This type of 'update' is one reason I tend to stay away from so-called 'smart' devices.
If part of the product I've paid for is software, and the company can update it without customer consent at any time, then I can't rely on the product's features. Period.
I experienced this myself on the PS4 version of Terraria. I bought a hard-copy of the game. I mastered the controls, and loved them. Terraria was updated one day, and the controls were all changed, completely. Total rip-off. I liked the game I bought, but it was replaced without my consent.
My feeling is that this behavior should be illegal for purchased products.
I agree. Perhaps the U.S.'s legal framework reasonably allows this kind of behavior, but IMHO it's a sign that the framework needs legislative correction.
The first time I encountered this was when Sony advertised Linux-compatibility for the PS3, which I bought expressly for that purpose. I was shocked when a judge upheld Sony's post-sale removal of that capability.
Government should mandate the ability to downgrade the software to versions that were previously available on said hardware.
I’ve had so many issues with Apple devices losing compatibility with obscure features on apps after updating iOS, I wish I could go back occasionally to accomplish some task, and then upgrade again when finished.
The flexibility is valuable.
For example, on the newest iPad Pro, iMovie is unusable after iOS 15, completely jittery and unable to handle smooth user experiences for some reason.
TV updates are another thing. They change things with abandon and you can't revoke the updates.
Sometimes they break stuff and then you have to pray and wait until they hopefully fix them at their leisure.
IMO, it should be illegal to issue unrevokable updates so you can't get a product to have identical features as it did at the time of purchase. You should always be able to wipe it back to stock. Same with phones.
And the people who might crow about "security" - my device, my rules. I can block it on the network if I want.
That's exactly why I personally try to stay away from as many of these things/devices as I can reasonably do.
TV: just don't buy an actual TV. Buy a monitor and hook it up to a Linux box with something like Kodi. You can hook up your cable box if you have that or stream from Netflix and such. Sure, even Netflix makes it hard as you can't get 5.1 surround but I'll take that and 2.0 -> 5.1 upmix over buying a Smart TV any day!
Games: Kerbal Space program sounds fun. Lots of mentions on HN. Apparently after some company bought them up changes of this sort have been made. So I decided against getting it even though I would probably very much enjoy playing it. Don't buy games like that. Buy games like Factorio or some GoG stuff (the ones that actually do work on your current Windows OS if that's what you use ... ;)) and do not buy into the GoG Galaxy thing. Get the installers. Otherwise that's like falling for Steam or Xbox Live or whatever the "Windows Live" BS is called nowadays.
Tablets and Phones: Use them for what they're good for: Making phone calls and browsing the web on the go.
Apps are a curse, I avoid installing them as much as possible. Some exceptions prove the rule, like a free GPS tracker app for hiking created by a single guy. UI looks like it's out of the 90s but works for my use case. Found it because the other app I used started requiring a login even for the free part of the app. I refuse to bow to such things.
> TV: just don't buy an actual TV. Buy a monitor and hook it up to a Linux box with something like Kodi. You can hook up your cable box if you have that or stream from Netflix and such. Sure, even Netflix makes it hard as you can't get 5.1 surround but I'll take that and 2.0 -> 5.1 upmix over buying a Smart TV any day!
I've looked into this, but this option is really not great, either:
- Large Monitors are unavailable or (if you use business monitors) a lot more expensive and usually don't have latest panel tech.
- You'll loose surround sound and also 4K on most platforms
- The integration is usually worse (you'll have to start more devices, if you're lucky CEC decides to work)
- Good luck with HDR
I personally settled for a SmartTV behind a PiHole-equivalent, but an Apple TV or an Android TV combined with an offline smart TV are good contenders, too. Unfortunately, there's really no silver bullet right now.
I have bad news for you. Even if the TV is not connected to your WiFi, it could still get into the network over other devices connected via HDMI with HEC [0].
Although it could be a general concern, it unlikely to affect me.
Since all the HDMI connections are via a (slightly older, non-connected) AV receiver, its almost impossible for this to affect my setup. But it's indeed a sleazy move by those setting the HDMI standards.
- Large Monitors are unavailable or (if you use business monitors) a lot more expensive and usually don't have latest panel tech.
Agree, monitors in regular TV sizes are way more expensive than the largest 'cheap' monitors. But I'd rather make a decision between paying $300 CAD for a 32" monitor that is 'large enough' but not huge or a ~43" monitor that is way larger, has 4k etc. and costs ~$1200 CAD etc. or a $500 50" 4k "generic Smart TV" in "dumb mode" than to use it as an actual Smart TV.
- You'll loose surround sound and also 4K on most platforms
There you go, no expensive 4k monitor needed if you can't get it anyway. Surround sound I'll give you but see your sibling if you are so inclined to go the potentially unlawful but ethically probably totally OK route.
- The integration is usually worse (you'll have to start more devices, if you're lucky CEC decides to work)
To be fair it's been a while that I've had cable and had to deal with that and that was in low-def times (so I had a cable card in the mythtv server). I don't fancy setups w/ IR switching cable channels and such but to be honest, I think it's worth it to at least try if you have to keep actual cable for some reason. Nowadays other viable options than having cable do exist if you ask me.
- Good luck with HDR
I probably just don't know what I am missing and as long as it stays that way it's like staying on 720p and a monitor most people would think is way too small but actually totally adequate than to complain that my huge 4k one looks bad with that source material ;)
offline smart TV are good contenders, too
Totally agree, if you're looking for a cheap huge "monitor" that can definitely be a good option as long as you stay away from the actual "features" and are fine with the other limitations.
