My 70" Samsung TV is just being used as a dumb monitor. It's hooked to a small windows 7 HTPC box. I use Media Center to get my DRM cable using $1.50/month cable cards from the cable company (comcast), so don't need to rent their equipment (except the cheap cable card). I can play 100% of everything and don't have these "smart tv" issues. Skip the smart tv stuff and just use it as a dumb monitor. The TV isn't even hooked to the net. No update notifications, ads, or anything else. Everything works seamlessly with macros on a single Logitech remote that is now about 7 years old. I love this setup. I can access anything from anywhere in the house on any device and it always "just works." It has been for many years. Recently MS ditched their program guide, which sucks, but there are alternatives that make it work and hopefully live on another 10 years.
Please make your products work with URLs
121–130 of 353 posts
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#122There's an android/roku app that makes this fairly seamless in all the instances I've tried. It even does a good job of finding videos in a web page if you don't have a direct link. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.instantbit... http://www.webvideocaster.com/
Yup, that app got me really close. It even worked for about a minute, but I was unable to reproduce the success (that was infuriating).
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#123There's a reason that Smart TVs (and set top boxes, and streaming sticks) usually don't allow you to load an arbitrary URL: it increases the attack surface by allowing you to load any arbitrary endpoint on the Internet. When you "cast" from an app on another device you are casting something that app understands is not a generic endpoint, but reference to an object in the app's library.
You can disagree with this reasoning. It should be possible to safely load arbitrary endpoints and not ever execute an attack embedded in it. But then it wouldn't be called an exploit, would it?
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#124I haven't kept up with the state of video streaming, so for me this raises more questions than answers: - How inefficient is video streaming when you're downloading chunks of a compressed, static file over a flaky Internet connection? - Was it worse before? Would it work better with QUIC or HTTP/3?
Inefficient compared to what? Fundamentally you have to shift the same N bits per second at a reasonably uniform speed regardless of how the transfer is done.
Your main enemy in this process is, as usual, middleboxes, which may be a bigger problem for the advanced protocols. This is why Apple created the bizarre but effective HLS system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't you just remove the smart TV's internet access (no wifi pw, no Ethernet) and treat it as dumb? Then attach a Chromecast or whatever "smart" dongle you think has the best UI.
This is definitely one approach, but I would actually just prefer a full computer, because I do sometimes run other software that is simply not available on any dongles. One downside though is that I only have a couple HDMI ports to work with, so between a Nintendo Switch and a full desktop PC I'm already using all of the ports. Also, even though I love the NVIDIA Shield, I find it does not really integrate as well a…
My shield also keeps stealing focus. When I turn on the switch, the TV turns on, then the shield turns on and steals focus from the switch, and I have to go grab the tv remote and turn it back to the Switch again.
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, same here with JS. Solid black page, no content. View source indicates about half is some Google analytics boilerplate, the other half is a body consisting entirely of non-functional JS pulls. OP, where is the content stored?
I feel like Hacker News main purpose isn't a news aggregator anymore, it's turned in to a place to test the usability of your Web site with the kinds of people who run NoScript or browse with a terminal.
Off topic: reading back through your comments here, I was surprised to learn you're Danish. Your written English is completely native and natural: is this typical of Danish people? Can schools be that effective?
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#127Few minutes of googling found this, and few other similar thingies that send urls to chromecast just fine. http://movies.foamsnet.com/url/ discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7365256
I don't have a Chromecast. I have a Roku TV. One of the implied points of this article is that the solution I'm suggesting would work for any device as a fallback, let them implement whatever other fancy protocols they want.
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Depends, but generally yes, for now. In the near future though you're likely to see smart TV's and similar devices with dedicated SIM cards and cellular modems that can't be disabled.
What do you mean by similar devices?
Other appliances. Set top boxes, refrigerators, washing machines, doorbells, anything someone thinks should be part of the "Internet of Things" product line they sell.
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#129Please make your stuff work with reader view.
Please see my explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22038862
Re: Please make your products work with URLs
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's your threat model? Apple TV is a pragmatic option for the sort of person that doesn't mind the Apple Walled Garden. Xbox One is a pragmatic option for the sort of person that doesn't mind the Xbox/Microsoft Walled Garden. NVidia Shield and FireTV are pragmatic options for folks that prefer the more Android-ish "mostly a Walled Garden, but". If your threat model is anything with a corporate or walled garden sme…
> What's your threat model? Avoiding tracking and phone-home things.
Then in that case you will have to go open source like a Plex or Kodi box. Raspberry pis work nicely for this.