The battle for Smart TV dominance continues to ratchet up, with Google and Firefox now both wading into the same connected space. The former has reignited its living room ambitions via Android TV, while open source rival Firefox has partnered with Panasonic. You might reasonably expect both to be cut from much the same cloth, but having lived with new tellies from each camp, I can reveal there’s a world of difference. One is lithe, intuitive and fun to use. The other isn’t.
Then I discovered it was paginated clickbate with no single-page option. No Thanks. We’re not on print media anymore.
Wow. Amazing how little effort Google put into the TV interface. So it’s android with a custom launcher. Terrible.
They really have to drop the “smart”* moniker. None of the devices have cognitive reasoning. Thus can not be smart.
Computer monitors are ideal TV viewing devices – often no audio (I’d be using a 5.1 audio receiver like any sane person does 🙂 ) and quite high resolutions. However, the prices/rarity when you go 30″ or higher are just insane.
I’d just like an affordable very large “dumb” monitor (50″+) with HDMI, but they just don’t seem to exist (or if they do, they’ll break the bank). I’m still waiting for some 50″+ tech (OLED for example) to become affordable – until then, I guess I’m stuck with my 50″ Panasonic plasma…which I have to view in the dark to avoid reflections! And, yes it’s a smart plasma TV, which I found was too dumb after only 2 weeks, so I hang external boxes (DVR, Chromecast) off it now instead.
I don’t like the “smart” tv concept. External boxes are better, because you can easily update them when the time comes. I mean, we all know just how many updates your Android TV is going to get.
Yes, and they’re not going to make it much better either or introduce strange, unwanted changes to the GUI that you can’t reverse. Thinking of Chrome OS and G+.
I recently purchased the Nvidia Shield Android TV and couldn’t be more happy. It is a Chromecast device, a Netflix/Hulu machine, as well as a gaming system which can stream from my PC or the game service. It does other things that I use less, like stream radio. Plus it is capable of 4k streaming, for when I get a 4k TV haha. To each his own I guess.
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