Live data from Hacker News

Plasma Bigscreen

plasma-bigscreen.org

71–80 of 276 posts

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#71
post #58

I realize "Plasma" is the name of the KDE presentation layer across all platforms, but it's mildly awkward to see in this context considering plasma TVs have only been a dead technology for six years or so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_display

Admittedly i thought this as well. was hoping for a new plasma tech! Not that i think it's better, just nostalgia - it was the first 'new gen' tv I owned back in 2007. Heavy but well worth it at the time.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#72
post #34
post #33

It does not tranform your TV into anything. it needs a RPi in order to do anything.

This. And it just kills me how so many things "linux" look so unpolished. Why is it so difficult for projects like this to find and get designers interested?

Windows is also pretty unpolished, I think it is impossible to get people to work on polishing unless you have infinity dollars, like Apple. At least Linux has the excuse that it is a community project -- things that the community decides not to work on are sort of definitionally not annoying enough to be worth working on, or they would.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#73
post #58

I realize "Plasma" is the name of the KDE presentation layer across all platforms, but it's mildly awkward to see in this context considering plasma TVs have only been a dead technology for six years or so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_display

Not sure in other countries, but in my country (Korea) they were called PDP and rarely called plasma TV even knowing the technology behind it. It's a bit funny thinking about "Plasma" but it should be fine.

BTW, it had been dead for 10+ years...time flies so fast.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#74
I wonder how long it will be before cheap TVs have no input ports (just a WIFI connection). That way the TV gets to decide what you watch to some extent. For example by interrupting your Netflix stream with a few ads from time to time.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#75
Wow, so this is why the marketing departments exists. I thought this was related to actual plasmas TVs lol.

Looks pretty cool though. I'm keen on open source privacy minded software I can run on my TV. Currently, I have Kodi and it would be nice to have other high quality alternatives.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#76
post #56
post #5

If I understand correctly it uses a RPi or other ARM device attached to the TV. Is there anything out there tbat overwrite the TV's "smart" firmware? Something analogous to OpenWRT and its router support? It would be bet cool if you could use the controller and buttons "natively".

If Software Freedom Conservancy win their lawsuit against Vizio for GPL violations in their TVs, you will probably be able to install open source Linux distros with KDE Plasma Bigscreen or Kodi on any Vizio TV and soon afterwards lots of other smart TV vendors will be similar. Allowing the vendor operating system to remain on the device after you purchase it basically means spyware these days. https://sfconservancy.o…

Open source != custom code can be run. Bootloader would be locked by cryptographically signing. There are source distributed TVs already.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#77

I wonder how long it will be before cheap TVs have no input ports (just a WIFI connection). That way the TV gets to decide what you watch to some extent. For example by interrupting your Netflix stream with a few ads from time to time.

Video games are way too big a business. Until game consoles die and it all moves to the cloud (Stadium, etc.) I can’t see ports going away on most TVs.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#78

Unfortunately I can't figure out the scope of this project from the content on the site right now. Perhaps if there are any contributors reading this they might like to clarify? The tagline on the home page is "A privacy-respecting, open source and secure TV ecosystem" so that sounds promising. Is this some sort of alternative firmware to replace the junk installed as standard on most "smart" TVs now - like installin…

> Is this some sort of alternative firmware to replace the junk installed as standard on most "smart" TVs now… I believe it's more along the lines of an open-source Apple TV or Roku box.

What could you actually run on something like that? None of “normal” apps would be there for the various streaming services.

I guess it could be a plex front end but outside of that can it really do much people usually do with their TVs?

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#79

The killer feature of Kodi (on most hardware, for example the Raspberry Pi) is that it can switch the output resolution to match the video you are playing. It also bypasses things like ALSA in order to be able to bit-bang audio in supported formats directly to an external receiver. These are basic functions of normal video playback devices like blu-ray players or cable boxes. A Plasma skin can't do any of this. So wh…

Changing the monitor resolution doesn't seem good. A software upscaling (like lanczos, or ML upscaling if you like that) can be much higher quality than whatever upscaling (probably bilinear) the display does.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#80
post #76
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Software Freedom Conservancy win their lawsuit against Vizio for GPL violations in their TVs, you will probably be able to install open source Linux distros with KDE Plasma Bigscreen or Kodi on any Vizio TV and soon afterwards lots of other smart TV vendors will be similar. Allowing the vendor operating system to remain on the device after you purchase it basically means spyware these days. https://sfconservancy.o…

Open source != custom code can be run. Bootloader would be locked by cryptographically signing. There are source distributed TVs already.

That would not be GPL compliant (both v2 and v3), so would not conclude the lawsuit.

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t... https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...

Post reply on HN