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LG acquires webOS from HP, plans to use it in smart TV platform

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Re: LG acquires webOS from HP, plans to use it in smart TV platform

#51

Post by andybak »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #20

This just signals that there is a hole in the market for an open source smart TV platform. Google TV was supposed to be that, but it's pretty clear that they don't take it as seriously as they take Android. To manufacturers like LG, TVs are actually more important, and falling behind competitors is more serious. Forking Android for this purpose isn't really an option thanks to the recent "non-fragmentation agreement"…

You don't need to fork Android as such. There is a huge uptake of Android Smart TV sticks amongst hobbyists and early adopters and it already works fairly well. XMBC has been ported and there are more and more apps in the Play Store specifically aimed at this market. Stick a custom launcher on it and plug in a remote and you're away.

This is still early days but it looks like Android TV is happening despite Google rather than because of them.

Re: LG acquires webOS from HP, plans to use it in smart TV platform

#52

Post by baddox »

Indyan wrote: post #47
ansible wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The could pair it with a Kinect style gesture interface. Sigh . I really find TVs with enhanced features that useful. The problem is that the software goes out of date very quickly, and I am entirely dependent on the TV manufacturer for updates, which will likely stop shortly after the TV goes out of production (which is what, 6 months these days). All I really want out of a TV is good picture quality, and a bunch of…

Yeah. LG's high end smart TVs have something called Magic Remote. It's no kinect, but an improved version of this might work well with an WebOS adapted for the big screen. http://www.lg.com/global/magicremote/

I have one and it's awful. For one thing, if you have it sitting somewhere on your couch, any time someone else moves on the couch, a cursor will appear on the screen for 10 seconds or so because the remote will detect movement.

Re: LG acquires webOS from HP, plans to use it in smart TV platform

#53

Post by calinet6 »

lukifer wrote: post #3
barredo wrote: post #2

It's hard to imagine a worse ending to the WebOS software.

The worst ending (darkest timeline?) would be WebOS not getting used for anything at all. I'm curious to see if it will stay open-source. At this point, though, Firefox OS has much more mindshare as a full-stack mobile web OS anyway.

The problem is that anything could have much more mindshare. WebOS has negative mindshare; a new product built from the ground up with modern technology actually has a better chance of success (and indeed, that's likely to happen).

Re: LG acquires webOS from HP, plans to use it in smart TV platform

#54

Post by pessimizer »

emehrkay wrote: post #43
pinaceae wrote: post #40

this tweet by Kontra sums it up: WebOS has been targeted to mini-phones, larger smartphones, tablets, printers & now TVs. Won't stop until you see it on a LG refrigerator. https://twitter.com/counternotions/status/306014344876023808

Imagine a situation where you'a query your fridge from the market and it tells you that you're low on milk or have 8 eggs so no need to get more.

Or when the people who made your fridge query it without your knowledge, then sell the current state to 3rd parties who make sure that all you see are egg ads on the internet.

Re: LG acquires webOS from HP, plans to use it in smart TV platform

#55

Post by calinet6 »

mixedbit wrote: post #10

I wonder if any attempt at reinventing TV will achieve a mainstream success (I mean a legacy TV scale success). Up until today all such attempts attracted a relatively small group of customers and a popular opinion is that TV is bound to die.

"TV is bound to die"

Quite impossible. TV is the large entertainment display in your living room. That won't die. Whatever currently runs that display might die, but it will be replaced with something better.

I want Spotify for my TV. Let me choose shows to watch, when I want them, streamed from my fiber internet connection, on-demand, right after they come out, and I will pay a premium.

Netflix is so close to this. They need a few more agreements and a better interface designed for TV and designed for an entertainment system. Frankly I'm a bit surprised they're not there yet; it leaves the space open for someone else to fill with a better living-room UI.

Big opportunity here folks, if you can deal with licensing & legal. Someone else do it, I don't have the time.

Re: LG acquires webOS from HP, plans to use it in smart TV platform

#56

Post by MatthewPhillips »

mikeryan wrote: post #42
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed my point. That consumers only care about their programming being available is precisely why an open platform is needed. If LG releases a smart TV that doesn't have Netflix, Hulu, MLB.tv, Amazon, etc. they look bad in the eye of the consumer. Those content providers are currently building out separate apps for each TV platform, or at least for the ones big enough to move the needle.

