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Android Television Technology

Comcast is Looking To Enter the Smart TV Wars (protocol.com) 80

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Comcast wants to turn the software running on its set-top boxes into an operating system for smart TVs, Protocol reported Friday, citing multiple industry insiders with knowledge of the company's plans. From the report: The company began pitching TV manufacturers on the idea in recent months and had some conversations on the subject at CES in January. It's unclear how far these talks have progressed, but the push underlines the growing importance of smart TVs as a major platform for the future of entertainment. At the center of these discussions has been Comcast's X1 platform, which the company built as an operating system for its own set-top boxes over the past decade. In addition to running on the company's cable boxes, X1 also powers Flex, the Roku-like streaming hardware launched by Comcast last year. Comcast has also for some time pitched X1 to fellow cable operators. Cox, for instance, runs X1 hardware and software under its Contour brand, and Charter executives have publicly acknowledged that the two companies have been negotiating a similar licensing deal.
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Comcast is Looking To Enter the Smart TV Wars More

Comcast is Looking To Enter the Smart TV Wars

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  • Yes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @12:26PM (#60449832)

    Just what I want, a TV tied to my cable monopoly.

    • My first thought as well— maybe they can go full telescreen as well for effect. I don’t think they get their value-add.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TWX ( 665546 )

        What value-add?

        I know, thats-the-joke.jpeg

        • Heh... they sure as hell don’t know! I don’t know Comcast’s truck roll rates, but here Spectrum rolls an unimaginable number of trucks per customer. If they stopped doing everything with heavy trucks there just might be a business opportunity there...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      What is a set top box?

  • Now maybe they'll get to charge 2x the rental fee.

  • So does this mean we'll be able to buy a cable-ready TV that just plugs into the coax and works? No more cable boxes and rental fees? Comcast must be desperate to have their system be the TV interface instead of Roku, Fire, or something else, if they're willing to give up that rental income.

    I'm in a weird situation where I would probably buy one, as I have a vacation rental property where we shut off the cable in the winter every year, and not having to pick up and return cable boxes would be a huge win f

    • So does this mean we'll be able to buy a cable-ready TV that just plugs into the coax and works? No more cable boxes and rental fees?

      No, now you will pay new, HIGHER rental fees for the tv instead.

      • No more cable boxes and rental fees?

        No, now you will pay new, HIGHER rental fees for the tv instead.

        But look at the plus side -- the forced commercials will look just SO much better than before!

    • No, the coax will plug into the cable modem, then the TV will either connected by ethernet or Wifi. Cable operators are trying to get video signal off the coax entirely so that the entire frequency range can be used by docsis, and the video delivered over IP.

    • So does this mean we'll be able to buy a cable-ready TV that just plugs into the coax and works? No more cable boxes and rental fees? Comcast must be desperate to have their system be the TV interface instead of Roku, Fire, or something else, if they're willing to give up that rental income.

      Comcast's software will run on smart TVs, but to use the features you'll have to subscribe. It's going to be SaaS model.

      • SaaS Software as A Shakedown model.Any way you say it, their software is like Hannibal Lecture , eating a bit of your brain for every interaction. No thanks. It is still an Idiot Box, now with adultproof remote.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fred911 ( 83970 )

      ''No more cable boxes and rental fees?''

      Wow.. where do I start. Ok.. probably none of the first, and surely as much of the second as they can. And, probably more creative fee methods such as ''user owned equipment compatibility fees'' as much as they are able to get away with raping clients before FCC legislation is put into effect.

      But, seriously in this day and age, why even trust the ''tuning'' or content delivery system of your display to anyone but yourself? Possibly, other than the ability to decode te

    • I strongly suspect you will pay a rental fee for the TV. It's an integral part of comcast's business model.

    • have to rent the TV and need to buy HSI + cable + and maybe even rent the gateway.

      And the non rerun price of the tv is way over retail price

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by crow ( 16139 )

        While I can see Comcast loving that idea, I just don't see it flying in today's market. I really think Comcast sees that whoever controls the interface has an advantage, so they see Amazon/Fire and Roku as their competitors, and they're willing to forego the rental income to complete in the changing marketplace. I think they see this as a chance to stay relevant instead of being squeezed out by the streaming services, so they'll do whatever they have to to stay in the game. This shows that their executi

  • No (Score:4, Insightful)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @12:40PM (#60449882) Journal

    I'm just looking for a non-"smart" tv, something which does one thing and does it well: display an image. I don't need nor want all the cruft which goes along with "smart" tvs, or "smart" anything.

