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Comment by IgorPartola | Hacker News Reader

I honestly don’t know what you are talking about. My TCL Roku TV is great and I will be buying another soon. It does everything I want and none of the things I don’t. It’s easy to use for me and for my kids. Roku also has all the major streaming services that I want. And I haven’t seen a commercial in 10 years. What am I missing?

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I also own a TCL Roku TV and the interface is easily twice as slow as my Roku Ultra. Right on the home screen is a giant ad(unless you have network adblocking). Over the years Roku and Google have been fighting about Youtube/Youtube TV on Roku, just like Disney/ESPN fought the cable companies.

I also own a Toshiba built FireTV that suffers from those same problems but far worse. Way more ads, much slower interface, and the hilarious part is a hidden power off button in the menus(it's fun trying to turn the TV off without the proper remote).

Granted I have never owned a Roku Ultra but the UI is plenty fast for me. And yes I pay for NextDNS so I don’t see giant ads. I think about it so little that I forget to mention it.

my Roku Ultra is very fast. It's the TCL Roku TV that is very slow.

Don't use the interface? Use it as a dumb monitor right?

I'll go as far as to say that you can't complain about a slow interface of a cheap smart TV if you went out to buy it with the purpose of using it just as a monitor which is what you really should be doing. The smart isn't a value add except for being able to use a remote app on your phone especially if you're a HN frequenter. You gotta have computers lying around that can replace all the "smart".

1) I'm not the sole user of these TVs. 2) If I wanted a "dumb monitor" I would have bought one. 3) When I sit down to watch something, I put my phone away and in a different room so I am not distracted by it, that goes against using the "remote apps".

That's my experience with my TCL also. When I get up in the morning I just turn on the Roku TV app on my phone, Go to the remote, turn on the TV, hit right once, then hit okay. Then it's on HDMI 1 and it's displaying my Mac Mini all day. This is a dumb TV. Doesn't do anything except what I tell it to and it just shows what I want.

Obviously you were lucky. My experiences were based on Sony and Samsung, so TCL might be a different story and also different people have different needs. For me, all I need is really just a instant on big screen with decent speakers, nothing more.

What do you plan on putting on that screen once it’s on?

Not your business. :)

I want it, I can pay for it, it's weird that it's getting harder to do so.

Sure. But as a practical matter, if your plan is to hook it up to a Roku, an Amazon Fire, or an Apple TV, then what does it matter if it’s built in or not.

Besides, buy commercial panels. You’ll pay a premium for your premium needs and get a much more robust device in the process.

Actually you're right and I'm looking into buying exactly one of those.

You got any recommendations?

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