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Personally a dumb tv/roku/media server has been my go to choice. This whole smartTV hype is still beyond me. Could someone please touch on the advantages of a

by Fundlab 12y ago

Personally a dumb tv/roku/media server has been my go to choice. This whole smartTV hype is still beyond me. Could someone please touch on the advantages of a smart TV offerings over my setup?

daigoba66 12y ago
Some people like the concept of having fewer boxes to plug in. That means fewer cords, fewer remotes, etc. Personally I would love to have a TV running a decent OS (as long as it still boots instantly). Unfortunately TV manufactures do such a shitty job with the software. Both in terms of quality/performance/usability, and now with privacy issues and injected ads.
- delecti 12y ago
  Exactly. If it was an option to get a smart tv that was actually competent then it wouldn't be such an easy decision to avoid them like the plague. Though even then, I'm always going to have devices plugged into my TV. A combination of my PS3 and PC can access any of the content I might want to watch.
- tomjen3 12y ago
  I used to agree with you, kinda regretted I brought a dumb tv. Then I got a Chrome cast. Plug and go, no remotes (you use your phone or tablet) the ugly wires are hidden behind the tv.
FreakyT 12y ago
I think main purpose of a Smart TV is to act as a single-device solution for people who don't already have a Roku/Chromecast/whatever.
- spiritplumber 12y ago
  Good, some more high profile fiascos like this, and people will understand that it's best when they control what's wired up to what.
dagw 12y ago
In theory: Nothing extra to buy and decide about. Fewer chords, boxes, remotes etc. Better integrated and unified UX between live TV/recorded TV/streaming TV/downloaded TV etc. In practice. Very little. I'm still waiting for someone to do smart TV right with good software (Hell, just pay a couple of the XBMC devs to port the latest version to your TV) and an open platform with support for third party and DIY software.
lucaspiller 12y ago
I purposely bought a Philips smart TV this year as the only stuff I really watch is Netflix, iPlayer, YouTube and my own ripped content. This TV advertised apps for all of that and DLNA support, so I figured I wouldn't need any other boxes. I have used XBMC before and that worked great, except there is still no Netflix support, so I figured I'd try something with it built in. Netflix works perfectly, and I really can't complain about it. The interface is very user friendly and it is very responsive. I guess it's pretty much the same as you get on an Apple TV or Amazon whatever-its-called box, but it's nice to have it built in. YouTube works pretty well. It's sometimes a bit slow to skip to the next video, but being able to use my phone or laptop as a remote to queue up content is pretty nice. iPlayer is pretty hopeless. If I play a SD video it plays in the wrong aspect ratio, and HD video just keeps buffering (Netflix 720p is fine though...). The interface is nice though. DLNA started off well, the browser is pretty basic but even over wifi I was able to stream 1080p which was impressive. Then some videos I tried just crashed the player randomly after 10 minutes, so I gave up on that. I've now got a Raspberry Pi with XBMC/Kodi running. It's a bit slow (seems to be inefficiencies of the software, as even idle in the menu it uses 80% of the CPU), but 1080p movies play back fine even over wifi. I use that in place of the DLNA on my TV and use get_iplayer to fix that. They both support HDMI CEC which means I can use just the TV remote to control the Raspberry Pi without any addons. There are a few other things I should mention too: The whole interface of the TV is HTML and Javascript (it runs Opera 9 under the hood) and it isn't very optimised. This means even simple things such as pressing the 'Source' button to view the source list (you can't just press it to switch, you need to press this then select the new source from the menu) takes 30 seconds to load. I specifically bought this TV and an amplifier (both Philips) that support HDMI ARC, this means that audio can be sent from the TV (or peripherals) to the amplifier via just the HDMI cable. When it works it works great, but most of the time for whatever reason it just doesn't. I ended up buying a $3 optical S/PDIF cable from eBay which works as expected (i.e. it just works) and achieves the same end goal. If I'd known it would have been this flakey, I would have just gone that route in the first place and I could have got a cheaper amplifier. The TV also has Skype built in, and an optional camera for $100. I'm glad I didn't buy that at the same time as the TV... So what's the purpose of a smart TV? I have no idea. I would prefer a 'dumb' TV, but it seems pretty much everything is a smart TV now. Edit: I also looked into building my own interface for it. The 'Smart TV' home screen has ads on it loaded over HTTP, so I setup my router to sent that traffic to my own server and served up a JavaScript redirect. It worked well, but I never got around to taking it further. According to the spec [0] the TV supports 1080p60 x264 at 25 Mbit/s. [0] http://www.yourappontv.com/documentation/smart-tv-versions-spec/smart-tv-version-3 http://www.yourappontv.com/documentation/smart-tv-versions-s... (free signup required)
slowmotiony 12y ago
The TV that I wanted was not available without the smart functions. In fact, most new TVs aren't. It's not like I chose to pay extra for the smart stuff.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  Its worth noting that a TV is already a combination device (though, mostly, a sensible one): display + TV tuner. In many cases, you can get a similar display separately, branded as a "Monitor" or "Commercial Display" or something similar, with HDMI inputs, etc., but no TV tuner and no smart features. If you are using locally-stored media, internet sources and/or a cable box as your content sources, you probably don't need a TV tuner built into your display any more than you need "Smart" features built into it.
zamalek 12y ago
> Could someone please touch on the advantages of a smart TV offerings over my setup? Advertisements during your locally stored content, possibly for whatever the hell it is that they are smoking at Samsung.

