Linux-Friendly, Internet-Enabled HDTVs?

mrchaotica writes "I'm in the market for a new HDTV (in the $1200-or-slightly-more range, as I won the extended-service-plan lottery and have a Sears store credit). Several of the TVs I've looked at have various 'Internet TV' features (here are Samsung's and Panasonic's). Some manufacturers appear to be rolling their own, while others are partnering with Yahoo (maybe in an attempt to create a 'standard?'). Moreover, these TVs also tend to run Linux under the hood (although their GPL compliance, such as in Panasonic's case, may leave something to be desired). Finally, it's easy to imagine these TVs being able to support video streaming services (YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, etc.) without a set-top box, but I don't know the extent to which that support actually exists. Here are my questions: 1) Is this 'Internet TV' thing going to be a big deal going forward, or just a gimmick? 2) Which manufacturers are most [open standard|Linux|hacker]-friendly? 3) Which TV models have the best support (or best potential and community backing) for this sort of thing?"

Is there such a thing

[XanC]

Is there such a thing as a TV that can run mythfrontend? That would be sweet beyond words.

No more broadcast.

[Anonymous Coward]

I see eventually all radio and television programming going to the web or cable or a combination of the two - maybe some other technology all together: TCP/IP and Ethernet is getting ling in the tooth and I don't see too much of a future for it. As far as the spectrum, that will be divided among new devices and current ones. You HAM guys have a real fight coming in a decade or so.

Netflix

[MBCook]

I know Sony makes at least a couple of TVs that use Linux to run the OSDs. That said, I doubt you'll find any manufacturers willing to let you put new software on the TV. Your best bet there is probably some 3rd party box (can you replace the kernel on a RoKu?).

In non-hackability, my TiVo lets me watch YouTube and Netflix as well as some other things, I it probably is the future of TV. YouTube is... gimmicky. It's YouTube, so mostly little videos. There are some documentaries and other things worth watching, but not a lot.

Being able to watch Netflix stuff is fantastic, and looks better than DVD since much of it is real HD. The content isn't there yet (it's rather limited, especially with new releases) but it's very nice. The biggest problem is that you have to have a "queue" which you update on your computers, so you can't add new movies from your TV. This is fixable, but that's how it operates now. I really love using it, it works very well.

I would love to have Netflix on my TV if I didn't have my TiVo to do the job. My TiVo also supports Amazon Unbox which I don't use (due to prices, where I already pay for NetFlix). There are some other video casts available for free on my TiVo (like David Pogue's from the NYT), and they recently added support to automatically get video from an RSS feed if it's in the right format.

This kind of video on demand seems to be the future to me. I already use recording on my TiVo sort of like VOD (since I can watch what I want when I want). These things seem like clear winners to me.

As for widgets, they seem of limited use. Pressing a button to call up a little weather forecast would be OK. Maybe having a little baseball diamond/score block up while I'm watching some other channel would be good. I used to like it when I had a set-top box that would display caller ID info.

Mostly though, widgets seem like a "but we're more than a generic TV" thing, trying to turn a commodity (an LCD panel in a case) into something more. My guess is that mostly no one will care soon.

If you want these features, you can use your TV if it supports them. But you can use a RoKu box to do the same thing, for only $100. Many higher end DVD/Blu-Ray players are starting to offer some of these features. TiVos support them. The XBox 360 supports them.

Basically, you don't need to get them in your TV. Every other box under the sun will soon have them. I wouldn't use this as a deciding factor.

Save your money

[grub]

Save your money on subscriptions.

Just get a no-frills (but decent) HDTV then pick up a PopcornHour Network Media Tank [popcornhour.com]. Plays xvid, DVD ISO, x.264, etc up to 1080p.

Samsung firmware

[jvillain]

You might want to have a look at these threads on the Samsung 7/8/9 series firmware over at AVS.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1134497&highlight=linux [avsforum.com]
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1047445&highlight=linux [avsforum.com]

Projector

[dsanfte]

My advice? And it's what I did... get a projector.

You get a bigger screen than a TV (for me, 82" at 9.8ft), and it accepts all sorts of inputs. I have my HDTV box wired up to it by component cables, and a VGA D-SUB coming down for my laptop. It works fabulously, and I can switch between the two with a single button on the remote.

Get a Plasma

[genik76]

Don't get hyped by the bright colour of LCDs in the showroom, get a Plasma if you don't have an exceptionally bright living room or watch static images for a long time period. They have - better blacks (without gimmicks like LCD-backlighting) - more natural colors - much better motion resolution (http://www.crutchfield.com/S-mVnnO3HsmRB/learn/learningcenter/home/tv_flatpanel.html) Modern plasmas from better manufacturers (Pioneer, Panasonic, Samsung) don't have the burn-in issues (which were common some years ago) anymore.

