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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

#271

Post by odensc »

valiant55 wrote: post #36
pba wrote: post #14

Maybe this was the whole point of the author's post.. but I'm fairly certain the reason the author's use case is not easily workable is because the OEMs mentioned are deliberately discouraging the ability to play anything that is not inside some sort of DRM control. They don't want you to just be able to play any URL. Its not a technical problem, its a content management problem.

When I first bought a Chromecast I was disappointed how much of a pain it was to play content I already had on my computer. I shouldn't have to spin up a Plex server just to get acceptable streaming capabilities.

You can do this natively with Chrome. Just go to the overflow menu in the top right > Cast... > Sources > Cast file.

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#272

Post by namibj »

coda_ wrote: post #243
Spivak wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intermittent connectivity problem might be the result of a chatty network. mDNS is really sensitive to this and clients don’t wait very long before deciding that they got all the responses from devices. If you stick your Chromecast and your phone in their own broadcast domain I think the problem would disappear. Unfortunately it’s not a solution to whatever is spamming your network but it would tell you that that…

Any suggestions on how to determine what is causing the chatty network?

Wireshark should help. Otherwise, it's a pretty open-ended question.

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#274

Post by jeroenhd »

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?

I use Kodi, and while it probably isn't a complete replacement for Roku (Netflix doesn't work out of the box but I have to admit I haven't looked into getting it to work because it's one of the few "smart" things I let my smart TV do), it's pretty good for showing content.

There's a Firefox extension called "Send to Kodi" that I use to quickly cast Youtube videos and other videos from my PC to my Kodi. On my phone I use Kore, which can send a URL to Kodi using the standard Android share menu (hold a link, Share > Play on Kodi).

Kodi also supports UPNP so you can use one of the million available apps for that to allow some other media servers as well.

It's not perfect, but Kodi has managed to satisfy my video consumption needs quite well. I'm using an outdated version (it's running on my server which runs Debian stable) but I haven't run into problems thus far.

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#276

Post by a1369209993 »

anderspitman wrote: post #179
gregsadetsky wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it would have been overall simpler to link directly to the page's markdown content..? :-) https://anderspitman.net/entries/16/entry.md

Not a bad idea TBH. I should configure my server so that opens in the browser instead of downloading.

Don't forget to add that specific url ( https://anderspitman.net/entries/16/entry.md ) to the noscript block instead of the nigh-useless github link.

Edit: Actually https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anderspitman/anderspitman.... works fine already; can we change the submission URL to that?

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#277

Post by sdinsn »

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…

I have a dirt cheap TLC smart TV w/ Roku that works great. 55 inch for ~$250 or so.

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#278

Post by Nition »

justinclift wrote: post #154
tmountain wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse yet, Smart TVs often brick themselves due to failed software updates. My last Sony TV did an overnight Android update, and I found it in a state where it'd show the Android boot logo and subsequently shut down. Some Google research showed that this has happened to hundreds of people (youtube videos outlining the problem, etc). Sony refused to do anything due to the TV being out of warranty, and no amount of hac…

> Sony refused to do anything due to the TV being out of warranty. Interestingly, apparently in the UK (or maybe EU?) there's a defined period an appliance is required to work for, to be "fit for purpose". Note - not a warranty thing, it's a consumer goods thing. Not living in the UK any more (thanks Brexit), so don't remember off hand the period of time though.

Similar in New Zealand, although the exact time isn't defined. The parent comment's case would almost certainly fall under the protection of the Consumer Guarantees Act[1][2] and Sony would have to fix or replace it. Of course, getting a company to actually do something can be harder than just telling them the law.

[1] https://www.consumerprotection.govt.nz/general-help/consumer...

[2] http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1993/0091/24.0/DLM...

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#279

Post by UncleMeat »

prox wrote: post #184
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…

A screen should be dumb, though I should be able to attach something smart. TVs are trying to be what they are not.

The problem is that there is nothing else to compete on. TVs are two centimeters thick and have crisp displays. I don’t give a crap about 5k or whatever. So what can they market on except price? Apps.

Re: Please make your products work with URLs

#280

Post by a1369209993 »

mirimir wrote: post #61
dredmorbius wrote: post #2

Irony: blank page w/o JS, fails in Outline.com.

Funny, but with my cranky old Firefox, it loads just fine. With NoScript blocking both the site and Google. By "w/o JS" do you mean totally disabled? Or just NoScript?

FWIW, I have the same setup (3.6 forever!) and it doesn't load. Are you sure you have NoScript set to default-deny?
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