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Comment by Santosh83 | Hacker News Reader

The larger question for society is do we even want smart everything? I rarely see this issue debated. Undoubtedly, software enables complex/rich functionality for what were hitherto relatively "dumb" devices, but the same flexibility can also lead to exploits, backdoors, bugs and place too much control in the hands of the manufacturers and many other nameless parties.

The most important aspect here is remote connectivity. Software without remote connectivity may be less correctable, but it is also resistant towards tampering from unwanted directions. With network connectivity the device basically becomes impossible to fully control. In fact, admin control shifts from you, the owner, to someone else on the other side of the planet, unless you want to take a hammer to it.

These issue need vigorous debate. 1. Do we even want every device to become "smart"?, and 2. should smart devices be designed with 24x7 network connectivity requirements?

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Best I can figure is companies not eating their own dog food. Clever engineers forced in directions the clueless set and enforced.

IMO, we lost the TV and car entertainment system battle long ago. It all just went south. And those two are leading symptoms of dumb smartification.

Car entertainment systems: lure of reprogrammable "somethings" replaced tactile buttons, distracting drivers. And then the programmable interface became a sequence of terrible things, features and partnerships, completely disconnected from how you use a radio.

TV: we went from hundreds of channels modulated on a single coax cable where you can flip instantly and get immediate signal to layers of slow interfaced descrambling and streaming, ... "please wait, updating" ... "please wait, cannot connect to service" ... "service status ok, 4/4" and of course, slow loading interfaces, > 1+ minute time-to-play experiences, audio lipsync issues and balkanization of content streaming, and market juggling of rights.

Yes, I'm whining, but why couldn't evolution of at least these two have gone ... better?

Good point - I don't understand how it's legal for me to drive my Citroen - the flat panel displays are as distracting as a mobile phone.

I'm not sure the consumer's wants really have much weight here. Manufacturers want smart TVs so they can get ad revenue. Streaming services want smart TVs to help get their app in front of more people. Google, Apple, Amazon and Roku want to hook more people into their ecosystems. I would guess your average consumer doesn't really consider any of this, they just go to Best Buy and buy a TV that seems reasonably priced.

It sucks. The smartest capability I want is the ability to mount network storage, play video from USB, etc. Give me options for playing my media.

Unfortunately nobody owns media, they stream everything, hence TVs with "smart" features.

That is because the root problem is excessive copyright terms lasting 100+ years. Bump that down to 10 or even 20 years and you will see a market emerge for the abilities you are looking for.

I think if you eliminated all copyright right now, people would still mostly choose to stream rather than deal with the hassle of managing a media library. It's a huge pain in the ass.

If there was popular media that could be legally stored locally and played then there would be a market for it.

I imagine it would be possible for a company to sell a NAS with all 80s movies, and 90s movies, music, games, or whatever. Right now there is no incentive to selling devices that can locally distribute content within your home because there is no content to distribute in the first place. So the target market is too small and results in whatever Synology or Plex or XBMC solutions exist.

You make a very good point. Right now the only DRM free media I can acquire is music (qobuz, hdtracks). There is no legal way to acquire DRM free movies or TV shows as far as I know.

I like the idea of a post-copyright world where you could buy a NAS preloaded with content. Unfortunately we seem to be headed for a future where you cannot even buy most media, you must subscribe to a service to stream it.

The companies want it because they make money selling your viewing activity, and that means that these devices will be popular with everyone who buys the lowest priced item in the store.

What I’d like to see are mandatory privacy disclosures on the front of the box and minimum lifetimes based on the primary function: full support for the advertised features for, say, the 10-15 years that the display lasts or they buy it back at a significant fraction of the original purchase price. We have a ton of usable equipment going to landfills because the manufacturer refuse to ship updates for things which aren’t generating ongoing revenue.

"Smart" is just a fancy marketing word for better features and richer experience. Smart TVs and smartphones are not smart. Smart is someone or something who exhibits high degree of intelligence which no computer has right now.

A few months back I found a very nice Samsung TV locked in a closet. I looked it up and it cost like $3,500 a few years back. When I asked about it, my boss said "I bought it to watch soccer but it doesn't have any apps, what good is it?" He had never heard of Roku/Apple TV/Fire TV.

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