    As a rule, everything "smart" I've encountered gets in the way of me being able to do what I want to do because it thinks it knows better. These things should be "smart" enough to recognize when someone doesn't need or want help and get out of the way.

    • Bahahaha, good luck on that! TV manufacturers make money from the "Smart" features of the TV in the form of ads or content upsell (for example Sony with their PlayStation movies app). Once the current non-Smart TVs exhaust the pipeline of non-Smart chips it's over. It's the same reason some laptop OEMs charge you $20 extra for a laptop without crapware. They make money from that stuff.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sloppy ( 14984 )

        Will this page [newegg.com] go away?

        • Monitors aren't TVs. They lack sound capabilities most of the time, don't have a remote control also most of the time, and compatibility with RGB 15-235 and YCbCr signals is uncertain. On the bright side they don't have chroma clipping issues and accurately reproduce 6500K without the need to software-emulate it on a 9300K panel, but the problems outweight the benefits IMO.
    • You may have to buy a massive computer display and supply your own audio system to go with it, so long as you don't need a tuner as well.
      Of course I can't see how they'd stop making non-smart TVs anytime soon, there's always a lower-end market that doesn't want to pay for all that extra stuff and just needs something basic. Also I can't see how they'd make them that won't work without being connected to the Internet, that makes no sense at all. Just don't connect the thing.
      • Thing is, the money made from the "smart" platform in the form of ads and content upsells overshadow the extra cost of the SoC needed to run the "smart" TV. So, "smart" TVs are actually cheaper to make overall. All "non-smart" TVs currently on the market are old models on their way out.
        • Well.. whatever. If they think they can FORCE you to connect it to the internet and LEAVE it connected 24/7, they're nuts. I and many others would simply return them to the store if we were forced. Simple as that. End of subject.
          • They cannot force you to connect to the internet, but you are still getting a Smart TV with lots of dead functionality in the menus due to lack of internet access.

    • The only non smart displays are professional units that add another zero to the price tag. Best thing to do is not give them an internet connection and use something else to play from.

  • SmartTVs are already a bad idea because none of them are modular. They'll end up having to code for the lowest common denominator.
    A modular/replaceable unit makes far more sense.

    What needs to happen is to standardize a slot for holding a Smart module. Or at the very least start providing USB ports on TVs with enough power to eliminate extra power cables and maybe a physical ethernet extension.

    • What needs to happen is to standardize a slot for holding a Smart module.

      Gee, you mean like.. a little computer.. [duckduckgo.com] that you plug your non-smart TV into? What a concept! xD

      • Good idea, but NUCs are actively cooled, and this little fan spinning up at random times will drive you nuts eventually if you want to use it as an always on Smart TV box. I just bought a passively cooled PC from some company named "Hystou", which is passively cooled and has a normal x64 CPU (irrelevant: I even got to specify an Intel 5th gen "U" processor because I wanted Windows 8.1 with Windows Media Center on it). Be warned though it's physically larger than a NUC.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

        > Gee, you mean like.. a little computer.. [duckduckgo.com]

        No, a little slot, like I said. What you linked to requires external power connections and an HDMI connection and a place to store it.

        If TVs had a PCIe slot one could slide in a module and replace it with a new one.

      • What needs to happen is to standardize a slot for holding a Smart module.

        Gee, you mean like.. a little computer.. [duckduckgo.com] that you plug your non-smart TV into? What a concept! xD

        Why not just buy a Roku like a normal person?

        • I don't do any of the above. I have a non-smart TV and TiVo. And an antenna. I'm not even part of this subject really and haven't been for about 10 years. I refuse to play.

    • Actually a fair number of TVs have used Raspberry Pi and others’ compute modules. Software updates might not be easy, but there is hardware flexibility.

      Unfortunately, the display resolution and some other gimmick is likely to make it obsolete before the practical end of life of other components.

  • That currently one can't even use their Xfinity Stream portal in any Chrome browser on a Linux desktop [for that matter any browser any linux] even if you switch the user-agent?

