| > What expanded scope in new TVs is actually something I would care for? I think this is the crux of our confusion; you may not desire the expanded functionality but others certainly do. You can suggest that manufacturers force unwanted functionality onto consumers but I have trouble accepting that premise unless admit our own complicity; maybe I’m part of that problem though. > Owning a TV is something one should be able to do for over 10 years. Again, that’s your preference and the choice you’ve already made; I choose to not set arbitrary time limits but instead make decisions on purchasing new TVs (and other non-essential products) depending on the available technologies and toys—and, of course, the girth (if any) of my wallet . We have different preferences, we make decisions based on those preferences, yet—as far as I can tell—we are both satisfied with our choices; why complain about a system capable of implementing a bug that doesn’t affect us? > Can you guarantee that most of the nice features on your TV will work more than 10 years from now? Almost certainly I can. There are both massive and minuscule communities, aftermarket solutions, and DIY makers/hackers/activists that focus on all kinds of technologies and products dating back over a hundred years. The original iPod is 25 years old and yet there are still folks making firmware updates for it. The Commodore 64 has a multitude of projects, products, communities, and marketplaces to keep the product alive — nearly fifty years after it was released! There are literally thousands of examples. Interestingly, and calling back to my original point, these kinds of secondary markets are only possible because of those products’ use of a combination of quality underlying hardware and user-updatable/modifiable software—well, and that nerds like us dig breaking things. |