[digitalronin]

I haven't figured out why some chinese manufacturer doesn't make a TV with software that is hackable and replaceable by design. I'm fairly confident that a hacker community would soon make it into a seriously desirable product. Look at XBMC, it's an amazing product. I would queue up to buy a TV set on which I could run something like that.

[pedrocr]

I've had the same kind of doubt in the Android space. Don't really know why none of the Chinese manufacturers didn't just decide "we'll ship Cyanogenmod [or stock Android] by default". ZTE seems to come closest by shipping pretty stock Android but they don't seem to make it very easy to hack. Hopefully the new Cyanogenmod phones will be good.

[ttflee]

FYI, Xiaomi, a Beijing based company, has launched its TV with root-able Android based OS(, but with limited availability like other products from the company). Other competitors are also trying hard to catch up.

[Jtsummers]

You know, something like the form factor of the new Raspberry Pi Compute module might be a neat way to go about this. If they could agree on the interface, it'd allow an otherwise "dumb" display to get easy, hackable upgrades over time.

[digitalronin]

That's true, but what I'd really like is to be able to change the way the TV itself behaves. For instance, my Panasonic TV will automatically switch to the HDMI input if I turn on my Apple TV after turning on the TV. My Samsung TV won't - you always have to navigate the dumb "choose source" menu. That's the kind of thing I would want to be able to customise. A separate unit would be a good intermediate step (basically, something like AppleTV but with a tuner in it), but a truly hackable TV would be better.

[pedrocr]

The standard VESA mount + HDMI would probably be a better fit than having to cram everything into a SO-DIMM sized PCB. It should also work right now in most existing TVs.

[Jtsummers]

True, but if they're going to insist on cramming things into the display itself it'd be an interesting way to leave them somewhat future-proofed. Personally, outside of mobile devices, I do like most others here seem to, ignore the display's capabilities and attach a computer/Roku/Apple TV/etc.