    Supported Operating Systems
    Windows 7+,iOS 11+, Android 7+
    Mac OS X 10.14.4+ for Safari
    Mac OS X 10.7+ for Chrome and Firefox
    Supported Browsers
    Chrome 75+, Firefox 68+, Edge 17+, Safari 12+

    https://www.xfinity.com/stream... [xfinity.com]

    • Because Desktop Linux avoids DRM by avoiding most premium content. Desktop Linux users like to look down on users of other OSes in a manner that implies we enjoy DRM infrastructure in the OSes we use, in reality we know that without such DRM infrastructure there is no official access to premium content we might already be paying for via cable or satellite service subscriptions. And now onto the obligatory advice to just pirate the content, despite the fact there is some kinds of content like live sports or

      • Because Desktop Linux avoids DRM by avoiding most premium content. Desktop Linux users like to look down on users of other OSes in a manner that implies we enjoy DRM infrastructure in the OSes we use, in reality we know that without such DRM infrastructure there is no official access to premium content we might already be paying for via cable or satellite service subscriptions. And now onto the obligatory advice to just pirate the content, despite the fact there is some kinds of content like live sports or foreign-language TV series that's not easy to pirate for most people.

        The Direct Rendering Manager is very useful for displaying graphics on the screen in Linux.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by theCoder ( 23772 )

        Desktop Linux users like to look down on users of other OSes in a manner that implies we enjoy DRM infrastructure in the OSes we use, in reality we know that without such DRM infrastructure there is no official access to premium content...

        Somehow, I would guess that if those other OSes didn't provide such a restrictive Digital Restrictions on Media system that premium content would still be available, as the content providers would not turn down the opportunity to sell their content even if they had no "gua

        • Apple tried to pull this off with Blu-Ray, the first kind of premium content to require Protected Video Path infrastructure on personal computers. You see, Apple didn't want to spend R&D implementing Protected Video Path in OS X, they had iPhones to make. Guess what, the Content Cartels already had their "green and keen" ally (Microsoft), so they made Blu-Ray a Windows exclusive, despite Apple being a big brand with video professionals and Apple users being generally more prone to opening their wallets
          • Basically, the entire motivation for Protected Video Path is that if you make some screen-grabbing piece of software that bypasses the Protected Video Path infrastructure offered by your OS to the Content Cartels, then you run afoul of the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules and you can't distribute that software from OS vendor app stores or from US store shelves. Instead, you have to host your software in China or Antigua and accept payments (or donations) using all kinds of unconventional payment processors.
            • By "closes" I mean "not readily available everywhere for the novice user" obv. Just like the bit-by-bit copy functionality and the analog hole have been theoretically being "closed". To the person who will go to Chinese websites and is willing to pay a hundred bucks or so and has no problem using unconventional payment processors, there are ways to make exact copies of Blu-Rays (DVD-Fab, AnyDVD HD) without even having to screen-grab.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by theCoder ( 23772 )

            Of course by "other OSes" I was referring to Microsoft Windows, as you did. Microsoft, having the vast majority of the market share was the important player, not Apple or Linux. If Microsoft had told the Content Cartel to go away, we wouldn't have the DRM problem. But Microsoft saw the $$ coming from the cartel as well as more potential for locking media viewers into their system. I cannot say it was a bad business decision for them, but it is an unfortunate one for society as a whole.

            • Do you honestly expect Microsoft to take a stand on DRM? Their own Xbox line of products has DRM.
  • The last thing I want is Comcast software in my TV! What a miserable company!

  • I have smart TV's from Panasonic and Samsung. The software is awful.
    I disconnected both from the network but the samsung can be persistent at times.

    FireTV is cheap, works great, and is portable. It's much better than my "smart" TV's.

    As for the cablecard thing, I think less and less people are caring about cable TV. I barely watch it.

  • We, like lemmings, already got used to the idea that there can be at most two operating systems or platforms in most applications. Desktop: Windows and Apple (still waiting for the year of Linux Desktop), mobile: Android and Apple. But now we get a great competition in the area of smart TV platforms: Roku, Android, Amazon, Google, Apple, all sorts of cable DVR platforms, and now another one. I say welcome.

  • This idea immediately reminded me of the 1984 telescreen. They already make so-called 'smart TVs' with a camera and microphone built in, and we're all aware that the manufacturers have covertly used this to spy on viewers, so if you get Comcast into the mix directly, considering at that point they'd be content creator, content distribution, and end-user enablers, it's not much of a stretch of the imagination at all that they'd be spying directly on viewers to get feedback for how their content was affecting
  • and i lost, i hate em, glitchy software, requiring i sign up to an account on every internet TV channel portal, i surrendered and quit watching it,

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      I just bought one and I won.

