LG acquires webOS from HP

[GMMan]

I don't know how well the cards for input interface would work if you use live feeds, since it seems you can only show one input of some type at once on current TVs. If it were only icons, it would defeat the purpose of having cards.

[deCorvett]

Originally Posted by GMMan

I don't know how well the cards for input interface would work if you use live feeds, since it seems you can only show one input of some type at once on current TVs. If it were only icons, it would defeat the purpose of having cards.

In the worst case, cards can be handled with 4 buttons: left, right, home and close.

[bluenote]

Regarding live feeds:

Didn't there used to be a feature on tvs of picture within picture, where one channel took up most of the screen, but another channel could be shown in a small box?

[andyhurley]

Originally Posted by GMMan

I don't know how well the cards for input interface would work if you use live feeds, since it seems you can only show one input of some type at once on current TVs. If it were only icons, it would defeat the purpose of having cards.

The majority of modern TVs can show PiP which means they can handle at least 2 sources and modern PVRs can record two channels at once meaning they can decode two streams. It's not a big leap from these to a card interface showing three live cards. I can easily imagine a UI with three cards on screen selecting sources and/or channels with little additional hardware to existing TVs/PVRs. Once you throw IPTV and other apps into the mix that could become quite a rich interface, possibly even including stacking. Add notifications for social media, email etc and I am sure you have something that would appeal to a wide audience.

I say good luck to LG but I also hope/wish that they might be inclined to eventually develop, at very least, a WebOS UI skin for their Android phones.

[GMMan]

There is PiP and other methods of showing two streams at once, but on the TVs I've tried they'll work only in certain configurations, like antenna and composite only on HDMI, or HDMI only on component, and stuff like that. You can't get another feed of the same input type. Not sure if that's a technical limitation. If it is, not all inputs can be previewed in card view.

BTW, don't smart TVs have separate input processing and application processors? Would something like this overload the former if you've got half a dozen inputs on at the same time?

[andyhurley]

Originally Posted by GMMan

There is PiP and other methods of showing two streams at once, but on the TVs I've tried they'll work only in certain configurations, like antenna and composite only on HDMI, or HDMI only on component, and stuff like that. You can't get another feed of the same input type. Not sure if that's a technical limitation. If it is, not all inputs can be previewed in card view.

BTW, don't smart TVs have separate input processing and application processors? Would something like this overload the former if you've got half a dozen inputs on at the same time?

My PVR will show PiP of two channels as will most modern digital devices. They generally have two tuner/decoder circuits so that they can record two channels at once and use this to allow PiP. Older devices didn't allow this as they only had one tuner. I'm assuming that a smart TV will have PVR functions and therefore multiple tuners.

Yes, there would need to be multiple input processors but if there are multiple tuners then this is a given. The limit on the number of cards shown from a given source would be the number of tuners for that source (or, in the case of digital TV the number of multiplexes from which content can be shown as multiple channels from one multiplex can be show with 'just' a decoder, no extra tuner needed).

At the end of the day it would be enough to have three live sources shown in cards (with the sources being switched as the cards are scrolled across to give the impression of all sources being live). This would certainly need more resources than the average PVR but not unreasonably more (three tuner/decoder combos instead of two). Non tuner sources (HDMI/SCART/Component etc) would be limited to the number of physical connectors and IPTV sources need no extra resources as they could use one of the three decoders you already have for the tuner section as you would only ever need three. If you are recording a source and not viewing it in a card then the decoder is not needed (you just record the data stream) and the decoder is then free for viewing a card.

It's probably worth pointing out that you also don't need the 2nd and 3rd decoders to produce a full HD image since it will only ever be shown in a reduced size card so you can probably get away with cutting some corners on those decoders but this may just make the design more complicated with little cost benefit.

[etphoto]

At least Derek will get invited back to Mobile Nation podcast to talk about the deal. Can't wait to listen.

Sent from my HTC6990LVW using Board Express

[Semma2]

I have a Panasonic TV with the split-screen version of PiP, but I've never used it aside from an initial test. I can't figure out what I would ever use it for, aside from imaginary scenarios that I never actually encounter. I think that's why it has gradually disappeared as a feature in newer TVs - it was a solution looking for a problem, and it never found one.

