Google TV was a wonderful idea, but there’s no denying that it’s flopped. LG has a new idea though, and it’s reportedly developing a line of TVs powered by the newly open-source webOS platform.
WebOS Nation reports that LG is working with Gram — the reincarnation of Palm, remember that? — to develop a new smart TV powered by webOS. That sounds like a hell of a lot of effort, and there’s certainly plenty of ground to be made up by webOS, but work has apparently “been underway for several months”.
So, what problems does the project face? A major thrust of smart TVs is apps, but WebOS Nation reports that software for the likes of YouTube and Pandora are already in development for Enyo — the HTML5-based framework that lies at the core of webOS.
The other stumbling block is boot speed. WebOS devices are notoriously slow to start up, and that is generally considered A Bad Thing in a TV. The team could, of course, throw obscene hardware specs at the problem, but rumours also suggest an always-on computational centre could be used to avoid the issue. Not green, but at least not infuriatingly slow.
WebOS Nation suggests that LG and Gram want to unveil the new TV at CES 2013. Let’s wait and see. [WebOS Nation via The Verge]