6 ms·

Smart TVs are a good idea. Who doesn't want less crap plugged into their TV? However, TV manufacturers – for some reason – are ill-suited to developing the soft

Smart TVs are a good idea. Who doesn't want less crap plugged into their TV? However, TV manufacturers – for some reason – are ill-suited to developing the software that would make for a good experience.

ohaal 12y ago
Smart TVs being a good idea, all depends on who you are. It's good for TV manufacturers, because old TVs get older faster (outdated processor / software and so on). For consumers however, having a separate box for the "smart" part of your TV is much better, because it makes it easier to upgrade. Personally, I prefer the dumbest possible TV. Most of the time, I don't need a new panel, all I need is an upgrade of whatever smartbox I'm using at the moment. So far my Chromecast is carrying me quite well. The biggest upgrade of my TV I'll be doing in the near future will be an upgrade to 4K and/or maybe OLED down the line.
andybak 12y ago
Smart TVs are a terrible idea for the same reason that combined printer and scanners are a bad idea but with the negative aspect magnified many times. The cost and life expectancy of each part is very different and you don't want their replacement/upgrade to be tied together. A display panel should last you more than a decade and probably costs many 100s or 1000s. The 'smart' bit is probably worth less than $200 and is probably going to be obsolete in a couple of years. EDIT - another thing. I want the people that make my 'smart' box to be nimble, forward looking new media companies - not box shifters like Samsung, LG, Philips et al. Most Smart TVs have awful software (LG's purchase of WebOS might lead them to be an exception here) I've been asked by non-tech friends and relatives about SmartTVs many times and my answer is always "don't touch them with a barge-pole" and a link to a Roku/Chromecast/AppleTV etc.
- a3n 12y ago
  I haven't bought a TV for five years (a Samsung, as it happens, plugged into a Roku). Can you even buy a TV that isn't smart these days?
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    In Europe yes.
  - pkfrank 12y ago
    Yes. Most big box retailers have an "in house" brand that is no-frills but still fairly quality. IE Insignia from Best Buy.
  - wil421 12y ago
    There are plenty of companies that sell budget TVs without Smart features. Visio, Magnavox, and even Samsung's low end TVs dont have Smart features. If you are looking for a top of the line TV it may be hard to find (but is the display really better than a budget Samsung, are we paying extra for Smart features?).
  - anon4 12y ago
    Yes, it's called a monitor. There are plenty of monitors that have hdmi inputs and a standard audio jack output for connecting to a set of speakers.
    - Roboprog 12y ago
      Like how you think. I'm not sure what the biggest monitor you can get is, though.
      - jpindar 12y ago
        The largest monitor I am aware of is the one in the Dallas Cowboy's stadium, which is 72 feet by 160 feet and 1920 x 1080 resolution. The largest one a normal person can afford is of course a different question.
        boobsbr 12y ago
        It's not even 2k? Ewww.
        12y ago
- HeXetic 12y ago
  > combined printer and scanners are a bad idea So, photocopiers are a bad idea? Because that's what that is.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    Parent post is clearly talking about domestic printers that come with a scanner too, and not photocopiers. But, actually, scanning+printing photocopiers (rather than traditional photocopiers) suck too: http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_...?
- dnm 12y ago
  The software on my 2011 Samsung "smart" TV has always sucked and is unusable. My initial reaction was that they went cheap on the processor (the network connection is hard-wired). It's just too slow to be usable and Youtube never played properly. I just want more HDMI ports at this point. I don't mind the external devices. With the revelation of the ad delivery, I have no interest in doing a software upgrade.
- comex 12y ago
  That's true to some extent, but I think that in part, smart TVs are a terrible idea for the same reason that combined music player and phones are a terrible idea. Er, that is, were widely considered a terrible idea, thanks to ubiquitous clunky software, until 2007 when Apple did it right. And ever since then it's been considered obviously beneficial that you don't have to deal with two separate physical devices. With TVs you're not usually lugging the devices around, but the TV has to be turned on and have volume (and sometimes other settings) managed with a separate remote. Since they typically have multiple HDMI ports, while the set-top boxes you mention don't have HDMI passthrough, you're encouraged to multiplex devices from the TV too, which requires manually selecting between numbered inputs with only a dumb OSD to help coordinate things. (If you have external speakers you might use a receiver to multiplex instead, but now you have a third remote and another dumb UI, not to mention potential latency issues for gaming.) In practice, the result is that among regular users, nobody can use someone else's TV without first being coached on their particular idiosyncratic combination of remotes, let alone try to play their own content by plugging a device in or wireless streaming or something shocking like that. Supposedly HDMI CEC helps with this somewhat by letting the device control the TV; I haven't used a setup with it, but there's only so much a standard for connecting disparate devices can do. I want one remote - with the option to use my phone or voice control if I lose the remote - and a single, good UI that controls everything. That's only going to happen with a smart TV, but maybe the right device has yet to be made. (One potential solution to obsoletion is for a manufacturer to make the brains of the TV a separate detachable part that fits into the design, like a laptop battery. Another would be to standardize on one HDMI port per TV, with CEC support and no UI when something is plugged in, so that you're basically required to plug in a box that then takes over the experience. Yeah, like that's going to happen.)
  - Evolved 12y ago
