and is a third of the price. Being tiny and taking almost no power are nice too. If it updates at all, it does it silently in the background, which is how I like it.