Last year, it launched an app that converts a mobile phone into a webcam for your TV set. Tellybean was founded by someone with the usual problem: grandmother in Australia, grandchildren in Finland. However, TV cams were an extra cost and created even more confusion. Companies such as Logitech tried producing dedicated “ TV cams” for Skype calls, some having built-in H.264 video compression. What makes things worse is that smart TV sets running Android TV OS can’t even support a simple USB webcam. Google can’t keep most Android phones up to date, so what chance have TV sets? Smartphones, smartphone operating systems, apps and even video codecs are relatively ephemeral.

TV sets are consumer goods and they are intended to last for many years, if not decades. All your efforts – more than 50 pages – were binned at the end of June, along with “all the work-arounds for a Skype on TV app were discussed in great detail,” according to a Microsoft forum moderator.Īlthough many of us grew up with a science-fiction vision of families video-chatting via their TV sets – what could be more obvious? – it hasn’t worked out that way. These disappeared after the forum moved from to.

Skype disabled this feature on smart TVs about a year ago, and there were lots of complaints on its online forum.

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