      Connected my new Vizio to the rabbit ears and scanned for OTA channels. Fine. Two minutes later, it pops up with a nag screen requesting that I accept Vizio and Google licensing terms. So I go to the system menu and note that, as planned, the TV cannot connect to the Internet to download and display those terms. That's right, I have no WiFi. And I'm not plugging it into the Ethernet. So effectively, the TV stated "Cannot connect to Internet. Accept terms? [ ]Yes [ ]No". I agre

  • Just the other day I was thinking that there are some major problems in the Smart TV ecosystem. I was brainstorming ways of fixing these problems and right at the top of my list was: We need someone even less trustworthy and more useless than TV companies to develop a new system. I'm glad Comcast stepped up. Finally we'll get the ultimate system:

    A system more buggy than MS could develop, with less software updates than Samsung, with vendor lockin that puts Apple to shame, all topped off with the speed of a

  • Cable is constrained by the bandwidth. I{n the good old analog days of 480i equivalent TV, they could carry hundreds of channels in the same line. When digital happened, and channels switched to 1080i, ATSC gave a reprieve, but currently they need to have a smart receiver and request one digital channel at a time.

    That is almost exactly what Sling, Filio and others are doing. No more RF based signals decoded by the cable box, but a per-channel stream goind over a digital connection.

    And that is what cell prov

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fred911 ( 83970 )

      ''And that is what cell providers have done when they switched to 4G. All (almost all?) calls are not voice over ip,''

      Perhaps you misunderstand. Since the first GSM/TDMA/CDMA cell phones, all handsets are assigned IP addresses, as they are to this day. All of what you assumed was POTS phone calls were VOIP and have been nationally since Feb 18th of 2008 when the analogue cell network was disabled in the US. Independent of the data plan for your cellular, all voice calls were and are VOIP, just at a higher

  • It's useless unless it's Android TV (Score:3)

    by kbg ( 241421 ) on Friday August 28, 2020 @01:33PM (#60450100)

    The only Smart TV operating system that you should ever have in your TV is Android TV. Not because it's the best system, because believe me it has it's share of problems but because it's the most supported and has a big entity, Google, backing it up. It's almost guarantied that you will be able to run Netflix, Youtube and other apps on your smart tv because the companies that make them are supporting that system and keeping the app up to date, since it's almost identical to an Android smart phone. But these run of the mill tv OS-es will not be supported after maybe 5 years max and then your "Smart" TV becomes useless.

    • Caveat: Android TV doesn't have Amazon Prime, unless we are talking about Sony TVs with Android TVs, and that could be a deal-breaker for some people. But overall it's the best of the "Smart TV" OSes.

      • Caveat: Android TV doesn't have Amazon Prime, unless we are talking about Sony TVs with Android TVs, and that could be a deal-breaker for some people. But overall it's the best of the "Smart TV" OSes.

        That used to be true, but no longer in the absolute. Amazon Prime Video is now available on other Android TV platforms (although Amazon does restricts it to specific platforms). For example has been reported to be available on among others the NVIDIA Shield TV, the TiVo stream, the Xiaomi Mi box, and a Hisense TV.

        • It turns out there is an app in the Play Store, but my Nexus Player is incompatible. So that's still a caveat, keep in mind that some Android TV devices don't have Amazon Prime video, even Google's own devices.

    • The only Smart TV operating system that you should ever have in your TV is Android TV. Not because it's the best system, because believe me it has it's share of problems

      So the Smart TV market is different than the smart phone market? Each TV vendor does not cook their own device specific image and then promptly abandon them as soon as next years model rolls off the line?

      but because it's the most supported and has a big entity, Google, backing it up.

      But these run of the mill tv OS-es will not be supported after maybe 5 years max and then your "Smart" TV becomes useless.

      Perhaps this is a trick question where the only correct answer is no operating system. TVs cost too much and are too big to toss in landfills every few years.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kbg ( 241421 )

        So the Smart TV market is different than the smart phone market? Each TV vendor does not cook their own device specific image and then promptly abandon them as soon as next years model rolls off the line?

        Yes that is still a problem but because it's based on Android TV that means you should still be able to update and install apps even though the image is not being updated. But of course there is a limit for everything and Google has been known to abandon older versions of Android.

