On Thu, 3 Sep 2015 08:45:44 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:

On Thursday, September 3, 2015 at 11:37:50 AM UTC-4, Michael Black wrote:
On Thu, 3 Sep 2015, Ewald Böhm wrote:

On Thu, 03 Sep 2015 04:47:02 -0700, taxed and spent wrote:

so you can connect to the internet and watch Youtube, netflix, etc.

Maybe I don't understand. Actually, I don't understand.

To watch youtube, you need a browser, which is usually a program compiled
for a certain computer, which runs a certain operating system, and which
has a certain byte order and memory structure and a whole bunch of other
things associated with a "computer".

Is the TV acting as a "computer"?
If so, what operating system is the TV?

What browser does it use?
What architecture is that TV browser compiled for?


And a tv set has become a computer. They needed a CPU to handle the data
conversion, so they might as well allow it to be used as a more general
purpose computer.


It's not clear to me that you need a CPU to handle the conversion
of the digital bitstream to analog. It would seem that a dedicated
chip or chipset would be more far more suited to the application.

You do need a CPU to handle the human interface and supervise
the other chips. I'd think that's the CPU that's running the WEB/wifi
interface.

Everything is a CPU these days. It is cheaper to write software and
use an off the shelf CPU chip than to design a purpose built chip.
Fixing mistakes is a lot easier too.
That is why things as mundane as a washing machine or microwave timer
is a CPU.
There is a processor in my "dumb" Samsung.