Personally I'm on a 32" regular HD IPS panel monitor. Given the size of the living room and how far away the sofa is, this is totally adequate (I upgraded from my >>>10 year old 4:3 "I don't even remember the size of it" monitor when it finally broke!). Surround sound depends on the source. If it's Netflix the upmix is "good enough" for most of what the kids wanna watch and then there's other material too where proper AC3 is available. Most of the times I can't really have the bass turned up anyway so as not to wake the kids :P
We paid 2000 EUR for a 55" HD (1K) Sony in 2010, and would happily go down a bit in size as it's now mounted over a piano that frankly sees a lot more use than the TV. I'm completely ok with paying 1000-1500 EUR to get a 40"-50" 4K set that we don't have to constantly give the side-eye once the current one gives up the ghost. We rarely watch anything, so it might be more of a question of whether this one will outlive 720p/1080p freeview or not.
After a good nights sleep I think I want to revise this (can't edit).
I think it's prudent not to even buy a Smart TV and use it in "dumb mode". If we do this, we are not voting with our wallet. I'm not sure how likely we would be to have a large enough effect numbers wise but one can try. If we don't try, we've already lost.
You're still voting with your wallet to the effect of the TV not being able to serve the ads that it otherwise would.
But anyway, ever since content consumption became prominent on mobile smart devices (smartphones, tablets), this battle is already lost - the TVs are merely playing catch-up with the rest of the industry.
I'm a software engineer because I love technology.
Your opinion is fine don't get me wrong but my 4k 55" OLED tv is really really impressive.
It's a marvelous picture.
My DSLR images look brilliant on it, games do as well, HDR is surprising ly nice as well.
We watch most tv shows still on a 10 year old 720p beamer due to image size. 110" is still more immersive than 55". But I do expect being able to buy 110" 4k in a few years either through a more affordable 4k projector or by microled panels.
I can't follow your 4k = full of propaganda Point. Not sure what you mean by it.
I'm into fractal videos (e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cgp2WNNKmQ), and resolution makes a huge difference there. I got a 4K TV largely for this reason, and seriously considering 8K for the next one.
> Netflix makes it hard as you can't get 5.1 surround
Then get it from *ahem* elsewhere, you've paid for access to that content in that quality, if they can't provide that… Maybe if enough do that they'll fix the problem, so they can start tracking your use of the content again when you return to consuming it their way.
> TV: just don't buy an actual TV. Buy a monitor and hook it up to a Linux box with something like Kodi.
I simply bought a non-smart TV. I just made sure it had a number of HDMI ports. I plug my various media sources into the HDMI ports.
A "smart" TV must be the most un-smart TV possible - you're stuck with whatever's there. The "smart" part (say, a Pi or a Chromecast or both) must be detached from the display device (the TV), not a part of it.
"smart" TVs remind me of back when I bought a webcam with integrated Skype, for my old parents. It did make it easy for them to skype with their grandchildren, using the TV. But of course Skype, or MS at the time, plugged the pull on the version of Skype used by the webcam and then it became a brick. Never again.
That may be changing, but when I bought my 49" non-smart TV a few years back it was quite a bit cheaper than the same-size smart TVs. It wasn't that long ago, but a quick check at the same shop shows only "smart" (read: stupid) TVs. Unfortunately. As the price for the non-smart TV I bought was lower than the equivalent "smart" version I believe we'll be paying for a feature we don't need.
> Games: Kerbal Space program sounds fun. Lots of mentions on HN. Apparently after some company bought them up changes of this sort have been made.
The changes to Kerbal are in Kerbal Space Program 2, not the original KSP. I highly recommend KSP, go ahead and get it. KSP 2 will have better graphics and add some new capabilities to the game, but honestly you could play KSP for years (I have) and not get tired of the graphics or what the game offers. To me KSP 2 seems like a competing game, not a replacement.
Nope, not mixed up. Redshell apparently was added in KSP 1.4 by Take Two. After an uproar in the community it was removed again but personally this is something that's just too big of a thing to dismiss. Not changing my mind.
Thank you. I had not head of Redshell, and I thought that you were referring to features being removed. I'll now be very wary to see if spyware like this is installed again.
My Vizio TV updated itself a month ago, and I only noticed because changed the default behaviour of which input to open on when it turns on, which was really irritating.
After finding the menu entry to fix it, that in particular was no longer an issue.
However, around the same time, my PC input began to blank out for a second at a time at random intervals which was very irritating. On a lark I performed a factory reset and didn't set up my wifi credentials, and it hasnt misbehaved since.
I'm saying there should be a law where the govt punishes the company.
If the law needs me as an individual consumer to procure my own team of lawyers to go up against a multinational every time I buy a new TV, then that law might as well not exist.
The damages would probably only qualify for small–claims court. These cases don’t take much time to present or judge, and the evidence you need is quite straight forward. Consulting with a lawyer on the matter, if you wanted that extra assurance, wouldn’t cost much.
I consider my time for a day off work, travel to court, preparation, irritation, etc more than the value of the TV, and they probably wouldn't pay me damages for those things.
The point is that I shouldn't have to do that as an individual for every purchase.
We need a blanket rule that they can't remotely modify purchased items in a way that cannot be rolled-back by the consumer to the functionality at the time of purchase.
I'm in Australia. Although we're covered by what I consider to be pretty good consumer guarantees, you can still only demand a refund in the case of a "major problem" with the product.
I don't think simply being unhappy with it connecting outside would qualify, although IMO it should.
It depends on the retailer, but probably you won’t be able to return it for a refund. You should attempt it though, or at least be able to present the retailer’s return policy as evidence in small–claims court.
This is why punitive damages exist. Because you can sometimes get a lawyer to work on your case with no cash. So they can collect a large percentage of those punitive damages.
Looks like this was partly successful against Sony but it took six years in court and people didn't get the whole price back when they removed Linux support from the PS3:
Those damages were assigned with the assumption that most people didn't buy a PS3 to run Linux on it. If you opted out of the class action I have no doubt you would have gotten a full refund.
>As a software engineer can you imagine supporting every version of your software you ever released? Sounds like a nighmare.
This would teach us developers to do better.
