What is the best OS for televisions?

[knoober]

I am not really a panel nerd, nor one of the image quality elite. I am just a guy who wants an reasonable image quality and to have wife approval factor. Reasonable image means that the bright colors are not bleached out, the darker colors are discernible from each other and mostly that I can just watch TV without being distracted by image quality. With all that said, a while back I grabbed a random Samsung 55 inch from a big box retailer and liked it. The image quality was not even comparable to the budget/bottom shelf TV's I had been watching previously. Then I started digging around in the OS (Tizen is what it is called apparently) and bled to death from the paper cuts. Too small of storage space + preinstalled apps that cannot be removed + non-skippable Samsung account + app store did not contain some of the app I had used on my previous tv.... you get the idea. The easy solution is to get one of those little dongles that plug into the HDMI port (chromestick, firestick, roku, maybe others), but there were problems there as well. These sticks share some oof the same problems but none of them have ALL of the issues that Tizen does. I went through several different options and every one of them overheated. When overheating occured wifi would drop.

Because of this adventure I started to wonder what different OS for televisions are like. Chome and Firestick are both attached to advert/datamining powerhouses. The menu systems are reasonable if you can see past the ads but I wouldnt consider either a great choice because of the parent company. Roku is leaning that direction as well, but gives more options to hide junk menu items and just feels less cluttered to me. So the question is.... what kind of TV do you have and what is the UI like? What do you like about it? Or what might spur you to choose a different brand/OS for your next purchase? FWIW I did try to do some searching but comparisons for TV's are usually about the panel and SoC rather than the UI/UX.

 

[JLK03F150]

I have a Samsung TV, but have never looked at its OS. We use a TIVO Stream 4k and have a YouTube TV account for watching TV shows.
Tried Apple TV (gen 1), ChromeCast, Firestick, and Roku. Of those, the Roku Stick was the least offensive IMO.

I wish we could buy dumb TVs because their OS platforms become outdated quickly so using something external is a better option anyway.

 

[EarthDog]

I like LG's, but, I only use it to access OTA and Apps like Hulu/Netflix/A Prime/Paramount/Peacock, etc.

Since this is how I use my TV, it doesn't matter much to me what OS it has... so long as it is responsive though.

 

[Nebulous]

I have a Samsung TV in the livingroom and an LG in the bedroom. Both have a ton of apps, but since I already had 2 Roku Ultra boxes, I use those for all my free streaming needs. I really didn't give the TV OS's much thought.

 

[Janus67]

LG OLED are our TVs, that said I'd never recommend a TV's OS (frankly I turn on network to get firmware updates and then turn it off again).

I recommend either an Apple TV or nVidia Shield depending on your home OS preferences. (IOS or Android)

 

[don256us]

When I bought my latest TV, I selected the Android OS. My thought is that Android is the giant in the room making it easier for companies to write apps for it.

What I found is that Visio uses it's "Smart" TVs to provide add space and thus subsidize their business income. I've been less than happy with that. Couple this with the fact that WallMart just bought Visio so that they can advertise to me and I will likely not buy another Visio brand.

I still like the idea of buying the Android OS.

 

[knoober]

That was another one of the dealbreakers with TIzen. The ads took up a lot of space and demanded to be interacted with. I had heard that you could set up an android TV box but completely missed that it shipped with off the shelf tv sets. I might have to give it another look, especially if there are custom roms available (doubt it).

My big worry with the streamsticks is that the processing/HDR/audio benefits of a premium panel will not be used. However, KDE Plasma Bigscreen looks promising but the price of SBC's has kept me from giving trying it. I would love to set it u as a VM and stream it from my NAS but I just dont have the knowhow.

Does anyone thing it would be weird to ask the sels people in store to give me a remote and give the UI/UX a test drive before urchasing a set? I guess i cant see why they wouldnt, but it seems irregular to ask and like they might not want to?

