7 ms·

My biggest gripe is how terribly slow it is to navigate UI on a TV. The latency between user input and the UI responding can be upwards of 10-20 seconds. Just i

by tantalor 10mo ago

My biggest gripe is how terribly slow it is to navigate UI on a TV. The latency between user input and the UI responding can be upwards of 10-20 seconds. Just incredibly user hostile.

andrewblossom 10mo ago
This can be solved by using any number of 3rd-party streaming devices: Apple TV, Google TV Streamer, NVIDIA Shield, ... I've never experienced an TV OS that was reliably better than one of the above, though a Roku-OS TV came close.
- arrozconcosas 10mo ago
  I tried to look for a 'dumb' tv for a long time to get to a setup like this. The ultimate setup would be 1) a totally dumb and stupid tv + 2) a streaming box like Apple TV or whatever. I just want the audio/visual aspect of the screen, nothing else.
  - walthamstow 10mo ago
    If you never connect it to the internet, all TVs are dumb. I have an airgapped Panasonic powered by Nvidia Shield for years. The only issue I ever had was Google adding ads to the front page of the Android TV launcher. Easily fixed by using a different launcher.
  - wafflemaker 10mo ago
    Given enough determination, you can learn how to locate antennas in the TV and remove them, which would render the TV dumb for all intents and purposes. I have no experience with it, it just might be less work to remove antennas from any TV than finding a dumb TV in 2026.
    - mikestew 10mo ago
      Or one could just, you know, not connect it to the Internet rather than ripping apart your new TV.
      - wolvoleo 10mo ago
        I'm sure sooner or later TVs will demand to connect to an "activation server" before they start working. And soon after that continuous internet access. You know, for your own protection of course. You wouldn't want to miss out on exciting content recommendation features and AI integration! Your life isn't complete without a constant guided tour of all the wonderful things surveillance capitalism has to offer, after all.
      - wafflemaker 9mo ago
        Some TV's (unverified) were said to use available open/ring-camera WiFi's to ping the owner. Think I've read about it in some hn comment.
  - c22 10mo ago
    You can purchase commercial signage displays that are just dumb screens, but the markup is quite high. Easier to just get one of the 'smart' ones and never let it connect to the internet.
    - reaperducer 10mo ago
      but the markup is quite high Maybe a decade or two ago, but I looked into this last year, and the prices were just about the same.
      - amiga-workbench 10mo ago
        I got mine 2nd hand on eBay as new old stock. £300 for a 55" 4K panel. The only thing I can ding it for is that the backlight local dimming is done in columns which is extremely distracting, so I turn it off. You have to remember this thing is designed to sit in a shop window in direct sunlight. Ticks all my other boxes though, powers on as soon as my finger leaves the button on the remote, same with input switching and any other interactions with the OSD. Its completely braindead, just how I like it. Oh, they also sent me the model with the touch digitizer installed. So I've got capacitive touch and pen input, it has a USB-B port on the side to connect to a computer.
        ustad 10mo ago
        Whats the model?
        amiga-workbench 10mo ago
        Its a NEC MultiSync M551
  - cc81 10mo ago
    You don't need to connect it to the Internet or use the built in OS for anything else than just navigate to your box. I just use my NVIDIA Shield for everything.
  - WorldMaker 10mo ago
    My trick has been a simpler/faster/dumber HDMI switch that isn't the TV so that you can leave the TV on a single HDMI input and delegate any input switching to the the switch rather than the slow TV UI. That adds extra complexity in terms of an extra remote. In my case, the simpler/faster HDMI switch is also the surround sound receiver so that moves volume as well to the simpler, dumber remote. It's not ideal either, but reducing use of the TV's terrible UI is reducing temptation to just go back to the TV's terrible apps. (Also as the sibling option points out, the other trick is isolating the TV out of the network entirely. Sometimes the UI gets even slower to "punish" you for not allowing its smart features and ads to work, or the UI is just badly written and relies on a lot of synchronous waits for network calls for things like telemetry [six of one, half dozen of the other], which gets back to reasons to use a dumb input switch and get away from the TV's own UI.)
  - al_borland 10mo ago
    Dumb TVs really don’t exist anymore. You just have to buy a smart one and treat it like it’s dumb. Over Christmas my mom was complaining about her TV and I found a setting to have it start up with the last used input, which meant no more dealing with the smart interface and motion remote. I have an LG as well, but I wasn’t able to find the same setting available, unfortunately. Thought the automatic selection seems to work decently well when I turn on a device. I have an old Samsung from 2017 that’s dumb. I mainly bought it because it was the size I needed (~40”), smaller than most people these days want.
    - exhumet 10mo ago
      got a Sony last year that gave me the option on startup to enable or disable the smart TV os, picked the disabled option, TV isnt connected to the internet and the thing works beautifully.
    - neltnerb 10mo ago
      This is what I do, I'm a little confused by the issue. If you have a device that outputs HDMI just never connect the TV to your wifi. It's not like you need or want firmware updates if there's no internet connection. A much more fair retort is that an extra device to output video costs more, though I might argue that if you don't use the TV's built in system the manufacturer is losing ad revenue. So if you only use it as a normal TV you kinda are buying it subsidized by everyone else watching ads on theirs.
