#41 Musings

I love AndroidTV or GoogleTV or whatever its called next. I enjoy the interface, especially the latest one. My previous TVs have all been Sony for the most part anyway. Why? Well they are good tvs for one, but two they also run AndroidTV as their default dashboard. That means I can install all of the same apps and don't have to worry about compatiblity etc.

The problem though is that AndroidTV sucks or at least it was the last time I bought a high end tv. A Sony Bravia 4K LED TV from 2015. The way that Sony have implemented AndroidTV on their TVs is actually what made me invest in dedicated players such as the great NVIDIA Shield (2019) and the MiBox 4s. It is a massive indictment on Sony that my $100AUD AndroidTV player imported from overseas performs better than my ~$2000 (in 2015 dollars) Sony TV. It boggles my mind. It actually has made me rethink my recommendations on friends and family who ask my advice. In Sony's defence I have heard they "fixed" the performance issues in their newer lines of tvs.

When I say performance, I don't mean quality of the picture, sound or necessarily how Netlix runs but rather moving around the dashboard is glacially slow, like treacle. Its an abomination. I just updated my Sony Bravia 4K 2015 to Android 8.0 with a security patch of Jan 2020 (Don't get me started on that front). The perfomance is even worse.

Aside from the fact that LG have cornered the market in OLED panels, their WebOS feels so snappy in comparison. Now, I still just use the NVIDIA Shield so I essentially don't need to actually use the TVs own dashboard but WebOS actually makes me want to use unlike 2015 era Sony AndroidTV.

Till next time,

B