Inevitable Obsolescence

I bought our current living room TV back in November 2011. It is a Smart TV: that is a television that has internet connectivity built into it. On the face of it this is a handy thing to have as it allows online streaming services such as the BBC iPlayer and film services such as Amazon and Netflix to be accessed directly from the set. However, the whole thing relies on up-to-date software to work and I have had a rather patchy relationship with such integrated devices in the past.

My previous television was bought in 2001 and was a widescreen CRT unit which was one of the earliest integrated digital TVs (IDTV): it came with a terrestrial digital receiver built in as well as a slot for an On Digital decoder. It also came with built in Dolby surround sound. This was a TV that could seemingly do everything and was described as “future proof” as it could have its software updated by the manufacturer. Unfortunately, it started to fail a component at a time: first On Digital (then rebranded as ITV digital) ceased trading rendering the decoder redundant. Half the features of the digital receiver never worked and it eventually ceased to function altogether as the software updates from the manufacturer never materialised and the Dolby sound stopped working reducing the rest of the TV to a large monitor.

The problems with my old TV were down to one simple thing: software. TVs are effectively several components packaged into a single unit: a monitor, a receiver, an amplifier, speakers and, potentially, a streaming device or other software based interface. Where the TV is required to work within fixed standards (PAL reception, SCART or HDMI inputs etc) there is little that can go wrong provided there is a suitable input to work with. This is why prior to the digital switchover many people had TV sets that were potentially 20 or 30 years old. They conformed to a standard and, subject to the lifespan of the electronic components, they could work indefinitely. Once software is introduced into the equation with its moving target compatibility the concept of “future proof” should be really seen as “inevitable obsolescence”.

The Smart TV function on our living-room set has always been rather hit and miss. After the initial novelty of being able to use the iPlayer and (as was) Lovefilm Instant on the big screen the service has been a bit variable. Some services that we did try initially would be removed after a while: possibly due to a change in the service providers’ business plan but often because a change in the software meant that the TV could no longer support it. YouTube was a case in point as it stopped working and then was removed with little notice after a new feature in their software made it incompatible with what the TV could support.  Another problem was with Amazon Instant Video (rebranded from Lovefilm) which seemed to suffer from an existential crisis for a few months until some software (I’m not entirely sure if theirs or Samsung’s) was updated.

The last straw for the TV’s software dilemmas emerged a few weeks ago when we discovered that high definition films on the Amazon service wouldn’t play correctly on our TV. Rather than showing everything in letterbox mode it reverted to full screen. This is fine if the film was made in 16:9 but when we started to watch The Imitation Game we discovered that Benedict Cumberbatch had been stretched out into a wafer thin stick insect whereas Keira Knightly had practically disappeared due to the messed up aspect ratio. I contacted Amazon who said that they would investigate the problem…

Amazon did investigate this for me and they do appear to have tried out various solutions. However, the eventual reply from them was that they have decided to discontinue their streaming support for Samsung Smart TVs built in 2011. There are a few other apps that still work on the TV (iPlayer, for example) but it looks like the smart functionality on the 4 year old set is reaching the point of “inevitable obsolescence”. I do have a workaround at the moment as we also have a Sony Bluray player which has smart functionality and the Amazon streaming service still works through this although the sheer slow clunkiness of the interface rather indicates that it is heading inexorably towards its own demise.

In fairness to Amazon they have made a reasonable offer of a workaround to this which is to buy their Fire TV streaming box (a similar idea to Apple TV) which they are offering to me for half price. Whilst I’m rather put out at having to fork out for yet another piece of home entertainment hardware this does appeal to me in one particular sense: it is a stand-alone, dedicated device which is not dependent on riding on the back of a TV, Bluray player, games console or any other device with needlessly packaged software. If it was to go wrong or hit its own point of obsolescence it is the only thing that would need replacing and given the rather cheap discounted price it isn’t going to break the bank even if it does nothing for the flow of defunct electrical devices to our local recycling site.

The only fly in the ointment as far as I am concerned is that I have run out of connection points for the TV. It has 4 HDMI slots and they are currently being used by the PVR, Bluray, German Satellite decoder and Wii games console. Something would have to go or, at least, share a connection. Maybe it would be nice to have a streaming device for the bedroom but do I really need all this hassle? I’m starting to long for the days of 3 channels and a decent book.