by Fundlab 12y ago

Personally a dumb tv/roku/media server has been my go to choice. This whole smartTV hype is still beyond me. Could someone please touch on the advantages of a smart TV offerings over my setup?

daigoba66 12y ago

Some people like the concept of having fewer boxes to plug in. That means fewer cords, fewer remotes, etc. Personally I would love to have a TV running a decent OS (as long as it still boots instantly). Unfortunately TV manufactures do such a shitty job with the software. Both in terms of quality/performance/usability, and now with privacy issues and injected ads.

delecti 12y ago
Exactly. If it was an option to get a smart tv that was actually competent then it wouldn't be such an easy decision to avoid them like the plague. Though even then, I'm always going to have devices plugged into my TV. A combination of my PS3 and PC can access any of the content I might want to watch.
tomjen3 12y ago
I used to agree with you, kinda regretted I brought a dumb tv. Then I got a Chrome cast. Plug and go, no remotes (you use your phone or tablet) the ugly wires are hidden behind the tv.

FreakyT 12y ago

I think main purpose of a Smart TV is to act as a single-device solution for people who don't already have a Roku/Chromecast/whatever.

spiritplumber 12y ago
Good, some more high profile fiascos like this, and people will understand that it's best when they control what's wired up to what.

dagw 12y ago

In theory: Nothing extra to buy and decide about. Fewer chords, boxes, remotes etc. Better integrated and unified UX between live TV/recorded TV/streaming TV/downloaded TV etc. In practice. Very little. I'm still waiting for someone to do smart TV right with good software (Hell, just pay a couple of the XBMC devs to port the latest version to your TV) and an open platform with support for third party and DIY software.

lucaspiller 12y ago

I purposely bought a Philips smart TV this year as the only stuff I really watch is Netflix, iPlayer, YouTube and my own ripped content. This TV advertised apps for all of that and DLNA support, so I figured I wouldn't need any other boxes. I have used XBMC before and that worked great, except there is still no Netflix support, so I figured I'd try something with it built in. Netflix works perfectly, and I really can't complain about it. The interface is very user friendly and it is very responsive. I guess it's pretty much the same as you get on an Apple TV or Amazon whatever-its-called box, but it's nice to have it built in. YouTube works pretty well. It's sometimes a bit slow to skip to the next video, but being able to use my phone or laptop as a remote to queue up content is pretty nice. iPlayer is pretty hopeless. If I play a SD video it plays in the wrong aspect ratio, and HD video just keeps buffering (Netflix 720p is fine though...). The interface is nice though. DLNA started off well, the browser is pretty basic but even over wifi I was able to stream 1080p which was impressive. Then some videos I tried just crashed the player randomly after 10 minutes, so I gave up on that. I've now got a Raspberry Pi with XBMC/Kodi running. It's a bit slow (seems to be inefficiencies of the software, as even idle in the menu it uses 80% of the CPU), but 1080p movies play back fine even over wifi. I use that in place of the DLNA on my TV and use get_iplayer to fix that. They both support HDMI CEC which means I can use just the TV remote to control the Raspberry Pi without any addons. There are a few other things I should mention too: The whole interface of the TV is HTML and Javascript (it runs Opera 9 under the hood) and it isn't very optimised. This means even simple things such as pressing the 'Source' button to view the source list (you can't just press it to switch, you need to press this then select the new source from the menu) takes 30 seconds to load. I specifically bought this TV and an amplifier (both Philips) that support HDMI ARC, this means that audio can be sent from the TV (or peripherals) to the amplifier via just the HDMI cable. When it works it works great, but most of the time for whatever reason it just doesn't. I ended up buying a $3 optical S/PDIF cable from eBay which works as expected (i.e. it just works) and achieves the same end goal. If I'd known it would have been this flakey, I would have just gone that route in the first place and I could have got a cheaper amplifier. The TV also has Skype built in, and an optional camera for $100. I'm glad I didn't buy that at the same time as the TV... So what's the purpose of a smart TV? I have no idea. I would prefer a 'dumb' TV, but it seems pretty much everything is a smart TV now. Edit: I also looked into building my own interface for it. The 'Smart TV' home screen has ads on it loaded over HTTP, so I setup my router to sent that traffic to my own server and served up a JavaScript redirect. It worked well, but I never got around to taking it further. According to the spec [0] the TV supports 1080p60 x264 at 25 Mbit/s. [0] http://www.yourappontv.com/documentation/smart-tv-versions-spec/smart-tv-version-3 http://www.yourappontv.com/documentation/smart-tv-versions-s... (free signup required)

slowmotiony 12y ago

The TV that I wanted was not available without the smart functions. In fact, most new TVs aren't. It's not like I chose to pay extra for the smart stuff.

dragonwriter 12y ago
Its worth noting that a TV is already a combination device (though, mostly, a sensible one): display + TV tuner. In many cases, you can get a similar display separately, branded as a "Monitor" or "Commercial Display" or something similar, with HDMI inputs, etc., but no TV tuner and no smart features. If you are using locally-stored media, internet sources and/or a cable box as your content sources, you probably don't need a TV tuner built into your display any more than you need "Smart" features built into it.

zamalek 12y ago

> Could someone please touch on the advantages of a smart TV offerings over my setup? Advertisements during your locally stored content, possibly for whatever the hell it is that they are smoking at Samsung.