I have a nice Samsung QLED TV. I was really excited to buy it. After using it for a couple years, I hate the smart features on this TV.
Let me backtrack for a second.
I want control.
Camera, computer, or TV, I want to control how I operate that item. I want to know what media I can use with it. I want to know what features will interact with my other networked hardware.
There can be NO gatekeepers between me, the hardware I use, and the media I pay for.
In the early days of Tivo, I popped a TV capture card into an old PC with a huge hard drive, just so I could better manage my own DVR recordings and skip commercials. I get a bit fanatical about control.
Owning a Samsung TV has been upsetting because I feel like I’ve been losing control over that premium purchase.
What started out as a nice display upgrade, slowly shifted to an ad platform with poor app support.
Little ads were snuck in on my home list of apps, now banners take up roughly a third of the screen. Samsung TV Plus regularly hijacks what were watching to offer mediocre TV streaming. It’s so poor that the first result when searching for “Samsung TV Plus” returns the following text: Samsung TV Plus is an integrated feature of your TV and it can’t be fully removed.
At the same time, some of my favorite services like Plex and Google Play are lagging and locking up. It’s a regular action in our home to reboot the TV to get the basics working again.
Smart TVs are the modern equivalent of TV/VCR combos.
They seem convenient, but over time the “smart” hardware becomes a pain point. The computer part of a smart TV isn’t going to last as long as the display part, which reinforces a planned obsolescence pressure to upgrade sooner than you might otherwise need to.
Some smart TVs are better than others, but the more I play with other brands, the more I feel that it’s just better to use some other device to control the viewing experience. Switching to a new Chromecast backs this idea up better than I thought it would.
I’m a LONG time Chromecast fan.
I really do genuinely prefer the idea of “casting” content to a receiver on a TV. Generally, my phone is a faster interface to navigate. I find what I want to watch, and then throw that to a screen. With a few hiccups along the way, watching content on second generation Chromecasts has been more consistent than trying to stream directly through our Samsung QLED.
I really believed this would be “the future” of streaming content. Alas, we’ve trained people too well. Using a stick with buttons is the way to control a TV. In our house, we never fully escaped that idea. Between TV and soundbar, even with a Chromecast, we regularly had to hunt for a remote to change or fix something. We never achieved that truly digital interoperability, and phones gave up on IR blasters, which helped fill in the remote gaps.
Firing up the new Chromecast, in some ways it feels like a step back. In my brain this is a minor defeat, relying on a stick with buttons again.
And then I got over myself.
Some of my general complaints remain. Any UI which requires a remote will be slower to navigate than my phone, but the browsing experience on Google TV is light-years smoother than Samsung’s UI.
As a legacy idea, cranky tech reviewers like me can still cast through the little buttons on our apps. Now there’s just an additional piece of hardware to control a proper front-end UI.
I don’t have a lot to add about the software conversation. There’s terrific integration for the most popular services. Having fired up Sling, Plex, YouTube, Amazon, Hulu, Tidal, and the dedicated button on the remote for Netflix, there hasn’t been any down time. Things load like you think they should, though I do find it interesting that the two dedicated buttons on the remote are YouTube and Netflix. Your Google Play Movie catalog is now the “Library” listed on the far end of your top menu.
The only annoyance I have, your basic homescreen offers recommendations, but there’s not always a clear conveyance on what service serves the content recommended. Google Home and Google TV are approaching a more seamless unified platform, tying together all the separate services we might be subscribed to, but there’s still room to polish this up.
I was concerned this would be yet another remote we would have to keep track of, but it’s a nifty add on for the price. The little remote included with the Chromecast is a better universal remote than most of the options you might get for around $10 on Amazon, and included in the price of a $50 solution that supports 4K HDR streaming.
More than previous generations of Chromecast, this model feels more like a little computer hooked up to your TV. In a small puck, dangling from an HDMI port, we’ve got some decently powerful processor cores and 2GB of RAM. The hardware here is similar to the low power CPU cores found in many phones.
