Big-screen Skype gets small farewell note One of the big splashes of CES 2010, Skype for televisions, will start going gently into that good night in June. Via Skype's support FAQs comes the announcement that the talk-to-your-friends-on-the-telly app is getting sunsetted. "Starting in June 2016, the Skype for TV application will no longer be supported; there will be …
A couple of years ago I treated myself to a new Samsung smart TV. It used to come up with a TV guide that went far beyond the normal Freeview offering. That disappeared some months back. Over the space of the two years it seems to have lost more than a quarter of the icons that used to appear when the so-called 'Smart hub' is invoked. How long before every trace of smartness disappears?
One thing that is truly dumb and irritating is that a few minutes after switch-on, the notice regarding the end of the Skype service pops up. Usually just as I'm pressing the return key having selected what to watch. Instead of going to my selected program, I'm whisked off to a web page that I have no interest in. That wouldn't be so bad if it took note that I've seen the notice and been to the web page but, no, I'm going to be subjected to that Skype announcement popup every time I switch on until June. How smart is that?
Note: I didn't buy it for 'smart' or for 3D. It just happens that there isn't a great deal on offer without these features when looking for a reasonable quality large panel with long guarantee from a reputable store.
a TV guide that went far beyond the normal Freeview offering
I never saw that on my Samsung TV, largely, I think, because I declined the 48-screen privacy agreement that went with it. And that's the bigger problem with "smart" anything - you give more than you get.
Having said that, there is now an xkcd app for Samsung TVs - which almost makes up for the other crap.
In my opinion any smart TV needs a good dose of wireshark monitoring before you decide where you'll let it talk to. After all, it will work without internet access so no need for the Samsung TV to phone home but your iPlayer, Netflix, etc apps can do what they need to. As for voice activation, I'm yet to get to the stage where I'm too f*cking lazy to pick up a remote control and have to shout at the TV from under a pile of chocolate wrappers and empty coke bottles.
<quote>people are using smartphones for Skype, while they watch the TV</quote>
That may the way you exclusively use Skype. It's also how I use Skype - mostly - when I am 1:1 with my missus when one or other of us is away from home. But when THE WHOLE FAMILY want to Skype with our relatives back in the UK (we being in NZ), that is when Skype on the TV makes perfect sense, with a web cam designed for lean-back use and a microphone designed to listen to the entire room with the audio piped through the AV systems.
On the other hand 4 (or even more) people trying to cram around a tiny phone or slightly larger tablet without jogging the coffee table on which it has been propped awkwardly trying not to obscure it's tiny little speaker too much and shouting to be heard by the microphone tuned for close-to-mouth use.... well that is just idiotic.
You don't need and can be absolutely certain that you will never will need or want that ? Good for you. But don't make the mistake of thinking that your use case is definitive and universal.
It is literally the ONLY smart feature of our smart TV that we ever use.
I bought my dumb Samsung TV just before "Smart" came as standard. Seems like there's now no reason to buy a new one at all.
My proactive skinflintedness has paid dividends - I've missed out an entire upgrade cycle and ended up in the same place as everyone else.
Abandoning a Platform?
Even if not many people used Skype on TVs, it was more or less MS's only presence on TVs. Now they'll not be there at all. That's a lack of ambition if ever I saw it.
Same here - my Samsung is a midrange unit from 2009 and the only thing I miss out on is maybe LED backlighting. I can keep it up to date by added £50 Roku/Android boxes, which works out cheaper than the £100 or so premium they were asking for smart features.
I've used smart TVs and found the interface to be laggy and fiddly for basic things like switching between Sky, game console and streaming box.
I think the author has underplayed how useful this is when having a video call with multiple people in shot - particularly small children. When people use handheld devices for Skype you tend to end up seeing just the top of someone's head! And getting several people in the frame for more than a few seconds rarely works!
Add to that that having the TV on at the same time is noisy and distracting, so Skype taking over the TV wins again!
"always on top of things"
MS do seem to have lost the plot a good number of times in recent months.
It is almost as if they know that their bid to take over the world is doomed to fail.
Shirley not?
Seriously, what is going on in MS Towers (aka Redmond)?
{sounds of tumbleweed blowing in the wind perhaps?}
Nadella probably has a full "telepresence" videoconf setup with his relatives and friends in India, so what's the problem for the Pariah who bought a smartTV? Just become as rich as him and you'll be able to get the same.