I'm really scratching my head as to what advantage WebOS has as a TV operating system. It's all about the touch-gesture GUI and multi-tasking for portable devices. Under the hood it's really Linux, just like all the TV operating systems are underneath their custom GUIs. So what advantage does WebOS bring to the TV environment?

[Rnp]

Hummm... let´s gonna see what we gonna find in App Catalog...

OH... MY... GOD!!

-> Facebook Phone
-> Facebook Tablet
-> Facebook HD
-> Facebook 4K ???

#okIstopped

Well... can be interesting I going to some home´s friend, touch my Pre in TV and my smartphone begin to control... or; maybe, I touch my phone in the panel and the TV begun to show my Netflix movies. So... why not?


Best Regards...

[laoh]

My guess is a Wii U like remote control with a screen in the middle and each card would be a channel that you visited recently (or that's from your fav channels list). Perhaps even TV settings can be its own card, just like how display/audio settings is its own card in Pre/Touchpad. The question is, will LG keep the card concept that made webOS so fluid and pleasant to use? Would be silly not to.

As far as PiP, I guess you can have 2 tuners (there's been plenty of TVs in the past with dual tuners to allow PiP of TV channels as opposed to one TV channel and one some other input like VCR); one tuner is your active one that you're watching and the other one can in the background scan 2-3 more channels intermittently and save snapshots of them in the inactive cards so when you look at the cards, it won't be full motion but rather snapshots from 5-10 sec ago... who knows... that's just me thinking...

As far as the upswipe to kill the cards... maybe that would be a hindrance to the masses. We love it but it's been the case where as easy as we think webOS is, a first time user (and you can expect 95% of consumers won't read the manual) had problems "figuring out" the whole gestures business. If they can keep the card moniker that makes webOS so great, and also keep upswipe (for those that want to use it), and also an 'X" on the card like playbook cards to kill the cards, with a true back icon (like touchpad, not gesture area like Pre, which we already know is not gonna happen with LG), then we might have a really cool TV UI.

[John Steffes]

LG webOS Smart TV...

Walk into the family room, TV turns on the screen interface, it discovers all your photos from your LG phone, camera, video recorder, it displays the current weather with a live feed of outside, it shows streams pictures you just took from your vacation while you eat your breakfast, as the news comes on the card flows up above the stack after the commercial informing you of the auto accident that is on your way to work, your quickly email that presentation you were just reviewing on the TV before breakfast, and you get a call from (Skype) your mother asking if you can stop by on the way home after work with some groceries (she already shared the photo as part of the messaging app, of the list), which is now synced to your LG phone... As you leave the TV senses (from the NFC) that you are leaving the house and shuts down the screen...

What a smart TV…

[ToniCipriani]

This might be an idea for how the cards would work on the TV:

Clear for Mac shows off Leap Motion 3D support for gesture-based to-do's | The Verge

Imagine point and flicking cards away, one card for XBMC, another few cards for a few channels and other browsers.

[GMMan]

Originally Posted by Semma2

I'm really scratching my head as to what advantage WebOS has as a TV operating system. It's all about the touch-gesture GUI and multi-tasking for portable devices. Under the hood it's really Linux, just like all the TV operating systems are underneath their custom GUIs. So what advantage does WebOS bring to the TV environment?

Enyo apps? What I'd like to see is some open developer action, the same as with webOS phones. I've used Sony smart TVs before, and they keep on trying to push their commercial partners. It's quite annoying. They recently removed YouTube from the main app list, so I have to go hunt through all their entertainment providers to find it. And it's not even the latest version (it's Leanback instead of YouTube TV). If you stick an app-centric OS in it, all apps are given equal precedence, and there's no bit of custom work here and a bit of work there (e.g. the Sony TV has Yahoo Widgets and SEN, and neither talks with each other). And if they go the same open route as Palm, we can load our own apps on it the same as official ones. And DRM isn't really a problem. HP was perfectly comfortable making available a movie app, so there isn't anything anyone else should be afraid of.

