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Comment by zschuessler | Hacker News Reader

I 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 :-)

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Keeping PRIVACY a top priority, my ultimate vision would be to move away from these so called app stores. Considering the current state of things, I know that sounds very unrealistic. However, something inside me still tells me that if you create something of value, they will come!

No no no, stick to your vision!!

½ of these comments asking for AirPlay, the other ½ asking for Android TV or wtf Google is calling it these days. Next someone will want Roku, while someone else wants Amazon, and we’re right back to where we started.

The purity of your idea is in the dumb TV. Don’t put a Raspberry Pi on the back, don’t build a mini-ATX PC in.

5 HDMI ports. Power. That’s it. People can bring their own set top boxes and everyone will be happy.

Exactly. There are probably two groups of people in this thread who are interested in the pitch:

* people who want a completely dumb display with a bunch of inputs, as you say

* people who want a display with some smarts but that is "open", can be "hacked", etc

I totally understand the desire to have more things to hack, but there are already numerous little boxes, pucks, sticks, etc to scratch that itch. What's really missing is a way to get a display that doesn't have any of that at all and also doesn't cost 5x because it's made for commercial entities. (Incidentally, my early research suggests a lot of commercial displays actually have "smart" BS in them already, it's just more targeted at device management than serving content-based ads, so that inflates the cost if I'm not going to use it.)

EDIT: formatting

To be clear, I am ALL for this group below:

* people who want a completely dumb display with a bunch of inputs

This leaves the option to hack it with whatever input device the user sees fit.

I like the idea of one cable to an external box of many inputs that lives in the tv stand.

It separates out the input box from the display (makes it easier to plug things into) and allows just one cable to come from the TV. You can also have a lot more ports this way (8 HDMI?)

Samsung has a TV that implements something like this (of course it has all the rest of the smart crap too that you could nix).

Also this makes it easy to potentially have upgradeable/future input boxes with new ports without having to modify the display.

It's still 'dumb', but I think breaking out the inputs is a better design.

I agree with your vision. Keep it simple, or even better: keep it dumb! ;)

I 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).

Also, 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).

> The end user would need to install the Play Store

At that point you're back to square one though right?

How could they introduce anything if you don't connect the TV to the internet at all?

My Sony OLED smart tv works the same way it did when I got it.

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