I hope the Software Freedom Conservancy lawsuit against Visio results in an open source distribution for TVs like there is OpenWRT for routers after their last lawsuit. Perhaps the OpenLGTV/SamyGO projects and other folks will join forces on a common distro for smart TVs.
> Perhaps the OpenLGTV/SamyGO projects and other folks will join forces on a common distro for smart TVs.
What's wrong with webOS? I assume LG have "Googled"[0] it to some extent with proprietary software, but there's documentation, a lot of open-source stuff, and overall it doesn't look too bad.
Not parent, but I think I can respond. There is really nothing wrong with WebOS ( I actually find very good for my needs ), but the focus is not on having one decent OS we can mess around with as needed. The focus is on ensuring that users have actual control over their smart TVs.
And this is where it gets fun. There is money to be made from harvesting data. Do you think companies will willingly give up the ability to keep 'users' in their grasp?
I would add to that future updates, etc as well. LG stops bringing in major WebOS versions for older models, so you miss out on features and apps that would have no problems running on the hardware.
You are getting security updates but not OS updates. OS updates actually stop after 1 or 2 years on LG TV. So if you look at the HBO max app for instance is for 2018+ models (web os 4 and more). I have a TV from 2017 with web OS 3 and I can't get the HBO max app.
Apps are not necessarily developed by LG, but by specific developers. The BBC for example stopped updating their app for a while, saying the device would not be supported going forward; they must have received a bunch of complaints though, because a couple of months later it was back to normal.
> Apps are not necessarily developed by LG, but by specific developers.
Nobody here's saying anything like that, though. Not sure how you got that idea?
But if the OS on your TV isn't being updated by LG any longer, then you won't be able install the newest versions of many apps, since they use SDK-features, that aren't supported by the older versions of the OS.
Whether an app is actually developed by a third-party, like the BBC or HBO, doesn't change the fact that "minimum supported OS version", is as crippling for a TV, as it is for a smartphone or tablet.
Last time I had to buy a new smartphone, even though the old one was still in excellent working condition, was because my bank and mobile payment apps, stopped supporting the Android OS version, it were stuck at.
I'd hate to also have to buy new TV's, just because the Netflix, HBO, or whatever apps I use, stop working.
From the parent post: > So if you look at the HBO max app for instance is for 2018+ models
AFAIK nothing stops HBO from supporting older webOS releases, they just can't be arsed to. They could maintain builds produced with the older SDK forever, if they wanted to. Old models won't get new features, but there is no reason the app should stop working - like it works on the Apple Appstore every day to millions of apps.
> AFAIK nothing stops HBO from supporting older webOS releases
Assuming that to be the case, nothing is stopping LG to provide an upgraded webOS either.
> They could maintain builds produced with the older SDK forever
Maintaining backwards compatibility in this way is not a small undertaking. How many webOS versions do you maintain compatibility with? How do you decide which features you spend time trying to backport to which versions? How do you make it clear to your users that their 2-year-old >US$1k TV won't get the shiny new thing because it's too old?
> they just can't be arsed to
And they shouldn't have to. If the hardware is good enough to support the latest OS and SDK, refusing to do so is nothing more than planned obsolescence on part of the manufacturer. They all share the same underlying architecture, main difference will probably be around drivers.
Multiply the number of apps by the number of different smart TV OSs by the number of versions of each and supporting all of them gets old really quickly.
In that case, you'd just buy a streaming stick or settop box, like a FireTv, AppleTV, Roku, or AndroidTV box.. These are a small-ish percent of the cost of a new TV.
I had to manually install iPlayer after it disappeared from my Sony. This week it seems to have been updated, so yes, I think they must have a had a fair few compaints.
That might be down to a mix of both the service (HBO Max, in this case) and the OS distributor (LG). As a personal anecdote, I remember when the YouTube app ceased to work on old Sony Bravia TV's. YouTube printed a message to the screen explaining how the service would be cut soon.
LG TVs are filled with ads on the operating system itself, there are built-in features which you can't use without agreeing to an invasive privacy policy, the general performance is dogshit after a few years of updates, and there are dark patterns.
For example, I have one Fire TV (and nothing else) connected to the HDMI port of mine. Whenever I turn on the TV, it correctly shows the HDMI input, but it always displays the WebOS app launcher for a couple of seconds, which covers a quarter of the screen. I know the difference between launching the Netflix app in WebOS and launching it through Fire TV, but I'm pretty sure the average non-techie doesn't.
WebOS itself is pretty good, especially considering it's open source. But I would neither trust LG to provide a safe or decent implementation, nor would I want to rely on the performance of whatever low budget SoC they're sticking into these TVs. An external Roku-like device would be the best option.
WebOS has actually been more reliable than my Nvidia Shield. The Shield weirdly gets slow over time until I reboot even if I haven't really done anything on it. The Hulu app on these has also been broken for years: the first couple minutes after it starts playing a show will just show black while the audio plays. I don't know if that's a Hulu, Google, or NVIDIA issue, but what I do know is that I don't have any issues if I use the WebOS app.
> An external Roku-like device would be the best option.
Does something like this exist? A webOS box, so to speak? I would be very interested if so. It would be nice to hear of webOS outside of the context of TV's.
> WebOS itself is pretty good, especially considering it's open source. But I would neither trust LG to provide a safe or decent implementation
Me neither. It would be nice to have something I can trust is fully open-source. Would also be nice to use webOS like Kodi, though that is a truly crazy idea.
The only time I’ve seen WebOS not in a TV was the HP Touchpad that was released a long time ago. It was a WebOS based tablet and was pretty nice, but it failed miserably, and most people ended up installing Android on it.
C9 here. I never see any ads. Might be because I dug through every menu looking for things to opt-out of. I can’t use the voice control because I opted out of that. But, otherwise the WebOS experience is great.
Only complaint is that I can’t figure out how to disable “resume playing paused movie when the controller feels someone walking across the room”.
I think it is consumer-hostile that LG TVs don't allow you to downgrade firmware.
So they release an update that breaks basic advertised TV functionality (like ARC, HDR, etc), and then all the consumer can do is pray for 6 months that they're actually working on fixing the problem that they caused.
> What's wrong with webOS? I assume LG have "Googled"[0] it to some extent with proprietary software
You just answered your own question. Besides the Freedom issues and unwieldy bespoke UIs, embedded proprietary software inevitably becomes abandonware in a few short years.
Others have answered, but I'm only interested in community based software distributions, or ones backed by an ecosystem of companies, not ones ran by a single corporation.
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/firmware-liber... https://www.samygo.tv/