I don’t think mine is Android, I’ll try to check tonight. The annoying kicker is that they have an android app that lets you control the TV, but didn’t bother putting any sort of text input mechanism in it. Even hunt & peck on a smartphone screen would be much better than arrowing around with an IR remote.
Not even close, although I used to have my computer set up as a movie server and would use the TV to watch videos. Now, that’s too much hassle; I put the movies I want to watch (Rifftrax downloads, mostly) on a USB thumb drive, which is plugged into the USB port so that I can call them up whenever.
One neat thing about the USB drive: we had made a movie of our adoption trip to China, which we formerly would burn on DVD to show people. Mastering for DVD creates lines, though, so I remastered it as just a high-def computer video file, which looks way way better on the HDTV. That file stays on the thumb drive, too.
I use the TV for Amazon Prime and Netflix, too, although not quite as much anymore for Netflix, since I can just turn to a channel on the Dish Network box for that. I also watch YouTube videos on it; that app still works pretty well.
We have Rokus on our TVs and just one Smart TV, my father’s. He uses the Roku most of the time but will use the smart TV for YouTube – mostly for opera performances or TV show episodes he is reminded of while using the Roku.
I’m finding enough on the Roku (netflix, hulu, amazon prime) so far that I don’t miss internet access.
Doesn’t Roku have Youtube?
Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu. The rest are a jumble of weird apps with names like Spork or Flerp or Chumbo that I assume either make you watch ads or pay a monthly subscription to watch fine cinematic fare like Porky’s 2: The Next Day and Dr. Giggles.
Like someone else said before, very few among us use all the capabilities of their technology. I know I don’t use my smartphone to its fullest. As of now I only have dumb TVs at home (hell, I still have one tube TV) and for my next purchase I’m thinking if I may actually prefer to get me a plain set and pay for a model with a few more input ports including and then get myself a separate box for “smart” stuff. Of course I fully expect a majority of sets very soon to be “smart” in one way or another from the factory but as mentioned in earlier posts built-in tech tends to not be easily updatable (but easily orphaned).
Ours is a Sony that we bought just before interfaces got a lot more user friendly, but we use ours to: access Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, watch youtube every once in a while and watch Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee on Crackle. The worst part about it is using the cursor to **slowly **type out the search terms.
Yeah, good point. Maybe he has switched to that by now.
I’ve got a $99 19-inch TV from Walmart, with a paper clip for an antenna, and I don’t even use most of the smart features on that. I change the channel and the volume. But I do have a VGA connection to my computer, and I know how to switch that.
At least I don’t have to reach around the back and twiddle the vertical hold, like we did in 1952.
OP: All the capabilities? Probably not, but few people fill their car with passengers, load up the trunk, turn the radio volume all the way up, crank up the air conditioning, and drive down the highway at top speed while honking the horn. It doesn’t mean those people would have been better off buying cars with fewer capabilities.
I have a smart TV and we use Amazon Prime, Netflix, the HDMI inputs, the AV inputs (for an old Wii), and the TV tuner. We’re probably in the very small minority of users for that last feature. One “TV” we looked at didn’t even offer a built-in tuner.
The set I bought last year uses Roku and we mostly use Youtube for the grandkids and Netflix, HBO and the input from the regular cable box. Where do you even find stuff like a browser?
Dennis
Probably depends a lot on what OS the TV uses. On mine, I just went to the Google Play store from my TV (Google Play was pre-installed) and looked one up. I could also sideload an app off the USB drive if I was so inclined.
Probably helps that Android TV is a bona fide Android offering developed by Google. I don’t know if you get apps for a webOS TV off Google Play or a separate source.
There’s a button on my remote that brings up all the apps like Netflix etc. and one of them is a browser. It totally sucks so I don’t use it but it’s there.
Is your TV a Sony? We have a Sony running Android. Didn’t even think about syncing a Bluetooth keyboard, need to try that to see if Sony supports it. The weakest link with the smart TV IMHO is that text input is very clunky (and different from app to app).
My Samsung TV seems to have some good apps I use often. I use:
Netflix
Amazon streaming
Hulu
Pandora
Youtube
It also has spotify, which I’ve never used on any platform. And HBO Go, but I don’t have a subscription. I’ve used Crackle before, but the app kind of sucks.
So yes, I use it pretty fully. What else is there one could be doing with it?
When I got my Smart TV, I tried to see if it was smart enough to learn to do the dishes.
It wasn’t.
It also couldn’t do the laundry (not even folding!), sweep the floor, cook dinner, or walk the dog.
LeEco – some Chinese company making a push into the US (they’re currently buying Vizio). My television was selling for around $250 over Black Friday from their site so I took a chance. Been happy with it so far.
But Android TV is supposed to be a consistent platform across brands so I’d guess you could synch a keyboard. I just use some small one intended for tablets. Some apps handle it better than others but it beats scrolling a cursor around.
Wow … I am living in the stone age I guess … I have a dumb flatscreen of my brothers set up in my room and have one of his laptops pushing through an HDMI setup. I use it to stream music from the hard drive, watch DVDs and BluRays, and stream youtube and netflix. I have the laptop set up with a wireless mouse and can direct the laptop while hanging out in bed. It is effectively how my brother had it set up in his room - I do actually have minimal basic cable run in, but I haven’t actually watched anything generated by cable programming in at least 3 weeks. Though I did binge watch all 6 Tolkein movies off BluRay yesterday.
I have found that the more channels of cable you get, the less there actually is that one is interested in watching. I suppose if I were interested in watching sports it would work as there seem to be at least 10 sports channels … at least 5 shopping channels, 4 political/news channels and only a couple stations that remotely interest me [TCM has some excellent old movies without commercials] so I am thinking of just ditching the cable entirely.
Before we got our current TV, I did the about the same thing: ran a cable from a nearby desktop computer to the TV so you could switch over to it and stream stuff. Had a long 3.5mm audio cable connecting them as well. It worked well enough although it’s much more convenient to control it all from the couch.
I had a media computer in the stack for years. It was always more of a PITA than an asset - the disc player software (HD-DVD and then BR) always needed an update, or the OS did, or some other thing would keep us from just turning it on and using it. I guess a regularly-used (and thus continually updated) system would work better, but none of the personal systems were within reach of the TV.
Appliances. Casting. All that stuff… priceless.