
LG acquires webOS from HP, plans to use it in smart TV platform - j_col
http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/25/lg-acquires-webos-from-hp-smart-tv-future/
======
geon
I have difficult to see what advantage webOS has on a TV. With no touch (?)
they need to completely redesign the interface anyway.

~~~
ansible
The could pair it with a Kinect style gesture interface.

 _Sigh_. I really find TVs with enhanced features that useful. The problem is
that the software goes out of date very quickly, and I am entirely dependent
on the TV manufacturer for updates, which will likely stop shortly after the
TV goes out of production (which is what, 6 months these days).

All I really want out of a TV is good picture quality, and a bunch of input
ports. For video streaming, gaming, and other apps, I prefer to have a
separate box for that, which can be replaced and/or upgraded less expensively.

~~~
Indyan
Yeah. LG's high end smart TVs have something called Magic Remote. It's no
kinect, but an improved version of this might work well with an WebOS adapted
for the big screen. <http://www.lg.com/global/magicremote/>

~~~
baddox
I have one and it's awful. For one thing, if you have it sitting somewhere on
your couch, any time someone else moves on the couch, a cursor will appear on
the screen for 10 seconds or so because the remote will detect movement.

~~~
fsckin
Mine does not do that. Gotta hit a button for it to wake up the remote.

~~~
baddox
Nice. I'll have to check if that's an option for mine.

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barredo
It's hard to imagine a worse ending to the WebOS software.

~~~
lukifer
The worst ending (darkest timeline?) would be WebOS not getting used for
anything at all.

I'm curious to see if it will stay open-source. At this point, though, Firefox
OS has much more mindshare as a full-stack mobile web OS anyway.

~~~
calinet6
The problem is that _anything_ could have much more mindshare. WebOS has
_negative_ mindshare; a new product built from the ground up with modern
technology actually has a better chance of success (and indeed, that's likely
to happen).

~~~
networked
>WebOS has negative mindshare

I wouldn't be so categorical about that. There's at least a minority of users,
most of them technical, that really appreciated WebOS for its capacity for
multitasking and the UI, if nothing else [1]. (How relevant would this be in a
TV OS is debatable.)

Even today WebOS remains a good platform for hacking with an unofficial app
marketplace [2] that's still actively maintained and offers, among other
things, two "real" Linux distributions (Ubuntu and Debian chroots). I keep a
Palm Pre Plus with Debian myself for use in various experiments (like making a
time-lapse camera). I got it for cheap when it was clear that WebOS is in
decline but now I (along with many others who did the same) would be in the
market for a new WebOS device if one came out, though probably not a TV.

[1] See, e.g., comments right here on HN:
[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=webos+...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=webos+multitasking&start=0),
[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=webos+...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=webos+ui&start=0).

[2] <http://www.webos-internals.org/wiki/Application:Preware>

------
thiagoperes
Not using WebOS on smartphones is really a waste. Palm failed but I still
think it was an OS ahead of its time.

~~~
DeepDuh
Sometimes 'ahead of its time' is not such a good thing. Specifically, when the
available hardware can't keep up with what the system design demands[1], e.g.
a responsive smartphone touch interface created in an interpreter (as far as I
can see without even having a JIT compiler) on a 500Mhz embedded CPU, without
GPU acceleration[2]. It was ahead of its time alright.

[1][http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/01/02/0213204/insiders...](http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/01/02/0213204/insiders-
call-hps-webos-software-fatally-flawed)

[2][http://forums.webosnation.com/webos-discussion-
lounge/295123...](http://forums.webosnation.com/webos-discussion-
lounge/295123-webos-devices-gpu-acceleration.html)

~~~
onli
Sure, running too taxing software on unaccelerated hardware is a bad thing.
But webOS wasn't slow. It had sporadic slowdown and then it really was slow,
but in normal state it sure could compete speedwise.

It was buggy, the scrolling felt slow because the settings were wrong (as
proven by the buttah-patch), same for the animations, the default-browser
lacks html5-support, the connectivity of the phones is bad, pages often don't
load without a reason even when on wlan (and when not, it often fails to fetch
a slowly loading page bit for bit, which was made even worse because the
browser would reload that page the moment it was loaded because he was
inactive too long(!)) - it wasn't performance that was the issue here.