    - Asmod4n 10mo ago
      All LG OLED tv at least can be controlled via an http API. So you don’t need a remote for them. You can turn them on and have them select any input. That way you can completely use it like a monitor instead of a TV.
- catlikesshrimp 10mo ago
  Keep in mind: "Is your android TV streaming box part of a botnet?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46037556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46037556
  - mbreese 10mo ago
    Which is generally easier to fix (replace) than a TV.
  - wolvoleo 10mo ago
    Yeah SmartTubeNext recently got hacked too :(
- apparent 10mo ago
  True, but when you want to change any of the TV settings you have to deal with the sluggish UI. I have memorized the key presses to toggle between two different brightness presets, including the amount of time I have to pause between each keypress. If I press the buttons without waiting sufficiently long, it goes sideways.
brk 10mo ago
That sounds like you have an overly shitty ‘smart’ TV. Plenty of external devices (I’m partial to AppleTV) have no significant lag. Or it could be you’re using some niche service that has its own issues.
- no_wizard 10mo ago
  It’s a matter of time before tv manufacturers start requiring an app to sync with the TV to set it up. That would let them glean information about you every time you use said app. You’re still getting around this with a 3rd party device like an Apple TV for the most part but if it’s required to even turn it off or on it’ll be enough to sync any metadata that it holds
  - pletnes 10mo ago
    My samsung did this years ago. Not sure if it was truly required but I’d say this has happened.
  - ggus 10mo ago
    My LG does just that. The tv remote sensor stopped working (and broke again after servicing), so now the only way to use the TV is by the LG app on my phone.. which asks for permissions to Nearby Devices, Location, Camera, Microphone, Notifications, Phone, Music&Audio...
    - Melatonic 10mo ago
      Lots of good generic remotes out there (still using a Logitech harmony personally)
- kenjackson 10mo ago
  External devices like AppleTV, Roku or Xboxes are responsive. It’s the actual TV UI that tends to be very slow and laggy.
  - akagr 10mo ago
m4tthumphrey 10mo ago
This is definitely due to the age/quality/model of the TV. I have 4 LG TVs across the house and the newest/biggest is 100x faster than the oldest.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
alexfoo 10mo ago
And not always anything to do with the TV. I have BT TV (https://www.bt.com/help/tv/learn-about-tv/bt-tv-boxes https://www.bt.com/help/tv/learn-about-tv/bt-tv-boxes) and the UI is painfully slow at times (UI response to a button press of 10-20 seconds), searching is horribly slow. Can't wait to ditch it for something more responsive (probably Sky Stream). I also miss an old TV that had a "q.rev" button to allowed you to switch back and forth between two channels with a single button. Perfect for skipping advert breaks (which is almost certainly why most entertainment systems don't have it any more).
- GJim 10mo ago
  > Perfect for skipping advert breaks The mute button is the next best thing. Advertisements become much less irritating when silenced. I'm surprised so few people appear to mute advert breaks.
  - alexfoo 10mo ago
    Yeah, that's the next best. I taught my kid to mute adverts from an early age. It really winds up one family member who works in TV advertising, so that's a bonus.
- Thlom 10mo ago
  Can't you just buy an AppleTV, download the EE/BT TV app and ditch the box? My ISP also sends me these boxes that I never connect to my TV since their app on AppleTV works better than using the god awful TV box.
gwbas1c 10mo ago
When Netflix released an awful update that had that problem, I called and threatened to cancel.
- SamBam 10mo ago
  And they immediately fixed the lag?
  - gwbas1c 10mo ago
    Within a few days it appeared that the update was recalled. It was the bad update that made videos start playing as soon as you selected them, instead of going to the information page. I get the impression I wasn't the only person who complained; I suspect that any manager who sat down to watch TV that night probably twisted a few arms.
    - pests 10mo ago
      I'm seeing that again in some of their UI, where you have to specifically click More Info to get to the details page vs playing immediately.
haritha-j 10mo ago
Honestly we don't need TVs, just big monitors. I can figure out the rest, thank you.
- al_borland 10mo ago
  The monitor I use for work is 43” and can double as a TV. It also has 4 HDMI inputs, which can act as 4 displays. I could, in theory, watch TV via a streaming box, play a console, and still have the equivalent of 2 21” monitors going at the same time. I’d love this kind of flexibility on my primary TV in the living room.
  - dylan604 10mo ago
    Is this something you're actually able to do with this monitor, or that you think it should be able to do it? If it can actually display all 4 inputs at the same time, I'd be interested in knowing the model and price of that monitor. That's a feature that tends to require special equipment that's not cheap.
    - al_borland 10mo ago
      This is something it is actually able to do. I would like it to be more of a standard feature on monitors and TVs. When it came out it seemed like a unicorn, it still kind of does. It's an LG 43UD79-B. According to LG's site[0], it's discontinued. I got it from Costco in 2017 for $550, but it was sold many places at the time. Doing a quick glance at LG's current lineup, there isn't an obvious successor. It looks like Amazon has 1 person selling it used[1], but in 6/10 condition and no remote, for double the price of new... While it looks the remote is also being sold places, it's pretty useless without the remote. The seller has sketchy ratings as well, I'd stay away. [0] https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-43UD79-B-4k-uhd-led-monitor https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-43UD79-B-4k-uhd-led-monito... [1] https://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronics-LED-lit-Monitor-43UD79-B/dp/B0711MP768 https://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronics-LED-lit-Monitor-43UD79...