It’s surprisingly powerful, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. This little receiver needs to process and stream high quality video. Paired with a more traditional operating system, we get more native support for apps. Running Netflix has a familiar front end. Many Android apps are supported, and this hardware connects to accessories like most phones and tablets will. Pairing my SteelSeries gaming controller was easy, and there was excellent support for using a controller to navigate the Chromecast interface.
It’s an interesting middle point for performance. The Chromecast is not quite powerful enough to game natively. An arcade shooter like Xenowerk loads and plays, but at a choppy frame rate you probably won’t enjoy for long.
This hardware should be plenty powerful enough to support game streaming however. These mini solutions are the tip of the spear to encourage more consumers to try services like Stadia.
For the better part of ten years I’ve kept a computer connected to my TV.
Streaming sticks have always had some kind omission. One service that didn’t work, or support would be missing for certain types of media. In years past, a proper computer was the only solution to fill those gaps.
Over time though, the “convenience” of keeping a Windows PC connected to my TV hasn’t improved much. Even using a “tablet” style UI for Windows 10, we’ve never achieved a TV streamlined control for a full computer. I need to keep a Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad combo connected.
At the same time, streaming sticks have gotten increasingly more powerful, and there’s less corporate gate-keeping. I don’t have to use different hardware solutions for different services just because Amazon and Google are feuding. There’s nothing in my digital library which the Chromecast has failed to play, even my larger Blu-Ray MKV rips.
The PC I use for my TV is substantially more powerful, but there are fewer and fewer areas where that power provides a tangible benefit. At this point, the only critical PC victory is natively rendering a game.
Outside gaming, the Chromecast + remote experience is significantly more convenient, and just as media complete. It still feels a little like Star Trek magic to tell my phone to play a movie, and watch my TV turn on and play that move.
I’m not breaking any crazy news here.
Generally, most of my family and friends I speak with fall into two camps: People who hate their TVs and people who use some other kind of streaming solution.
This new Chromecast properly cements the idea that I’ll be recommending some other front end for TVs. Nvidia Shields, Apple TVs, Rokus, and Amazon Fire TVs, the new Chromecast joins a lineup of media streaming solutions which all generally outperform the built in TV software I’ve experienced. There’s something critically important to this consumer conversation.
Familiarity matters.
Once a consumer is familiar with this interface, and they know they can move this hardware to a new TV, a product like this could (and should) outlast the TV its paired with.
There’s no reason to suffer a lame “smart” TV UI. These boxes are much smarter.
I’m happy for my TV to be turned back into a dumb display again.
Appreciate your approach on the Smart TV buying decision. I was also looking for a non-smart option for same reasons listed by you.
We all know the our good ol android which slows down in a couple of years and the software support that can be expected for Android TV’s. I didn’t wanted to be in a situation where I was looking for an upgrade in 3-4 years just because of the laggy UI. I am a firm believer in the fact that it is an easier purchase decision to upgrade a slow streaming device then a fully functional TV.
After an extensive search I found a decent Qled without Android smartness and paired it with my trusty FireStick. I may upgrade to a different streaming device in some time but the TV will be for keeps.
This is the kind of commentary I follow this channel for.
I agree with the sentiments entirely, I got my parents a smart TV and the interface was annoying for them at best. I ended up connecting an old laptop to the TV which they love much more than the smart TV interface. In future, ill get a dumb TV instead.
Have you toyed around with the Logitech Harmony Hub? Its remote sends commands to the base station which blasts IR to all your connected devices. The neat thing is that it can also connect as a bluetooth keyboard to devices (like the Chromecast with Google TV), so even then you don’t need another remote.
It can be a bit of a pain to add devices, and then activities but since it can send all kinds of custom sequences, it’s a cinch to make an activity to “Start Amazon Prime” for instance. That activity can send the right commands to turn on your TV, receiver, switch inputs, and even button presses if you make sure the Prime app is in a pinned location to launch it.
And if you misplace the remote, you can use your phone. And you can map buttons on the remote to custom sequences (which can be remapped per activity). The list goes on and on.
The final piece of integration that I appreciate is the one with Google Home, I can simply say “Hey Google, turn on TV”, or “Hey Google, turn on Nintendo Switch”, and it will execute those activities.