The government has announced plans to regulate smart TV home screens: what the new rules mean for yo
The government has announced plans to regulate smart TV home screens: what the new rules mean for yo
New legislation will require smart TV manufacturers to ensure we can easily find local broadcasters when we turn on our TVs.
What’s the bet this’ll end up with Sky News installed on all new TVs by default.
Make it mandatory to have an option to disable the smart bs.
A dumb TV that is just a monitor and your choice of STB. Our house has an AppleTV as HDMI1 on all devices and a HD HomeRun in the server rack to broadcast LiveTV over the network.
Other people have similar setups using Raspberry Pi’s running various HTPC packages, which I can recommend for those people who aren’t interested in Apple products.
No one should ever need to purchase a FireStick, Roku or Google Home thingy and no one should ever connect their TV directly to their Home Network.
It better include the option to uninstall them too!
What they should really do is pass legislation to force those companies to develop apps that actually work well.
The broadcast freeTV electronic program guide (EPG) on my current TV is trash. It's clear they only cared about big corporate apps (that paid to get dedicated branded buttons on the remote).
- Squint to see the tiny text (probably because it was designed & tested on a non-4K tv)
- You have to visit the channels first for the EPG to populate for them.
- There is no line to denote your current position in time on the chart. Instead you have to read the (tiny) time at the top right, then guesstimate its position on the chart, then look down.
My decade+ old Samsung plasma is so much better; but it wasn't a "smart" tv, so broadcast TV was its tea.
(Of course this still doesn't fix the fact the "apps" are buggy and slow. Already had the TV warrantied and parts replaced once because of some of them going black and white. I have no idea how such as weird problem could manifest OR how the solution was to exchange hardware components)
You're probably using the FreeTV/pbbtv guide. Turn that shit off.
You have to visit the channels first for the EPG to populate for them.
Unless your tv has dual tuners, which most don't because $, or use an internet connection to populate the TV guide, that's how digital TV guides work. Remember the analog TV guides? Yeah. You had to go and buy a paper...
Alternatively, you can visit any of dozens of online tv guide websites and get heaps more info with links to imdb etc for info and ratings. I don't even know why TV epgs are a thing...
This article phrases this like it's a positive. Instead it now forces companies to preinstall even more bs.
I guess the argument is if your TV is going to come preloaded with subscription crap to provide easier access, then taxpayer funded "local" content should be just as easy to access. I think it's a fair decision to have ABC iView, maybe SBS. God, can you imagine SkyNews coming preinstalled. Ugh.
What’s the bet this’ll end up with Sky News installed on all new TVs by default.
In a way it already is. There is a Sky News channel on Samsung's free TV app which runs every time you turn on the TV.
Is this limited to ABC iView and maybe SBS? I hope it doesn't include the others. God, can you imagine SkyNews coming preinstalled. Ugh.
Says it includes all f2a stations so 10/7/etc.
Sky are free to air in some parts of Aus, so it very well could apply to them as well.