Like don't push random updates that break shit. If your product is not filled with security issues you should be able to backport a fix for that giant secuiry bug you found, you can ignore the crashes. Anyway this big companies can afford to pay you to backport some fixes . It is not like some volunteer is forced to backport fixes in his free time.
> As a software engineer can you imagine supporting every version of your software you ever released? Sounds like a nighmare.
Perhaps we (developers) need to get better at this. We care so much about pushing features and being agile and all, but when it comes to supporting old releases: "umm, no. It's a nightmare".
I wouldn’t expect support for old versions, just the ability to download and install knowing that a downgrade by definition removes some fixes (and possibly restores something of interest).
IIRC the Linux support was there solely so that Sony could circumvent tariffs in the EU.
Gaming consoles had higher tariffs than "general purpose computers", so Sony added the ability to boot into Linux and argued - successfully - that it was a general purpose computing device and thus in the lower tariff category.
I bought a couple Hue bulbs a while back and a (somewhat) recent update to the Hue app removed the ability to control them via by watch. Completely pointless feature removal. Part of the selling point is that level of control, and yet they just removed an entire feature I frequently used. That's simply straight up removing something that I've paid for, which I don't view as any different from theft.
This is precisely the reason why prior to linux support/removal, exploits weren't targeted. Once linux support was removed, linux hackers started releasing exploit after exploit on the target hardware and software, and it only took a couple months after they removed the linux support.
Upon which we found out that not supporting Linux on the PS3 slim from the get go "because they wanted to focus on games and it was too much effort" was a lie - turns out there was almost nothing extra that needed to be done for it to work on that model too, once the hacks were in place.
(Cue next rant about class-action settlements. To make me whole, Sony would have needed to give me a full refund (with interest) or restore Linux compatibility.)
I still haven't gotten my check from the iPhone 6 battery scandal. I still have the phone. It is forever stuck on the wall now. They have no incentive to hurry up I guess.
IANAL, but I've heard that if you let the court know about situations like this, they'll often provide the necessary motivation to the responsible parties.
I suspect that in terms of actual value lost and never properly compensated, this kind of thing is second-largest source of property theft in our economy, right after all the unpaid wages.
Just serves to remind that whenever we talk of governments protecting property rights, it's always worth clarifying whose rights they are actually protecting, and who is SOL.
This pattern is pervasive. I also dislike needing an app and an internet connection for the most basic functionality with some purchased device. At some point, we need to own the things we buy and that line keeps getting pushed back further and further.
Anec-data: I purchased a cooking device for my parents in December and it has a single button to turn it off. The only way to use it is with an app which requires a login to the company's service. The device even has local bluetooth capabilities. You may be wondering, "What is this device supposed to do?" and the obvious answer is: "It's supposed to boil water." The real answer seems to be, "it collects usage data about customers boiling water."
I'm assuming you are talking about a sous vide device.
This is one of the few (unrooted) smart devices I actually appreciate. You can easily configure it for a specific task (steak? chicken? brussels?), get push notifications when it's done and even turn off it's warm setting remotely if needed.
And given that most of the thing is immersed in boiling hot water, it makes sense to not put controls on the device itself.
i'm glad my anova has both manual and bluetooth controls, because after the first couple of uses i simply default to manual for everything. personally i tihnk modern cellphones are remarkably clunky devices for anything other than reading books and gps. they aren't even very ergonomic as phones, they're annoying for web browsing compared to laptops, and they are definitely not satisfying to use as controls for physical devices.
The app doesn't need the cloud for bluetooth usage or basic wifi usage (though "out of your house" usage likely uses their relay service). You would no longer get "recipe of the week" stuff, but that is a small loss.
The real danger is that eventually the app goes away due to not being maintained. Hopefully they release the API spec before then, but my specific device has already been reverse engineered at least.
It should be legally mandated to release either the firmware source, or at least the API and applicable keys, before discontinuing support for a device.
I'm reminded of the Wemo netcams my parents owned, which updated to remove a previous ability connect directly to the video stream in favor of pay-only cloud software, and the proceeded to cease support for that, leaving my parents with two completely useless bricks.
Yeah, that is the danger I tried to allude to in my second paragraph.
I hope we do see phone/OS/store ecosystems that focus on longterm stability of features and UI. Keep devices repairable by end users, supply parts for the whole of the phone's lifespan.
Fair phone is trying to do this for phone hardware, and Framework is doing similar for laptops. We still need OS and store ecosystems.
Yup, "smart" devices will require an accompanying phone of a similar age with the app already installed in case it was removed from the App/Play store -- if you want to keep using it much after 5 years.
Mine cost a quarter of the app-based devices I've seen and the one difference is that I have to take a glance at a little table. I don't mind that.
And whether a device has controls doesn't matter with regards to hot water contact. It has to be properly sealed either way and capacitive buttons work fine for this (not worse than the low-quality buttons they'd use otherwise). The main feature you get with Bluetooth is another point of failure thanks to connection problems, at least that's my average experience with BT.
I recently got an Anova -- with touch controls, and it works great both with and without the app. The top is a big bigger to handle the screen and touch controls.
Making an immersion circulator app-only is likely a BOM-reducing measure, which is fine (given that active time is probably at most a few minutes like twice a day). And you can get smaller form factors too with app-only control (e.g. Ember Mug).
It’s not fine. I still use electrical appliances that are 10-50 years old. I’m pretty sure these “smart” devices apps won’t work in a decade (if that).
My Anova touchscreen frequently fails to work in service, I think because of the humidity, which seems like something reasonably foreseeable by the designers...
I like it, but now leave it pre-set to 135°F lest I set it elsewhere and then lose the ability to adjust it, so I think they dropped the ball on the design.
I guess I can see a push notification for a very slow cooking process, but most of the time if you use a smart device in a kitchen frequently, you're going to get things like uncooked chicken juices on it. Not ideal for a personal phone.
This is true for things that are connected to the network anyway. It is not true for unconnected devices controlled by Bluetooth. The gratuitous app login is straightforwardly malign.
