Sony Smart TV is pretty effective

[Flint]

With the pending move-out of my soon-to-be-ex-wife, I have had reason to spend as much time away from home as possible. As such, I have a friend who likes to hang out and we watch streaming content on Amazon Prime TV, Netflix, and Hulu+. What I found surprisingly impressive was the streaming client in the late model Sony TV at my friend's home.

I have a nice Sony BluRay player with a streaming player built-in, but I find it clunky and far too slow for my preferences. The newer player in the TV, a 2016 mid-high range model, is easy to use, quick enough for the job at hand, and perfectly fine at playing video. The only drawback is the WiFi connection which for some dumb-ass reason required us to reconnect it if we didn't use the player for more than a day, or so. Since the cable company router is placed in the same cabinet as the TV, I just connected a Ethernet cable to the TV and solved the problem. I didn't bother to investigate if the problem is the TV or the cheap Cable Modem / Router / WiFi Access point thing - most of which never work quite right.

My point, if I buy a new high end TV for HT (a very distinct possibility given my pending change of status to being single), I might do away with the Roku in my HT and only have the TV and my BluRay player as source components. That assumes the TV can play streaming music services as well as it does video content.

 

[Deacon]

I thought the whole point of the Roku and other similar devices was to provide streaming service for non-smart TVs to begin with.

 

[Flint]

So.... how many of our forum friends are using a smart TV versus a streaming box for their online content?

 

[mzpro5]

I use a Roku device on both my TV's, one is not a smart TV and the one that is does a piss poor job of streaming. Plus the Roku passes all audio thru my HT systems.

For the price I think the Roku is the best deal around.

 

[Batman]

I have 4 "smart tvs" I only use the built in Netflix in 2 of them to check for more and more 4K content. The other 2 are in the kids rooms and they don't have a need to really access the smart features on those sets. Our local media is accessed via AppleTVs so they use those for other streaming services.

 

[Haywood]

The Sony set in my main HT is on the Android TV platform. I like Android TV well enough, but Sony did some really annoying things in their implementation (like preventing me from rearranging apps, so that their featured apps always list first). I also find that some of their firmware updates make the set flaky and cause it to crash a lot or throw up dialog boxes with stupid error messages I don't give a shit about (i.e. the Play Store is offline). This is all putting aside the fact that Android TV does not support all of the services we use and I cannot use a smart TV to stream content to another room.

The only time I use the Android TV function is when my wife wants to watch Roku content in the kitchen and I want to stream something different in the living room (which has happened maybe twice). The rest of the time, we use the Roku Ultra or my dedicated Plex box.

If it were possible to get a dumb version of my TV, I would have done so in a second. I am not in love with having my display crash or having to switch my remote to the TV source to clear a dialog box for some error message that is utterly irrelevant to what I am doing.

 

[lulimet]

So.... how many of our forum friends are using a smart TV versus a streaming box for their online content?

I have a smart TV but it's too damn slow for everything (same with all TVs I've seen). So I use a Chromecast instead. And thinking about getting a Roku or an Amazon FTV.

 

[TKoP]

I have a Smart TV that I used for most services save Netflix -- which has a horrible app. However, with Dish, you can access Netflix directly through their box. And I'm too chea.. err.. frugal to buy a stick.

 

[Haywood]

Roku supports the most services overall. The main problem with Fire TV is total lack of support for UltraViolet. None of the UV partners have Fire TV apps. Android TV is pretty decent for the most part, but I don't like the Sony implementation and there are a few apps that we use that are missing.

 

[Haywood]

I forgot to mention that the Nvidia Shield Android TV box is capable of acting as both a Plex Server and a Plex Client and is one of the few Plex clients that can play 1:1 Blu-Ray rips.

 

[Towen7]

So.... how many of our forum friends are using a smart TV versus a streaming box for their online content?

My two smart TVs are not smart enough and don't support the services I use as well as a Roku.

 

[Haywood]

The new Android TV release looks promising, but I still recommend sticking with STBs. If you like Android TV and don't mind not having access to a handful of mostly niche apps, the NVidia Shield is supposed to be fantastic. I almost went that way myself, but they did not support Amazon Video at that time and my wife subscribes to a couple of services for Asian TV content that are not available on the platform.

 

[MatthewB]

My new Smart Samsung has the apps but I prefer to keep my Roku2 hooked up and here's why. There are far more apps on the Roku then the SmartTv. The Roku is updated all the time where SmartTv's are only updated when the manufacturer wants to update them. Being a member on Vudu forums I've read nothing but issues people have with the Vudu app on SmartTv's but no issues when using the Roku app to play Vudu. That and with the Roku being so small is it really an issue having an extra box hooked up to my Marantz preamp. I have all my devices hooked up to the Marantz then one HDMI to the TV. I just hit one button on my Harmony remote, it turns on the preamp, my Roku and my TV yes it may be easier just using the TV but as mentioned I'd rather have the latest firmware updates on the Roku rather then waiting for Samsung to decide when it's going to initiate and update to a specific app.