Philips to drop Google TV for European-based Titan OS(9to5google.com) |
Philips to drop Google TV for European-based Titan OS(9to5google.com) |
The only downside to enabling this mode is that it's a bit more difficult to access the play store when you need it because they hide the home shortcut to it as a final f you.
When you need to install a new app you can still access it by going to settings -> apps -> show system apps -> scroll -> scroll more -> keep scrolling -> Google Play Store -> Open.
And at that point, I can just get a dongle that supports everything, which defeats the point of having a smart TV in the first place.
I don’t WANT my TV to do the job of a computer. I want it to display whatever it is that the computer it is attached to is sending out via HDMI (I’d rather have DisplayPort but that’s another battle entirely).
I detest the idea of Smart TVs and it irks me to hell and back that they are the standard now. I just want TVs to be TVs, not entertainment centres.
But practically, it seems like the economic reality means these systems will always be stacked against consumers. Nobody cares enough about an open ecosystem when making the purchase decision if it means a difference of more than a few dollars, so we end up with streaming service logos on the remote, exclusivity deals with a given TV brand etc.
"Titan OS is the European, independent Linux-based smart TV operating system from Titan OS S.L, the technology, entertainment, and advertising company based in Barcelona."
Also :
"Titan OS operates on a Chromium browser, offering support for standard audio and video codecs, streaming protocols, and DRM options"
I don't watch TV, but have a non-smart Samsung hooked up to a laptop running Linux. I wonder how locked down or hackable this OS would be? Would an EU based system be better for privacy? I'd love to have a better option for when I update the "TV" I have in my living room.
grow your business by creating ongoing revenue streams
a.k.a they sell your customers' eyeballs. I don't want these creeps near my tv, european or not.
> Titan OS operates on a Chromium browser,
Google....
This is basically an Electron-powered TV. Fuck me, people really do not want to write native code anymore these days, do they?
Imagine how many "TV" targets Netflix builds app for. I would not be surprised if it's in the hundreds. They are not going to build and maintain a fully native app for some obscure platform which 0.03% of their customers use, when they can just build a wrapper around their web interface.
Then that well known distro company realised they couldn't get any TV company to actually license it. So they abandoned the project and asked us to remove their name from it. We then went out to the market and tried to sell it to the TV and STB manufacturers. Europe, Japan, USA, China, we visited everyone we could. I met with so many companies you'd recognise. We couldn't get anyone to license it.
We considered just releasing it, but it needed tidying up and the Distro company still had an option on it, but we didn't get an adequate answer on releasing it for free.
Eventually, under the burden of building something no one wanted to pay for, the company got sold to a Russian company for not enough. And the code was effectively lost inside that organisation.
Writing a distro for smart TVs is harder than you'd think. MStar, who makes >90% of the chipsets, has their own version of GStreamer which is not quite compatible and quite outdated (last time I was involved). Managing the lifecycle of apps in a resource constrained environment with a lean-back experience (e.g. no mouse and keyboard), requires experience. Almost all consumers want Android/AppleTV levels of simplicity, not ArchLinux with a full screen browser.
So it's good when people who know what they're doing maintain the software that goes into TVs.
But getting organisations to pay for the support and development is hard. Especially when TVs are horrifically unprofitable for most companies. And that's the key part that most people don't understand. When I was working on this strategy, most companies had 9 months to make any profit on a new TV model before the market put price pressures enough that each unit sold wasn't helping. TVs have become ridiculously cheap in the past 20 years, and every extra penny the manufacturers spend hurts their bottom line.
Ultimately, this is one of the reasons why TV manufacturers are always looking for new ways of making money (like adverts in menus), because TVs aren't a profitable business to be in. Notice how large screen PC monitors are usually much more expensive than the comparable TV but with less tech?
Just kill the idea of Smart TVs outright. Dumb TVs are superior in every conceivable way.
Man I hate smart TVs.
Additionally there is an increasing number of embedded OSes alternatives with permissive licenses, meaning eventually not even the Linux kernel will be taken into account.
"We must take the world as it is and not as we would like it to be." - Maurice Allais
But if they decide to lock these devices down, there’s little that can be done given that those that would be willing to put in the work to break it open aren’t likely to do it since there are a billion and one types of devices in this hardware space—the chance of yours being gifted with a working hack of such is ridiculously small.