Speaking from personal experience, I am far more comfortable with a web interface than a BT interface. If I were hired to write code for an IoT kitchen thing I'd probably implement a web thing, rather than a BT thing. That would not be malicious on my part, just laziness (if you're being unkind), or pragmatism (if you're being kind).
I have a similar device and was recommended the newer and upgraded version from someone I know. Given time pressure and other priorities at the time, I took the recommendation without much further investigation.
> I also dislike needing an app and an internet connection for the most basic functionality with some purchased device.
Yeah, my watch supports setting (and syncing) the time and timezones using bluetooth. But before you can do that, you must agree to the maker's ridiculous privacy policy which includes consenting to sending them all kinds of data that has fuck all to do with setting the time on a watch. Immediately uninstalled. So that feature is dead weight to me unless/until someone reverse engineers the watch.
This is true for most consumer tech (whether software or hardware) nowadays. The primary objective is to get "engagement" out of it. Any useful work the product might be doing is the bare minimum needed to convince the user to "engage" with the product.
It’s not that i dont agree but the Terraria example is a bit unfair. First this is issue of the platform. On other platforms you can choose version of the game.
And second Terraria is example of probably one of the most supported games. The update you are talking about brings massive amount of content and updates completely for free 9 years!!! after release. Most companies would milk the product with third sequel and dozens DLCs by that time.
I'm not trying to pick on Terraria, but I think it's a great example for the reasons you are bringing up.
Even with the 'value add' of the update, I no longer play the game. Why? Because I invested in learning and mastering the game as it was when I bought it. The forced update removed all value for me, and I'm the one who made the decision to buy it.
If the product is changed significantly after purchase without my consent, then I feel I should be able to revisit my decision to purchase it. Otherwise, it's a sort of bait-and-switch scheme.
I think it's how it's always been with software. It's ephemeral.
When the devs have to keep up with the system updates etc. there is expectation that they keep working on software. I am sure they would love to just push something that would work forever.
So much software that i bought stopped working. Even when you have "lifetime" license - eventually world moves on and you are without hardware to run the software.
I am not saying it's right but i am also not sure how it can be solved.
I would absolutely love to be able to push out software that just "works forever". And this is basically impossible on mobile by design these days.
Hardware evolution isn't a big deal, actually, so long as you can emulate the old on the new. For example, all the old DOS games can still be made to work thanks to DOSBox and PCem. In principle, the same applies to software, except that it evolves too fast for such emulation layers to keep up.
Not sure if you are intending to, but that only further illustrates how broken (in the favor of corporations) the current legal environment is.
You are right in that there probably is a gotcha, you agreed clause in the text that is displayed after I have purchased the item. I also think the idea that is legally binding a farce.
Imagine how popular buying things would be if people actually had to read those agreements.
>Imagine how popular buying things would be if people actually had to read those agreements.
If you ever wondered why your elders are such sticks in the mud on this sort of thing, that is exactly why. Put a contract in front of most people and off they run for the hills.
This is why the click through EULA was the best thing to ever happen to the legal profession.
It has to be displayed before you buy the item, and it is. If you don't read the contracts you sign you only have yourself to blame. You also wouldn't go to a car dealership, skip the contract, sign it and expect good things to happen.
Does it even matter if we read these contracts? No one's going to negotiate terms with the billion dollar company and only lawyers will have a full understanding of the implications of what's written in these things anyway. This last fact alone should be enough to invalidate any consent.
I mean, we're actually talking about "buying" games here. That's how insidious these things are. The few people who read this fine print will know that we're not really "buying" anything, we're being offered extremely limited licenses to the content. Can you blame consumers who fall prey to corporate deception? Marketing leads them to believe they're "buying" stuff. It's not really their fault when they become victims of corporate bullshit like remote content deletion. Nobody should have to consult lawyers before consuming.
Let's summarize all company contracts in an easy to understand manner:
1. We can do whatever we want.
2. You can do nothing we don't want.
3. We own everything.
4. We guarantee nothing.
5. You have no rights.
That does it. That's literally what all these little contracts boil down to. Every single time I read one it's just the above 5 points over and over in mind numbing legal language.
No. Absolutely nothing will change. Declining is not a valid negotiation tactic when you're dealing with literal billion dollar companies. Are you seriously suggesting some company like Amazon is gonna change their terms if we decline them? They couldn't care less about us. Maybe if you're a rich corporation using their services. Sometimes not even then if the horror stories I've read here on HN are to be believed.
Where I live many of these contracts are actually in violation of consumer protection law. I've had actual lawyers tell me I can safely ignore many clauses because they are clearly abusive and judges would strike them down in court. Particularly unacceptable are those that make me give up my rights. Appatently that's a thing in the US, you can just sign away rights such as reverse engineering or even the ability to take companies to court by "agreeing" not to exercise them.
If more people did things differently in this fashion the world would be a very different place. Too bad this doesn't happen and the users who actually decline make up less than 0.01%, probably below any error margin.
People just don't care until they personally get a kick in their face. We all know that and companies bet on it.
> brings massive amount of content and updates completely for free 9 years!!!
Which can be a bad thing. The Minecraft I played first and the Minecraft I played recently are two different games, and I don't like how overpacked with stuff the new version is.
Most game expansions - paid or not - follow the philosophy of "more of the same", rather than stopping somewhere between that and "less is more". Depending on the game, that can make it tedious.
Yup. I started playing Minecraft on Xbox 360 which my kids and I loved. We still love the game, but it's so different now, it's not the same game at all other than voxels and biome themes and some of the original music. We have a ship of Theseus situation. It's no longer the same game. I'd love to be able to pick a version to play like you can on PC.
> I tend to stay away from so-called 'smart' devices
I tried several alternatives in terms of smart TV (Apple TV, Google/Android TV, Fire TV), and I could not find any platform that let me use all of the apps that I needed without resorting to casting from my phone. And in some cases there was a long process to follow in order to get the device to do what I needed[1], which involved activating developer mode, sideloading apps etc.
