Facebook's Portal TV Video Chat Device Was Mocked -- Now It's Completely Sold Out (cnbc.com) 41
jmcbain writes: When Facebook launched its Portal hardware product line for in-home video communication in 2018, people accused the company of being tonedeaf to the privacy uproar stemming from the Cambridge Analytica controversy. Tech reviewers almost universally dismissed the product, saying "No one should buy the Facebook Portal TV," "Trust Fail," and "Is it really a good idea to pitch people on a Facebook-powered camera and microphone in your home?" However, during this period of shelter-in-place, Facebook's previously-beleaguered product has found an opportunity to shine. CNBC reports that "with people stuck indoors and seeking the best way to stay in touch with family and friends, the Portal TV is completely sold out on Facebook's website and from retailers such as Best Buy." Facebook further mentions that "We're pleased that we can help people connect with family, friends and colleagues during this time."
Got mine today (Score:3)
I just got my regular Portal device today. One of the features I really appreciated: it comes with a plastic clip designed to cover the camera.
The virtual pan and zoom is cool. It follows me around the room like a cameraman.
Re: Got mine today (Score:3)
Thank God. I wouldn't want anyone you don't trust to be monitoring your conversations...
Our species is clearly too stupid to survive (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no longer mocking it (Score:1, Interesting)
Now I'm laughing at people inviting the devil into their homes.
Facebook has long since had established data dumps to private companies that collated and provided interior photos and layouts of your homes and businesses, now you just gave them a live feed.
Pathetic
Re: (Score:3)
Accept reality there are two groups of people who use the internet, those who interact with it and those who consume it. Two distinct groups, whose behaviour to modern marketing techniques is quite different, the consumers are specifically targeted for these schemes, they are unquestioning believers of what ever they are told to believe. The other group question everything as they interact with the internet and often push legislation to protect the, well, sheeple because protecting them protects themselves,
I wouldn't call them people. (Score:1)
They feel insulted if you demand that they act like indiviuals. They love passive-thinking and being under the control of some nanny. They find it "simple" and "convenient".
Clearly, the definition of a swarm drone or body part OF an actual person, fits them much better.
I'm not saying that in a bad thing per se.
I mean I find it horrifically stupid and harmful, but if that swarm is more s ccessful than I am, who am I to judge?
Then again, single-celled lifeforms vastly outnumber us humans in bio-mass, and will
Re: (Score:2)
The internet is no one-way communication system. It doesn't work like TV where there is a dedicated sender and a dedicated recepient. If you don't care about your ability to send, someone else will.
And as we can see here, does.
Desperation (Score:2)
Desperate times call for desperate measures. It's not all that surprising.
Portal has always puzzled me. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Skype and smart TVs have been around for ages, so why aren't there TVs with built-in video calling already?
There was an optional video camera for the Logitech Revue android tv device. I never bought it. (2010/2011)
Re: Portal has always puzzled me. (Score:2)
Because I dont want you answering the phone in your boxer shorts and a soiled wifebeater ;-) dont nobody wanna see that
Re: (Score:2)
Because, well, do you want video calling?
For the past few weeks, I have been working from home. With video conferencing pretty much replacing personal contact at the office as well as any kind of communication with everyone at the company. Do you know how many of those calls actually included video? Zero. Not a single one. A lot of them, almost all of them actually, included screen sharing and shoving documents and information around, but not a single call included video.
Why?
Because nobody wants to see thei
It takes a Pandemic (Score:3)
If it takes a pandemic for a product to become popular, I suspect that once the pandemic is over its popularity will once again plummet and many purchased units will fall into disuse (of course, as long as people leave them hooked up Facebook will still be using them to collect information about you).
It should also be considered that if this product has been unpopular since 2018, then they probably never really ramped up production and, given the pandemic, are unable to now. So does being sold out at this particular time mean that it's actually popular?
Perhaps I'm wrong on both accounts and it's just wishful thinking because I hate Facebook. But, hey, I'm an optimist.
Also, that article reads like a giant advertisement for the device. Especially how he waits until the end to mention any of the privacy concerns and quickly brushes them aside.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If it takes a pandemic for a product to become popular, I suspect that once the pandemic is over its popularity will once again plummet and many purchased units will fall into disuse (of course, as long as people leave them hooked up Facebook will still be using them to collect information about you).
It should also be considered that if this product has been unpopular since 2018, then they probably never really ramped up production and, given the pandemic, are unable to now. So does being sold out at this particular time mean that it's actually popular?
Perhaps I'm wrong on both accounts and it's just wishful thinking because I hate Facebook. But, hey, I'm an optimist.
Also, that article reads like a giant advertisement for the device. Especially how he waits until the end to mention any of the privacy concerns and quickly brushes them aside.