      - dylan604 10mo ago
FartyMcFarter 10mo ago
10-20 seconds? What TV are you using?
elAhmo 10mo ago
It is time for a new TV!
rubslopes 10mo ago
People are replying that OP must own an old TV, but that's missing the point: with very old non-smart TVs, menu commands were always instantaneous!
- H3X_K1TT3N 10mo ago
  Yeah, I don't understand why everyone is trying to invalidate their experience or suggest workarounds (implying that they are the problem); this isn't stackoverflow. Every TV I have interacted with in recent years is slow and terrible, except for really old ones. The TVs are the problem, and we shouldn't be making excuses for that.
- dylan604 10mo ago
  This was my experience with the switch from analog cable boxes to digital boxes. The whole experience became sluggish as channel changes were forced to wait for I-frames which depended on the GOP size.
hadlock 10mo ago
The "smart" TV in my office is hooked up to a chromecast thing and I interact with the chromecast dongle. My TV has never been hooked up to the TV and in fact I haven't even accepted the EULA. The GUI on the TV is lightning fast, and since it can't update itself (and never will!) it will remain lightning fast. If my 4k HDMI dongle begins to struggle, I will plug in a new device via HDMI. I was not able to win that argument with my wife on the living room TV but our LG (C series) I was able to disable the ads and with a recent update I can now turn off all but the ~4 apps we use (youtube + disney+, + netflix and one or two rotating services). Fingers crossed LG does not push the "brick your TV" update before it's usefule EOL. The HBO app on our ~2016 era samsung was totally useless by 2018. I am hoping we get more than 2 years out of our current TV before the GUI starts creaking under it's own weight. The Samsung also started showing ads in the app menu selection about 3 years after we started buying it (from korean car makers, really good way to ensure I never buy your brands!).
- hilbert42 10mo ago
  "I am hoping we get more than 2 years out of our current TV before the GUI starts creaking under it's own weight." Ha! The Sharp color TV here in the kitchen is now nearly 48 years old (bought in 1978) and still functions well but with the addition of a set top box/PVR although its remote control has been repaired many times (but the TV itself has never needed maintenance). Other flat screen TVs have no internet access or are used monitor style with separate STBs/PVRs. As I mentioned on HN some weeks ago, if the trend continues and manufacturers booby-trap sets into planned obsolescence, I'll buy only monitors and connect them via HDMI to a TV feed. My ancient Sharp TV shouts at me that these days there's something terribly wrong with domestic electronic appliances.
Melatonic 10mo ago
This can usually be improved by turning off all the crap you want anyways (noise reduction - smart dynamic contrast adjustment - anything similar). Opting out of the ad tracking and personalisation also seemed to slightly speed up some TVs as well for me. Also experienced a Samsung TV at an Airbnb once that was insanely slow - turns out it had very little storage space to begin with and was literally at 0 remaining. Deleted a few larger apps and reinstalled the remaining and it sped up a lot once it had some cache to work with.
bartread 10mo ago
I don’t run into this because I never allow the TV to connect to the internet. I basically use it as a dumb screen with a set of speakers and a bunch of devices connected to it: Apple TV, consoles, etc. As such, when I do use the TV remote - if I need to manually change sources, adjust picture settings, or whatever - the TV’s UI remains responsive. I have heard that some brands of TV will try to stealth connect to open hotspots to download updates and whathaveyou, but haven’t run into that issue with LG or, in more recent years, Hisense.
- hamdingers 10mo ago
  This is always the top reply and it's not particularly useful. I want the ease and convenience of having a single device both play and display content, there's no reason that should be so hard. Of course I know I could Buy More Things but that sucks as a suggestion. This is how most people use their TVs these days (despite the issues with it). It's reasonable and fair to ask for a better experience.
  - dylan604 10mo ago
    I tried the smart tv, but then the app devs stopped updating the apps for that model or version of the OS. there's nothing wrong with the picture, but to be able to keep using apps would require a new tv. That's when I switched to devices connected to the TV, and stopped using the TV's apps. Devs will always update for devices like Roku, AppleTV, etc as there's enough users. I can only imagine the number of users for specific model of tv's OS will get smaller and no longer worth effort on the dev's time.
  - exhumet 10mo ago
    its a double edged sword, better hardware and experience = more expensive (see Sonys higher end stuff) 90% of would much rather drop the money on the less expensive BIG TV with a cpu that cant even transcode properly and harvests your data to offset the price. ive got a lot of family and friends that use my plex server and i pretty much force them to get a dedicated streaming device for it or warn them that unfortunately i cant help them if the content doesnt want to play.
  - 10mo ago
brabel 10mo ago
