The shift toward open source in consumer electronics is long overdue. The real question is whether Titan OS will allow users to actually control what data leaves their TV. Most smart TV platforms treat the device as a data collection endpoint first and a TV second. Open source at least gives someone the ability to audit that.
A somewhere over 10 years ago a certain Linux distro company commissioned a company I worked for to make a TV specific distro. The team built something amazing, as a DVR it would have been better than anything on the market. Think people who professionally build software for millions of TVs and STBs for years, getting told they can do anything they need to in order to build a Linux based, open-source focused distro for TVs/STBs/DVRs.
Then that well known distro company realised they couldn't get any TV company to actually license it. So they abandoned the project and asked us to remove their name from it. We then went out to the market and tried to sell it to the TV and STB manufacturers. Europe, Japan, USA, China, we visited everyone we could. I met with so many companies you'd recognise. We couldn't get anyone to license it.
We considered just releasing it, but it needed tidying up and the Distro company still had an option on it, but we didn't get an adequate answer on releasing it for free.
Eventually, under the burden of building something no one wanted to pay for, the company got sold to a Russian company for not enough. And the code was effectively lost inside that organisation.
Writing a distro for smart TVs is harder than you'd think. MStar, who makes >90% of the chipsets, has their own version of GStreamer which is not quite compatible and quite outdated (last time I was involved). Managing the lifecycle of apps in a resource constrained environment with a lean-back experience (e.g. no mouse and keyboard), requires experience. Almost all consumers want Android/AppleTV levels of simplicity, not ArchLinux with a full screen browser.
So it's good when people who know what they're doing maintain the software that goes into TVs.
But getting organisations to pay for the support and development is hard. Especially when TVs are horrifically unprofitable for most companies. And that's the key part that most people don't understand. When I was working on this strategy, most companies had 9 months to make any profit on a new TV model before the market put price pressures enough that each unit sold wasn't helping. TVs have become ridiculously cheap in the past 20 years, and every extra penny the manufacturers spend hurts their bottom line.
Ultimately, this is one of the reasons why TV manufacturers are always looking for new ways of making money (like adverts in menus), because TVs aren't a profitable business to be in. Notice how large screen PC monitors are usually much more expensive than the comparable TV but with less tech?
"Titan OS is the European, independent Linux-based smart TV operating system from Titan OS S.L, the technology, entertainment, and advertising company based in Barcelona."
Also :
"Titan OS operates on a Chromium browser, offering support for standard audio and video codecs, streaming protocols, and DRM options"
I don't watch TV, but have a non-smart Samsung hooked up to a laptop running Linux. I wonder how locked down or hackable this OS would be? Would an EU based system be better for privacy? I'd love to have a better option for when I update the "TV" I have in my living room.
When I bought a Sony TV, I was excited that it ran on Google TV because I thought Google would do software better than Sony could. Oh, how I was wrong. I have been so frustrated by the experience that I just got Apple TVs just so I could avoid having to navigate the molasses-slow interface chock-full of ads.
The frustrating thing about having so many "smart" TV OSes and streaming platforms is that it's basically guaranteed that I'll end up needing a dongle for at least one service anyway, because its app is not available for my TV.
And at that point, I can just get a dongle that supports everything, which defeats the point of having a smart TV in the first place.
I miss dumb tvs. Just give me the option for a dumb tv that i plug whatever "smart" device I need into. Something that is snappy and responsive. No one really uses the built in thing for long, everyone who can ways gets frustrated and opts for 3rd party eventually so now your tv just scrapes your data, draws more power, and offers nothing.
I don’t even understand the point of smart tvs. Too slow to run anything I always end up plugging in an Apple TV or an Xbox eventually. (Although Xbox is going down the drain too)
10 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 33.0 ms ] threadThen that well known distro company realised they couldn't get any TV company to actually license it. So they abandoned the project and asked us to remove their name from it. We then went out to the market and tried to sell it to the TV and STB manufacturers. Europe, Japan, USA, China, we visited everyone we could. I met with so many companies you'd recognise. We couldn't get anyone to license it.
We considered just releasing it, but it needed tidying up and the Distro company still had an option on it, but we didn't get an adequate answer on releasing it for free.
Eventually, under the burden of building something no one wanted to pay for, the company got sold to a Russian company for not enough. And the code was effectively lost inside that organisation.
Writing a distro for smart TVs is harder than you'd think. MStar, who makes >90% of the chipsets, has their own version of GStreamer which is not quite compatible and quite outdated (last time I was involved). Managing the lifecycle of apps in a resource constrained environment with a lean-back experience (e.g. no mouse and keyboard), requires experience. Almost all consumers want Android/AppleTV levels of simplicity, not ArchLinux with a full screen browser.
So it's good when people who know what they're doing maintain the software that goes into TVs.
But getting organisations to pay for the support and development is hard. Especially when TVs are horrifically unprofitable for most companies. And that's the key part that most people don't understand. When I was working on this strategy, most companies had 9 months to make any profit on a new TV model before the market put price pressures enough that each unit sold wasn't helping. TVs have become ridiculously cheap in the past 20 years, and every extra penny the manufacturers spend hurts their bottom line.
Ultimately, this is one of the reasons why TV manufacturers are always looking for new ways of making money (like adverts in menus), because TVs aren't a profitable business to be in. Notice how large screen PC monitors are usually much more expensive than the comparable TV but with less tech?
"Titan OS is the European, independent Linux-based smart TV operating system from Titan OS S.L, the technology, entertainment, and advertising company based in Barcelona."
Also :
"Titan OS operates on a Chromium browser, offering support for standard audio and video codecs, streaming protocols, and DRM options"
I don't watch TV, but have a non-smart Samsung hooked up to a laptop running Linux. I wonder how locked down or hackable this OS would be? Would an EU based system be better for privacy? I'd love to have a better option for when I update the "TV" I have in my living room.
> Titan OS operates on a Chromium browser,
Google....
And at that point, I can just get a dongle that supports everything, which defeats the point of having a smart TV in the first place.