Just because something becomes popular in a pandemic doesn't necessarily meant it dies off when the need dies. People get... scarred by these sorts of things and start using times of plenty to just prepare to the next one.
That said your point about "selling out" potentially indicating more of a lack of stock than a rise in popularity is probably a good point.
"Sold out" is not always a great metric (Score:4, Interesting)
If you manufacture a total of four devices and manage to get four people to buy them, it doesn't really say much about the appeal of that device.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, I was going to post the same thing...
>"the Portal TV is completely sold out on Facebook's website and from retailers such as Best Buy."
Maybe because sales were so dismal and demand so low that nobody ever restocked.
Re: (Score:2)
Or, in this case, they finally ran out of the stock that they’ve had sitting on shelves since 2018. But hey, it’s “sold out”, so it’s a good thing!
It is still mocked (Score:1)
Can't handle multi-hundred numbers of videos simultaneously like you can with a PC and Camfrog and a shitty Dual-core E7500.
Re: (Score:1)
"Can't handle multi-hundred numbers of videos simultaneously like you can with a PC"
Huh? Do you really need to be streaming hundreds of videos simultaneously to do video chat?
" and Camfrog and a shitty Dual-core E7500."
You forget this is an APPLIANCE designed to be used by mostly computer illiterate masses. So no, it won't do what your home brewed setup will do.
This is like comparing a toaster oven to the fancy expensive cooking gear that a master chef would use.
No you don't need to. (Score:1)
Jitsi managed video chat with 128 users without problems, probably a decade ago.
(The trick is to only handle the compressed streams, and only tell the sender what formats to send out, so the client can arrange them, or the server can merge them into one for all the clients.)
Re: (Score:1)
...still this is a very extreme case and more of a tech demo than something that would be used in the real world. I can't even imagine a situation, even in a large teleconferencing session, where over 100 simultaneous streams would be used.
Your day-to-day car may be able to do 120mph, but when are you even going to find yourself in a situation on public roads where you would need to even come close to that speed? Likely never.
Re: (Score:1)
...still this is a very extreme case and more of a tech demo than something that would be used in the real world. I can't even imagine a situation, even in a large teleconferencing session, where over 100 simultaneous streams would be used.
Your day-to-day car may be able to do 120mph, but when are you ever going to find yourself in a situation on public roads where you would need to come close to that speed? Likely never.
Sold out? (Score:2)
the Portal TV is completely sold out on Facebook's website and from retailers such as Best Buy.
So they sold the whopping 100 (ok, maybe 1000, perhaps 10,000) units that they made.
Bullshit. (Score:1)
Everyone in Europe cares about privacy nowadays. *Especially* older people.
Things have completely turned around. Especially since the GDPR. Which was very popular around here, despite being a hassle at first.
There's only some nutjobs out there who didn't get the memo yet.
Re: (Score:2)
Except 99% of the websites used that to enforce cookies on and made turning cookies off terrible. One click for yes to everything or click customize, uncheck each and every optional cookie individually oh and these are mandatory... oh and you can't turn cookies off because then the cookie-preference cookie won't get set so we'll loop back to this dialog. And if you're just some nasty fly-by-night sites that ignores the GDPR you can set cookies unless the user has a double approval once on the site and once
Re: (Score:2)
Can't really say that I agree. My dad, who is much but certainly not a computer person, even refuses to do online banking because he's terribly afraid someone might see what he pays for (not that he did anything illegal, mind you, my dad's the goodie-two-shoes law-abiding citizen used as the poster child our governments love so much) and about as paranoid as you can get without becoming a clinical case. And right now I have a hard time convincing someone I know to finally move from Win7 to 10 which he refus
Re: (Score:2)
Remove_crw.cmd keeps the telemetry out of Windows 7. But you can't remove it from 10.
Overuse of the term AI (Score:1)
Sounds like this device has basic shape recognition which has been around for decades. It's irritating to hear buzzwords thrown around like this, and it's even more irritating when I have to deal with people who think they will be opening their front door and finding a Terminator on their door step any day now. Believe me, I had to deal with quite a few of them.
I think that too... (Score:1)
... okay, it is more of a hope. :)
You know... cause Corona was such a disappointment. ^^
Re: (Score:1)
During the past 43 years, I've learned about (and dealt with) a surplus population that needs culling.
Suuure it is ... (Score:1)
Just like the media industry used to buy up their own CDs to make them look more popular in the charts.
We'll find a large hole, filled with them, in a few decades.
if your in Facebook jail and paid for the service (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It works with more software and does the same thing.
To be fair to the idiot consumer. The Portal would be more convenient. a guaranteed base level webcam and an easy "does one thing" interface.
I still think it's a bad idea personally but I see the appeal if you.... for whatever use facebook to talk to people. I have a hard enough time convincing my younger friends that maybe they shouldn't do all their group projects over Facetime of all things.
Hi (Score:1)