I had a 75-inch TV I inherited, it was on the higher end and the TV UI was supper snappy. Then, I broke it accidentally and got only 1/4 of the money from insurance. Because I barely watch TV, I thought I would just buy a TV of the same size, but on the lower end... both TVs were Samsung anyway. What a huge difference. The image quality is a little worse, barely noticeable after you get used to it. But the UI is agonizingly slow. Every time I turn the TV on it starts showing some channel fairly quickly, but then after several seconds the image gets black because it's loading the stupid UI... and I can't find a way for it to NOT do that! The higher end TV, needless to say, didn't do that. So now, I know what you're paying for when you get a TV for $4,000 instead of $1,000: slightly better image , but a proper computer to run the stupidly heavy UI (probably made using some heavy JS framework, I suppose).
- jliptzin 10mo ago
  Plug a new chromecast into one of the HDMI ports and use that and only that and weld the setting shut so that you never have to deal with the TV’s default UI ever again.
  - eru 10mo ago
    Though you still have to turn off the frame generation on the TV.
  - vee-kay 10mo ago
    I use an Amazon FireTV Stick on my old non-smart LG TV. And the advantage is that the FireTV has a simple cute little remote control device. There is a nifty Setting in the Amazon FireTV UI to allow its remote to turn on/off the TV too. So it's been a long time since I had to wrestle with the TV's built-in OS. I just use the pleasant UI of the FireTV Stick to watch Netflix, Prime, Disney+, etc. on that decade+ old TV. That FireTV becomes sluggish if I keep multiple apps open, so I have learnt to exit out of an app before switching to the new one. I may get a new FireTV stick this year, rather than splurging for a new TV, since the old TV is still doing well. As the Americans say: If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
port11 10mo ago
Our Samsung running Tizen has the obnoxious need to check if antenna-based broadcasting is available, every single time you open the settings menu. It never is, it won’t ever again be in Europe. But it checks. And lags. And then whatever you chose in the menu is not what it selected. Every. Single. Time. Going to settings makes me wince.
amelius 10mo ago
Hey, trying to change the source of my monitor from HDMI-1 to DisplayPort takes 30 seconds.
AndrewDavis 10mo ago
Mine is so slow to become initially responsive. It (thankfully) comes on to whatever source / channel it was on when turned off, but it takes a good 15 seconds till you can change a channel, closer to 30 seconds to change input source. And when it does accept inputs it frustratingly drops inputs for another 10 seconds or so.
steve_taylor 10mo ago
When you're a low-tier video streaming company, you look for cost savings such as writing the same app as few times as you can get away with, so typically you end up with the same web app running on Tizen, webOS, VIDAA, PS4, PS5 and quite often Fire TV and even Xbox. Even Amazon's new Vega OS with its React Native way of building apps has a WebView escape hatch. These TVs typically have really slow SOCs – certainly not fast enough to run a web app the way a typical dev write a web app these days.
georgefrowny 10mo ago
Turn on TV: 3 seconds Roku boots: 10 seconds Meanwhile turn on soundbar: 3 seconds Press Roku remote button: 3 seconds until it wakes up and repairs (remote still eats batteries) Open streaming app: 5-10 seconds Select profile: 3 seconds Scroll about looking for show: 5-20 seconds, or a minute to type it in Select the right episode: 3-10 seconds depending on if it's currently on the right season (somehow not always) Start and buffering: 5-10 seconds Ad: 20-40 seconds (depending on platform) And that's all if you're concentrating on getting through it and the device isn't a laggy UI toxic waste dump. Some TVs you have to press each button and wait for each one to register. At least there isn't an FBI copyright warning at the start I suppose (when you don't live in the US).
- mlrtime 10mo ago
  Rokus are ad selling devices, I wish someone would just hack them [devices] already so we can strip it out.
- austin-cheney 10mo ago
  Everybody complains about performance. Slow software feels like poison. Except, anything written with a large JavaScript framework is allowed to be slow. In fact slow as syrup is strongly encouraged. To prove it just ask the developers. Mention it could be 8-50x faster just by not using their favorite framework and note the response. Even better, show them a proof of concept and take note of their unemotional objectivity.
  - bayindirh 10mo ago
    In short, user experience and efficiency is sacrificed everywhere for development velocity, time to market and monies. This is embodiment of worse (for the customer) is better (for the business) adage.
    - austin-cheney 10mo ago
      That is a rather generous comment. As a former JavaScript developer I can tell you the qualities of concern are not the business concerns of delivery. Delivery will increase just as dramatically by reducing the tech debt imposed from unnecessary code. All that really matters is solving for developer anxiety.
johnisgood 10mo ago
Modern TV, yeah. TVs from 15 years ago were waaaay faster than smart TVs. Ridiculous.
throwawayffffas 10mo ago
Do you remember analog TVs? Switching channels was a sub second affair.
- GJim 10mo ago
  I remember our first digital TV crashing and needing to reboot it. "Wow"! we said. This is the future. Having to reboot the TV.
- LocalH 9mo ago
  It was sub frame. You would literally see the set re-sync to the new timing (since each station's vblank would not necessarily be happening at the same time).
dustypotato 10mo ago
I uninstalled google launcher and shitty Xiaomi apps in my Mi TV stick using ADB and switched to F-Launcher. Can't be happier with the performance.
philthe 9mo ago
Honestly the main reason I could never use anything other than an Apple TV. Every smart tv or box or stick I’ve ever used is barely acceptable in terms of input responsiveness fresh out of the box. And after one system update it’s usually over and a complete pain to use

