Re: All I want is the screen
Totally agree. A TV should just be the screen. You want something more ? Buy a piece of kit to attach to it and you're done.
It is ridiculous to imagine that an enormous screen is obsolete in any way. In fact, it should be ridiculous to have to ditch a TV screen for anything else than pure hardware failure.
Now, I've heard that the reason for all this integration that is busting our collective nuts and will do so for the foreseeable future is that Joe Public doesn't like to have to choose, he wants everything in the box. Funny that cars have lists of options and TVs cannot, but fine then, put all the external kit in the box with the screen, just don't solder it to the frame and force me to dump the screen when one piece gets out of whack.
What should be done is the screen should have a plug-in board at the rear. Kit to attach could be modules that slot in at any available point on the board. Kit that fails gets its module taken out, to be or not replaced when the owner chooses to do so. When Joe Public comes to buy a new TV, all available modules are attached. If/when a module fails, Joe Public can replace it when he wants.
Sure, the screen itself will one day become obsolete, but come on. We had 4/3 TVs for decades before that fancy Widescreen came along. Now we have HDTV screens and you want me to think that they're going to change in 5 years ? Nope. The failure of 3D is a good indicator that we'll have HDTV screens in 2050 yet. And even if everything has 3D support by that time, HDTV will still be the standard for non-3D broadcasts (which will exist until we have holographic TV at least).
So get cracking on modular frames. Then I'm ready to bet that we'll find out that Joe Public is quite happy with the idea of buying a frame and choosing the modules he wants - especially when he can add more any time.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
