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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

#201

Post by satysin »

causality0 wrote: post #172
satysin wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your frustrations about smart TVs but I also like the setup I have with my TV. I bought an LG OLED last summer (a 55" C9) and to be honest I don't hate the software (webOS) on it. However my setup is not really normal . Firstly my TV is connected via Ethernet to my router and is restricted to only Netflix, the LG web store and my internal network. I don't watch live TV, instead my viewing is limited to N…

I fear that soon we're going to need an open-source alternative to Plex. Increasingly aggressive monetization seems to be creeping into the Plex experience. I keep finding things I don't own and don't want showing up on my home screen. "Suggested movies" and "Suggested podcasts" and the like. You can prune them back but a few months later you find some other garbage you don't want.

This is a very valid complaint however I understand their need to monetise and at least you can remove that items. At least so far.

I am always open to alternatives however with everything I have tried over the years nothing has come close to how well Plex works. From the flexibility of running the server to the superb automatic content identification to the frame perfect delivery to my TV it has been flawless for me.

However I feel I should point out again that I don't use the transcoding feature so I cannot comment on how well that works.

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#202

Post by danShumway »

spaceribs wrote: post #54
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

Huh. I will admit, I always kind of dismissed monitors out of a blanket assumption that they'd be wildly expensive, but $550 for 4K support is not that bad.

Yes, it's more expensive than a smart TV, but the only reason is because smart TVs are very literally subsidized by future data collection and monetization.

Not trying to minimize that this could still be too much money for some people, but frankly, a one-time extra $250-300 to permanently escape that whole tracking situation is just a lot less than I expected.

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#203

Post by nkrisc »

derp_dee_derp wrote: post #132
mumblemumble wrote: post #59

> 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…

As much as HN wants to whine about it, the truth is that Javascript is a primitive, basic, use case of the internet.

How is JS related to a page with only text and hyperlinks?

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#204

Post by einpoklum »

crazygringo wrote: post #100

I don't believe I've ever, once, in my entire history of browsing the internet, come across a direct hyperlink to a video file to play in the browser. Virtually universally, videos are embedded in webpages, and occasionally a link is provided that downloads rather than plays a video. So I think this is just a use-case issue: the average user is exceedingly unlikely to ever want to watch a raw video file specified by…

NVIDIA GTC-on-demand conference recordings website uses .mp4 files, which you access using direct links.

Also, more generally, while videos do tend to be embedded in web pages, some of these pages are nice enough to provide a download link for the video.

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#205

Post by zzo38computer »

spaceribs wrote: post #54
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

I also thought of using a computer monitor. Also it may help to reduce the lag (I know some people use a computer monitor for their games due to this). Also I don't need such a huge TV set, I think.

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#206

Post by anderspitman »

Mindwipe wrote: post #170
anderspitman wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah so you can just cast whatever is on VLC? That was the first thing I tried with Roku but my TV doesn't support it, and I was disappointed there wasn't any VLC companion app.

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#207

Post by anderspitman »

mumblemumble wrote: post #168
anderspitman wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ups…

It's a valid point. I added an edit to that comment to concede it.

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#208

Post by darkwater »

anderspitman wrote: post #149
worble wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds cool. How easy is it to do what I talk about in the blog post and send it a URL from my phone?

With Kodi it's dead easy, actually I was thinking about it while reading your post: "he should use Kodi"

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#209

Post by tempestn »

gregmac wrote: post #175
zeta0134 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long since run with the notion that if you must have Smart TV features, do it with an external box. Last time I checked the Roku devices were decent for this, but there's a bunch of alternatives, and some lovely FOSS stuff (Kodi comes to mind) that is much more privacy focused. The TV itself is a black box of mystery, and does NOT get to go on my network. It doesn't need my wifi password, and I certainly don't w…

I've gone through many incarnations of HTPC's, plus tried with SageTV, Roku[1], Chromecasts, and several others... and can absolutely recommend the Nvidia Shield. It has a good 10-foot interface via Android TV (as opposed to regular Android), is kept updated, is a Google Cast target, has official apps for all the major streaming platforms, can run Plex and Kodi (for local content), and it's also possible to sideload…

That's awesome. I used to be a big fan of Sage, before they sold out / shut down. Even did the direct capture from cable boxes. I've been planning to get a Shield TV, so good to see these endorsements!

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#210

Post by mey »

gregmac wrote: post #175
zeta0134 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long since run with the notion that if you must have Smart TV features, do it with an external box. Last time I checked the Roku devices were decent for this, but there's a bunch of alternatives, and some lovely FOSS stuff (Kodi comes to mind) that is much more privacy focused. The TV itself is a black box of mystery, and does NOT get to go on my network. It doesn't need my wifi password, and I certainly don't w…

I've gone through many incarnations of HTPC's, plus tried with SageTV, Roku[1], Chromecasts, and several others... and can absolutely recommend the Nvidia Shield. It has a good 10-foot interface via Android TV (as opposed to regular Android), is kept updated, is a Google Cast target, has official apps for all the major streaming platforms, can run Plex and Kodi (for local content), and it's also possible to sideload…

Depending on your TV, the Shield can control the TV (volume and power) via HDMI-CEC (my decade old Sony LCD TV supports it). You have to go into settings but once setup, you can power on the TV and auto switch to the Shield HDMI connection with one button.
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