    Hardware combinations are mostly a terrible idea unlike software combinations that can be patched with updates. If your music player on your phone malfunctioned it shouldn't be a difficult remedy to push out an OTA update. Try that when your printer won't align thus relegating it to a bulky and expensive scanner (if that part still works). There isn't a solution to devices becoming obsolete because manufacturers would sell less of a new product if the old one worked fine in perpetuity. Not only this but old iPhones, for example, run worse with new iOS versions because new versions are coded for new hardware. Hence the need to upgrade periodically. How many of us have a 486 that will run Dragon Age?
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Smart TVs are a terrible idea for the same reason that combined printer and scanners are a bad idea but with the negative aspect magnified many times. The cost and life expectancy of each part is very different and you don't want their replacement/upgrade to be tied together. I think combined printers and scanners are a much better idea than Smart TVs because (1) you get more benefit (footprint savings) from the combination with all-in-one printer/scanners than with Smart TVs, and (2) IME, printer replacement is desired more often than scanner replacement, and the printer is also the more expensive part; so you lose less by tieing replacement schedules together compared to Smart TVs, where the "brain" is the more frequently replaced part when replaced separately, but the display is the more expensive part.
  - linker3000 12y ago
    If my MFC ever starts printing random ads every 'n' scans or pages printed it's going in the bin. IF I consider buying a Samsung 'Smart' TV in the future, it better have clear abilities to disable this kind of adserving crap. In any case, I forsee some appropriate rules being added to the house firewall. Additional thought: Is there a Web site where you can list products or services you HAVEN'T purchased, giving the value lost to the supplier, and why you didn't buy? Might generate some interesting stats?! Hmm...'whyididntbuy.com' is on sale for over $2K...where can I document my non-purchase of that!?
    - lozf 12y ago
      Nice idea, but then the money grabbing corporates will just use the "freely submitted user data" to shaft the rest of us by jacking up the price of any simpler / less-smart products. Unfortunately telling 'them' why they lost a sale is unlikely to help 'us' in the long run.
  - danudey 12y ago
    I had a friend whose printer wouldn't scan because it was out of ink. Needless to say she threw it in the bin and bought one that was slightly less worse.
higherpurpose 12y ago
I think the opposite. Why would I buy a smart TV, pay the premium for that, get shitty software that I get stuck with for 10 years, including its obsolete hardware and processor, when I could just buy a $100 box that does the same thing if not more, made by companies who specialize in this stuff (Google, Apple, Roku, Amazon), and change it say every 3 years?
astrodust 12y ago
Every "Smart TV" I've seen is like a dumbed down version of a real device like a Chromecast or an Apple TV. How do you make something so brutally garbage, anyway? Some of these TVs take so long to register a button press you have to wonder if they aren't using a 6502 inside to power the thing. The only experience that's worse is those set-top boxes the cable companies provide you with. The Amiga had near flawless, real-time response and these things refresh at, maybe, a few frames per second.
- omega_rythm 12y ago
  > The only experience that's worse is those set-top boxes the cable companies provide you with. I don't know about the American market. Over here (France), set-top boxen aren't so bad. And there are regular software upgrade; some of them even include games and apps.
  - ChrisClark 12y ago
    In Canada it's like he said though. Press a button, there is just enough of a delay to wonder if you pressed it hard enough, then it starts moving... slowly.
    - omega_rythm 12y ago
      It may have to do that often actions on set top boxes are related to accessing content, for which the software has to check permissions; these are usually embedded in the stream (think mumultiplexed), and the decoder needs to receive the frames before being able to extract the content and display it. Cable network has very high latency (compared to fiber or adsl). If some of the credential checks are stored in a separate device (dongle, smartcard ), then it could take even longer.
- asd 12y ago
  What's worse is when you do not think that the Smart TV registered your button press and you send another after a second or two. Then you'll get two keypresses queued up and fire at once and then you have exited your app/screen/etc. Yay. DirecTV's apps (even on their latest Genie DVR) are the worst - you hit the right button and wait about 8 seconds for the apps to load. Why even bother? Someone surely tests these things and sees the laggish behavior and just say, "Fuck it! Good enough! Ship it and never update it!"
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Smart TVs are a good idea. Who doesn't want less crap plugged into their TV? I don't. For the same reason I don't want all-in-one desktop computers -- the display is both a substantial portion of the expense and the part that gets outdated the slowest. So, I'd rather replace the parts that provide the content to display separately from the display. I'd rather replace my Chromecast for new functionality than replace my TV.
Htsthbjig 12y ago
I don't. I bought a 55 inches LG OLED and basically connect it to a computer. It is an amazing device for work. In 2 or tree years I will change my computer, but not my screen. People are buying 4Ks screens today, with quantum dots LCDs and OLED you could display color for which no specification exist yet!! In one or two years you will have devices that could use the color space. There is very little content for 4K. No affordable computer is going to display google earth at 4Ks and 60 fps, but in the near future they will appear.
- boobsbr 12y ago
  I have a Smat TV from LG and basically what it does is update itself through wifi. I don't have Netflix to watch on it. I don't share files on the network to stream from it. I don't watch Youttube on it, either through my phone or through the TV's app. I just plug my laptop into the HDMI port, my wife watches cable (most basic package with internet), I maybe play Xbox 360 twice a year. Most of the non-smart features are also useless for me. The standard settings are so good enough for me that I only switch input ports and change the volume.
loco5niner 12y ago
I disagree. Just like my printer, I want my display to be mostly dumb. Fewer things to break, first of all. Also, "smart" devices are usually pretty badly designed. I'll plug in my own choice of brain, thank you.