In the end, I bought a wireless keyboard/touchpad combo and built a HTPC, reusing old components that I removed from my gaming PC after upgrading it over the years. I installed Ubuntu on it and never looked back.
[1] For example not having the home screen being made of mostly ads, or having a simple web browser installed on the device
Genuinely curious, did you feel anything was missing from Apple TV besides a web browser? I feel it’s perfect for our uses but I always like to know if I’m missing something. Personally I don’t like web browsing on TV but AirPlay fills that gap when it’s needed.
I have to say that Apple TV sucked less than the alternatives but it's also the most inflexible in the sense that it's harder to "jailbreak", so for example if Apple decides that the home page will now be filled with ads rather than icons, I won't be able to do anything about it whereas in Google TV and Fire TV you can sideload an unofficial launcher if you want. Compare this with my current solution where I can just change OS or desktop environment if I feel like it.
Another aspect is the fact that smart TV apps are sometimes not as good as their desktop counterparts. For example the YouTube app on most smart TV platforms does not support viewing show notes or comments. So every time the person in the video says "link in the notes below"... you are missing out on that link. Another example: I like watching martial arts, both the UFC web app and the FloGrappling web app have additional features that are not found in their smart-tv-app counterparts.
Another big one for me, is the fact that in a desktop environment I have better multitasking and I can use browser tabs. For example if I find a Youtube channel I'm interested in, and I see a couple videos that I would like to watch, I just open them in a new tab. On a smart TV you would have to add them to watch later, then go to your library and find them, it's just not as immediate.
Another point is gaming, I am recycling old computer parts that I removed from my gaming PC when doing upgrades, these are relatively old parts but still pretty good, so you can run triple-A desktop games with pretty decent quality, whereas the type of games available for download on smart TVs are mostly just ports of mobile games. I also installed RetroPie which is quite fun!
Then there is hardware upgradeability. Recently I was thinking to add a faster CPU, and then the CPU that is now in the HTPC will go into my NAS since the one I have in the NAS is quite slow. You can't do any of that with a smart TV dongle, all the parts are soldered to the main board :-)
One more thing I like is that it's easier to watch content using alternative clients, for example I watch YouTube videos using the FreeTube app, on Smart TV platforms you might be able to find some alternative clients but the choice is more limited.
EDIT - rephrased some parts as they were not clear
So basically what you’re saying is that you want your “smart” TV experience to be just like a desktop PC experience.
That’s fair, if that’s what you want and if that works for you.
For most users however that would make the TV impossible to use with a regular, simple remote and thus be a major downgrade in user experience.
Basically what it seems like (to me at least) is that people who buy “smart” devices don’t want them to be smart in terms of having advanced capabilities. Rather they want the devices to be smart enough to do the right things in a simplified UI, allowing the user to get the same things done, but with less effort.
Basically smart devices are smart to allow the user to be lazy, dumb or both ;)
> So basically what you’re saying is that you want your “smart” TV experience to be just like a desktop PC experience.
Yeah another way to say it is that I want my smart devices to be general computing devices. For example I've build my own NAS instead of getting something like a Synology or a WD NAS, I'm in the process of building a router/firewall using OPNsense etc.
I spend more in the short term but less in the long term due to the ability to reuse old parts etc.
> Basically smart devices are smart to allow the user to be lazy, dumb or both ;)
I tried to do the same thing, but the 4K+HDR streaming story is fully broken/DRM'd to hell on PC. You simply cannot stream 4K+HDR in most (all?) services on a modern PC (my HTPC is also a gaming PC... so Nvidia graphics in my case).
I went with Apple TV + Plex (along with D+/NFLX/Peacock/HBO Max/Hulu/AppleTV/Prime/Cable... but I still can't find everything I want)
I think the main problem is HDR right? Because I don't think that 4K per se would be an issue? To be fair my TV is not 4K so I haven't tried 4K streaming... Even on my gaming PC I don't have 4K because I preferred to spend on a higher refresh rate 1440p rather than a 4K panel so I really don't have a direct experience.
The problem is that providers will refuse to serve you that content in most cases. Some will let you have content if you use their windows store app on a sufficiently modern PC to support the CPU assisted DRM, at least until there's an exploit for that and then they'll discontinue sending that content to your system and you need to buy a new one.
It's fairly inconvenient to have to use your phone as the remote, especially when you want to do something on your phone (or watch something else) while the kids watch netflix.
We have disney+, and my TV apparently thinks we're not subscribed. My phone does, though, and I can cast from that. Yes, we can watch Encanto again, but it's very jarring when the normal interactions with the TV don't work.
>It's fairly inconvenient to have to use your phone as the remote, especially when you want to do something on your phone (or watch something else) while the kids watch netflix.
But when you cast from an application with integrated chromecast support (as e.g. Netflix) then the phone is free to use as you wish while the kids are watching. I do this all the time. I start the cast, then use my normal TV remote to pause, for volume control etc. You don't need the actual app for most things and you can use the phone/tablet for other things (I have to find translations for my wife, for example, while watching).
Let's put it another way: having to cast from the phone to the TV is like using a normal screw that requires a screwdriver. A TV where you don't need the phone is like one of those tool-less thumbscrews[1]. They are convenient because in order to use one tool (the screw) you don't have to reach for another tool (the screwdriver).
I've been able to stream Netflix, Disney+, and Prime to my TV via chromecast, and it's a weird mix. The main detriment is that for all the apps, when streaming from my phone, people watching the TV can't use the TV+Remote to do things like pick a different episode, or pick a different show -- so this makes it already a crap alternative unless I want to be involved in all the future viewing decisions.
One nice thing about the phone apps is that you can search for a different thing to watch _while_ currently watching something. Fast-forward/rewind also tends to be a little more intuitive with adraggable progress bar, except small-scale rewinds (1-2 minutes) of a movie is _harder_ because a few pixels is difficult to select cleanly.
