Before purchasing my Smart TV with Android TV in 2020, I had tried different operating systems for the TV and it was clear that Google was the one I liked the most. My experience later only confirmed this: I think Android TV is the best operating systemmainly due to the number of available apps and customization options.
Although I also had some disappointments: when I bought a cheap model, I faced poor performance that sometimes caused stuttering or freezes in applications. Once I discovered this problem, I easily fixed it. But this does not hide the reality: Android TV has an overly busy interface, full of ads and recommendations
Android TV is like a baroque altarpiece full of ads and recommendations
I am aware that on television, being Smart TV is a functionality more and not the reason for being of the device (something you can say about set-top boxes), which means it’s not the neatest feature and it shows. So, you should expect an entry-level TV to include outdated and/or basic hardware, but having to deal with having to move a screen overloaded with recommendations and promoted content doesn’t help at all.
And has direct consequences that penalize the experience: It’s more visually exhausting to deal with so much content and can even cause us to make more mistakes if we go on autopilot, which results in entering where we didn’t want to. Even someone familiar with the interface and technology, like me, sometimes enters other content by mistake.
For what when you open the main screen of Android TVwhat you find is the series currently promoted by a streaming service in the foreground, a row with your favorite apps (in my opinion the really important thing next to the top menu), the list of content you are watching and if you scroll down, an endless sea of recommended categories from streaming platforms, from Google and yes, also from the manufacturer itself.
Android TV is free, so it is logical and logical that there are advertisements in its interface, as well as a series of recommended advertisements that invite us to continue using and enjoying the service, so this annoyance does not seem to change. And if we look at its possible successor Google TV, things don’t improve: yes, the design is perhaps more intuitive than Android TV (among other differences) and that’s good news, but it is also well provided in terms of recommendations.
Fortunately, and as I already mentioned in the introductionone of the great virtues of Android TV is that it has more apps to download and install than any other operating system for TV, which led me to try installing other, more minimalist launchers.
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