Ubuntu TV doesn't seem old, even three years later

May 28, 2015 12:04 GMT  ·  By

Ubuntu TV was one of the early attempts from Canonical to branch out on other platforms, and it showed great promise, but it didn't get anywhere. The project is currently shelved, but it's interesting to see that Canonical was thinking about convergence long before they started to publicize it.

Canonical started to experiment with various platforms a few years back, and we had products like Ubuntu TV or Ubuntu for Android, which looked really cool but never got very far. Those projects have been shelved, but some of the code and ideas have been used later on. For example, the idea that you can have a single operating system working on different platforms, in this case, a smart TV.

As you can see from the video, the product was really advanced and could do a lot of cool stuff already, much more than anything you could find back in 2012. The feature that allowed users to connect to various backends, like Netflix or Hulu, straight from the interface was extremely interesting. We can see a somewhat similar implementation in today's Ubuntu Touch, which has online aggregation from online services.

Ubuntu TV is not completely gone

Despite the fact that Ubuntu TV never made it to market, it managed to capture the imagination of a lot of users, and it's still being brought up in conversations. People are still wondering what has happened with the project. Some of the code from the original project has been folded into Ubuntu Touch, but the idea of an Ubuntu TV hasn't been abandoned.

If Canonical ever decides to make an operating system for TVs, it will be based on the current Unity 8 and Ubuntu Touch effort. The system is designed in such a way that it shouldn't be too hard to make it work if there is any interest in it.

Enjoy!