CES is less than two weeks away and with it will come a whole slew of announcements about the TVs your living room will covet in 2019, but Samsung has made one announcement early that reads like a souped up version of Chromecast. Its 2019 TV sets will allow you to remote access your computer.
Or a computer. Frustratingly, the details in Samsung’s press release are spare so we don’t know which computers, tablets, and phones the new Remote Access feature will work with. VMWare, the company Samsung is teaming up with to supply the remote access ability, does offer software on most of the major OSes, including Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android, so one can presume the Remote Access feature might work across platforms, which would make it more appealing than offerings from Google, LG, Roku, and Apple TV, which all have pretty severe limitations on which operating systems they work with.
This feels like a natural step up from the 2017 and 2018 line of Samsung TVs, which had a Steam Link app available that allows gamers to stream games from from their PC to the TV via Steam. Soon they should be able to easily pop over browser based videos or video chats. Or 2019 Samsung set owners could just use their TV as a giant monitor. According to Samsung’s press release, you’ll be able to use a mouse and keyboard (presumably via USB) with the it.
The press release also claims a “web browser-based cloud office service” will be accessible via Remote Access—though no word on if this will be a Google or Microsoft affair, or some new Bixby-branded office suite.
Samsung also claims that Remote Access will be secure thanks to “proprietary Knox security technology” which is the kind of frustrating PR speak that leaves you with scant details. We’ve reached out to Samsung directly for additional information and will update should we hear back.
[Samsung]