 

[EarthDog]

Does anyone thing it would be weird to ask the sels people in store to give me a remote and give the UI/UX a test drive before urchasing a set? I guess i cant see why they wouldnt, but it seems irregular to ask and like they might not want to?

I can't imagine you'd get a funny look, even, asking that. If I cared, and couldn't get what I wanted watching the salesperson navigate, then heck yes I'd ask for the remote to play around in the menus.

 

[don256us]

Well that brought forth a neat question. Are there alternative ROMs for my TV? Leaning towards "no" like you but I will have a look when I get some time. Neat idea.

Most "Smart" TVs are cheaper than an equivilant non-smart because of the adds Smart brings to the purchaser. If you want to get away from the adds, you gotta pay more up front.

 

[Janus67]

Well that brought forth a neat question. Are there alternative ROMs for my TV? Leaning towards "no" like you but I will have a look when I get some time. Neat idea.

Most "Smart" TVs are cheaper than an equivilant non-smart because of the adds Smart brings to the purchaser. If you want to get away from the adds, you gotta pay more up front.

Honestly that's a good question. I bet that someone has done it to their TVs but I've never looked. You're exactly right though, if you want the better experience you're going to pay for it. If you want DV/HDR/etc it's probably not on the $25 units. I like my shield because I can side load apks onto it or run an alternate launcher (like ProjectiTV)

 

[infinitevalence]

I know im late to the party, but I hate all the integrated OS's on TVs. The only sometimes exception is Roku, but I still prefer to plug in my own Roku rather than rely on the one included in the TV.

The primary reason is a TV panel will last for 10+ years, but the included processing and software will probably stop getting updates after 5 at the best. So for my money I would get whatever TV you like, never bother to setup or connect its OS to the internet (so it wont snoop on you) and just plug in a Roku, Chrome Cast, Amazon Fire stick, or Apple TV based on your preferred flavor.

 

[surlyjoe]

We have a 7th gen i7 micro desktop that was going to the recycler mounted to the wall bracket behind our 65" with a wireless keyboard / touchpad. runs whatever you want.

 

[knoober]

I know im late to the party, but I hate all the integrated OS's on TVs. The only sometimes exception is Roku, but I still prefer to plug in my own Roku rather than rely on the one included in the TV.

The primary reason is a TV panel will last for 10+ years, but the included processing and software will probably stop getting updates after 5 at the best. So for my money I would get whatever TV you like, never bother to setup or connect its OS to the internet (so it wont snoop on you) and just plug in a Roku, Chrome Cast, Amazon Fire stick, or Apple TV based on your preferred flavor.

This was my original thinking, but wifi kept dropping during marathons due to overheating. I pulled apart the casing and threw some copper heatsinks on a couple of test subjects and solved the problem, but I dont want to do surgery if I dont have to. There is another caveat to these devices, although only with budget sets: some of them are USB powered. Premium sets offer more than 1 or 2 usb ports, but I found myself in a pickle when I wanted to have bias lighting + the stream stick + a upscaler for old game consoles. Beccause of those hurdles I am trying real hard to look at the native OS that comes with the set, but I agree with these comments in principle.

We have a 7th gen i7 micro desktop that was going to the recycler mounted to the wall bracket behind our 65" with a wireless keyboard / touchpad. runs whatever you want.

Ive considered making a purpose built appliance from a rasberry pi or some old PC, but I am not there yet. Since I am considering a newer tv in the future I thought I might try to get one that had all my wants without the extra work, but if I cant then I can always get an IR blaster and see if I can squeeze some more miles out of the old tv. Having a dedicated Pi or PC serving the content would come with a couple wishlist items, like streaming from my gaming PC to the TV, which I currently cannot get done. I mentioned it before in this thread but KDE Plasma Bigscreen looks pretty nice. They state right in the documentation though that it is not ready for daily driving, but the app catalog is growing and it might be time to give it a try.