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?"

Comments

Re:um too late dude

[adolf]

So what?

Re:Save your money

[tepples]

Context for moderators: We were discussing advantages of the combination of a PC and a plain HDTV vs. the combination of a game console and a plain HDTV. A purported PC advantage is that unlike Wii, it plays indie games that aren't written in Flash or JavaScript.

Strange, my home brew channel works just fine on my wii.

Until you get arrested. See this recent story. And given the Wii homebrew community's aversion to paying for homebrew, for what platform should an independent game company too big to give everything away at no charge but not big enough to be an authorized Wii developer develop?