ohaal 12y ago

Smart TVs being a good idea, all depends on who you are. It's good for TV manufacturers, because old TVs get older faster (outdated processor / software and so on). For consumers however, having a separate box for the "smart" part of your TV is much better, because it makes it easier to upgrade. Personally, I prefer the dumbest possible TV. Most of the time, I don't need a new panel, all I need is an upgrade of whatever smartbox I'm using at the moment. So far my Chromecast is carrying me quite well. The biggest upgrade of my TV I'll be doing in the near future will be an upgrade to 4K and/or maybe OLED down the line.

andybak 12y ago

Smart TVs are a terrible idea for the same reason that combined printer and scanners are a bad idea but with the negative aspect magnified many times. The cost and life expectancy of each part is very different and you don't want their replacement/upgrade to be tied together. A display panel should last you more than a decade and probably costs many 100s or 1000s. The 'smart' bit is probably worth less than $200 and is probably going to be obsolete in a couple of years. EDIT - another thing. I want the people that make my 'smart' box to be nimble, forward looking new media companies - not box shifters like Samsung, LG, Philips et al. Most Smart TVs have awful software (LG's purchase of WebOS might lead them to be an exception here) I've been asked by non-tech friends and relatives about SmartTVs many times and my answer is always "don't touch them with a barge-pole" and a link to a Roku/Chromecast/AppleTV etc.

