George Hofmeister

The simple answer is no, Android APKs are not compatible with webOS, while both are 'nix based they are completely different animals.

Thanks for the info Alan, it may help others with similar issues.

Can you give a little more detail to your problem please?

Can you let us know what setting you altered please?

Sorry Ravi, I in no way suspect that just because I contacted Hotstar that they suddenly decided that they would produce an app for webOS TV users. Say an app does not appear from Hotstar and I contact them again only to get the reply that they did not feel there was actually enough demand for the platform. What I would like is feedback from other forum users showing that they have contacted content providers and that they are in turn getting some sort of feedback, be it positive and negative. I have done the same thing for BBC America, a content provider I will never user but who I wanted to show that there was a desire for an app. If I am the only one contacting content providers they are not really going to latch on to the fact there is a demand out there are they.

But have you contacted Hotstar yourself?

Hi All, I hope you have all been contacting Hotstar to voice your request for a webOS app, below is the reply I received to my email I have detailed earlier in this thread: Hi Gavin, Greetings from Hotstar. We understand our users need to view the content bouquet we offer on the big screen. We have recently released an app for Android Smart TV. Also, you would be glad to know that we are working on an App for LG WebOS which should be available soon. Your continued support and patience is highly appreciated. Have a good time! Thanks, Kruti Hotstar Team. ---- So Hotstar are working on a webOS app, but please contact them as weight of numbers will be what gets things progressed quicker.

Speaking only for the UK if you have proved something that you can prove had a manufacturing defect and you paid by credit card then that can give you an avenue to seek a refund. Of course your mileage may vary in your country.

If you can find the model number of your TV users would be able to tell you exactly which operating system it has. I am going to take a guess that being a 2012 model it is running NetCast which is LG's previous iteration of Smart TV and not covered by this forum.

If the app is not in the content store then it is more than likely either not available in your locale or has not yet been created for webOS.

Unfortunately I cannot test this fully as Hotstar is not available in my region, for me the home page loads but as I cannot log in I am unable to see what does or does not not work. The home page at least does not appear to rely on Flash according to https://seositecheckup.com but who knows what is used after logging in. A possibility for things not working are that the Hotstar website has not had support for the webOS browser written in to it, basic things such as adding support for its browser ID string may not have been implemented. If you can give further explanation of what is going wrong would be appreciated by the forum.

So just a little more on the subject, I have sent this email to Hotstar: Dear Hotstar Support I am a member of the LG webOS User to User Support Forum, where we have many users asking why a Hotstar has not yet produced an app for the platform. I am hoping that you could provide some on whether you are aware of LG's webOS platform and if so what plans if any are in place for producing support for it. Any feedback you could provide would be appreciated so I can pass it back to forum members. Your name here https://www.lgwebos.com ----- Feel free to copy and paste the message above (changing the name to your own of course), and if I do get any feedback I will let you know but the more people who contact Hotstar the more likely that they will engage with us, LG and webOS.

Hi Ravi, Yes action would be much more appreciated than advice, so please let me know what feedback have you had from contacting both Hotstar & LG? I like yourself and all the other members of this forum are just then end user/consumer, I cannot get LG or Hotstar to create an app, nor can I create one myself. If you want a Hotstar app then you need to take action yourself, by start a writing campaign to both Hotstar and LG. Here is an official contact link for LG on the forum which you can use to voice a request for an app: https://www.lgwebos.com/topic/2550-lg-has-a-feedback-and-suggestions-form/ Hotstar can be contacted via [email protected] The more users that take the action of contacting both LG and Hotstar the more the likelihood that an app will be produced. Just complaining about the fact there is not one will not get one created, take action contact LG and Hotstar. When you do contact them mention you belong to the forum, send them links to individual threads to show there is the desire for an app and if you get any feedback post it here preferably with contact email addresses so other users can contact them as well. Hotstar is not some fly-by-night little company with no ability to produce apps for Smart TV platforms, they have iOS and Android apps so writing for webOS should be well within their capabilities. May be they just do not realize that there is a demand. Also see if Hotstar has Facebook, Twitter etc and post your request there as well.

Yes, you are quite correct a blank screen would not cause screen burn, because by definition blank would mean no display, no pixels in the on position. But why would you want to display a completely blank screen? If you mean that you have a screen displaying a fixed image then yes there would be depending on the screen technology there is a potential for screen burn. Cheers!

LG don't want users to be able to turn off the screen saver. They look at it from the corporate point of view is that long term dis-use of a screen saver could lead to screen burn in, which could lead to law suits from disgruntled users.

In the same way that there may be apps on webOS that are not available on Samsung Tizen just because something exists for one ecosystem does not mean that it will occur for all of them. The best way to get webOS support is to continually push the content providers at the links provided. Yes you can contact LG as well and they may, if you are lucky, liaise with the content providers to help them to produce an app for webOS, but LG themselves cannot necessarily produce an app without help from the content providers themselves.