[akitayo]

Originally Posted by sgamao

This is what we know now:

What LG Will Do With webOS - Arik Hesseldahl - News - AllThingsD

..and we know LG is going to produce Firefox OS hardware. It doesn't seem possible they are going to support both FFOS and webOS aside Android. But, as we can see on Sailfish (from Jolla) webpage:

https://sailfishos.org/about-technology.html

there is interest in the high-tech world to meet compatibility with Mozilla's main goal: the web APIs which are going to power the open ecosystem which is going to power Firefox OS as well as Tizen, Ubuntu, Jolla and any other will join the party. Everyone of them is based on the Linux kernel (just like webOS) and everyone comes with his own design principles and language, QT, QML, EFL, javascript, etc.
Because of that i don't see reason why we couldn't see a webOS device from LG.

It is also possible that LG's gonna build smartphones on Firefox that are going to talk with its home appliance powered from webOS.
So possibilities are many.

Agrre,there are a long options list LG could select for their electronics besides TVs only.

[insink71]

WebOS wasn't a bad platform... That being said it really wasn't given the development attention it needed to grow and become vibrant. When open WebOS came out, its available on android devices such as Galaxy Nexus [phone] and Nexus 7 [tablet], it wasn't made available for existing WebOS devices. Not a swooft move. So how do I see mobile OSes moving forward?

iPhone - love em or hate em.. they have a pretty product and its solid and holds solid market share.. proprietary and yuppieish imo but nevertheless a top player.

Android - soon to be if not already king of the mountain. Also holds solid market share.. open source but allows manufacturers freedom to keep their proprietary blobs (mostly drivers). They will not be unseated for awhile. Google owns Motorola's tablet division (or part of).

WebOS - its been around.. I don't know what the change in ownership (from HP to LG) will bring but given the statements that they'll be revamping it for some kind of multimedia entertainment os.. it has plenty of functionality for such cause. Doubt it will be a player in market share on mobile devices even though LG makes the new flagship android device and will probably see increased sales in devices as a result of this (HTC & Samsung both benefited when they were in similar position).

Tizen - An attempt to bring a purer linux like atmosphere to the mobile marketplace. Many are jumping on this one.. especially Samsung stating they will fold their dead Bada OS into the existing Tizen framework. This one has promise. They have the most influential manufacturer's backing and a good community of support. I consider this one to most likely to emerge as the "third contender."

Firefox OS - Another mobile OS geared toward lower end devices. They will have some phones out this year, but I look to this one to be no better than WebOS; although, it does boast an open html5 development platform. The trouble with this one was their target was lower end phones, and their code base was ice cream sandwich (android) or better.. well, most lower end devices didn't make the cut to ics.. So you have to wait for new low-end devices to be built, then develop.. If they could have forked off of gingerbread, their development would be eight months ahead.. but they are starting to get there. Another drawback is Mozilla, although a well-known and respected open source company, doesn't have any device holdings or backings. They will work with those that will work with them.. In the crowded marketplace, this approach might get squeezed out. I could see this being a rival to WebOS in the multimedia playback type scenario, but they aren't targeting or thinking that yet; so, they'll have to go through the exercise of trying (and most likely failing) in the mobile arena first.

Ubuntu One - This one is like the motorola atrix .. should be able to dock and run a full distro of ubuntu from your phone or mobile device. Well, that's a neat trick.. but in my experience, the more hardware needed.. the more stuff I could possibly lose.. So, if I were to utiliize it, I'd need to buy multiple docks for the phones/tablets I ran it on. Still in its infancy as well and I'm not sure that docks are manufactured yet for the devices it could possibly run on (galaxy nexus and nexus 4 to start).. but I'm sure someone will start making them soon enough (if they haven't already). I think the tizen one will win this lil linux race; as, they already have samsung's support.

Who else is left? Lots.. but they won't make it for one reason or another.. Blackberry continues to decline (proprietary); as, I believe all proprietary OSes over long haul will.. Nokia's Meego.. they'll be most effected by the Firefox OS attempt.. This one will probably die further as well.. New OSes will emerge and recede.. but openness means more developer friendly which in turn means more apps, more functionality. Some of the new breed, especially Tizen, have more open avenues than some of the existing OSes.. So we'll have to wait and see.. Will Tizen step up and pound android overnight? No way.. Android didn't overtake Blackberry overnight.. but it did (the NSA revamp of android's security didn't hurt).. It'll be 2015 before we see results of where these OSes are headed.. Sure we'll see devices before then.. even in the upcoming months. But we are all lil rats on the developers' wheels there... its fun to be involved, but advancement doesn't come without growing pains, bugs, and reshaping the wheel from time to time.

