What I’m seeing from Taylor’s comment is that by “hub-less” he’s just meaning in the sense of heaving a physical hub separate to the TV
The 2016 SUHD TVs will have the ST hub (or rather a variant of the hardware design but a lot of the same software) built in meaning that you don’t have to have a physical hub to use SmartThings, since the TV is the hub.
Sorry, but this is not true. Please refer to Samsung press release.
Among the 2016 Smart TVs, all Samsung’s 2016 SUHD TVs will apply IoT hub technology, allowing the TV itself to act as the controller for the entire smart home. Samsung developed its own IoT hub technology with SmartThings for 2016 SUHD TVs.
SUHD TVs can connect with and control Samsung devices and SmartThings sensors, as well as more than 200 other SmartThings compatible devices. These include everything from connected lights and locks to thermostats and cameras, from a wide range of high quality third party manufacturers. For the full support of connectivity with SmartThings compatible devices, SmartThings Extend USB adaptor is required.
There’s no doubt this implies that the SmartThings hub (minus Zigbee/A-wave radios) is built-in into SUHD TV.
http://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-reveals-entire-2016-smart-tv-line-up-will-be-iot-ready
Fair enough. 
I’m just still waiting to see whether the TV based platform offers the same feature functionality as the current platform , in particular the ability to create custom device type handlers and smartapps.
It’s highly unlikely they’d go through the trouble of spawning a separate back-end platform for the TV-based hub, but we’ll see.
And if so, if it will only work with the TV on!
Honestly I dont expect this before christmas at this point so I’m almost certainly going to have to go out and buy a regular hub for now
You’ll be able to create and use custom device type handlers and SmartApps.
The TV does present one problem, however. It will be harder for us to get firmware updates out to the TV, and they will be more sparse. We’ll have to jump through some more hoops to get firmware updates out to TV Hub users.
What this means is that we need to work extra, extra hard to make sure that the launch firmware and any updates we push to the TV are in really good working order.
It’s a good thing and a bad thing, depending on how you look at it.
Is TV based on V1 hardware or V2?
It’s more similar to the V2!
How about the ui and TV app. What functionality will be there? Will you be able to pull up cameras as was shown at CES or view and interact with individual devices? Smartapps?
Sony has a version of this by integrating Android TV and Logitech Harmony…
Shouldn’t this have been considered prior to announcing the product? You’ve just said that the product when/if ever is released won’t be updated on a regular basis due to it being “harder to do”. Do this alone not set you up for failure before it’s even launched? Assuming the extra step is to have Samsung (your parent company) send out the update via a tv firmware? I don’t see how that would be too hard considering their name is on Smartthings product as well and would ideally want the best experience for the customer. If it’s the firmware on the USB stick that needs updating, could you not just make an app to plug it into your computer to update? Possibly build it into the ST current app to update the firmware? You comments are kinda concerning when you are already pointing out the fact that it won’t be updated too much due to it being “harder to do”.
Excuse me, but I don’t recall saying that the TV Hub won’t be updated on a regular basis. But yes, updates will need to be packaged with Samsung TV updates which have their own cycle and, as I said, more hoops to jump through.
It certainly does not set us up for failure, but I can see that you understand the drawbacks of this particular distribution model
Sorry, man. We’re not quite ready to reveal everything about this side of things. You’ll be able to interact with your devices via routines in the TV App and accelerator bar.
I was just basing it off your words of “The TV does present one problem, however. It will be harder for us to get firmware updates out to the TV, and they will be more sparse. We’ll have to jump through some more hoops to get firmware updates out to TV Hub users.”
Sparse tends to make one believe that it’s not on a regular basis no? Not sure how many updates have been sent out for each TV as I have only noticed one since I’ve owned the tv. I also don’t think it’s the same firmware released for all of the different lines of tv sent out at the same time. For example, the last firmware update for the KS8000 was 7.25.16 but the KS9000 last update was 7.13.16.
Since you are not in control of when Samsung sends out updates for their TV’s, if a bad update is sent out, it could be months before a fix is able to go out. I don’t see Samsung’s tv side wanting to send out a bunch of hot fixes all of the time. I think a better idea would to have be the extender perform just like the current hub does where everything is inside and uses the internet connection to update it. Maybe that’s not possible, but would be easier. Or plugging it into a computer to update it.
It’s a valid concern, and I appreciate the idea for a USB stick update option. I don’t know if anything like that is planned for the moment, but I’ll see if I can float the idea to the appropriate people. I wish I was more in the loop about this particular aspect of the TV project to help ease your concerns, but the gravity of releasing a not-great firmware is not lost on us
will the extend work on the 2015 SUHD TV’s? I have the UN65JS9000 SUHD TV. I would like to know if it will work on my TV when they release the extend ?
You would think it’s better to have a separate app running inside Samsung UI and be able to update that app anytime you want. Like android, IOS, Windows. Get ready to ramp up support if there is no quick update on the apps.
That’s also the case. There are several components. One is the Tizen SmartThings client running on the TV. That will be updated through app updates.
The other component is the firmware baked into the TV and the dongle. Those cannot be updated through an app update, but instead require an OTN update sent from Samsung.
All in all, you won’t have to worry about updates or the frequency of updates. It’s just another challenge for us to tackle.
That’s probably the worst thing to do with ST firmware. Samsung doesnt even update million of their phones. Nevermind TV. I have 5 Samsung TV and update is definitely not a priority with them. Hopefully you guys can solve this.
I still get updates on my three year old Samsung TV…