[Vampirebat]

I see posts saying that companies force their GUI onto the consumers, but I don't think that is their intent all the time. Support is HUGE! And that APP/GUI that smart TVs have is typically dominated by ease of use and hopes of reducing support.

Yes, as i indecated in a post earlier i belive that tv manufacturers do and will continue to have closed source prepryitory interfaces/os but that doesnt mean i dont understand thier reasoning behind it.
You hit the nail on the head regaurdiing tech support imo.
A closed source product where the consumer can‘t "break" anything is just a good business decision from the stance of a large corporation.

[nickr]

Actually have you looked at the list of open source licenses at the end of an LG manual? It's about a third of the manual in my case.

But the gui on top of the (typically) linux core is proprietary, as is legitimate.

I don't think they want the support nightmare of people running random software on their expensive panels. Just by using the documented serial port interface on my 55" LG TV I managed to somehow blow a circuit which necessitated a warranty claim.

For those who want to put their own smartness in there, what you basically are asking for is a 60 inch LCD monitor with HDMI in.

My TVs aren't even connected to the antenna. Everything is via mythtv or xbmc. The internal tuner is a waste for me.