Re:Yes, but

[Hungus]

Linux is more reliable, but that is not the reason is is used. Linux is cheap, can be stripped down to its essentials thus having less of a footprint and is easily extensible. That is why Linux is used. If M$ gave away the compilers and libraries then made windows truly modular companies would start using it instead. Sad but true.

"Internet TV" has always been a gimmick.

[mark_wilkins]

In early 1996, I was a software engineer for Mitsubishi Consumer Electronics, in meetings to plan their first generation implementation of the ATV standard, on which current, U.S. HDTV devices are based. A huge priority for them at the time was to build a web browser into their television sets, and many ways to do this were investigated.

WebTV, which was pretty much the same idea in a set-top box, was in development at the time, and provided a model for that kind of thing, so Mitsubishi announced that they would, at some unspecified point, begin selling TVs with a feature they called "Diamond Internet" built into them.

It never happened. I don't know whether the issue was politics in the software department, or maybe just management recognition that it was a gimmick, but they never delivered such a product. Probably it came down to there just being too many other issues to manage to get an ATV set out the door.

However, it's clear that the idea's been there, lurking in people's minds, for the thirteen intervening years, and hasn't become any more useful a concept.

Incidentally, around that same time, I did buy a wonderful set-top-box by a company called Videoguide, that delivered TV schedules and news headlines to the device via unused text pager bandwidth. It was a great product, inexpensive and very useful, as even though I did have internet at home at that time, it wasn't an always-on connection. However, between shortened times to come out of sleep for laptops and PCs and the ubiquity of always-on internet connections in the home, I think the utility of a product like that isn't what it used to be. And anyway, Videoguide ended up getting bought out by Gemstar after spending tons of money.

It's a microwave!!

[SEWilco]

A Linux microwave would be nice to have if I wanted to add a microphone so it could pop popcorn correctly.

Re:Whatever happened to...

[antdude]

What bothers me is that NVIDIA yanked its TV output from its latest drivers and cards. One can't do fullscreen TV overlay anymore. I had to switch to ATI Radeon 4870 so I could watch videos fullscreen on my 20" 1996 CRT TV. :(

Re:Is there such a thing

[Anonymous Coward]

I have just got a LG BD-390 [cnet.com] which plays
- Blu-ray
- MKV, divx rip, either on a USB drive or on a burned disc
- Netflix stream which can be HD depending on your bandwidth and the source material.
- stream from your own server

I'd say it is almost perfect.

Re:"It's just around the corner"

[jedidiah]

For "convergence" the ergonomics of a computer attached to a TV is perfectly fine.

The problem comes when you try to do something like word processing from the
couch. Although even that is not necessarily a show stopper with the right
keyboard. Just treat the TV like another monitor as you would have with
an Amiga, Atari or Apple 2.

For multimedia, a remote is perfectly usable. It helps to try and not use some
stupidly limited mouse like the one that Apple bundles with it's hardware.

A "convergence" PC is certainly no worse than an optical disk player.

Re:Not what I would used to select a TV

[Ritchie70]

And the Zenith TV my dad bought in the 80's had some sort of weird built-in text news thing and a thermal printer.

I threw the printer away after he died, and the news stuff never worked that I saw, but I still have the TV.

The point it, as ffujita says, TVs have historically tended to last longer as TVs than whatever foolishness is built into them.

I'm not convinced that is still the case since they don't seem to last nearly as long any more.

Re:"It's just around the corner"

[glarbl_blarbl]

I just got a 40" 1080p hdtv, and the way I set it up to get around some of these problems was to also connect a 22" DVI display close to the couch. Then I set the two displays to act as separate x sessions, which allows finer control of the settings on each display. I installed mythbuntu, and then set up a guest account which automatically logs in and runs mythtv on the tv. I'm thinking I'll start another x session under my user name for my own stuff which will have a password-protected screen saver. And another one for games :)

This set up worked quite nicely when I had to do a quick spreadsheet last week.

Re:hacker-friendly HDMI-capable TV can't support H

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think HDCP has anything to do with it. The Linux that's running on the TV probably never gets to see the data stream, it just switches that between various inputs and decoders. It just won't be fast enough to read more than a 1 or 2 frames eper second from the framebuffer, if it has any access at all. Linux is typically used for the On Screen Displays, and in some of the newer TVs, for the web browser.