I noticed most avg televisions have built in wi-fi and other internet functions.Why not make it so you guys can use those as computing resources.Just an idea ,don't go all mightymoe on me for this thought

Wi-fi and internet is nice to have on a TV, but you don't need a strong CPU for that, or one that does (any) (lots of) floating point executions and certainly not some (USB) hard drive with oodles of space.

So the questions become:
- what kind of processor is in those TVs?
- what kind of hard drive space are we talking about?
- can we install some Linux on that drive without breaking the TV?
- is it even possible to run an OS on that processor?
- how much memory does the TV have?
-- can we add memory to it if need be?
- is it possible to port BOINC and Seti to the native OS on the TV and work that way?

End question will be, is it really worth it?

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lmmfao NOooooooooo!! i see and i never even thought of the hardrive space,

Thanks again

"So the questions become:"
- what kind of processor is in those TVs? : Probably very lightweight ARM type processors

- what kind of hard drive space are we talking about? : Not much, maybe enough for seti@home, but the first question already rules out the ability to run it

- can we install some Linux on that drive without breaking the TV? : Without breaking the TV? Probably not, but I'm sure we could get embedded Linux on it. *evil grin*

- is it even possible to run an OS on that processor? : I guarantee there's a linux distro that would run on it, regardless of its architecture.

- how much memory does the TV have? : I'm sure very little, just enough to run what's natively installed on the TV.

-- can we add memory to it if need be? : Probably can't add memory that could be used as part of the native OS, but there are usually SDcard readers on these devices, and with the right OS I'm sure it could be in theory used for an OS storage device.

- is it possible to port BOINC and Seti to the native OS on the TV and work that way? : Ported to a Linux that could be installed on the TV, yes (Still doesn't matter the hardware is not powerful enough).. Ported to the TV's native OS- Anythings possible. But the work involved means it wouldn't happen and definitely wouldn't be worth it. And the hardware comprising the system is not powerful enough to even bother.

-End question will be, is it really worth it? : Not today, maybe in 10 years with powerful enough native hardware, and a big enough user-base of some standardized operating system. (Maybe we should consider an android port, people could kill their batteries in 2 hours for 1000 FLOPs. j/k) :-)

But it's fun to think through the process of things like this. It could be a fun project to hack a TV into running a nice embedded Linux. Or even just boot it from a memory card/stick :-)
-Dave

More useful would be the Digital Recorder. -- assuming it could be done without breaking it.

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BOINC WIKI

More useful would be the Digital Recorder. -- assuming it could be done without breaking it.

It'd be far easier to use a special built pc as a "video intermediary" to act as a DVR.

(But again, a standardized OS could be useful. To someday be able to use an app to just plug in a storage device to the TV and use it as a DVR. Android On TV! there's an idea...)
-Dave