Because webOS is not Android, Android is not webOS. It is like expecting an Apple only application to run on Windows.

No problem, glad to help.

I found an app called Internet Speed 2, and found that it does not work. As an alternative the web site http://www.speedtest2.com works well.

The search link below will lead you to all the forum topics on the subject of Hotstar: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hotstar+site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.lgwebos.com&t=hg&ia=web

Hi Jay, Which speed test app were you using?

This is a user to user (it says so at the top of every page) forum, here to allow LG webOS TV owners to ask questions, raise interesting topics, ask the community to help fix faults etc. It is not a direct line to LG, because with the exception of the Developers forum there is (to the best of my knowledge) no official LG user forum. Yes you can tell everyone here that you would like a particular app created, you would like support for Flash, but it does not mean LG are going to read your request and act on it. The forum allows for other users to offer advice and voice opinions, mine was to contact Hotstar, if you do or do not wish to do so then that is your prerogative. No Flash is built in all browsers, obviously it is not, otherwise we would not be having this conversation. Google's Chrome has their is their own implementation of Flash not Adobe's and that will be dropped in 2020 as will all support for Flash: https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/07/25/chrome-will-completely-remove-flash-support-end-2020/ Mozilla have published there own missive on the future of their support for Flash: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2017/07/25/firefox-roadmap-flash-end-life/ Flash is at best a plugin/addon so no it does not in fact 'always exist'. The simple fact is that Adobe is killing Flash off, going as far as to stop development on mobile devices as far back as November 2011: https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2011/11/flash-focus.html Other Smart TV manufacturers do not support Flash either due to the fact that there is no support from Adobe: https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=opera&q=samsung+smart+tv+no+support+for+flash&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 https://neurogadget.net/2016/03/13/reason-modern-smart-tvs-dont-flash-player/26048 While I understand it is frustrating that the particular website you want to use does not work in the webOS browser the fault is not necessarily with LG, in the same way it would not be reasonable to expect that every website in the world to work in say Firefox. The manufacturer of a web browser be it LG or Opera have no control how well a website is written, or what technologies it uses. To quote one user on CNET replying to someone complaining Samsung TVs lack of support for Flash: If the web site wants their site to work on smart tvs they'll have to test for and support it. These TVs are not PCs so there is nothing for use to install. Expecting LG or any other Smart TV manufacturer as this late stage of Flash's life span to suddenly introduce support for it is naive. The sad fact is that content providers with sites that currently rely on Flash are going to have to pull their collective fingers out and move with the times and undertake some serious upgrades. I have been to several websites in the webOS browser that do not ever recognise the user agent string falsely reporting says as Chrome. Now this is the website owners fault not LG who cannot force them to add support. As for contacting software creators directly, well yes I have done so on many time for many different products, be it a full blown desktop package through to add-ons for Mozilla projects. Were possible I will join a producers own forum in the hope that if they run one they will actually read and interact with the users, Enpass is the latest site I have joined to give feedback and add my support for feature requests. Also, for several years I ran an independent forum for users of a personal information manager software and was lucky enough to not only engage directly with the business that created the software but had them participate on the boards. Forum members were instrumental in advancing new ideas and features in the software on many occasions. Yes things would work better on this and other related webOS forums is there were LG staff members involved, being given a definitive idea of how apps get developed, LG's interaction with content providers. Again I am going to have to guess that LG have approached some content providers in differing regions to get them to help develop Premium apps with the aim of capturing the biggest players in those particular areas. The BBC iPlayer is one that springs to mind.

The reason that content providers are ultimately responsible for an app being produce is that they have access to the inner workings of their systems. LG cannot magically produce an app if it relies on accessing someone else servers, APIs, CGIs etc. As for not being able to display Hotstar's desktop version (I am assuming you are talking about their website) then I am guessing it has some reliance on Adobe Flash on which much has been written on this and many other forums. Flash is outdated technology, it is dying and will be put out of its misery in 2020. No major TV manufacturer to my knowledge supports Flash in their browsers do to the complexity of programming for it and its many security issues. Content providers that still rely on Flash are sadly not moving with the times, even Amazon whom it could be considered forward thinking still have a certain level of integration with it. If you want an app from a content provider or you want to be able to view their website in the webOS browser then the only people you should be complaining to are the content providers themselves. That said it would be nice if LG acknowledged that there is a call for specific apps and let the users know that they at the least had reached out to content providers to offer help in developing for the platform.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hbo+site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.lgwebos.com&t=hf&ia=web

As posted elsewhere on the forum content providers, not LG are responsible for producing apps for the webOS platform.