I will say though that Prime is _freaking fantastic_ when streamed from my phone, better even than using the native TV interface. The Prime phone app lets you navigate _by scene_ in a show (e.g. Bosch) which my tv app won't let me do. I wish Netflix and D+ would/could copy that, specifically. I wish it didn't have spoilers in scene descriptions, but being able to say, "Hey go back to the start of the council of Elrond" is really nice, rather than having to use +/- 30 second increments.
Not OP, but speaking for myself, one of the biggest annoyances is that both Google and Apple actively resist the actual standard that's already there and widely supported by playback devices (Miracast), and instead push for their own proprietary walled garden solutions (Chromecast, AirPlay).
Google in particular is the worst offender here because they actually had Miracast in Android all the way up to Nexus 4 - and then deliberately removed it! Other vendors of Android devices generally reinstate it in their distros, although I do wonder how long that is going to last (probably right until Google makes not supporting it a condition of getting Google Play certified).
Casting from a phone is a terrible experience. I want to sit down on the couch, mash some remote buttons and watch something. I don't want to find a phone to cast from. Whose phone would we use? Mine, my wifes, my relatives who are over? What if they want to change the program? Now they are figuring out all the casting business? No, pick up the remote and use it like normal.
I see. Pre-Covid I used to have my phone with me more often, with the whole WFH situation I don't really see a reason to use it since I have other devices in my home that give me a better experience (larger screen, physical keyboard, good speakers etc).
I treat my phone like I do Google. Every day I try to be a bit less dependent on it. I usually don't know where my phone is, physically, and only use it for banking and car navigation. I use WhatsApp through the web interface. I dream of a world without smartphones.
yeah I am like you, I even tried a PinePhone because I hate the current mobile OSes so much. (Unfortunately PinePhone is not 100% ready to be a daily driver though). Then COVID came, I haven't commuted for 2 years now and I stopped caring about phones. I carry my phone only in the weekend and only if I'm out, not if I'm e.g. bbq-ing at home.
LG uses WebOS which is not among the ones I tried. In some of the other systems the ads generally cover the upper half of the home screen, then you have the app icons below that.
Yeah, I completely agree. Vehicle manufacturers can't just come and change out the steering wheel and dashboard in your vehicle, for example. Why can software vendors change out the total functionality of a piece of software you paid for? Especially irreversibly, in the case of DRM-laden platforms like game consoles, iOS, etc. where you cannot undo an update once it's installed, or cannot refuse an update if you want to actually use the software. Recently an iOS app I use almost daily pushed an update that removes a feature I relied on. The dev has never fixed the issue and has made other minor changes since, subtly indicating their change is intentional and permanent, so I'm just screwed forever and lost a core piece of functionality I depended on. Great. This is fine.
> Yeah, I completely agree. Vehicle manufacturers can't just come and change out the steering wheel and dashboard in your vehicle, for example.
Actually, they can. There was a huge airbag recall a few years ago, affecting maybe half a dozen automobile manufacturers because they all bought their airbags from the same supplier. In at least one case, the dash had to be modified in order to fit a replacement airbag because drop-in replacements could not be procured quickly without disrupting new car production. It would not surprise me if some of the cases also required modifying or replacing the steering wheel.
How is this relevant? The owner has to physically bring the vehicle into the dealer. The dealer can't change or replace anything while it is in my garage or driving down the street. There are physical barriers that require the owners consent beyond checking a box.
You are correct, the vehicle manufacturer cannot come and take the dash away. However, under literal threat of metal shrapnel exploding in one's face [1], I would argue that the consumer is coerced with great bodily harm to present his vehicle for service.
It's a tangent, but it's incredible to me that people used to ship video games and other software on physical media and it worked fine. Now you can drop a big turd on the steam store initially and it's just business as usual. Cynicism aside, I really do admire the dev and QA teams that pulled this off. It's such a different world now.
It cuts both ways, games would take half decades to get done or only cover a thousandth of the ground current games cover. Imagine what Minecraft would be, shipped on physical media.
We also wouldn't get games like Goat Simulator who basically set a low expectation bar in exchange for low cost, best effort game play. I'm kind of ok with more "garbage" if we also get more weird/low budget games that wouldn't exist otherwise.
...which is still true today. It's common that large titles take 4+ years in development if they're not built on an existing game's engine and actually release in a finished state. Activision was able to release a new CoD every year because they cycled through 3 studios of which each had 3 years time for a game that's mostly a mod of the previous one with slight improvements to the underlying tech.
And even then it's now almost expected that it'll take another 3+ months to get in a state that the game was meant to be released in.
> only cover a thousandth of the ground current games cover
That may be true if you go back to the Atari era, but even ~30 years old RPGs can still hold up well in terms of content. It's great that now we don't always need publishers to create & ship games and can release updates online, but that's no excuse to sell incomplete products.
There was a time in the gaming market were quickly developed, cheap, often not-so-good games on physical media were a thing: 8-bit home computer era. So it's possible to imagine that coming back in more modern times, in a timeline were internet wasn't the obvious alternative.
Take a look at the games from that era and the games you get right now. Sure, more has changed than just being able to update things, but the ability to fix issues later and continually update games has lead to much much better games with way more content. And you can always chose to wait a year for everything to settle.
I don't find this to be much of an issue because rarely is this ever a shock or surprise to the semi educated consumer. The game comes out and you see 100 people complain on reddit that it's buggy, so you just don't buy it until its resolved. Steam also has a pretty no fuss refund system for the cases you didn't see anything beforehand.
What seems to happen is people want the game as soon as possible but also complain when it isn't perfect on release but overall they enjoy playing it sooner more than they are bothered by its lack of polish.
Going to depend on what you like. But my favorite modern games have been Rimworld, Skyrim (still part of the internet era), and Planet Zoo. I love how all of these games provide hundreds of hours of possible gameplay without getting stale.
