Please consider accessibility while you're building this. The number of TV apps which don't use the Accessibility APIs is probably worse than on any other platform. Apple TV (as usual) is the best, but still has issues.
TV: Now What?
21–30 of 168 posts
Re: TV: Now What?
#22> Roku uses a proprietary language and UI toolkit I thought Roku was originally based on Silverlight, but I may be misremembering. I can't find any source to validate that. But Roku still quietly has the biggest market share in this space.
I know Netflix was def. Silverlight to begin with due to supporting DRM.
Re: TV: Now What?
#23Plex, Jellyfin, LibreELEC, Kodi... those are the best solutions for those wanting to manage their own destiny and TV experience. You can run them on practically anything and there are Tiny PCs, stick-form-factor Raspberry Pi devices (like CM4 TV Stick), and other silent small boxes you can attach to a TV for a thin client interface or just a shared media library / TV experience. It'd be nice if Amazon, Apple, Netflix…
> Plex, Jellyfin, LibreELEC, Kodi... those are the best solutions for those wanting to manage their own destiny and TV experience. As long as one produces their own content, right?
What exactly are you implying? You think I can't rip a Blue-Ray or DVD?
Re: TV: Now What?
#24The thing is, apps for TVs work relativley well. If I could run something in an RPI that accepts infrared remote control as an input device and have run all the drm-y media services, and have it work reliably with low maintenance, I would much prefer that! If Amazon makes their custom Linux OS open source and allow users to modify and update the fire tv sticks, that would be even better!
If your TV supports CEC you'll be able to control your Raspberry Pi with your TV remote. It works perfectly with OpenELEC, I suspect other platforms are fine too.
Re: TV: Now What?
#25> Roku uses a proprietary language and UI toolkit I thought Roku was originally based on Silverlight, but I may be misremembering. I can't find any source to validate that. But Roku still quietly has the biggest market share in this space.
Brightscript is the name of their application language. Sounds similar enough to Silverlight to me. I bet it’s just a mix-up.
SceneGraph, the XML, UI-layout component of Roku development is similar to XAML from Silverlight; but BrightScript, the language, is much closer to a modified VB6 than anything .NET.
Re: TV: Now What?
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Plex, Jellyfin, LibreELEC, Kodi... those are the best solutions for those wanting to manage their own destiny and TV experience. As long as one produces their own content, right?
Correct me if I am wrong, but hasn’t it been found (In the US) that making a digital copy of a DVD you own totally okay?
Sure, and the "water pipe" they sell on the boardwalk is for "tobacco use only".
Let's be honest, most people use this software to serve up their library of pirated content. The number of people who are even still buying physical media is relatively tiny. That is why retailers like Best Buy are abandoning that market. The population of people who buy that physical media and then manually rip it has to be miniscule.
Re: TV: Now What?
#27Plex, Jellyfin, LibreELEC, Kodi... those are the best solutions for those wanting to manage their own destiny and TV experience. You can run them on practically anything and there are Tiny PCs, stick-form-factor Raspberry Pi devices (like CM4 TV Stick), and other silent small boxes you can attach to a TV for a thin client interface or just a shared media library / TV experience. It'd be nice if Amazon, Apple, Netflix…
Since all of these streaming platforms are available on the browser, it should be trivial to run this through a pc/pi even without API support, if a little cumbersome. SHould also run faster than the ad-ridden software on Firestick/Chromecast/Apple-tv.
Re: TV: Now What?
#28Plex, Jellyfin, LibreELEC, Kodi... those are the best solutions for those wanting to manage their own destiny and TV experience. You can run them on practically anything and there are Tiny PCs, stick-form-factor Raspberry Pi devices (like CM4 TV Stick), and other silent small boxes you can attach to a TV for a thin client interface or just a shared media library / TV experience. It'd be nice if Amazon, Apple, Netflix…
> Plex, Jellyfin, LibreELEC, Kodi... those are the best solutions for those wanting to manage their own destiny and TV experience. As long as one produces their own content, right?
No, just pirate. I can kind of understand why people started giving Netflix money for the convenience, despite that supporting an industry desperately trying to destroy the Internet. But now with a thousand and five different "services", continually squeezing users for more revenue, digital restrictions management that makes perfectly good hardware stop working, and ever more surveillance telemetry in the various apps and devices? Rent an off the shelf seedbox, or set up your own with a consumer VPN, and don't think twice. Consider it just another "service" and see if it wins out in your life. And if down the line you end up deciding it doesn't work well for you, you still get to keep access to everything you've obtained!
Re: TV: Now What?
#29The fragmentation is both a flaw and a feature. It means we have diversity in media vendors, at the cost of a pretty high cognitive load to just watch something… which app is it on? What’s the account login? Search the device main search, then go to each app and do its own individual search. All while dodging ads and autoplay and “what’s new” and “for you.” It sucks for users. But it also sucks for developers, who ha…
“Huge cable bills” - we’re already back there. Netflix is $23, Apple TV just increased to $10c Disney+ is now $14, Hulu is $20, Max is $16, Paramount is $10, Peacock is $6. You can easily spend $100 /mn on streaming services.
No one says you have to subscribe to ALL of the streaming platforms at once.
If cost is an issue, pick 1 or 2 services, watch the shows you’re interested in, then cancel those and pick 1 or 2. Rince and repeat.
You have choice with this approach and you don’t need every service offered.
Re: TV: Now What?
#30The fragmentation is both a flaw and a feature. It means we have diversity in media vendors, at the cost of a pretty high cognitive load to just watch something… which app is it on? What’s the account login? Search the device main search, then go to each app and do its own individual search. All while dodging ads and autoplay and “what’s new” and “for you.” It sucks for users. But it also sucks for developers, who ha…
The fragmentation is a phase until the industry matures. Take a look at other industries, like woodworking. They have established practices which don’t change much.
The software industry has so much potential I don’t expect it to mature for another hundred years. Although some patterns are emerging, like strong typing and universal cross-platform runtimes (most notably Web).