The lack of direct video-out on modern smartphones is something I often find infuriating. Some of them support OEM smart docks, but imagine if the only way to output video on your laptop was a $250 HDMI cable. Sure you can cast, but there's enough lag to make you look slightly inept if you're pausing a presentation for a question and to make gaming impossible. Some phones support standards like DisplayLink but in addition to being unable to charge the phone it also generates a tremendous amount of heat and runs the phone's battery down.
Please make your products work with URLs
161–170 of 353 posts
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#162I 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
Sure... if you want to pay twice as much as the similar sized TV.[1] I actually just buy 4k TVs and use them as computer monitors instead. As long as you research to find one that has low response times (rtings.com helps with that), it works fine.
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#163I 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…
This Christmas I finally took the time (which admittedly didn't take long; I was just lazy until now) to set up LibreElec on my pi and hook it up to my TV, and I honestly don't know how I've overlooked this for so many years. It's a DLNA/UPNP client so I can cast anything I want from my media server on my computer to it (Bubble UPNP is a great app to control all this from my phone) and even though it doesn't have "ca…
How have you found DLNA? I tried it briefly with the built-in PS4 client and MiniDLNA/ReadyMedia on a headless Ubuntu machine and I found it to be awful— the server side needed to be rebooted in order to discover new media in the folder, the PS4 client was clunky to use (missing obvious stuff like picking up playing a file where you left off), and iTunes instances on the same network would do weird stuff like suddenly peg the processor and burn themselves to the ground, apparently due to something in the protocol.
I haven't yet circled back, but my conclusion was to give up on it and instead pursue an end-to-end solution like Plex or Jellyfin.
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#164I 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…
Worse yet, Smart TVs often brick themselves due to failed software updates. My last Sony TV did an overnight Android update, and I found it in a state where it'd show the Android boot logo and subsequently shut down. Some Google research showed that this has happened to hundreds of people (youtube videos outlining the problem, etc). Sony refused to do anything due to the TV being out of warranty, and no amount of hac…
No Sony TV has ever had firmware updates for long enough that the retailer wouldn't be required to replace it under the Sale of Goods Act under UK law fwiw.
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#165Anyone have a recommendation for high quality 4k dumb TVs that are truly offline? I have a media center PC I plug into my TV and don't want or need any of the "apps" or "homescreens", just give me a few inputs to HDMI cables, maybe USB slot, and I'm good.
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#166I 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…
>I hate smart TVs with a burning passion. Me too! When I bought a new Samsung 32" last year, I went very, very slowly as I set it up, so as not to inadvertently connect it to the internet. I succeeded in not connecting and life is good.
Pretty sure some tv's scan the local wifi networks looking for way to call home.
Not sure if Samsung is one of the manufacturers of those though.
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, it's a matter of how complicated you want your workflow to be. The way things are right now, the author can edit the markdown file directly and be done with it. It's simple and straight-forward, low-effort and low cognitive load.
I would imagine it would be possible to set up their system such that they could edit the Markdown file, and a helper process would immediately pick up that the file had been edited and re-run the local rendering to static HTML.
Yes, great, now you've complicated the workflow. What if the service fails to run? Or fails to pick up the changes? Now you've got another thing to think about.
Is the overengineering so ingrained in the average HN user that they cannot see why someone might not bother with that?
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#168> 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, her…
Please see my explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862
Yep. Your reasoning is valid, and further illustrates my point: From your perspective, pasting a URL to some media is a really basic use case. From mine, a stripped-down browsing experience is. The common element is that, no matter how simple and straightforward we think our preferred way of doing things is, it's still not particularly interesting - and therefore not particularly worth worrying about - to someone upstream.
Such is the way of things.
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#169Anyone have a recommendation for high quality 4k dumb TVs that are truly offline? I have a media center PC I plug into my TV and don't want or need any of the "apps" or "homescreens", just give me a few inputs to HDMI cables, maybe USB slot, and I'm good.
“Dumb TVs” essentially don't exist AAA product category; you need either a “commercial display” or a “monitor”.
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Are you aware of any that support the "play this URL" use case I talk about in the blog post?
A Sony Android TV would - you could paste the URL into either VLC or the Internet Browser provided with the TV using the Android TV remote app on your phone, as you can paste into that.