And if you have VR, Pavlov has been the most fun I have ever had gaming. It looks like a CSGO clone on the surface but it becomes the most absurd/surreal experience ever with custom maps. It's almost like playing laser tag in one of those optical illusion room of mirrors type attractions.
My feeling is that this is a temporary thing that leverages previous generations propensity for compliance and happily being controlled and screwed over constantly.
I have been appalled at the way people bend over and open their wallet since I was a preteen. Nordic and all the other rent seeking shits count on people blindly using their product they way they are told to. I'm surprised Nordic isn't suing their customers yet.
The problem with 'smart' devices I think is something akin to a conflict of interest.
On the one hand you're purchasing hardware, which you expect to own and control.
On the other, there is software that runs on a subscription model which 'coincidentally' restricts the functionality of the hardware, because they want to stop people from bypassing the sub.
The hardware effectively becomes useless if the subscription service becomes unavailable or is taken down (e.g. if the company is acquired and the new company doesn't want to support that stuff any more). It might still function mechanically, but it now has a broken appendage through no fault of your own.
I just don't think I could justify a purchase like that nos unless I could square that circle. I'm not going to pay 2k for a Peloton bike that holds itself hostage unless I pay another 40 a month.
That's a different debate IMO. Not so long ago we had external storage that only worked with Sony products. We now have headphones that only work with Apple phones.
Exclusivity always existed at weird levels, here the issue would be more about having the option to freeze/protect a product's software state to get out of the update treadmill.
> If part of the product I've paid for is software, and the company can update it without customer consent at any time, then I can't rely on the product's features. Period.
That's about any electric car manufactured after 2020.
I've never owned an electric car, but that doesn't surprise me. I'm curious whether you are just stating the fact, or suggesting that the practice is commonplace, therefore justified.
Even if it is software, I don't want automatically updating. The problem introduced by automatically updating is higher than the problem they fixed in my experience.
For example, windows updating. There was an updating when professor gave the talk in class. Windows updating popped out. There is no way for professor to stop the updating. He missed the chance and windows already went into blue updating screen. So, We had a break, and professor went to his office to find another computer.
Another problem is that automatically updating almost always runs silently. When I played online game and the game went laggy, I always tabbed out to see what happened with resource monitor. It is easy to find out there is whatever updating using CPU or bandwidth.
I feel updating just like legally raping my device. Oh. It is OUR device.
One option is to never buy hardware where you haven't installed the OS/software yourself and therefore have control over updates. This is kind of limiting though since lots of hardware doesn't support installing your own OS and Linux/BSD/etc don't support various hardware.
I similar avoid purchasing devices that I can’t have full ownership of.
I’ve often thought about starting a hardware company that provides all the source code, schematics, bill of materials with the sale of a product. This is a dream and a desire I have for the things that I do buy.
For example, I have several digital cinema film cameras that I do not plan to upgrade or sell. Unfortunately they are showing their age and have some fixable faults. I have spent the last two years to reverse engineering these cameras to identify the fault. If only I had a schematic.
I don’t expect the industry or politics to change any time soon. If only a hardware company could change the status quo by enabling their customers to be enabled to have full ownership and access.
> I’ve often thought about starting a hardware company that provides all the source code, schematics, bill of materials with the sale of a product. This is a dream and a desire I have for the things that I do buy.
Hardware in the old Soviet states came with all the blueprints and engineering schematics to fabricate replacement parts in the field.
Tablets can bounce around on a treadmill if you really get going, and 10" is not 32". And you think customers are going to wall-mount a TV in the garage where a lot of treadmills live, rather than just buy a built-in screen? I mean, yeah, that's exactly what I did, but not everyone (not but a few?) are even that handy.
And on top of everything else, customers thought that they could watch whatever they wanted on their attached 32" LCD screen. Why fuck with wall-mounting a TV or a bouncy tablet when they sell a treadmill with the screen built-in?
I don't think that's plausible considering the users knew they were "hacking" the machine to view this content.
> But Howard, and many other NordicTrack owners, weren’t drawn to the hardware by iFit’s videos. They were drawn in by how easy the fitness machines were to hack.
> To get into his X32i, all Howard needed to do was tap the touchscreen 10 times, wait seven seconds, then tap 10 more times. Doing so unlocked the machine—letting Howard into the underlying Android operating system.
Personally, I would never purchase a device with a screen that intentionally locked me out like this.
even if not for the content/software lock.. modularity is almost always better. screen technology is constantly improving. maybe i want to upgrade later without throwing the whole treadmill out?
It’s called military surplus Velcro. You get a second rubber case for the tablet that you apply Velcro to the back of then apply the other side to the treadmill in an area where it makes full contact. I have seen videos of people in Velcro suits jump and stick to walls so I’m sure it would work with a tablet.
Wrong question: wtf TV sized screen attached to whatever fitness gizmo when smaller screen and a whichever size you want wall/pedestal mounted TV will be likey cheaper and usable outside your jogging hours.
That is not always practical. Also, why purchase a tablet or install a wall mounted screen, when there is a perfectly good screen right in front of you.
I bought a sleep number bed, and now after like 2 years, suddenly one of the bedsides has decided to completely deflate around 5am every night, waking me up and forcing me to open up my phone and tell it to reinflate. I haven't contacted the company yet (out of laziness I guess), but I mean... it's a bed. A thing I lay on. Definitely turned me off to smart products, at least ones that worked perfectly fine as dumb devices.
For those of us are were of age when the internet and (later) big-data became a thing, we can only applaud the work of so many smart people. We see engineering plus entrepreneurship at its best. The varied inversion, however, of who has the majority control of an object or service post-purchase has lately gone to the provider not customer. Folks, that's a problem. We've seen this,
- here
- John Deer self-fix stories
- Apple store stories (and Android/Google variations)
- Several flavors of techs at places like best buy quivering in their boots at an Apple fix. Techs keep blabbering on about Apple repair policy and what they cannot do. I finally had to tell the guy: Start telling me what you can do, or I'll talk to somebody else. All I asked for was if they have a screw driver to take the bottom plate off, which I later got off Amazon.
