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Ubuntu TV: Coming Soon To a Living Room Near You (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the forget-the-world-we'll-dominate-your-TV-instead dept.

Apple TV is a little device you hook to your television. Ubuntu TV (motto: "TV for human beings") is going to be inside your TV, says Peter Goodall, Canonical's Product Manage for Ubuntu TV. At CES, he described Ubuntu TV to Timothy Lord in detail. Join them via Slashdot Video to see what's up with this Ubuntu venture, which has lots of competition; "Smart TV" was a major CES catchphrase this year.

8 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. Smart boxes not TVs by Monoman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I personally would rather see the TV makers stick to making the displays and let other companies like Roku, Boxee, Tivo, etc handle the "smart" parts.

    We have a Samsung smart TV too. We use Hulu quite a bit but have found that the Hulu app appears to suffer from lag sometimes. However, on our older TV (not smart) we have a Roku we use for Hulu and it never experiences the problem. If the TV lags bad I just pause the show on the smart tv and then go resume it on the Roku.

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    1. Re:Smart boxes not TVs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Exactly. There is no money to be made on it after the sale of the TV for the manufacturer, and therefore no incentive to maintain / upgrade the service; or even fix it if it's broken. This is not a good business model for the consumer.

  2. Integrated Computers & TV's dont mix by frith01 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Computer hardware changes a lot faster than the display components. There is only a limited market for integrated devices unless they are strictly re-formatting/ receiving streams over IP.

    Of course, manufactures would LOVE for you to buy an Integrated device with TV today, so they can sell you a brand new shiny toy in 3-5 years when your display gear no longer works with DRM version X.

    Look at all the VCR / TV combo's sitting in the garage sales cause they dont play DVD's , etc..

    1. Re:Integrated Computers & TV's dont mix by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The VCR/TV combos that I saw were always portable TVs. I quite often saw them in office environments, where they could be moved to where ever training or a presentation required them. In such a case, a separate TV and VCR wasn't a good option, because of having to carry 2 items, and the hassle of rewiring them together each time they were moved. And they probably had a useful life of, what 10-15 years?

      For large screen TVs, building a VCR in wasn't very common. I imagine there was such a product but I never saw one.

  3. Debian TV by psergiu · · Score: 4, Funny


    apt-get update
    apt-get install latest-tv-show

    Then to get the latest episodes:

    apt-get update
    apt-get upgrade

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  4. 2012! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Year of Linux on the...TV...?

  5. A solution looking for a problem by grimmjeeper · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I just don't see the big consumer demand for these smart TVs. Even among my gadget loving friends, the interest in smart TVs can be described as lukewarm at best. Sure, the integrated capability to stream content from providers other than the cable/satellite company does appeal to some. But I just don't see people banging down doors to get this integrated into the TV. If anything, I see more people using their TVs as big monitors for their PCs and game consoles.

    Perhaps it's just the cynic in me but I see this more as a push by the advertisers as a means to get more of their content delivered. All of the providers will relish the opportunity to embed ads, either in their UI or in their content. Yet another business model being pushed on people who don't really want it, if they care at all.

  6. Samsung is working on this by zerofoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Samsung is working on a "user upgradeable" TV with plug in modules. There was little detail about it at CES this year, but it appeared from the demos that you could plug in modules to upgrade CPU, operating system, and image processing components.

    I don't know exactly how much of the TV is upgradeable, but Samsung suggested that most of the important bits of the TV could be upgraded this way.

    -ted