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LG will license webOS for use on third-party smart TVs (It’s come a long way from the Palm days)

WebOS is an operating system that was originally developed by Palm for smartphones, acquired by HP for use on tablets as well as phones, and when that turned out to be a flop, HP sold its webOS assets to LG, which uses it for smart TVs and other smart home products. Now LG plans to […]

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Android TV is getting instant apps, improved keyboard, and other new features

Google’s Android TV software is, unsurprisingly, based on the same software that powers Android phones, tablets, and other devices. Not all the features you can use on phones are available on TVs… but Google has announced it’s bringing one of its mobile to its smart TV platform. Soon developers will be able to offer “instant […]

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KDE’s Plasma Bigscreen is an open source user environment design for TVs

KDE Plasma is a free and open source desktop environment originally designed for GNU/Linux PCs, and eventually adapted to phones. Now the folks at KDE have announced a new version customized for TVs and other big-screen displays. It’s called… Plasma Bigscreen. In a nutshell, Plasma Bigscreen brings the sort of features you’d expect from a […]

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Samsung’s new Smart TVs will support iTunes and Apple AirPlay

Samsung’s 2019 smart TV lineup will support all the usual streaming video services including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, YouTube and Google Play. But Samsung has announced that they’ll also have an Apple iTunes Movies and TV Shows app and AirPlay 2 support. That will make Samsung’s TVs the first third-party media streamers to support iTunes. Up […]

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Samsung’s new Smart TVs will support keyboard and mouse input

The line between computers and… everything else keeps getting blurrier. The phone in your pocket is basically a computer. Your smart thermostat? It’s a specialized computer. And your smart TV that can stream content from Netflix and YouTube? Computer. But it’s easy to forget that because you don’t usually interact with those devices the same […]