Pretty much all the current crop of smart tvs use HTML as their primary app platform. It's pretty consistently WebKit with a few custom integration points for TV specific functions. For all intents and purposes there is already a consistent open platform for apps on TVs I own a small agency who builds apps for these platforms we can hit LG/Samsung/Panasonic/Sharp/Sony tvs with a single code base now. There are still…

Awesome to hear that. I've long suspected that TV was a more appropriate for HTML5 than mobile, precisely because the remote input is much closer to traditional computing than touch. Clicker.tv made a TV-centric web-app several years ago that works wonderfully.

If you have some time to write about it, I'd love to hear more about how these systems work, are they packaged or delivered over http? Do you use ?

Re: LG acquires webOS from HP, plans to use it in smart TV platform

#57

Post by happycube »

lukifer wrote: post #3
barredo wrote: post #2

It's hard to imagine a worse ending to the WebOS software.

The worst ending (darkest timeline?) would be WebOS not getting used for anything at all. I'm curious to see if it will stay open-source. At this point, though, Firefox OS has much more mindshare as a full-stack mobile web OS anyway.

Open WebOS is under the Apache 2 license, so no take-backs.

Re: LG acquires webOS from HP, plans to use it in smart TV platform

#58

Post by happycube »

DeepDuh wrote: post #33
thiagoperes wrote: post #28

Not using WebOS on smartphones is really a waste. Palm failed but I still think it was an OS ahead of its time.

Sometimes 'ahead of its time' is not such a good thing. Specifically, when the available hardware can't keep up with what the system design demands[1], e.g. a responsive smartphone touch interface created in an interpreter (as far as I can see without even having a JIT compiler) on a 500Mhz embedded CPU, without GPU acceleration[2]. It was ahead of its time alright. [1] http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/01/02/021…

Mercer is a bit... biased. He was pushing a debased Java system that took five lines of code to center text, and couldn't implement Duarte's ideas properly. So webOS becoming, well, webOS was in reaction to that and a rushed effort to come up with something else in time for CES 2009.

The Palm folks then spent too many months de-Mercerizing the code for webOS 2.0...

Re: LG acquires webOS from HP, plans to use it in smart TV platform

#59

Post by networked »

calinet6 wrote: post #53
lukifer wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst ending (darkest timeline?) would be WebOS not getting used for anything at all. I'm curious to see if it will stay open-source. At this point, though, Firefox OS has much more mindshare as a full-stack mobile web OS anyway.

The problem is that anything could have much more mindshare. WebOS has negative mindshare; a new product built from the ground up with modern technology actually has a better chance of success (and indeed, that's likely to happen).

>WebOS has negative mindshare

I wouldn't be so categorical about that. There's at least a minority of users, most of them technical, that really appreciated WebOS for its capacity for multitasking and the UI, if nothing else [1]. (How relevant would this be in a TV OS is debatable.)

Even today WebOS remains a good platform for hacking with an unofficial app marketplace [2] that's still actively maintained and offers, among other things, two "real" Linux distributions (Ubuntu and Debian chroots). I keep a Palm Pre Plus with Debian myself for use in various experiments (like making a time-lapse camera). I got it for cheap when it was clear that WebOS is in decline but now I (along with many others who did the same) would be in the market for a new WebOS device if one came out, though probably not a TV.

[1] See, e.g., comments right here on HN: http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=webos+..., http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=webos+....

[2] http://www.webos-internals.org/wiki/Application:Preware

Re: LG acquires webOS from HP, plans to use it in smart TV platform

#60

Post by mcao »

baddox wrote: post #52
Indyan wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. LG's high end smart TVs have something called Magic Remote. It's no kinect, but an improved version of this might work well with an WebOS adapted for the big screen. http://www.lg.com/global/magicremote/

I have one and it's awful. For one thing, if you have it sitting somewhere on your couch, any time someone else moves on the couch, a cursor will appear on the screen for 10 seconds or so because the remote will detect movement.

Maybe I have a newer version but mine doesn't do that. Once the cursor disappears from the screen, it won't appear again until you physically press the enter button on the remote.
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