I have a couple of Chrome TV’s which seem to freeze or need to be rebooted fairly regularly. I also have a Roku which doesn’t give me much trouble but is nothing special. Are any of them better than the other?
The one that works is better than the one that doesn’t.
Rumour has it that Apple is about to release an updated AppleTV. I assume that’s going to be the best.
WebOS is probably the best OS loaded to a TV these days. Palm and HP probably dumped far more money into it than any other manufacturer invested in their TV’s OS. LG is doing a good job ruining WebOS though with more bloat and account requirements.
I’m having decent performance with Samsung for my 3 TV sets. Two aren’t technically TV’s since they don’t have tuners, but they can sync what I’m watching from room to room and rarely have issues.
Were they older Chromecast or was it Google TV? While the early days were a bit rough, Google TV seems to be considered to be the current leader, mostly driven by the huge app selection.
You’re probably still better off picking a TV based on screen quality if your budget permits, unless the OS is the primary purchase reason.
The streaming on my Samsung has been flawless for more than five years now. I’ve had a Fire and Roku attached and unused the entire time. My only issue is that it often turns itself back on a few minutes after I have turned it off.
I personally prefer Android-based TVs because I can break them open and fiddle with them fairly easily. My current screen has some sideloaded apps, a custom launcher, etc etc. But that’s my own personal leaning, and probably doesn’t apply to everyone.
Next year’s model won’t have an off switch. How dare you?
That’s what my current TV has and it’s the first TV I’ve had with an operating system so I don’t have much to compare it too. It seems fine, but I’d still like to see an OS that worked more like TiVo (or at least more like the last Tivo I used before I got rid of cable).
One of my issues with all these different streaming services is that I don’t think to check each of them on a regular basis and, as such, I very often will completely forget about a show. It’s not until I happen to check that service for something only to realize I’m multiple episodes behind on something or another.
Something that I really liked with my TiVo was that it monitored all those services for my shows. When I turn the TV and go to “my shows”, in addition to all the shows it recorded, it also showed me a list of new episodes of shows I watch on streaming services.
In any case, I really don’t much interact with the OS that much, so as long as I can get around and find what I’m looking for, I’m fine. My main gripe with this OS, or more specifically, LG, is the stupid remote ‘mouse’ and the fact that the OS doesn’t allow you to disable it. I know people love it, but I absolutely despise it and I can’t figure out a single reason why it can’t be disabled.
My only experience is with LG WebOS too and it works well for me. Prior to that I had a dumb TV and used a BlueRay player and later a Firestick but that was years ago.
I don’t mind the remote pointer thing but the link below claims to show a way to toggle it off.
A lot of people seem to hate it. If that doesn’t work there are lots of solutions available that I saw from doing a search.
I have an LG television and use a cheap third-party remote instead of the stupid Magic Remote thing.
(Adjusts the onion in his belt and addresses a cloud)
All I ask is that I can tell how to go directly to the content I want. And give me a damn keyboard if I have to sign in to a network.
I’ve come down to just selecting which HDMI input and then do anything else through the source (cable tuner, computer, etc.)
Just get a Bluetooth keyboard and plug the remote dongle into a usb port on the tv. I’d be surprised if you weren’t up and running in five minutes*.
*with the exception of the YouTube app which is borked for some weird reason on all TV OS’s.
Here is the one I got
WebOS on my new LG OLED has been a really good experience, bloat aside. Only downside to WebOS for me is that a couple of my niche streaming apps don’t have versions made for this system, so I have to use the built-in web browser. And on that topic, the web browser’s pretty good too.
I like the magic remote too. I’m pretty good at typing with a light saber I guess. Where it confuses me from time to time is that it assumes the starting point for a pointing session is the orientation the remote was in at the beginning. At least that’s my supposition. Sometimes the directions are reversed, or at an odd angle until I hold it steady for a few seconds. It’s that same unnerving feeling as when you grab a mouse upside down.
The TV in the living room that is primarily used by my wife. That’s a Samsung, and whatever it uses, well, I don’t like it. I also don’t like the TV settings control panels either. And I guess other than the tiny, slim size, I don’t like the remote. So when I went TV shopping, that was three strikes against Samsung.
Previous TV as the Amazon Fire TV OS. I don’t know if the hardware in the TV was underpowered, or if Fire is just that bad, but it needed to be rebooted frequently. It would get super bogged down and slow to respond, right up to the point where it would stop responding at all. The interface was nice, I suppose, when it worked.
The lack of support for some streaming services is an annoyance. For example, I think my LG set is missing Acorn TV. And originally, I remember there was an option to sort the list of apps so the most frequently used ones were up front but I think they dropped that.
You can still do it. I just tried. Go to home, press and hold any app, at the new screen you can select an app and then move it or delete it.
That’s just sorting the apps yourself. Thr feature i was referring to just did so automatically.
Ah. Gotcha. That would annoy the hell out of me personally so I hope it was something that you could opt-out.
I’ll look at that later, but I suspect it’s the same as all the other methods in that it doesn’t actually work. I’ve never found a way to disable the mouse on my TV, I know some people have luck getting it to work, but it’s usually just until the TV is turned off.
I’m generally comfortable enough tinkering, that if I knew what I was looking for, I’d remove the accelerometer(s) from the remote.
See if any of them have comments saying that it actually worked.
That’s the solution I’ll probably end up going with. Part of my problem is that I like to hold the remote while I’m watching something which means I end up activating the mouse by accident and causing other issues.