My biggest gripe is how terribly slow it is to navigate UI on a TV. The latency between user input and the UI responding can be upwards of 10-20 seconds. Just incredibly user hostile.

andrewblossom 10mo ago

This can be solved by using any number of 3rd-party streaming devices: Apple TV, Google TV Streamer, NVIDIA Shield, ... I've never experienced an TV OS that was reliably better than one of the above, though a Roku-OS TV came close.

arrozconcosas 10mo ago
I tried to look for a 'dumb' tv for a long time to get to a setup like this. The ultimate setup would be 1) a totally dumb and stupid tv + 2) a streaming box like Apple TV or whatever. I just want the audio/visual aspect of the screen, nothing else.
- walthamstow 10mo ago
  If you never connect it to the internet, all TVs are dumb. I have an airgapped Panasonic powered by Nvidia Shield for years. The only issue I ever had was Google adding ads to the front page of the Android TV launcher. Easily fixed by using a different launcher.
- wafflemaker 10mo ago
  Given enough determination, you can learn how to locate antennas in the TV and remove them, which would render the TV dumb for all intents and purposes. I have no experience with it, it just might be less work to remove antennas from any TV than finding a dumb TV in 2026.
  - mikestew 10mo ago
    Or one could just, you know, not connect it to the Internet rather than ripping apart your new TV.
    - wolvoleo 10mo ago
      I'm sure sooner or later TVs will demand to connect to an "activation server" before they start working. And soon after that continuous internet access. You know, for your own protection of course. You wouldn't want to miss out on exciting content recommendation features and AI integration! Your life isn't complete without a constant guided tour of all the wonderful things surveillance capitalism has to offer, after all.
    - wafflemaker 9mo ago
      Some TV's (unverified) were said to use available open/ring-camera WiFi's to ping the owner. Think I've read about it in some hn comment.
- c22 10mo ago
  You can purchase commercial signage displays that are just dumb screens, but the markup is quite high. Easier to just get one of the 'smart' ones and never let it connect to the internet.
  - reaperducer 10mo ago
    but the markup is quite high Maybe a decade or two ago, but I looked into this last year, and the prices were just about the same.
    - amiga-workbench 10mo ago
      I got mine 2nd hand on eBay as new old stock. £300 for a 55" 4K panel. The only thing I can ding it for is that the backlight local dimming is done in columns which is extremely distracting, so I turn it off. You have to remember this thing is designed to sit in a shop window in direct sunlight. Ticks all my other boxes though, powers on as soon as my finger leaves the button on the remote, same with input switching and any other interactions with the OSD. Its completely braindead, just how I like it. Oh, they also sent me the model with the touch digitizer installed. So I've got capacitive touch and pen input, it has a USB-B port on the side to connect to a computer.
      - ustad 10mo ago
        Whats the model?
        amiga-workbench 10mo ago
        Its a NEC MultiSync M551
- cc81 10mo ago
  You don't need to connect it to the Internet or use the built in OS for anything else than just navigate to your box. I just use my NVIDIA Shield for everything.
- WorldMaker 10mo ago
  My trick has been a simpler/faster/dumber HDMI switch that isn't the TV so that you can leave the TV on a single HDMI input and delegate any input switching to the the switch rather than the slow TV UI. That adds extra complexity in terms of an extra remote. In my case, the simpler/faster HDMI switch is also the surround sound receiver so that moves volume as well to the simpler, dumber remote. It's not ideal either, but reducing use of the TV's terrible UI is reducing temptation to just go back to the TV's terrible apps. (Also as the sibling option points out, the other trick is isolating the TV out of the network entirely. Sometimes the UI gets even slower to "punish" you for not allowing its smart features and ads to work, or the UI is just badly written and relies on a lot of synchronous waits for network calls for things like telemetry [six of one, half dozen of the other], which gets back to reasons to use a dumb input switch and get away from the TV's own UI.)
- al_borland 10mo ago
  Dumb TVs really don’t exist anymore. You just have to buy a smart one and treat it like it’s dumb. Over Christmas my mom was complaining about her TV and I found a setting to have it start up with the last used input, which meant no more dealing with the smart interface and motion remote. I have an LG as well, but I wasn’t able to find the same setting available, unfortunately. Thought the automatic selection seems to work decently well when I turn on a device. I have an old Samsung from 2017 that’s dumb. I mainly bought it because it was the size I needed (~40”), smaller than most people these days want.
  - exhumet 10mo ago
    got a Sony last year that gave me the option on startup to enable or disable the smart TV os, picked the disabled option, TV isnt connected to the internet and the thing works beautifully.
  - neltnerb 10mo ago
    This is what I do, I'm a little confused by the issue. If you have a device that outputs HDMI just never connect the TV to your wifi. It's not like you need or want firmware updates if there's no internet connection. A much more fair retort is that an extra device to output video costs more, though I might argue that if you don't use the TV's built in system the manufacturer is losing ad revenue. So if you only use it as a normal TV you kinda are buying it subsidized by everyone else watching ads on theirs.
  - Asmod4n 10mo ago
    All LG OLED tv at least can be controlled via an http API. So you don’t need a remote for them. You can turn them on and have them select any input. That way you can completely use it like a monitor instead of a TV.
catlikesshrimp 10mo ago
Keep in mind: "Is your android TV streaming box part of a botnet?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46037556 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46037556
- mbreese 10mo ago
  Which is generally easier to fix (replace) than a TV.
- wolvoleo 10mo ago
  Yeah SmartTubeNext recently got hacked too :(
apparent 10mo ago
True, but when you want to change any of the TV settings you have to deal with the sluggish UI. I have memorized the key presses to toggle between two different brightness presets, including the amount of time I have to pause between each keypress. If I press the buttons without waiting sufficiently long, it goes sideways.

