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Please make your products work with URLs

anderspitman.net

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Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#51

Post by babypuncher »

jchw wrote: post #17

I hate smart TVs with a burning passion. They accomplish literally the bare minimum to keep people happy and sometimes not even that. Samsung’s Tizen OS is the most genuinely frustrating experience I’ve had with a consumer device outside of printing. Advertisements on my home screen that can’t be disabled, dubious privacy, bugs that require me to reboot my TV, and of course security so bad that they recommend install…

There are set top boxes (Apple TV, Nvidia Shield, etc.) that offer a much better user experience with thriving app ecosystems and regular feature updates, if you don't want the rigamarole of trying to use desktop software in a living room.

I used to do the whole HTPC thing but having to use an actual web browser to access half my content felt obnoxious and cumbersome.

As for avoiding smart TVs, I found it pretty easy to just ignore the WebOS garbage on my LG. I don't see why I would want to pay more to get rid of a feature I haven't had to interact with since setting the device up.

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#53

Post by Willamin »

jchw wrote: post #17

I hate smart TVs with a burning passion. They accomplish literally the bare minimum to keep people happy and sometimes not even that. Samsung’s Tizen OS is the most genuinely frustrating experience I’ve had with a consumer device outside of printing. Advertisements on my home screen that can’t be disabled, dubious privacy, bugs that require me to reboot my TV, and of course security so bad that they recommend install…

As an alternative to getting a smart tv and treating it dumb, I came across this dumb tv a few weeks ago: ironcast.tv

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#54

Post by spaceribs »

jchw wrote: post #17

I hate smart TVs with a burning passion. They accomplish literally the bare minimum to keep people happy and sometimes not even that. Samsung’s Tizen OS is the most genuinely frustrating experience I’ve had with a consumer device outside of printing. Advertisements on my home screen that can’t be disabled, dubious privacy, bugs that require me to reboot my TV, and of course security so bad that they recommend install…

Here's my little suggestion for all those looking for an alternative to "Smart" TVs:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=42+inch+computer+monitor

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#55

Post by kelnos »

Yes, please. I was at an Airbnb in Austin last week, which had a Roku device attached to the TV. I usually bring along a Chromcast (or at least the proper adapters to get HDMI out of my laptop) when I travel, but this time I forgot.

I just wanted to play a video file I had on my laptop. I googled around, found that Roku appears to support DLNA, and tried to use Universal Media Server on my laptop. The Roku did find the media server, but kept claiming that there were no files available. Not sure if it was a video format issue (main-profile h264, ac3, and mkv are listed as supported by Roku) or something else, but at the end of the day I just couldn't get it to work, and I was bummed and frustrated.

Maybe play-this-URL functionality wouldn't've helped, but at least I would have felt more confident that it was a format issue rather than just some dumb problem with the huge DLNA tech stack.

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#57

Post by reggieband »

> However, there doesn't seem to be any widely implemented standard for playing plain URLs, only walled gardens like the YouTube app.

I've had experience overseeing the implementation of a simple Chromecast application. It was a relatively painless process and worked pretty flawlessly with minimal code. It may not be a standard but it is totally accessible to anyone with a bit of Javascript experience.

I could imagine an evening hack session that would be a Chromecast application (maybe a browser extension) that you can paste urls into and it would play that way. Without even bothering looking, I would bet such an extension already exists in the Chrome Web Store.

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#58

Post by deanebarker »

I wrote this five years ago, and it actually made from the front page of Hacker News back then.

"We Suck At HTTP"

>"We have broken HTTP. We’ve done it for years in fits and starts, but apps have completely broken it. HTTP was a good specification which we’ve steadily whittled away."

https://gadgetopia.com/post/9236

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#59

Post by mumblemumble »

> Here is my plea: when you build hardware/software, please make it support the primitive, simple case.

Says a webpage that is just a couple empty divs w/o JS, and, with JS, is 4 hyperlinks, a few paragraphs of text, and absolutley nothing (aside from google-analytics) that ever needed any JS in the first place, let alone 5 or 6 files' worth of it.

But, I think that conflict really speaks to the funamental issue, here: Thinking about the primitive, simple case is often, from the creator's perspective, more work than it's worth.

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#60

Post by cookiecaper »

I have two standalone Rokus that are a major PITA because of this. There's no way to connect to an NFS share, SMB share, or other local storage directly from the system itself. There's no VLC app for Roku. The best you can do is use the rudimentary "Roku Media Browser" to page through a DLNA server, which means you have to set up either something like Plex (which sucks for a lot of reasons) or at least miniDLNA to access files. It's really disappointing.

I've recently installed Jellyfin and even put the Roku in "Developer Mode" so I could install the Jellyfin Roku app from GitHub. This is better because unlike Plex, it won't transcode arbitrarily, but it's far worse because the Jellyfin Roku app crashes frequently, has only basic page-based navigation ("go to page 23 for media that starts with 'T'"), and it requires running a heavy media server for no real reason. I'm still reluctantly using Plex for the time being.

When I need something that I haven't put in Plex, I fall back to the Android interface on the FireTV and use VLC to access the NAS over SMB. It still rankles that Roku won't allow an easy way to access local media.

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