Anyway, it looks Nadella is going to kill every product not bought by him. Removing the Skype Windows 8 app and now from TV doesn't look a smart move for the Skype brand. But maybe he tried to outsource development to India and the outcome was so bad it was better to kill those products...
Microsoft has been trying to kill Skype for a while now. Their habit of retroactively disabling older applications is positively EVIL though, they did this for Symbian... (yes I know) I had skype on my nokia (yes, again, I know), used it regularly, then suddenly, out of the blue 'we can sell you a new phone if you want to use this application'
It just stopped playing content from my NAS. I could still navigate to and select content, but nothing happened when I hit play. After a torturous process to actually get in touch with tech support, their two step process was; 1. Factory reset 2. Give up.
I suspect (but it's only a suspicion) that I hit some kind of hard-coded limit in terms of file or folder volume as it stopped working just after I reached 1,000 albums (I buy a lot of music).
Every other device in the house plays the content fine still so nothing changed with the NAS or network. The TV is now just a non-Smart screen that displays whatever my NAS, BD player or ISP-TV box is doing.
We bought our last TV an LG47 3D jobbie - in 2013. Not for any Smart features it has. Mainly because
(1) it was LED
(2) it was 47" (of course now we could get 55" for less)
(3) it was DLNA equipped.
iPlayer Amazon and NetFlix are nice, but the future will be getting those services through a ChromeCast or FireStick, and partying like it's 1999 with my dumb - but big - panel.
"What Microsoft seems to have missed in its assessment of the market is that a Skype call on the TV kind of gets in the way of watching sports or Netflix."
Also, at least some of the 'smart' TV sets won't work with bog-standard peripherals like, say, a Logitech webcam - no no no, it has to be a proprietary thingy at four times the price. (I'm looking at you, Sony!)
It's cheaper to buy an Android TV box thing and a high quality webcam than it is to buy the Sony camera. you then have the advantage of lots of other apps, Youtube, and so on, as well as being able to run things like MAME (if that's your thing) and big screen minecraft which the kids love.
When they came out you could buy a Dumb TV and a phone/tablet/laptop and still have change. Some even you can buy Dumb TV + PS4 and have change!
TV as Monitor + Tuner is all you need. But many newer sets have far less I/O. Even lacking analogue audio out for better than laptop speakers that are built in!
I was lucky I think to get a "dumb" TV with 2 x USB (more handy to power gadgets than for intended HDD / USB photo/video playback), 4 x HDMI, SCART I/O, composite, Y/C, Component (SD or HD) and VGA.
Security, privacy (microphone, gesture camera etc), updates and compatibility is a horror on them.
I went back to sip during the last round of forced obsolescence.
I used sip with family until snow leopard came out and xlite 3 wasn't usable any more.
The replacement xlite was utter crap. (In fact I have found no nice sip videophones for older intel macs, Telephone is a nice audio only app, and the latest xlite is OK, but not as neat as 3).
Skype was the only alternative other than iChat (which we tried for a while).
Funnily enough, I just noticed a Skype chat plugin for Pidgin and installed it yesterday. Presumably it inherits Skype's issues with ghost online contacts and poor message delivery.
I'm probably in a minority but in the last couple of years I bought a webcam for my Samsung TV. Was fairly expensive for a webcam, but I used it to do occasional Skype sofa to sofa calls with distant family. I'd been a heavy Skype user (PC to PC) and I actually bought them a Skype cam for their Samsung TV just so we could do this - I was impressed Samsung supported this so well!
It appears following this announcement, despite Skype going on, both cams are now going to be pretty much useless after June. Thank you Samsung and thank you Microsoft. I'm off to teach my relatives how to use Hangouts with their laptop....
Losers MS have had their very last bite out of my wallet with this decision. I had all our silver surfer relatives set up via Samsung Smart TVs that cost £30 more than a dumb equivalent. That was about 15 months ago. Now it will all be obsolescent.
What MS don't realise is that people like me who use these facilities to enable our aged relatives access may also manage humongous budgets for IT systems, in my case GBP18m per annum. Knowing this was MS's sort of policy, I weaned most of the firm off MS product. As of this crazy decision, I have placed the final instruction, "NO MORE MS ANYWHERE IN THE FIRM". Decommissioning of their products now has a small task force and should be completed by the time the Skype switch off on my relatives TVs occurs.
Any suggestions for an alternative that is simple for silver surfers to enable Skype via their TVs?
Camallison
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