- General issues of privacy
We gotta get back to customer satisfaction. Eventually --- not as quick as we might prefer --- customers will realize they have the stronger position and use it. Indeed, if I plunk down money for an object, my assessment counts. I do not accept some paper pusher a large-corp-America gainsaying that.
There are reasons behind updates and auto-updates. Bugs, features, users which did not consistently update and were left with insecure or buggy software. Then again, updates are also a mess.
I think this is a problem which should have a mostly technical solution: If most software was updated as today and users could rollback at will, most problems would be solved. That's a better way than making updates illegal.
Companies could unbundle security patches from UX updates if they wanted to. For the software I use regularly, I pretty much always want security updates and never want UI/UX changes.
Of course the incentives are totally out of whack, since bundling the updates is cheaper and many UX "improvements" exist to make the company more money, at the expense of the user.
Once users are conditioned or forced to auto-update why wouldn't a profit maximizing company make changes to increase its bottom line, regardless of how it helps or hurts users?
In a lot of software I worked with, unbundling core and UI would've been an immense amount of effort. You basically have the option to either maintain two GUIs side-by-side - including integrating new concepts (think, for example, supporting OTP and creating the workflow) and updating both for datastructure changes - or you never update your UX at all. At worst, you end up in a situation where your two GUIs support a distinct set of features.
You can correctly accuse companies of a lot of things, but decoupling the UX really is a very hard problem.
PCs too. I’ve lost hours to OSX updates that bricked my dev setup (making me reinstall / compile libraries, disabling my second monitor, etc.). First thing I do is turn off auto update and wait for releases to bake for a while and until I have enough time to deal with any breakages.
I bought Elite Dangerous, played it loads, really enjoyed it. One day, they said 'we're no longer supporting MacOS'. Fine, I thought... except it turns out even their single player mode needs to be online to work, and they were disabling that as well.
No refunds, no apologies, just a game I'd paid 50 dollars for suddenly didn't work any more. Ultimately, still value for money given how many hours I'd ploughed into it before they broke it, but yeah, I think twice now about that kind of purchase.
But if you do that how could the poor company possibly make any money? How could it collect and monetize your private information? How could it advertise to you? How could it own you and sell access to you to other companies who want to reach you?
i agree, if you buy something, you buy it for how it is, now sometimes we may want to update for our benefit but other times maybe not, maybe updating would cause more harm than help. therefore we should have to consent to updates, i 100% agree with this and it’s not even that much code to add a “is it cool if we update?” alert.
> This type of 'update' is one reason I tend to stay away from so-called 'smart' devices.
That is why I call those devices 'dumb' devices (reminds me of a SciFi book where the AI helpers are called "artifically stupids"). Smart devices are local, no auto-updates, working with no issue in the event of an outage.
I have many smart devices, all that would stop working in the event of an internet outage, would be the voice interface.
> That is why I call [smart] devices 'dumb' devices
"Dumb devices" is already an actual term, already used to refer to non-smart devices, so you are confusing anyone that has not learnt your custom vocabulary.
This is why I disable updates for every piece of software that I use. People criticize this often, but it puts me in control. I can then review updates when I feel like it, and update as I see fit.
Linux and LineageOS are godsends in this regard too. I even like to maintain, update my things from time to time, but not always, and definitely not when Mr. Windows thinks it's the best thing to do right before my gaming time. Last time the stupid thing made me miss the time by half an hour, when all of my friends were waiting for me. I'm still salty about that.
I don't think the updates on this treadmill could be disabled. You have to connect it to the internet to use the screen and if it's connected it's getting updated.
Dear god don’t get me started on mobile terraria. They completely ruined the gameplay. Common sense would tell any product team to at least provide the option to switch back to the old interface (they didn’t add or take away anything that would disallow this) but NO. I started playing it because it was fun, simple and easy to learn/play, now the controls have been completely ruined for mobile.
I just bought Terraria a couple days ago to see what it was all about. After 20 minutes of futzing about with it on my iPad, I deleted it because it was so terrible to control. Now to learn that the developers only recently released an update to a 9 year old game that broke once working controls. Wild!
You're not buying new games if you're enjoying nine-year-old games.
Did you know that before The Phantom Menace, then-20-year-old Star Wars would compete with new movies at rental shops? I personally believe that this is why Star Wars was "updated": it was too resilient to being replaced. The rental place didn't need to buy so many new copies of new movies when they could keep making money on old Star Wars. So the studios needed a way to make Star Wars less appealing.
Of all the theories I have heard on why Star Wars was ruined (I agree) this is the first I’ve heard of this one :) . Politics aside, money does often seem to be the biggest motivator for creation and destruction of things. It is inherently not progressive to have one thing that is built perfectly and never needs to be altered or repaired. Progression often seems to be more of a quest for change for its own sake rather than improvement. Something isn’t profitable if it has no planned obsolescence.
> if part of the product I've paid for is software, and the company can update it without customer consent at any time, then I can't rely on the product's features. Period.
I don't necessarily see where "customer consent" really enters the picture. Even if installing updates were optional, at some point you almost certainly want to install the updates, as it will contain bug fixes and enhancements in other areas of the product.
This is much more a question of relying on "off-label" feature / bugs in a product, which will always be an issue. The problem here is that the advertised experience was "you can only use our content" and that should have been enough to scare off potential buyers from considering it as an option.
If part of the product I've paid for is software, and the company can update it without customer consent at any time, then I can't rely on the product's features. Period.
I experienced this myself on the PS4 version of Terraria. I bought a hard-copy of the game. I mastered the controls, and loved them. Terraria was updated one day, and the controls were all changed, completely. Total rip-off. I liked the game I bought, but it was replaced without my consent.
My feeling is that this behavior should be illegal for purchased products.