a3n 12y ago
I haven't bought a TV for five years (a Samsung, as it happens, plugged into a Roku). Can you even buy a TV that isn't smart these days?
- pjmlp 12y ago
  In Europe yes.
- pkfrank 12y ago
  Yes. Most big box retailers have an "in house" brand that is no-frills but still fairly quality. IE Insignia from Best Buy.
- wil421 12y ago
  There are plenty of companies that sell budget TVs without Smart features. Visio, Magnavox, and even Samsung's low end TVs dont have Smart features. If you are looking for a top of the line TV it may be hard to find (but is the display really better than a budget Samsung, are we paying extra for Smart features?).
- anon4 12y ago
  Yes, it's called a monitor. There are plenty of monitors that have hdmi inputs and a standard audio jack output for connecting to a set of speakers.
  - Roboprog 12y ago
    Like how you think. I'm not sure what the biggest monitor you can get is, though.
    - jpindar 12y ago
      The largest monitor I am aware of is the one in the Dallas Cowboy's stadium, which is 72 feet by 160 feet and 1920 x 1080 resolution. The largest one a normal person can afford is of course a different question.
      - boobsbr 12y ago
        It's not even 2k? Ewww.
        12y ago
HeXetic 12y ago
> combined printer and scanners are a bad idea So, photocopiers are a bad idea? Because that's what that is.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Parent post is clearly talking about domestic printers that come with a scanner too, and not photocopiers. But, actually, scanning+printing photocopiers (rather than traditional photocopiers) suck too: http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_...?
dnm 12y ago
The software on my 2011 Samsung "smart" TV has always sucked and is unusable. My initial reaction was that they went cheap on the processor (the network connection is hard-wired). It's just too slow to be usable and Youtube never played properly. I just want more HDMI ports at this point. I don't mind the external devices. With the revelation of the ad delivery, I have no interest in doing a software upgrade.
comex 12y ago
That's true to some extent, but I think that in part, smart TVs are a terrible idea for the same reason that combined music player and phones are a terrible idea. Er, that is, were widely considered a terrible idea, thanks to ubiquitous clunky software, until 2007 when Apple did it right. And ever since then it's been considered obviously beneficial that you don't have to deal with two separate physical devices. With TVs you're not usually lugging the devices around, but the TV has to be turned on and have volume (and sometimes other settings) managed with a separate remote. Since they typically have multiple HDMI ports, while the set-top boxes you mention don't have HDMI passthrough, you're encouraged to multiplex devices from the TV too, which requires manually selecting between numbered inputs with only a dumb OSD to help coordinate things. (If you have external speakers you might use a receiver to multiplex instead, but now you have a third remote and another dumb UI, not to mention potential latency issues for gaming.) In practice, the result is that among regular users, nobody can use someone else's TV without first being coached on their particular idiosyncratic combination of remotes, let alone try to play their own content by plugging a device in or wireless streaming or something shocking like that. Supposedly HDMI CEC helps with this somewhat by letting the device control the TV; I haven't used a setup with it, but there's only so much a standard for connecting disparate devices can do. I want one remote - with the option to use my phone or voice control if I lose the remote - and a single, good UI that controls everything. That's only going to happen with a smart TV, but maybe the right device has yet to be made. (One potential solution to obsoletion is for a manufacturer to make the brains of the TV a separate detachable part that fits into the design, like a laptop battery. Another would be to standardize on one HDMI port per TV, with CEC support and no UI when something is plugged in, so that you're basically required to plug in a box that then takes over the experience. Yeah, like that's going to happen.)
- Evolved 12y ago
  Hardware combinations are mostly a terrible idea unlike software combinations that can be patched with updates. If your music player on your phone malfunctioned it shouldn't be a difficult remedy to push out an OTA update. Try that when your printer won't align thus relegating it to a bulky and expensive scanner (if that part still works). There isn't a solution to devices becoming obsolete because manufacturers would sell less of a new product if the old one worked fine in perpetuity. Not only this but old iPhones, for example, run worse with new iOS versions because new versions are coded for new hardware. Hence the need to upgrade periodically. How many of us have a 486 that will run Dragon Age?
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Smart TVs are a terrible idea for the same reason that combined printer and scanners are a bad idea but with the negative aspect magnified many times. The cost and life expectancy of each part is very different and you don't want their replacement/upgrade to be tied together. I think combined printers and scanners are a much better idea than Smart TVs because (1) you get more benefit (footprint savings) from the combination with all-in-one printer/scanners than with Smart TVs, and (2) IME, printer replacement is desired more often than scanner replacement, and the printer is also the more expensive part; so you lose less by tieing replacement schedules together compared to Smart TVs, where the "brain" is the more frequently replaced part when replaced separately, but the display is the more expensive part.
- linker3000 12y ago
  If my MFC ever starts printing random ads every 'n' scans or pages printed it's going in the bin. IF I consider buying a Samsung 'Smart' TV in the future, it better have clear abilities to disable this kind of adserving crap. In any case, I forsee some appropriate rules being added to the house firewall. Additional thought: Is there a Web site where you can list products or services you HAVEN'T purchased, giving the value lost to the supplier, and why you didn't buy? Might generate some interesting stats?! Hmm...'whyididntbuy.com' is on sale for over $2K...where can I document my non-purchase of that!?
  - lozf 12y ago
    Nice idea, but then the money grabbing corporates will just use the "freely submitted user data" to shaft the rest of us by jacking up the price of any simpler / less-smart products. Unfortunately telling 'them' why they lost a sale is unlikely to help 'us' in the long run.
- danudey 12y ago
  I had a friend whose printer wouldn't scan because it was out of ink. Needless to say she threw it in the bin and bought one that was slightly less worse.