        Perhaps this is a trick question where the only correct answer is no operating system. TVs cost too much and are too big to toss in landfills every few years.

        The TV is still a TV and will continue to works as such no matter what the "Smart" option is. All modern TV run some kind of operating system at it's core so I am just saying if you can get a TV with Android TV you at least have so

    • 5 years ago I'm sure someone said the same thing about Skype on TVs. Now the oddball camera I bought for my Sharp TV is a paperweight because the big entity backing up Skype desupported it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kbg ( 241421 )

        Yes that is the typical Microsoft way. They buy any company that is in competition and then slowly dismantle it and phase out the product until only the name is left being used on a different Microsoft product.

        The problem here is that using an OS from a single TV manufacturer like Samsung or LG is always a bad idea because maintaining an app for every single TV manufacturor is just too much work for app developers and will always result in being abandoned. The way do do this is have the same OS on many TV m

  • If their last revision of their remote hadn't removed the 5 secs back feature (the backwards circle arrow), I would have praised their TV platform. I hate Comcast, particularly for their unreliable internet in which I have to apologize on every Zoom/WebEx call in advance for the bad quality because I am a comcast customer, but their TV division has been working hard. Comcast gets a few things right and in my experience, their DVR is pretty good. Their xfinity roku app is intentionally disabled. You can't see the screen when you rewind or fast forward, but I am confident that's just a scam to get you to rent their boxes.

    The problem today is that you can't trust anyone. I loved my Roku until I found out I won't be getting HBO Max or Peacock because they want their cut from the provider. Who does that leave?...Amazon? I tried their fire stick long ago and it was unusable...last I saw, they blocked providers. AppleTV? I had one of those a few years back. Decent hardware, terrible remote...can I really get every channel out there on that?. Google Chromecast? Pretty nice and reliable...but the whole phone link is kind of a pain. The problem...EVERY major hardware provider today is also a streaming provider and last I checked, most disable at least 1 channel. I thought Roku was well worth the money because it worked with everything...but that changed this year. So...I guess I have to buy something far off the mainstream or keep 2 streamers on each TV to ensure I can watch everything I have access to?

    So that brings us back to Comcast...I used to say avoid them like the plague and get a Roku...but if Roku is just as broken and incompatible, I don't feel good about any option. At this point, it's less about the business practices and more about the hardware and experience. If you buy into Comcast's ecosystem fully, I have to concede, the TV experience isn't that bad. Their Netflix integration is nice. Their voice search works better than Roku. Being able to access your DVR from a web browser is a nice feature when traveling....so given the current state of events, I would consider Comcast a viable contender. I don't anticipate them being the best streaming platform today, but it's not out of the realm of possibility any more. They're working harder and getting better, while Roku got sleazy and I don't even know or care what's going on with Google, Apple, and Amazon these days...I don't trust trust those companies either.

    Comcast does have engineering talent on staff and a ton of money. If they put their mind to it, they could pretty easily make a superior platform to the silicon-valley/Seattle giants. I view this like a Microsoft hardware situation. Microsoft, IMO, makes hardware not because they want to take that sweet mouse and keyboard money from Logitech, but because the other companies didn't provide reliable enough hardware and they viewed the sub-par experience as an inhibitor to their sales. They don't want to dominate the market, just ensure people have what they need to have a good experience and keep buying Windows, Office, and MS Games.

    If Comcast is smart, which I am not sure they are, they see a more viable future in making their customers happy and lazily paying their monthly fees than in controlling them. Give the customer what they want...give them a nice TV, let them watch whatever channel they want...yours or the competition...you still get your cut. The goal should be profit, not dominance for pride's sake...and to that end, I can see a path for Comcast to make a superior TV. I don't know if it's likely, but is possible.

  • no no nopedy nope.

  • TV SOCs are underpowered malware infused crap abandoned the second the TV rolls off the line. Connecting one to any network let alone the Internet is as needlessly reckless as it is idiotic.

    Couple this with pointless nature of dealing with a company guaranteed to lose well north of a million TV subs in just this year alone its hard to see the point.

    Personally I find it telling to see OTA gaining significant ground as Cable implodes and Internet based "streaming" services fragment themselves into a billion

  • In these days of streaming, why cant I just have the app to enable access? Do I really need a company I may not have a relationship with in the future, run the os of my smart device? Sounds like a bad idea for consumers.

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