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Plasma Bigscreen

plasma-bigscreen.org

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Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#191

Post by mijoharas »

dataengineer56 wrote: post #176

I bought an LG OLED recently after giving up on my dream of finding a dumb consumer OLED. I assumed I would disconnect it from my network and use my Chromecast for media, but instead I've recently unplugged the Chromecast. The interface is surprisingly good, it has every app that I want and it's fast. I can press the Netflix button when my TV is off and be watching a show within seconds.

I used to write software for smart TV's, so ended up using a lot of them. LG were easily my favourites (N.B. this was 6 years ago now).

One of the best things is the dev enviroment was so simple, just a basic linux setup with a sensible toolchain. (Samsung was easily the worst in terms of dev experience due to their tizen crap).

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#192

Post by dTal »

voidfunc wrote: post #107
Lammy wrote: 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

Quoted post unavailable.

On the contrary - "Plasma" is one the best branding efforts in the open source ecosystem so far.

It's not really confusing or hard to search for if you know that "Plasma" is a KDE product - for instance, Plasma Bigscreen is the first Google result for "kde plasma tv" and "kde tv". It's 8 years old, it covers several different products with a similar look and feel, and it sounds as cool as it looks.

Big brands don't have an issue with using common words for product lines (like "surface" and "pixel"), and I don't see why open source should cede that ground.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#193

Post by qwerty456127 »

captainmuon wrote: post #139
Lammy wrote: 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

The name is generally really unfortunate, and I wish they would switch back to KDE for the Desktop Environment (and call the framework Klibs or KDElibs or something). Many people have positive associations with KDE, but associate Plasma with bloaty QML based desktop widgets from the KDE4 era. If they even associate it with KDE, and not with plasma TVs or blood plasma.

People who know KDE hardly need marketing - they already know what is what and what they want. So they could name it whatever way, I only care about how well does that name integrate in the whole namespace of Linux apps/libs/packages. At the same time, for non-techies or people coming from other OSes Plasma automatically sounds cool, doesn't it?

Nevertheless, as for what I personally feel, I agree - I like KDE better.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#194

Post by sph »

neilalexander wrote: post #173
abujazar wrote: post #161

I hope they'll get some design help.

Unfortunately this was the first thing I thought too and is often the first undoing of open source projects. It might be an impressive technical feat but it _looks_ a mess. Software developers often make the worst UX designers and all that.

> Software developers often make the worst UX designers and all that.

What bugs me is that most people make bad UI designers and they are completely oblivious to it. I see some people desktops and their editor's colour schemes and I wonder if they have any sense of aesthetics at all. A cursory look at those "desktop theme" websites is the proof that 99% of them are just plain terrible.

I swear I saw someone that replaced their default UI font with Times New Roman.

It's like what Steve Jobs said about Microsoft: most people just don't have any taste. It sounds arrogant, but I think there's some truth to it.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#195

Post by weberer »

capableweb wrote: post #187
antongribok wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it actually comes with a Raspberry Pi is incredibly cool to me. Oh, and of course there's a review of it from Jeff Geerling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-epPf7D8oMk Actually, this thing has some pretty decent specs... my initial reaction was that it was overpriced, but now I'm thinking this is a decent deal for what you get.

Looking at the product page, quite prominently this is displayed: > WARNING: This product can expose you to chemicals including Styrene and Formaldehyde (gas), which are known to the State of California to cause cancer, and Lead I'm not sure the risks are worth the price, I've never seen such warning on any product, but I don't live in the US. Is that a common warning to see? How likely is that to happen? Is it a thi…

Yeah, styrene and formaldehyde are very common everywhere, usually due to styrofoam packaging. Wood and textiles are often treated with formaldehyde, even in Europe. Lead based solder is less common these days, and pretty much banned in the EU due to the RoHS directive, but there are weird exceptions, like how its OK in servers or networking equipment.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#196

Post by jbay808 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #170
ognarb wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest hurdle is the DRM. Plasma Bigscreen ship with it's own browser but you still need the proprietary blob for the DRM running on an ARM device instead of the usual one for intel/amd. Making things worse, even on intel/amd the video quality is often limited to 1080p on Linux.

Funny, since DRM is never an issue if you play pirated content. Arrgh maties! But ironically, DRM is only a huge annoyance for paying law abiding customers. Did you pay Ubisoft $50 10 years ago for Assassin's Creed 2, am amazing game? Great, because now you can go f*ck yourself instead of playing the game since Ubisoft took the server running the DRM for that game offline. Did you pirate the game? Great, because now…

I purchased DUNE on YouTube. Turns out even after paying full price, the image quality is limited to 480P unless you watch via a smart TV.

To prevent piracy, or something.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#197

Post by dTal »

mappu wrote: post #92
rascul wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would really like to know more about this, and I can't seem to find anything about it. Are these projects implementing their own drivers for all the various audio hardware they can use instead of using ALSA? That certainly wasn't the case some years back when I used OpenElec.

"ALSA" has two meanings - there is only one set of Linux kernel audio drivers, and they're all ALSA no matter what distro you use. I think you're talking about this meaning. The other meaning of "ALSA" is libasound / asound.conf / dmix, the old userspace audio stack, which is deprecated since Pulseaudio except for a few holdout distros. ALSA had difficulty mixing multiple playback streams, let alone bitstreaming DTS.…

>let alone bitstreaming DTS

On the contrary, that's super easy with ALSA. Literally all you need to do to "bitstream" is "play" the data as if it were audio, and not have any software in between trying to adjust volume or otherwise modify it. You could do it with nothing more complicated than "aplay", making sure to specify the correct card and not dmix.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#198

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

jbay808 wrote: post #196
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, since DRM is never an issue if you play pirated content. Arrgh maties! But ironically, DRM is only a huge annoyance for paying law abiding customers. Did you pay Ubisoft $50 10 years ago for Assassin's Creed 2, am amazing game? Great, because now you can go f*ck yourself instead of playing the game since Ubisoft took the server running the DRM for that game offline. Did you pirate the game? Great, because now…

I purchased DUNE on YouTube. Turns out even after paying full price, the image quality is limited to 480P unless you watch via a smart TV. To prevent piracy, or something.

Are you watching YouTube on Linux by any chance? AFAIK modern versions of chrome and FF should not have this issue even on Linux but I could be wrong as I'm out of the loop on modern DRM.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#199

Post by dTal »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #41

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…

There's no reason a "Plasma skin" can't do anything Kodi can do. They're both just a bunch of software.

Re: Plasma Bigscreen

#200

Post by grishka »

kbumsik wrote: post #73
Lammy wrote: 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.

In Russia there was definitely a period when any large flat panel TV was called "plasma".
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