So maybe LG really can take the system and make something out of it. The tile-
system sure could work on TVs designed to be used with a remote-touchpad-
controller.

------
moondowner
How this affects the Enyo and Open webOS projects? Is it affecting them at
all?

~~~
unwiredben
Both the HP and LG press releases say "LG will assume stewardship of the open
source projects of Open WebOS and Enyo."

I'm the Enyo tech lead and I've got an offer from LG.

~~~
moondowner
Hope you guys continue the good work! :)

------
lucasjans
Since no one has posted this... CNET has pulled the article which was the only
source of this deal. I'm guessing it was a hoax. We'll find out soon, I'm
sure.

~~~
Shooti
According to Business Insider they broke an embargo:
[http://www.businessinsider.com/hang-oncnet-just-pulled-
this-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/hang-oncnet-just-pulled-this-
mornings-big-news-about-hewlett-packard-and-lg-2013-2)

------
mixedbit
I wonder if any attempt at reinventing TV will achieve a mainstream success (I
mean a legacy TV scale success). Up until today all such attempts attracted a
relatively small group of customers and a popular opinion is that TV is bound
to die.

~~~
PostOnce
I've always been of the opinion that a TV is just a display. A computer/the
web/netflix just gives you access to more content for that display; it's still
a TV. Analog broadcast channels, digital cable w/ box and guide features, the
full web and netflix, what's the real difference here other than quantity of
content? We'll still be watching shows and movies on large format displays for
the foreseeable future.

tl,dr: A TV is just a display, we're not going to stop watching content, why
say TV is bound to die?

~~~
koralatov
A lot of people use `TV' to refer to both the thing on the wall, and the
industry that produces things to show on the thing on the wall. I think that's
the case here.

Assuming I've read the OP right, I don't agree with the assessment that the TV
industry ``is bound to die''. The demand for high-quality, well-made
programming remains relatively stable (maybe increases gradually over time),
and even with the best will in the world, amateur producers can't produce
anything to match something like _Game of Thrones_. So there will probably
always be _something_ akin to the TV industry producing that sort of
programming.

What probably _will_ change is the means of distribution -- it'll be over the
internet instead of over the air -- but I don't think there will be a radical
shift in the style of broadcast for a long time. People are happier paying $XX
for a cable/satellite package and getting an Eat-As-Much-As-You-Like
experience instead of buying each course separately. If this wasn't the case,
we'd already have seen a _massive_ uptick in people cancelling their TV
service and just buying $PROGRAMME season-by-season on iTunes. As far as I've
seen and read, that just isn't the case.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
The more availability of internet-based programming, the more people will use
it. The more people use it, the more strain is put on bandwidth, which in many
areas is already strained. I think we're in for a rude awakening here; the TV
industry is warming up to internet distribution _faster_ than the broadband
industry is advancing its tech. People run back to cable when Netflix buffers
every 5 minutes.

~~~
koralatov
I agree completely, but broadcasting their programming via the internet isn't
a paradigm shift for anything except set viewing schedules. Whether I'm
watching _The Walking Dead_ over the air at a set time, or watching it over
the internet whenever I feel like it, I'm still watching it, and the TV
_industry_ as we know it still needs to exist in a relatively similar form to
produce it. The only real change is that they broadcast from a server instead
of via a transmitter, and they can't guarantee to advertisers that I'll be
sitting down at a certain hour to watch it, which may dilute their advert's
effectiveness somewhat.

------
programminggeek
So far there are two main use cases for smart TV's - watching videos, and
games. Up until now "smart TV's" are bundled with mediocre to terrible video
apps, and don't come with game controllers or game apps.

At this point something like Roku or OUYA is a lot closer to the future of TV
than even Google TV, which for reasons I'll never understand doesn't seem to
even understand the basic use cases of smart TV - video and games.

I don't see how webOS gets LG any closer to what people want from a smart tv.

------
darklajid
The thing I liked most about WebOS?

Gestures and its card system.

I cannot imagine how that translates to a TV.

~~~
SquareWheel
Perhaps a remote with a touch pad for gestures?

~~~
mikecane
With TV's "second screen" being touted -- mainly via iOS -- LG is going to
pass up an opportunity and NOT make a webOS tablet?

Wait. We're talking about webOS here. It's always screwed, so never mind.

