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."

Comments

Ads?

[ChatHuant]

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.

Re:Ads?

[mapkinase]

If they open their OS to third party software manufacturers I am ok with it.

AdBlock will come promptly and squash the ads.

The problem is closed OS.

Can I write my own program that runs?

Can I edit the file to add advertisement URLs?

LG televisions do that ad thing too, BTW.

Re:Ads?

[StuartHankins]

I bought one before I knew about the problems. One fix: don't give the Samsung TV wifi access, and plug a Roku or such into it instead. The built-in Netflix and apps are so slow that they're almost useless anyway, apparently they skimped big-time on the CPU. Like you, I will never purchase a Samsung TV again.

Sony stopped being a monitor

[aberglas]

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?

Re:Sony stopped being a monitor

[TheGratefulNet]

disable updates. sucks but it works.

my smart tv never EVER got an ip addr and never got an update.

if I don't like it OOTB, I won't buy it (as a TV). mostly I want it to be a monitor so I don't even bother trying to use it in any smart mode.

adding an ip addr just seems like a pandoras box. nothing good will come from it and the vendors are like wild west cowboys; they do whatever they want with no control over them. that's not something I will trust an internet endpoint to.

as for samsung, the rep is 'warranty plus one day'. things are meant to last as long as warranty and that's about it. I refuse to buy samsung unless its the only option. like sony, they are a bad actor and I refuse to support them with my $$.

the vizio that I have is kept dumb and the only bug is that the color is 'wrong' if I power the tv on while the pc has video turned off (due to pwr mgmt). if I wake up the pc first, then turn the tv on, the color calibration is correct. that's the only bug and I'm not willing to try to have that fixed at the expense of so many other things that DO work.

oh, and look for a tv that truly supports hdmi 2.0 and 120hz real rate. makes a big diff, and intel i3/5/7 series from skylake or even earlier do support 120hz mode out of hdmi. there are 35w i3 chips and even i5 chips, so you can make a truly fanless pc that has serious balls to it and is 100% silent.

zero reason to use tv's as anything smart. let your linux pc do that. works great and I have full freedom this way. even vlc on modern i5 chips is fully ok with software rendering, at any kind of encoding people may use for movies.

with the ability to run silent pc's, the idea of a 'smart tv' is beyond aburd to anyone here on this site.

Re:Sony stopped being a monitor

[StuartHankins]

No IP address / no wifi means it's secure :)

It's good to see someone else who remembers Sony's CD rootkit fiasco and their abrupt stance on their Linux add-ons. I won't buy Sony anymore either. My children got me a PS2 many many years ago and I still have it, that's the one exception.

This is so exciting...

[OnceWas]

...that 24+ hours in, there are still only four comments. Samsung is clearly onto something.

Rinse, repeat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey asshats. Weâ(TM)ve been down this road before. It does not work. Nobody wants their tv to be a computer.

Re:Rinse, repeat.

[Abe677]

Exactly. We share a TV in my house. It's a family thing. It forces some compromise sometimes. If someone wants to use the internet they go use some other device for that so the others can enjoy some entertainment.

Re:Rinse, repeat.

[Immerman]

Two points:
A large percentage of people are single.
A large percentage of people with families own more than one television.
A lot of people with a TV don't actually watch a lot of TV.

In any case having a TV that can double as a computer monitor can be really enjoyable, and a dramatic increase in the value of your purchase. I've been happily using a TV as my primary monitor for over a decade now - connected to my desktop, consoles, and chromecast, as well as docking my laptop when I want more screen space on it.

What I don't understand is why you'd want to introduce all the lag-inducing, performance killing properties of a remote desktop into the equation. The ability to go fully wireless would doubtless be nice for office applications, but I just don't see it working well for any sort of reflex-based gaming.

What I'm really waiting for is a TV that acts as a docking station - just plug in single a USB-C cable (with embedded HDMI/displayport) to your laptop, phone, etc. to recharge and get a big screen, good speakers, keyboard, mouse, etc. You can already get the basic functionality without too much trouble, but integrating a docking hub directly into the TV seems like the most elegant way to accomplish it, and at minimal cost

Re:Rinse, repeat.

