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Comment by pentae | Hacker News Reader

Although I agree with you on points 1-3, point 4 is no longer the case as of this last year or two. Most people are only interested in the main apps such as YouTube, Netflix, Disney+ etc. My 2019 Samsung TV OS is not only fast and smooth but those apps are as good, if not better than the same ones found on an Apple TV. Compared to a crappy Android box the experience is far better.

Why have a seperate device and two remotes when you don't have to? I'm convinced that the marketshare for these external media devices will flatline and steadily decline. In the case of Apple, the only way they can try to compete in the future is releasing their own standalone TV panel. I suppose they saw the writing on the wall which is why AirPlay and Apple TV are now available on Samsungs TV OS

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This might be true for some apps, from the biggest developers. But even there, it only holds for a given point in time.

It's been shown time and again that developer support of past products is atrocious. You just can't count on getting your apps updated through the whole lifecycle of the device. This is partly understandable, as older hardware just isn't going to be able to handle some things (say, H.265). But even so, the developers seem to be doing little more than paying lip service.

The best strategy is to have a dumb monitor, and a device like Roku that you can upgrade very cheaply every year or two.

> Although I agree with you on points 1-3, point 4 is no longer the case as of this last year or two. Most people are only interested in the main apps such as YouTube, Netflix, Disney+ etc. My 2019 Samsung TV OS is not only fast and smooth but those apps are as good, if not better than the same ones found on an Apple TV. Compared to a crappy Android box the experience is far better.

That's more a criticism of "crappy Android boxes" rather than a praise of builtin TV applications. The latter are still barely usable and quickly become obsolete (with updates stopping 1-2 years down the line), compare that to a good Android box like Nvidia Shield.

> Why have a seperate device and two remotes when you don't have to? I'm convinced that the marketshare for these external media devices will flatline and steadily decline.

You may be right long term but it's been years since we've had "Smart TVs" and they are still far from being as good as decent media boxes. That to me means there's an underlying reason, probably a misalignment of incentives.

And btw, depending on your needs you can use a single remote just fine (I use an Fire TV stick bluetooth remote, connected to the Nvidia Shield, for controlling the Shield, the Sony TV and the Yamaha amplifier through HDMI-CEC). With such a combination of different parts from different manufacturers I'm surprised how well it all works.

> That's more a criticism of "crappy Android boxes" rather than a praise of builtin TV applications. The latter are still barely usable and quickly become obsolete (with updates stopping 1-2 years down the line), compare that to a good Android box like Nvidia Shield.

Sorry, but this is just no longer the case. Even my neighbour doesn't turn on his Nvidia shield anymore because his Samsung TV OS is good enough and the Youtube/Netflix apps are fantastic. Samsungs OS is where the dominant marketshare is so the apps are great.

I have a 2014 Bravia TV, and I would still much rather use the Netflix app on that than the one in the PS4. I press one button on the remote, the app starts within seconds, it's smooth and it works. Why would I need anything else? And it's a 5 year old TV at this point!

I'm surprised to hear that. The LG we bought earlier this year has a Netflix app that can barely keep up with the display. It looks much better streamed from the Apple TV than from the TV's own app.

I think it'll be a long time before any TV has a native app store as decent as Apple's (and probably Amazon's, but I don't have personal experience with that so can't vouch for it).

Was this a LG C9 OLED tv? Just curious in how much better and in what way is the Apple TV to the native app. I haven't had any issues afaik. But I haven't used the Apple TV 4k before either, so I guess I wouldn't know if I'm experiencing subpar quality.

It's at home and I'm at work so I can't look at it right now, but it's one of their newer 4K UHD TVs with webOS. I tried it on the guest wifi for a couple of days to see what it would be like, and while it wasn't bad (like I couldn't look you in the eye and say "this sucks, don't use it!"), it just wasn't as good as an external video source. There's no reason it couldn't have a perfectly fine hardware video decoder that's as nice as one you'd find in an external player. Still, its SoC and other support hardware just isn't going to be as nice as what you'd find in a dedicated box. Maybe the network stack isn't as optimized because the CPU has to handle a lot of stuff in software. Or maybe its OS's memory allocator isn't as quick. Or insert a thousand other things that might make a TV's dirt-cheap-as-possible SoC handle all the housekeeping around keeping the decoder fed with data as efficient and smooth as possible.

And as others have pointed out, you're pretty much stuck with what it ships with. If my Apple TV breaks or gets old and unsupported, I can trivially switch to a Roku. If the SoC in my TV gets old and unsupported, there isn't jack I can reasonably do about it other than throw out the whole TV and get a new one.

In my case i've got a flagship panel, the Samsung Q90R (which cost me about $2500) which has a quad core Qualcomm chip with almost instant responsiveness. My Apple TV now sits in a drawer. From the reviews i've seen all the flagship brands like the LG, Sony are all super fast and quite good. I suppose for people buying entry level panels they aren't going to be springing an extra $200 on an Apple TV so they'll put up with a slower experience because it comes included - and that's what consumers appear to be doing.

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