Hacker News Reader

Comment by enos_feedler | Hacker News Reader

I want a dumb tv but with one smart feature: the ability to download software emulations of these terrible hdmi sticks so I don’t have to spend $35+ on each one. Imagine a tv with no ports but the ability to pull the souls of these roku, fire, google tv, apple tv and probably a microsoft one soon.

I want the tv to manage all of my bluetooth connections and hot swap to the appropriate “OS” when i reach for each bluetooth remote/controller.

This minimizes the role of the tv itself to a thin layer of sensor/peripheral management and routing the video feed to the oppropriate OS

View on HN

That sounds like a smart TV, or at least what one should be. Like an actually well made, non buggy, secure smart TV.

All of those devices are another useless layer to select an "app" that serves as a client for various streaming services. There is no utility to be had from visualizing multiple entire OS to run their respective nearly identical apps and a unique but useless settings and app switcher gui.

You can experience an actual decrease in complexity simply by getting a device that supports the streaming services desired and reducing the "smart" TV to the dumb duty of displaying the content that comes in via the device's input.

I agree with what you are saying, but I think it is futile to force all of these distribution platforms to disappear. You will never get everything you want on a single platform. Something will always be missing. The only way to get it all is to have access to all the operating systems.

Therefore, as a user, I just want good hardware that respects what all of these players are trying to do but makes my life as easy as possible. In my view, this is what hardware should do. Having a TV trying to stick it’s own ugly UI in front of all these other ugly UIs is just making the problem worse, not better. I would rather it not even have it’s own remote. It’s like everyone promises their remote will be the one you will use, but in reality you just added another remote to the living room. You didn’t solve it you just made it worse. The best TV right now actually subtracts, not adds.

Sounds like you want a computer

I am not sure about that. A computer draws pixels. I don’t want my TV drawing any pixels itself

plex

Reply on news.ycombinator.com