Slashdot Mirror
Samsung Wants To Bring Web Browsing, Office Work To the TV (variety.com)
Samsung's 2019 smart TVs will allow consumers to browse the web, access their PCs and even edit work documents from the comfort of their living room couch. From a report: The company previewed a new feature dubbed Remote Access this week, which integrates both Samsung's own Knox security framework as well as remote access software from VMWare. Samsung stopped short on revealing key details about Remote Access. It did disclose that Remote Access will make it possible to remotely access a PC from a TV, which then seems to function as a gateway to the web, as well as a way to play PC-based games.
To use Remote Access, consumers won't have to just rely on their TV remote controls. Instead, it will also work with a keyboard, mouse, and other input devices. These may come in handy when consumers access what Samsung vaguely described as a "web browser-based cloud office service" to "access files and work on documents."
To use Remote Access, consumers won't have to just rely on their TV remote controls. Instead, it will also work with a keyboard, mouse, and other input devices. These may come in handy when consumers access what Samsung vaguely described as a "web browser-based cloud office service" to "access files and work on documents."
I believe Samsung smart TVs both snoop on you and force ads on the menu screen. There'll be a cold day in hell before I buy a Samsung TV - even though they look ok from other points of view.
It's annoying that you can't find any large screen dumb TVs at a reasonable price point anymore.
And we all want to be working at home like Marty McFly, don't we?
My Sony Bravia just stopped being a monitor. Will only run through its internal an weak applications or a propert DVD player.
Could just be some very weird hidden setting, or some very weird hardware bug. But I strongly suspect a DRM like issue with the automated software updates.
So, Samsung want to own all computing?
...that 24+ hours in, there are still only four comments. Samsung is clearly onto something.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy.
Hey asshats. Weâ(TM)ve been down this road before. It does not work. Nobody wants their tv to be a computer.
There seems to be open source doing that, and given the average quality of Samsungs attempts at SW don't make me very optimistic that their implementation will be more persistent, stable, secure and (ad-)free.
https://sourceforge.net/projec...
https://kanaka.github.io/noVNC...
Samsung would have to prove themselves after their past track record.
.. I blocked my Samsung smartTV from accessing any domain that contains the word 'samsung'. I have been monitoring the TV on my firewall, and the amount of traffic it generates is ridiculous. Even when it's switched off, it phones home every few seconds. Not acceptible. So pihole takes care of it.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
I have a Samsung Smart TV which supports keyboard, mouse, and USB camera. First thing canceled by Samsung was Skype video calls. Later they canceled 3d movies and many more things. To prevent this set from calling home (remote has a microphone) I have cut its internet connection.
So I definitely recommend against using these devices for anything else than just a dumb monitor.
Can I write my own program that runs?
Last I checked, one of the CDD requirements for getting the Google Play Store app on an Android device is that the device allow the user to enable Android Debug Bridge. So yes, if you have Android TV with Google Play, you can probably adb install your own program into a device's user space.
Who wants this? The TV in our living room gets used very little. My daughter plays video games on it occasionally, and we might turn it on twice a month.
My daughter watches most things on her phone and my wife uses her tablet. From what I see from her friends, it's not much different in other households. The exception being homes with toddlers. But good luck doing office work when they want to watch Barney, or whatever it is they watch these days.
I have a projector in the basement that I'll watch movies on as well. But these days I'm the only one who uses it. I certainly don't want to do office work on it either. So I don't understand why Samsung thought this would be a selling point. Perhaps 15 years ago, before everyone had a personal device with them at all times. But it seems kind of silly to me to do this in 2018.
After all, this is Samsung, a company on fire, hell-bent on reigniting the market and singeing the competition. We are all burning with anticipation, Samsung.
Let's see, this means that Samsung will get a boatload of tracking data about the customers, and also be able to insert ads into the content. It's a win-win for Samsung and a lose-lose for anyone crazy enough to buy one of these surveillance TVs.
We already had Web TV. It was pretty universally apparent most people preferred not to surf that way. Are millennials pretending nothing happened on earth prior to their arrivals in charge at Samsung now, too?
... attack surface. Cool.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I bought a Samsung TV last month and I gotta say the UI, to be kind, sucks. 2 examples:
1) Every time you change the input to TV, or use the guide, the bottom half of the screen turns into an ad. Very annoying.
2) You can set an HDMI input to game mode to cut down on lag. But when I turn off my PS4 that HDMI input goes away. It comes back when you turn the PS4 on, but so much for switching inputs before turning on the PS4. That's annoying. What is frustrating is, when the HDMI comes back it forgets it's a game system. So you have to reconfigure it. Every. Fucking. Time.
I could go on and on but just take my word for it, I think I like Congress more than this TV's UI. Had I known I'd have never bought this TV.
No, no no no no no no no no.
I do not want to browse the web on my TV anymore than I want to watch TV on my phone.
Watching a movie on my phone feels like I'm viewing it through the gun slit of a tank. I have a 55" TV, why the hell would I want to watch a movie on something small enough to fall between the couch cushions?
But hey, if you want to watch 2001 A Space Odyssey on a 4" screen, be my guest.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
That signature really clicked with me. I mean, it just pops. It even made my stomach rumble and flutter... oh, wow!
I hope you're not tracking my errors here. I admit to lowering the signal to noise ratio, but really, I was just needling you, so feel free to turn the tables and dust me in return.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I recently picked up an Amazon Fire TV (not the dongle, a TV with it built in)
Since it is based on AndroidTV, I can load in most Android apps on it without issue. I currently have both Microsoft's Remote Desktop and Valve's SteamLink apps working quite well. I also have a SSH client, VNC client, full web browser, and more. I have a full sized keyboard and mouse attached, plus I also have an AirMouse attached (accelerometer based mouse movement) which has a full keyboard on it too, but in the form factor of a normal TV remote. This handles casual cases plus full on gaming needs too.
Samsung on the other hand seems to be pushing their own proprietary bullshit, or requiring VMWare!? Yeah, no thanks. Why do we need to wait until 2019 to get features that have been around for 2-4 years already, but with better compatibility with the existing tools?
Sorry but doing any sort of productivity work on a 30 Hz display is a terrible experience, especially if there is any temporal smoothing going on. The lag of just moving the cursor around may not seem bad at first but you will be hating life in less than an hour.
It's WebTV 2.0!
Next up, they'll introduce a great bar code reader that you can use to "Web Enable" magazines...
When your TV is an Internet-connected computer, you get all the problems of an Internet-connected computer.
Malware, ransomware making your TV useless, targeted ads, spying by corporations and governments, hackers...
Get a safeTV instead.
Us old guys gotta click together.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's just so evil it hurts a little. We like the TVs, but can never trust them to the likings of Windows 10, Google, Roomba, Onkyo (Yes, Onkyo's privacy policy quite amazing!)