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Comment by gerad | Hacker News Reader

I’ve found that it’s not the setup but the maintenance that’s hard with these sort of solutions for others.

And this where the value of "products" comes in. Something very hard for many techies to see.

That doesn’t follow. Any product that auto updates in a way that changes the UI (I.e. nearly every smart TV) is absolute dog shit to support. All hand written notes and knowing what’s going on over the phone go out the window when an update pushes an ad for a TV show they like on some new app.

This is the extremely frustrating part of not being able to roll back firmware updates in modern devices.

My dad is 78. He knows how to use his tv and cable box. It gets a firmware update that adds some feature that is pointless to him (lets say HDR, he doesn’t give a shit) but refreshes the UI.

I feel like 10-20 years ago I could just download the old firmware onto a usb and install it over the new one for stuff like this. That concept is just unheard of now. I sort of get why from a security perspective but if that has to be the case then keep your shitty UI/UX consistent at least. Or find a secure way to allow downgrades. That’s not my expertise at all but I’m sure it can be done

10-20 years ago it wouldn't have been a forced automatic update in the first place, because the system wouldn't have had an internet link at all.

10 years? nah, my shitty satellite set top box already had an ethernet port that you could get software upgrades with.

and if not that way, the software still forced upgrade by getting the data from a special passive channel from the satellite.

Yeah but who in the right mind plugged anything like that in? These days you're forced to provide a wifi link first thing when doing the setup of basically anything.

> the software still forced upgrade by getting the data from a special passive channel from the satellite

Ok that one I haven't ever heard of, sounds unwieldy.

2013?

DirecTV 100% had self updating receivers by that point, I tried to figure out which ones were the first to get those, but they're not big on being open with info

The manual for the first receiver I remember being able to update itself says 2006, but I can't check if that's right

Edit: I did some digging around, DirecTV's RCA Receivers + Ultimate mention being able to update, and apparently those are from the early 2000's

The manuals are something else, in the internet capable models there are sections on using your TV as an Email client or making your own website

> These days you're forced to provide a wifi link first thing when doing the setup of basically anything.

IDK, my new canal+ box seems to work fine with no internet connection. It gets the software and DRM updates the same way, simplex broadcast received from satellite

Perhaps that’s the confounding variable that ruined everything then. When internet access wasn’t a given and updates couldn’t be signed with activation servers downgrades were still a viable option but now they’re dead and buried

I absolutely loved Chromecasts for this (At least the non 4K ones), there was basically no real GUI after it's setup, everything was on the phone, usually in the same place for every app and it responded to at least some of the TV remote inputs

My mom loved it too

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