Samsung is turning its 2016 smart SUHD TVs into home automation hubs, enabling consumers to control and monitor their smart home systems via their TV screen, Samsung announced.
In addition, other Samsung smart TVs launched in 2016 will integrate with SmartThings home-automation systems, enabling consumers to control certain TV features through the SmartThings’ smartphone app and incorporate the TV into their smart-home routines.
The company partnered with home automation supplier Smart Things, which it bought in 2014, to add home automation technology to its new TVs, which will be unveiled at CES.
To control home systems via their SUHD TV, consumers plug in a SmartThings Extend USB adapter into the TV. Adapter pricing was unavailable.
Samsung will become “the first company to launch IoT-ready TVs,” said Hyun Suk Kim, President of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics.
For its part, LG previously said its new smart TVs with WebOS 3.0 would deliver
on-screen control of LG smart appliances and compatible other-brand appliances via Wi-Fi.
With Samsung’s TVs, consumers will be able to use their remote and an on-screen user interface to view security-camera video, lock and unlock doors, control lights, and control speakers and soundbars that incorporate Samsung’s wireless multiroom-audio technology. Consumers will also be able to see motion-sensor alerts pop up on the TV screen, and they’ll be able to automatically adjust ambient lighting in the TV room as well as surround sound modes when turning on a movie.
The TVs will control SmartThings-brand sensors and more than 200 other SmartThings-compatible devices, including lights, locks, thermostats, and security cameras.
The devices can also be monitored and controlled from a smartphone’s SmartThings app, which lets people manage all smart home devices and services through a single user interface.