brk 10mo ago

That sounds like you have an overly shitty ‘smart’ TV. Plenty of external devices (I’m partial to AppleTV) have no significant lag. Or it could be you’re using some niche service that has its own issues.

no_wizard 10mo ago
It’s a matter of time before tv manufacturers start requiring an app to sync with the TV to set it up. That would let them glean information about you every time you use said app. You’re still getting around this with a 3rd party device like an Apple TV for the most part but if it’s required to even turn it off or on it’ll be enough to sync any metadata that it holds
- pletnes 10mo ago
  My samsung did this years ago. Not sure if it was truly required but I’d say this has happened.
- ggus 10mo ago
  My LG does just that. The tv remote sensor stopped working (and broke again after servicing), so now the only way to use the TV is by the LG app on my phone.. which asks for permissions to Nearby Devices, Location, Camera, Microphone, Notifications, Phone, Music&Audio...
  - Melatonic 10mo ago
    Lots of good generic remotes out there (still using a Logitech harmony personally)
kenjackson 10mo ago
External devices like AppleTV, Roku or Xboxes are responsive. It’s the actual TV UI that tends to be very slow and laggy.
- akagr 10mo ago

m4tthumphrey 10mo ago

This is definitely due to the age/quality/model of the TV. I have 4 LG TVs across the house and the newest/biggest is 100x faster than the oldest.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

alexfoo 10mo ago

And not always anything to do with the TV. I have BT TV (https://www.bt.com/help/tv/learn-about-tv/bt-tv-boxes https://www.bt.com/help/tv/learn-about-tv/bt-tv-boxes) and the UI is painfully slow at times (UI response to a button press of 10-20 seconds), searching is horribly slow. Can't wait to ditch it for something more responsive (probably Sky Stream). I also miss an old TV that had a "q.rev" button to allowed you to switch back and forth between two channels with a single button. Perfect for skipping advert breaks (which is almost certainly why most entertainment systems don't have it any more).

GJim 10mo ago
> Perfect for skipping advert breaks The mute button is the next best thing. Advertisements become much less irritating when silenced. I'm surprised so few people appear to mute advert breaks.
- alexfoo 10mo ago
  Yeah, that's the next best. I taught my kid to mute adverts from an early age. It really winds up one family member who works in TV advertising, so that's a bonus.
Thlom 10mo ago
Can't you just buy an AppleTV, download the EE/BT TV app and ditch the box? My ISP also sends me these boxes that I never connect to my TV since their app on AppleTV works better than using the god awful TV box.

gwbas1c 10mo ago

When Netflix released an awful update that had that problem, I called and threatened to cancel.

SamBam 10mo ago
And they immediately fixed the lag?
- gwbas1c 10mo ago
  Within a few days it appeared that the update was recalled. It was the bad update that made videos start playing as soon as you selected them, instead of going to the information page. I get the impression I wasn't the only person who complained; I suspect that any manager who sat down to watch TV that night probably twisted a few arms.
  - pests 10mo ago
    I'm seeing that again in some of their UI, where you have to specifically click More Info to get to the details page vs playing immediately.

haritha-j 10mo ago

Honestly we don't need TVs, just big monitors. I can figure out the rest, thank you.

al_borland 10mo ago
The monitor I use for work is 43” and can double as a TV. It also has 4 HDMI inputs, which can act as 4 displays. I could, in theory, watch TV via a streaming box, play a console, and still have the equivalent of 2 21” monitors going at the same time. I’d love this kind of flexibility on my primary TV in the living room.
- dylan604 10mo ago
  Is this something you're actually able to do with this monitor, or that you think it should be able to do it? If it can actually display all 4 inputs at the same time, I'd be interested in knowing the model and price of that monitor. That's a feature that tends to require special equipment that's not cheap.
  - al_borland 10mo ago
    This is something it is actually able to do. I would like it to be more of a standard feature on monitors and TVs. When it came out it seemed like a unicorn, it still kind of does. It's an LG 43UD79-B. According to LG's site[0], it's discontinued. I got it from Costco in 2017 for $550, but it was sold many places at the time. Doing a quick glance at LG's current lineup, there isn't an obvious successor. It looks like Amazon has 1 person selling it used[1], but in 6/10 condition and no remote, for double the price of new... While it looks the remote is also being sold places, it's pretty useless without the remote. The seller has sketchy ratings as well, I'd stay away. [0] https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-43UD79-B-4k-uhd-led-monitor https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-43UD79-B-4k-uhd-led-monito... [1] https://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronics-LED-lit-Monitor-43UD79-B/dp/B0711MP768 https://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronics-LED-lit-Monitor-43UD79...
    - dylan604 10mo ago

FartyMcFarter 10mo ago

10-20 seconds? What TV are you using?

elAhmo 10mo ago

It is time for a new TV!

rubslopes 10mo ago

People are replying that OP must own an old TV, but that's missing the point: with very old non-smart TVs, menu commands were always instantaneous!