higherpurpose 12y ago

I think the opposite. Why would I buy a smart TV, pay the premium for that, get shitty software that I get stuck with for 10 years, including its obsolete hardware and processor, when I could just buy a $100 box that does the same thing if not more, made by companies who specialize in this stuff (Google, Apple, Roku, Amazon), and change it say every 3 years?

astrodust 12y ago

Every "Smart TV" I've seen is like a dumbed down version of a real device like a Chromecast or an Apple TV. How do you make something so brutally garbage, anyway? Some of these TVs take so long to register a button press you have to wonder if they aren't using a 6502 inside to power the thing. The only experience that's worse is those set-top boxes the cable companies provide you with. The Amiga had near flawless, real-time response and these things refresh at, maybe, a few frames per second.

omega_rythm 12y ago
> The only experience that's worse is those set-top boxes the cable companies provide you with. I don't know about the American market. Over here (France), set-top boxen aren't so bad. And there are regular software upgrade; some of them even include games and apps.
- ChrisClark 12y ago
  In Canada it's like he said though. Press a button, there is just enough of a delay to wonder if you pressed it hard enough, then it starts moving... slowly.
  - omega_rythm 12y ago
    It may have to do that often actions on set top boxes are related to accessing content, for which the software has to check permissions; these are usually embedded in the stream (think mumultiplexed), and the decoder needs to receive the frames before being able to extract the content and display it. Cable network has very high latency (compared to fiber or adsl). If some of the credential checks are stored in a separate device (dongle, smartcard ), then it could take even longer.
asd 12y ago
What's worse is when you do not think that the Smart TV registered your button press and you send another after a second or two. Then you'll get two keypresses queued up and fire at once and then you have exited your app/screen/etc. Yay. DirecTV's apps (even on their latest Genie DVR) are the worst - you hit the right button and wait about 8 seconds for the apps to load. Why even bother? Someone surely tests these things and sees the laggish behavior and just say, "Fuck it! Good enough! Ship it and never update it!"

dragonwriter 12y ago

> Smart TVs are a good idea. Who doesn't want less crap plugged into their TV? I don't. For the same reason I don't want all-in-one desktop computers -- the display is both a substantial portion of the expense and the part that gets outdated the slowest. So, I'd rather replace the parts that provide the content to display separately from the display. I'd rather replace my Chromecast for new functionality than replace my TV.

Htsthbjig 12y ago

I don't. I bought a 55 inches LG OLED and basically connect it to a computer. It is an amazing device for work. In 2 or tree years I will change my computer, but not my screen. People are buying 4Ks screens today, with quantum dots LCDs and OLED you could display color for which no specification exist yet!! In one or two years you will have devices that could use the color space. There is very little content for 4K. No affordable computer is going to display google earth at 4Ks and 60 fps, but in the near future they will appear.

boobsbr 12y ago
I have a Smat TV from LG and basically what it does is update itself through wifi. I don't have Netflix to watch on it. I don't share files on the network to stream from it. I don't watch Youttube on it, either through my phone or through the TV's app. I just plug my laptop into the HDMI port, my wife watches cable (most basic package with internet), I maybe play Xbox 360 twice a year. Most of the non-smart features are also useless for me. The standard settings are so good enough for me that I only switch input ports and change the volume.

loco5niner 12y ago

I disagree. Just like my printer, I want my display to be mostly dumb. Fewer things to break, first of all. Also, "smart" devices are usually pretty badly designed. I'll plug in my own choice of brain, thank you.