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First Smart TVs Powered By Firefox OS On Sale In Europe, Worldwide Soon
An anonymous reader writes: The first smart TVs powered by Firefox OS have gone on sale in Europe. Panasonic's line of Viera smart TVs includes six that are powered by Firefox OS — CR850, CR730, CX800, CX750, CX700 and CX680 — including their first curved LED LCD TV. The full global launch of the TVs is expected “in the coming months.” From the Mozilla blog: "We’re happy to partner with Panasonic to bring the first Smart TVs powered by Firefox OS to the world,” said Andreas Gal, Mozilla CTO. “With Firefox and Firefox OS powered devices, users can enjoy a custom and connected Web experience and take their favorite content (apps, videos, photos, websites) across devices without being locked into one proprietary ecosystem or brand.”
Personally, I want my women smart and my TV dumb. Seems like it wouldn't be very entertaining the other way around...
Just what I needed... a TV that...
* updates automatically every few weeks whether I want it to or not.
* sends *anonymous* viewing data to "improve the experience", against my will.
* changes the interface on the tv, and meanings of the buttons on the remote every 3rd or so update.
* that I will need to install adblock plus on to get rid of ads or keep them under control.
* that I will spend needless hours trying to find how to activate the power button after an update reconfigures the power button to require the auxillary button to be pushed down at the same time.
* requires that I install plug-ins that also self update just to get the tv to operate the way I want it to.
* that requires a unplug/ replug every few days as it runs out of ram and slows down channel switching and video output to a crawl.
* that as an organization, doesn't listen to it's user base and does what it wants instead.
NO THANKS, MOZILLA!!!
The whole idea of a "smart TV" is retarded because it ignores a fundamental truth, which is 1.- "Smart"devices that are successful are in markets with high turnover so the consumer is able to run the latest apps, for example smart phones and tablets, while 2.- TVs are devices that are typically kept by the consumer for 5-10 years which means the "Smart" part will quickly become as outdated and useless as a Palm Pilot.
Since FirefoxOS hasn't been out long enough lets use Android as an example, lets say you bought your smart TV 6 years ago, right around the time I bought my mother her new set (which is still working great and will probably last at least a couple more years if not more) that would put you on on Android 1.5, AKA Cupcake...now how many apps today can run on Cupcake? Very damned few. What about the hardware, could it have been updated? Since I had one of the early 1.6 (AKA Donut) I can tell you that while you MIGHT have been able to go to 2.0 it would have been painful to use, as the average device then was similar to these specs, a 530Mhz ARM11 with just 192Mb of RAM and 512Mb of flash...now remember that most smart TVs have lower specs than your average phone so how long do you think it would take before it was just painful to use?
At the end of the day I think that other than malware targets these things are gonna quickly become irrelevant, the OS will go out of date looong before the TV dies, making for a security nightmare as vulnerabilities in both the OS and the apps won't be able to be patched as the hardware will just be too weak to run anything newer, and for the consumer the apps will lose support and using the ones that come with it will be about as pleasant as trying to surf modern sites on the phone I listed above. So other than a checkbox on the side of the box? IMHO this is just fucking stupid any way you cut it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.