H3X_K1TT3N 10mo ago
Yeah, I don't understand why everyone is trying to invalidate their experience or suggest workarounds (implying that they are the problem); this isn't stackoverflow. Every TV I have interacted with in recent years is slow and terrible, except for really old ones. The TVs are the problem, and we shouldn't be making excuses for that.
dylan604 10mo ago
This was my experience with the switch from analog cable boxes to digital boxes. The whole experience became sluggish as channel changes were forced to wait for I-frames which depended on the GOP size.

hadlock 10mo ago

The "smart" TV in my office is hooked up to a chromecast thing and I interact with the chromecast dongle. My TV has never been hooked up to the TV and in fact I haven't even accepted the EULA. The GUI on the TV is lightning fast, and since it can't update itself (and never will!) it will remain lightning fast. If my 4k HDMI dongle begins to struggle, I will plug in a new device via HDMI. I was not able to win that argument with my wife on the living room TV but our LG (C series) I was able to disable the ads and with a recent update I can now turn off all but the ~4 apps we use (youtube + disney+, + netflix and one or two rotating services). Fingers crossed LG does not push the "brick your TV" update before it's usefule EOL. The HBO app on our ~2016 era samsung was totally useless by 2018. I am hoping we get more than 2 years out of our current TV before the GUI starts creaking under it's own weight. The Samsung also started showing ads in the app menu selection about 3 years after we started buying it (from korean car makers, really good way to ensure I never buy your brands!).

hilbert42 10mo ago
"I am hoping we get more than 2 years out of our current TV before the GUI starts creaking under it's own weight." Ha! The Sharp color TV here in the kitchen is now nearly 48 years old (bought in 1978) and still functions well but with the addition of a set top box/PVR although its remote control has been repaired many times (but the TV itself has never needed maintenance). Other flat screen TVs have no internet access or are used monitor style with separate STBs/PVRs. As I mentioned on HN some weeks ago, if the trend continues and manufacturers booby-trap sets into planned obsolescence, I'll buy only monitors and connect them via HDMI to a TV feed. My ancient Sharp TV shouts at me that these days there's something terribly wrong with domestic electronic appliances.

Melatonic 10mo ago

This can usually be improved by turning off all the crap you want anyways (noise reduction - smart dynamic contrast adjustment - anything similar). Opting out of the ad tracking and personalisation also seemed to slightly speed up some TVs as well for me. Also experienced a Samsung TV at an Airbnb once that was insanely slow - turns out it had very little storage space to begin with and was literally at 0 remaining. Deleted a few larger apps and reinstalled the remaining and it sped up a lot once it had some cache to work with.

bartread 10mo ago

I don’t run into this because I never allow the TV to connect to the internet. I basically use it as a dumb screen with a set of speakers and a bunch of devices connected to it: Apple TV, consoles, etc. As such, when I do use the TV remote - if I need to manually change sources, adjust picture settings, or whatever - the TV’s UI remains responsive. I have heard that some brands of TV will try to stealth connect to open hotspots to download updates and whathaveyou, but haven’t run into that issue with LG or, in more recent years, Hisense.

hamdingers 10mo ago
This is always the top reply and it's not particularly useful. I want the ease and convenience of having a single device both play and display content, there's no reason that should be so hard. Of course I know I could Buy More Things but that sucks as a suggestion. This is how most people use their TVs these days (despite the issues with it). It's reasonable and fair to ask for a better experience.
- dylan604 10mo ago
  I tried the smart tv, but then the app devs stopped updating the apps for that model or version of the OS. there's nothing wrong with the picture, but to be able to keep using apps would require a new tv. That's when I switched to devices connected to the TV, and stopped using the TV's apps. Devs will always update for devices like Roku, AppleTV, etc as there's enough users. I can only imagine the number of users for specific model of tv's OS will get smaller and no longer worth effort on the dev's time.
- exhumet 10mo ago
  its a double edged sword, better hardware and experience = more expensive (see Sonys higher end stuff) 90% of would much rather drop the money on the less expensive BIG TV with a cpu that cant even transcode properly and harvests your data to offset the price. ive got a lot of family and friends that use my plex server and i pretty much force them to get a dedicated streaming device for it or warn them that unfortunately i cant help them if the content doesnt want to play.
- 10mo ago

brabel 10mo ago

I had a 75-inch TV I inherited, it was on the higher end and the TV UI was supper snappy. Then, I broke it accidentally and got only 1/4 of the money from insurance. Because I barely watch TV, I thought I would just buy a TV of the same size, but on the lower end... both TVs were Samsung anyway. What a huge difference. The image quality is a little worse, barely noticeable after you get used to it. But the UI is agonizingly slow. Every time I turn the TV on it starts showing some channel fairly quickly, but then after several seconds the image gets black because it's loading the stupid UI... and I can't find a way for it to NOT do that! The higher end TV, needless to say, didn't do that. So now, I know what you're paying for when you get a TV for $4,000 instead of $1,000: slightly better image , but a proper computer to run the stupidly heavy UI (probably made using some heavy JS framework, I suppose).