------
whalesalad
It's like the village bicycle. Everyone is taking it for a ride. The idea
behind WebOS and some of it's UI held were pretty awesome. Unfortunately it's
got way too much baggage now. I think Firefox OS has the best chance to do
what WebOS could have done.

------
onli
If LG uses its new ownership to pay one developer to release the update that
was promised and in the pipeline for the HP Veer, but was never released
(rumor was they simply forgot to switch a button), I promise my next TV will
be a LG.

------
MatthewPhillips
This just signals that there is a hole in the market for an open source smart
TV platform. Google TV was supposed to be that, but it's pretty clear that
they don't take it as seriously as they take Android. To manufacturers like
LG, TVs are actually _more_ important, and falling behind competitors is more
serious. Forking Android for this purpose isn't really an option thanks to the
recent "non-fragmentation agreement" all of the phone manufacturers were
forced to sign. So they are going to try and go down the proprietary route.
They'll likely fail, but we'll see.

~~~
koralatov
_This just signals that there is a hole in the market for an open source smart
TV platform._

Is there, though? I'm pretty technical, and very interested in the whole FLOSS
thing, and I'm pretty much of the `meh' contingent when it comes my TV's
software's licensing. All I really care about is turning the damn thing on,
watching what I want, when I want, and being able to afford to rent the stuff
I want to watch. Now take that disinterest in the licensing and `openness' of
a TV's software, multiply it several times, and you get close to the amount
most non-technical people care about the software their TV runs.

I've worked with non-technical people long enough to know that they care about
getting done what they want to do, easily, more than almost anything else when
it comes to software. That attitude may be short-sighted, but it's very much
the standard; all they want from a TV is the ability to watch $PROGRAMME with
as little pain and inconvenience as possible. Caring about the philosophy of
the software a TV runs is very much a `nerd' past-time, and that's not likely
to change soon.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
I think you missed my point. That consumers only care about their programming
being available is precisely why an open platform is needed. If LG releases a
smart TV that doesn't have Netflix, Hulu, MLB.tv, Amazon, etc. they look bad
in the eye of the consumer. Those content providers are currently building out
separate apps for each TV platform, or at least for the ones big enough to
move the needle.

~~~
mikeryan
Pretty much all the current crop of smart tvs use HTML as their primary app
platform. It's pretty consistently WebKit with a few custom integration points
for TV specific functions. For all intents and purposes there is already a
consistent open platform for apps on TVs

I own a small agency who builds apps for these platforms we can hit
LG/Samsung/Panasonic/Sharp/Sony tvs with a single code base now. There are
still a few outlier platforms like Yahoo Roku etc but HTML now gets us ~80% of
the market.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Awesome to hear that. I've long suspected that TV was a more appropriate for
HTML5 than mobile, precisely because the remote input is much closer to
traditional computing than touch. Clicker.tv made a TV-centric web-app several
years ago that works wonderfully.

If you have some time to write about it, I'd love to hear more about how these
systems work, are they packaged or delivered over http? Do you use <video>?

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mattquiros
But of all the hardware makers, LG? They make ugly products. Innovation is not
really in their DNA. I wonder where this is going.

~~~
r4vik
Nexus 4 is ugly?

~~~
mattquiros
I have a Nexus 4 and it's beautiful. I love it. But I don't really consider it
an "LG" phone because look at how strikingly different it is from their other
models. It seems that because they carried the Nexus brand, they had to follow
the Galaxy Nexus' design, which might be a standard for Nexus phones now. I
wouldn't be surprised if the next Nexus phone looked the same.

------
pegas123
It actually makes a lot of sense and a great opportunity if you can take your
eyes from that big screen. Palm as a remote.

------
pinaceae
this tweet by Kontra sums it up:

WebOS has been targeted to mini-phones, larger smartphones, tablets, printers
& now TVs. Won't stop until you see it on a LG refrigerator.

<https://twitter.com/counternotions/status/306014344876023808>

~~~
emehrkay
Imagine a situation where you'a query your fridge from the market and it tells
you that you're low on milk or have 8 eggs so no need to get more.

~~~
pessimizer
Or when the people who made your fridge query it without your knowledge, then
sell the current state to 3rd parties who make sure that all you see are egg
ads on the internet.

~~~
emehrkay
Yeah. That's what sucks about technology. So much cool innovation, but it is
ultimately used against you, or the misuses are forced down your throat until
you're okay with it.

