Does anyone actually prefer the experience of an integrated Smart TV compared to a separate device? If these users exist, they probably wouldn't be found around these parts.
I do find it interesting because conversely in a car I absolutely do prefer an OEM integrated infotainment system as opposed to after market. Granted my experience with after market head units is kinda old, but I recall them seeming fairly antiquated with an OEM unit from the same vintage. Their real appeal was to "modernize" a legacy vehicle.
> Does anyone actually prefer the experience of an integrated Smart TV compared to a separate device? If these users exist, they probably wouldn't be found around these parts.
Sure, I've got a Sony TV with built-in netflix/amazon prime/chromecast receiver in it. Works great. There's no tv-inserted ads while watching TV or streaming services or anything like that. There's a couple of rows of icons on the homescreen below the app icons that are 'recommended content' which i guess some people consider to be ads (they're not, as far as i can tell) but i pretty much never use the homescreen anyway.
I do always see a lot of negative sentiment around these TVs on this site but really, I'm not bothered by mine at all and in fact quite like not having another device to wrangle.
I turned off the personalised adverts, if that even does anything. Occasionally they have an ad on the home screen, but it's small and not obnoxious (right now there is one for The Hunt on Amazon Prime). They mainly have ads in the app store as they sell content, but I rarely use that. I've never seen ads inserted in content.
The built in Netflix, YouTube and Amazon apps are good enough for my needs. Compared to an external device it's actually better, as you can configure picture settings per app. I have Netflix with a more cinematic settings, where as YouTube is toned down a little and not so bright. I have been thinking of getting a Chromecast so it's easier to share content from my PC (the TV supports Miracast but it's not great), but that's it.
What do you mean? I have a 2020 LG OLED and I'm using all the apps built into it. It has everything - Netflix, Amazon, YouTube.....buying a separate device seems like a waste of money at this point. It's also very quick, I was setting up a Fire Stick Lite for someone couple months ago and I was surprised how slow it is compared to this TV.
Can it? Aside from a very few functions reverse-engineered from LG's smartphone remote control apps, I've not found any way to control core display functionality via either TCP/IP or documented WebOS APIs, including such simple things as backlight brightness and display power on/off, at least on my 2018 model.
There is, on the other hand, a documented RS-232 protocol supported across many of LG's smart and "dumb" TVs that supports these things and more, so I threw together a trivial HTTP wrapper
that I use to control various TV settings via keyboard commands and Apple remote.
As a significant bonus, the RS-232 API has a "disable/enable OSD" command, so I can adjust brightness and switch between inputs without an annoying, oversized OSD window covering up a significant portion of the screen for several seconds telling me what I either already know from the resulting display (switched input to, e.g., the GPU connected to my Linux desktop VM) or don't care about (the numerical value of backlight brightness resulting from the latest up/down button press).
That's really interesting, can't wait to take a look.
There's a good webos plugin for homebridge (https://github.com/merdok/homebridge-webos-tv) which is based on LGTV2 (https://github.com/hobbyquaker/lgtv2) which exposes a ton of features, including the ability to instantly switch between apps/inputs. I have my Harmony calling this via my fork of Harmony Span (https://github.com/garethflynn/harmony-span) which very cleverly impersonates a Roku device via SSDP to allow Harmony keypresses to be captured by a server (a Raspberry Pi in my case) and used to run a custom shell script.
It sounds super-fussy, but it actually delivers a really clean way of switching inputs, especially in combination with my Samsung soundbar which, amazingly, only offers direct input selection via http (you can only cycle through them with the remote).
To your first question, yes and no. At least in the short term, yes. My previous Smart TV experience was a Sony from 2014. The "smart" experience was barely usable let alone ideal. I just plugged in other things - PS3 and then various Roku devices.
But a year ago I got a TCL Roku TV, and it's a pretty good experience. The one downside now is that it seems just a tiny bit slower than, say, a Roku 3. And of course no way to upgrade that. Down the line, that could be annoying. But it was also a 65" 4K TV with a pretty good picture all for $500. shrug In five years, I'll get a nicer screen and maybe a separate device, depending on the state of things. As a side note, I got a sound bar with wireless subwoofer and surround that uses HDMI ARC. So I never need a second remote, or a universal remote, or anything like that. It all... just works.
Anyway, built a small TV room for my spouse this fall, and we picked up a 40" TCL Roku TV. Just perfect for the situation. Easier to install, fewer wires, one remote. No complaints really. Perhaps if Roku goes the way of the dodo, and I want that TV screen to last longer, it could be annoying, assuming the "screen" part and the UI that lets me pick the inputs stopped working, I'd be out of luck, but that could be true of any TV. Of course, if updates were malicious and blocked those features, that would be nasty!