jliptzin 10mo ago
Plug a new chromecast into one of the HDMI ports and use that and only that and weld the setting shut so that you never have to deal with the TV’s default UI ever again.
- eru 10mo ago
  Though you still have to turn off the frame generation on the TV.
- vee-kay 10mo ago
  I use an Amazon FireTV Stick on my old non-smart LG TV. And the advantage is that the FireTV has a simple cute little remote control device. There is a nifty Setting in the Amazon FireTV UI to allow its remote to turn on/off the TV too. So it's been a long time since I had to wrestle with the TV's built-in OS. I just use the pleasant UI of the FireTV Stick to watch Netflix, Prime, Disney+, etc. on that decade+ old TV. That FireTV becomes sluggish if I keep multiple apps open, so I have learnt to exit out of an app before switching to the new one. I may get a new FireTV stick this year, rather than splurging for a new TV, since the old TV is still doing well. As the Americans say: If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

port11 10mo ago

Our Samsung running Tizen has the obnoxious need to check if antenna-based broadcasting is available, every single time you open the settings menu. It never is, it won’t ever again be in Europe. But it checks. And lags. And then whatever you chose in the menu is not what it selected. Every. Single. Time. Going to settings makes me wince.

amelius 10mo ago

Hey, trying to change the source of my monitor from HDMI-1 to DisplayPort takes 30 seconds.

AndrewDavis 10mo ago

Mine is so slow to become initially responsive. It (thankfully) comes on to whatever source / channel it was on when turned off, but it takes a good 15 seconds till you can change a channel, closer to 30 seconds to change input source. And when it does accept inputs it frustratingly drops inputs for another 10 seconds or so.

steve_taylor 10mo ago

When you're a low-tier video streaming company, you look for cost savings such as writing the same app as few times as you can get away with, so typically you end up with the same web app running on Tizen, webOS, VIDAA, PS4, PS5 and quite often Fire TV and even Xbox. Even Amazon's new Vega OS with its React Native way of building apps has a WebView escape hatch. These TVs typically have really slow SOCs – certainly not fast enough to run a web app the way a typical dev write a web app these days.

georgefrowny 10mo ago

Turn on TV: 3 seconds Roku boots: 10 seconds Meanwhile turn on soundbar: 3 seconds Press Roku remote button: 3 seconds until it wakes up and repairs (remote still eats batteries) Open streaming app: 5-10 seconds Select profile: 3 seconds Scroll about looking for show: 5-20 seconds, or a minute to type it in Select the right episode: 3-10 seconds depending on if it's currently on the right season (somehow not always) Start and buffering: 5-10 seconds Ad: 20-40 seconds (depending on platform) And that's all if you're concentrating on getting through it and the device isn't a laggy UI toxic waste dump. Some TVs you have to press each button and wait for each one to register. At least there isn't an FBI copyright warning at the start I suppose (when you don't live in the US).

mlrtime 10mo ago
Rokus are ad selling devices, I wish someone would just hack them [devices] already so we can strip it out.
austin-cheney 10mo ago
Everybody complains about performance. Slow software feels like poison. Except, anything written with a large JavaScript framework is allowed to be slow. In fact slow as syrup is strongly encouraged. To prove it just ask the developers. Mention it could be 8-50x faster just by not using their favorite framework and note the response. Even better, show them a proof of concept and take note of their unemotional objectivity.
- bayindirh 10mo ago
  In short, user experience and efficiency is sacrificed everywhere for development velocity, time to market and monies. This is embodiment of worse (for the customer) is better (for the business) adage.
  - austin-cheney 10mo ago
    That is a rather generous comment. As a former JavaScript developer I can tell you the qualities of concern are not the business concerns of delivery. Delivery will increase just as dramatically by reducing the tech debt imposed from unnecessary code. All that really matters is solving for developer anxiety.

johnisgood 10mo ago

Modern TV, yeah. TVs from 15 years ago were waaaay faster than smart TVs. Ridiculous.

throwawayffffas 10mo ago

Do you remember analog TVs? Switching channels was a sub second affair.

GJim 10mo ago
I remember our first digital TV crashing and needing to reboot it. "Wow"! we said. This is the future. Having to reboot the TV.
LocalH 9mo ago
It was sub frame. You would literally see the set re-sync to the new timing (since each station's vblank would not necessarily be happening at the same time).

dustypotato 10mo ago

I uninstalled google launcher and shitty Xiaomi apps in my Mi TV stick using ADB and switched to F-Launcher. Can't be happier with the performance.

philthe 9mo ago

Honestly the main reason I could never use anything other than an Apple TV. Every smart tv or box or stick I’ve ever used is barely acceptable in terms of input responsiveness fresh out of the box. And after one system update it’s usually over and a complete pain to use