Being able to pull out a full wireless keyboard+mouse when doing productivity work is great. Me and my wife regularly use the TV to plans trips, online shop and do spreasheet stuff.
The LG G5 stock remote doesn't even have a input button... Or a mute button, But it does have, six apps I never want to use, a AI microphone button that isn't useful, an accessibility button (which wouldn't actually be useful if I needed those features, you have to hold it to get a useful menu, which I am sure is easy for people who have trouble with remotes.
I rebound the accessibility button (located top right, where you expect the input button to be) to trigger home assistant to send an IR signal to open the input menu, disabled the random apps (though I did consider assigning those to inputs) and made the ai microphone button a mute button.
Its a bit silky I need a WebKit vuln and a vibe coded homepage to get the TV to the same UX of 10 years ago, but I got there in the end.
All I want is to select my computer or streaming box and turn it off and on :/
The whole thing just felt half-assed. I'm not going back. MS really missed an opportunity, because if it wasn't for quality issues, it would have been halfway decent.
Prior to that I used a mac mini with a TV tuner. The TV tuner software was horrible; the UI for programming the DVR was like writing SQL queries. I have a degree in computer science so I could understand it, but there was no way I'd try to explain that to someone who wasn't interested in databases.
When using Netflix, hit Shift + Control + Option/Alt + D in windowed mode and you'll see an overlay with the stream information. My system mentioned above is currently playing a 4K Netflix stream (3840x2160).
Sadly the audio is still 2.0 as you mentioned.
The other obvious issue is how much compression is used on the stream. For films I really care about, I'll buy the 4K UHD BD, rip it, keep the physical media as a backup, and enjoy a less compressed stream with better audio.
Back when I had the time, I'd use a colorimeter to produce an accurate display profile for my TV which would automatically be loaded by MacOS on the MacMini. For my displays of around 10 years ago, this would result in a noticeable improvement in quality, particularly for monochrome content where red push etc. is obvious.
The correct place to solve this is in a dedicated LUT in the display. This used to be the domain of high-end displays (medical imaging displays, professional-level displays for graphics designers etc) however I suspect it's hit the mainstream by now. My gaming display from 2025 came with a printout of the gamma ramp from the factory, so I strongly suspect they wrote it to the flash in the display and use it automatically. This does drift over time, though.
It'd be great to see whether the rooted LG displays provide a way to write a custom gamma ramp to the display, if this functionality is present.
You can run custom launchers on Android boxes and modded YouTube to remove most of the ads. Airplay works to mirror my laptop to my TV.
TV manufacturer OS < Apple/Google OS < user OS
Most people don't really care for their TV being a computer display even if you do.
A shield does, at least.