I have an LG C9, and I much prefer the integration and smart apps over slower Chromecast/Fire sticks. I can also cast to my TV and still use the remote in the Youtube app when casting (for example). It's a pretty good UX and the C9 has enough compute resources for everything to be very snappy. I could drop more on something like the nVidia Shield, but I already have an HTPC hooked up to my TV, running a Plex server as well as letting me use MPC-HC if I need to.
I've made my peace with the telemetry ramifications though I have not accepted a number of privacy policy notices so things aren't all that bad.
The reason every TV is a smart TV is not because they think you actually want that, but because they make money by selling telemetry on what you watch and serving ads. The margins are TVs are very low and this is where the profit comes from in the industry.
Note that TVs have technology to ID what you watch even if it's just displayed on the screen. This is always on by default, though I think all the TV manufactures do at least claim to let you turn it off.
The general buying public is also prone to thinking “smart TVs” is a good thing, so it’s almost a requisite if you want to succeed selling to the broad population.
I actually have this very TV and I think the smart TV aspects are pretty good, or at least passable, and the smart remote is very nicely engineered. I am sort of a snob with this stuff and just decided to spring for the AppleTV to control everything and to not be at the beck and call of what Samsung thinks is appropriate today especially in terms of ads and interfaces. I love the posh feeling of the Apple UI and it just feels so much more premium to me and cutting edge. With Samsung I feel like I'm in "Android world" where anything goes and no one really cares about polish too much as much as shipping the app and checking off a list of requirements. QA, performance, etc always feel so much worse in Smart TV land. I figure I only buy a new TV or box every 5+ years, so its okay to spend more to be happy. Over 60 months its really not a lot of money if you view it as a monthly expense.
I want it to "just work" and to me Apple seems to do that well enough. I do feel like if money was tighter I would have just toughed it out with the Samsung interface and been mostly happy. Currently, I do find myself cursing at how overly sensitive the Apple remote is and how tiny and easy it is to lose. Buying a white gel cover and setting sensitivity to low helped with this a lot, but that's just more money down the sink compared to just not being a snob and using the built-in system.
It really depends on the quality of the interface. My lower-end Samsung TV is laggy and buggy, maybe there are better Samsung TVs though. I have seen far more expensive LG TVs with decent interfaces that are snappy and work well with a remote.
I generally prefer using a PS4 to the TV apps. But, for instance, in theory the TV could be on standby and I could still use Spotify to cast to the TV and it would perk up and start playing in a way that my PS4 wouldn't, because I'd still need to turn the TV and the PS4 on. However even that doesn't work with my TV -- I have to manually turn it on, then launch the Spotify app before I'm able to cast to it.
Additionally, the Spotify app on my TV works in such a way that the optical audio out to my stereo doesn't produce any LFE/sub-bass, but the Spotify windows app on my PC through HDMI to the same TV, outputting through the same optical does it just fine. And the Netflix app on my TV outputs LFE just fine. Even changing my stereo to output LFE+Main to the sub, the sub gets no signal for some reason if I'm using the TV Spotify app. AND, still with this crap Spotify app on my TV, I have to set the TV audio to TV+Optical Out (and turn the TV volume all the way down) otherwise it doesn't send the sound through the optical.
Clearly I'm dealing with a variety of poor integrations and actual bugs; on my friends' LG TVs most/all of these issues are not present, and everything 'just works'. All I'm trying to do, is open Spotify on my phone and play a song, which I can then cast to a device that will output to my stereo with full audio (including sub) without having to first turn on a bunch of devices and load specific apps.
I do find it interesting because conversely in a car I absolutely do prefer an OEM integrated infotainment system as opposed to after market.
Other things being equal, I would agree. But the auto industry has such a bad record of being irresponsible about security and safety issues, and those who supposedly regulate the industry have so often failed to deal with real and potentially dangerous problems, that I have become wary of anything to do with "connected" vehicles and anything that integrates the essential engineering around vehicle control with non-essential systems of any kind. Sadly, modern car electronics are not only designed but in some cases even legally required to blur that line, and given all the other improvements over older vehicles, it seems inevitable that I will soon have to ride in vehicles I literally don't want to trust with my life.
I have gone out of my way to avoid "smart" TVs and similar devices in my home and office, but I fear the options for alternatives there will also become limited unless and until some form of effective regulation makes the spy-on-your-customers business model toxic.
I hate it. My 3 months old "smart" TV went in a bootloop and Samsung doesn't put any hard reset button on the TV. Due Corona restrictions no technician could come to take a look, and we have to send it back and wait for a new one.
I do find it interesting because conversely in a car I absolutely do prefer an OEM integrated infotainment system as opposed to after market. Granted my experience with after market head units is kinda old, but I recall them seeming fairly antiquated with an OEM unit from the same vintage. Their real appeal was to "modernize" a legacy vehicle.