[StuartHankins]

I use a 32" Samsung TV -- neutered without wifi -- as my secondary monitor when I work from home. A single HDMI cable transfers sound and graphics to the TV. If you want to add a cable to a dock that provides all the other things you mention, you can do it with a single cable from a laptop to the dock. A phone may require a special converter, such as a Lightning-to-HDMI cable with passthrough power. Or you can use wireless charging if your phone is capable and simplify things a little bit.

The whole reason you want to use a separate dock is that interfaces and connections change very frequently. It's easier to get a dock with everything you want in it than try to get a decent TV also with every connector you want in it. For instance, this TV is going to need a wire with a plate for wireless phone charging, right? How long of a wire at what gauge? No, seriously, different wattage wireless phone charging solutions require limits on wire length. Same for the larger phone / tablet chargers, it often makes a lot of sense to use an electrical extension cord to get the wireless charger close to where you need it rather than extend the charger cable.

In the computer industry, different adapters have come and gone over the years, it's the same thing, better to have a dock you can replace than have a TV with the equivalent of yesterday's SCSi / serial / parallel interfaces on it.

Re:Rinse, repeat.

[Immerman]

Why wireless charging? That's the beauty of USB 3/C: one plug that can carry all the power and data you need. Over efficient wires, instead of a wireless interface that throws away 20-30% of the power.

I'm not quite sure how exactly licensing is handled, but TVs pretty much already all include HDMI, and often DisplayPort, as well as USB ports, so most of the licensing is probably already paid. All they really need to do is incorporate a USB hub that can break out the video signal and they'd be set.

Meanwhile USB shows no sign of going anywhere - even USB 1.0 still occasionally crops up in new devices.

VNC over HTML5?

[drolli]

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...

I'll pass

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung would have to prove themselves after their past track record.

"It may be the worst code I’ve ever seen. Everything you can do wrong there, they do it. You can see that nobody with any understanding of security looked at this code or wrote it."

And this is why

[scsirob]

.. 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.

Re:And this is why

[Immerman]

Yeah. Kind of a shame to basically throw away the "Smart" part of the TV that way, but so long as the manufacturers continue to prove themselves both untrustworthy and incompetent, what else can you responsibly do?

And then there are all the people who happily pay to install an Amazon or Google home surveillance system in order to play music and do web searches by voice. It's hardly surprising that sleazy manufacturer behavior is rampant.

ADB requirement in Android CDD

[tepples]

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.

Do they think it's 2003 still?

[The Grim Reefer]

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.

Re:Do they think it's 2003 still?

[drinkypoo]

I don't want precisely this, because I don't trust Samsung. But I would like this kind of functionality in or near my television, for the purpose of accessing remote resources. In practice, I'm just going to use a long HDMI cable since I already have it and it will work, but it would be more convenient for me if I could do it through the network, since I have to pull network cable to that location anyway.

The better to monetize Samsung's customers

[QuietLagoon]

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.

New ...

[CaptainDork]

... attack surface. Cool.

Hope they fix their UI first

[Snotnose]

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.

Ummm, NO

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

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.

A new record!

[fyngyrz]

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.

Re:A new record!

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

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!

You're more than welcome to use my sig whenever and wherever you like, and I would be simultaneously horrified and flattered if you decided to get it immortalized as a tattoo.

Sadly, I suspect my sig has no meaning to a lot of people, especially anyone under ~30. If you asked most people what "33 1/3rd" meant or what it had to do with, they'd draw a blank.

Nonetheless, I'm tempted to have it carved on my tombstone.

AndroidTV and FireTV

[darkain]

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?

Color me excited!

[DigitalJanitor]

It's WebTV 2.0!

Next up, they'll introduce a great bar code reader that you can use to "Web Enable" magazines...

Samsung wants to bring ads, viruses to your TV.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Stereo, albeit only about 25dB

[fyngyrz]

Sadly, I suspect my sig has no meaning to a lot of people, especially anyone under ~30. If you asked most people what "33 1/3rd" meant or what it had to do with, they'd draw a blank.

Us old guys gotta click together.