Anyway, hope you guys enjoy the ride, and I look forward to seeing the WebOS of the future.

Regards,
Rob

[eblade]

Originally Posted by typolad

Going up on Techcitement.com at 4:45 ET, but one thing not mentioned in the article is how clearly impressed he was by the technology behind webOS and the brains behind it.

So, was there an actual interview that took place, that is posted somewhere, or is it just an observation that there's a guy at LG who's really excited?

[eblade]

Originally Posted by geekpeter

i suppose the "market" for apps on tablets/phones i huge as well as watered down profits wise, but tv's? who makes popular apps for use on a big screen tv?

im guessing no-one, if you wanted a huge headstart for an app eco-system, you may as well pick something that is not flooded already and a bit of a mess.

if it takes LG making a kickass TV then so be it. (btw i already love their monitors)

Who knows what the notification system will end up looking like (webOS's current incarnation isn't really a "system", other than "merely providing a space to locate notifications"), but I'd certainly not be averse to having a Google Voice account pop up with notifications of my incoming messages, at least, for one of my accounts. I'm already salivating at the possibilities for SynerGV. Especially if these things run a newer version of Node.

Originally Posted by mattmers

What about webOS in 4k? Can webOS display in 4k, is there a resolution limit?

Attachment 66897

Kinda like the old palm logo lol

The system manager is not particularly limited by resolution, although the graphics assets may have issues when used in unexpected display settings. At the moment, you basically just need to build a QPA (Qt Platform Architecture) module for rendering, which will open up a screen of the specified resolution, and then set that resolution in /etc/palm/luna-platform.conf . If you can use a standard QPA (like the "xcb" QPA used on the desktop webOS) then you may not even need that first step.

Originally Posted by geekpeter

i would like to see a tv from them that represents different video inputs as just visible webOS cards to pick/flick between, would beat guessing what device is connected to what scart/hdmi/rgb port etc, esp as most tv's now have rather a lot of those ports in total. I always forget which hdmi port certain devices are connected too and end up just mashing the remote till it shows what im after.

This way you just plug stuff in and dont have to know or care what port it is.

That would be awesome, although at this point, it seems that even high end TVs still are limited by the number of things that they can possibly tune in at once in hardware. It would seem like it would be possible to scan across all inputs and take a screen every few seconds or something, but TV hardware, at least from what I've seen playing around at Best Buy, is quite limited by their tuner hardware.

Originally Posted by bluenote

Regarding live feeds:

Didn't there used to be a feature on tvs of picture within picture, where one channel took up most of the screen, but another channel could be shown in a small box?

Of course. Seems that very few TVs can manage to tune more than 2 things at once, though.

[bluenote]

So LG wants to encourage an ecosystem around its tv apps.
And HP will continue to work on enyo but not webOS

This according to ARSTechnica (which has done a much better job of reporting than The Verge)


"Open source will be alive and well at LG," added Sam Chang, vice president of Smart TV at LG. "We think that’s a really important part of this transaction. When you think about the loyal development community out there and the need for a robust ecosystem to support smart TV, it’s really a perfect fit.” Of course, LG will have to make changes to webOS to optimize it for use with a remote."

What LG’s acquisition of webOS means for its open source projects | Ars Technica

edit: so my prediction is that LG did not pay much for the code but has to give royalties to HP for tvs sold. And in a few years that investment will prove to be one of the few bright spots for HP as their pc unit sales continue to decline and mobile does not make up for it. My prediction also is that LG will be the whitelabel manufacturer of some of those HP android tablets.
You heard it here first.

[samab]

Originally Posted by bluenote

edit: so my prediction is that LG did not pay much for the code but has to give royalties to HP for tvs sold. And in a few years that investment will prove to be one of the few bright spots for HP as their pc unit sales continue to decline and mobile does not make up for it. My prediction also is that LG will be the whitelabel manufacturer of some of those HP android tablets.

LG doesn't have to pay royalties for tv's --- Palm's patents aren't even related to tv's. On the other hand, if HP decides to make tv's in the future --- HP has to pay LG patents for tv's because LG has been making tv's for decades (so for sure LG has some patents related to tv's).

[bluenote]

emended: give royalties to HP for the copy of webos software on each tv