The Google TV Streamer might be the Apple TV 4K rival we’ve been waiting for
www.theverge.com
Goodbye, HDMI dongle. Hello, set-top box.
  • just another dev@lemmy.my-box.devEnglish
    25·
    4 months ago

    I’m probably a minority in this (although probably not so much here on Lemmy), but if anything, I’d want my TV to be less smart, and less personalised. I don’t want Google to know what my favourite TV shows and movies are. I don’t want “suggestions” on which streaming platforms I could also install (often before the content I would actually want to see). And I most definitely don’t want my TV to be monitoring the rest of my “smart” home.

    For the people who are part of this articles titular “we”, I seriously wonder: why would you have been waiting for this?

    • Bluefruit@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      4 months ago

      I think you’re definitely in the majority on lemmy with this take but i agree.

      I have a “smart tv” that has never even seen WiFi because i prefer having control over my hardware. My media pc is all i need. I even got a little remote for an air mouse and keyboard combo that works just fine for me.

    • GreyBeard@lemmy.oneEnglish
      3·
      4 months ago

      I got an ad like the a month ago, made me start looking at alternatives. I haven’t found one besides Apple TV that supports all the streaming services, is made for a TV, and doesn’t have worse ads. I could handle content ads for streaming services I didn’t have, but just straight TV commercials on my hopepage? Get fucked Google.

  • lemmylommy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    163·
    4 months ago

    Sure, the twelfth time‘s the charm.

    If you bought an Apple TV in 2015 you will still get at least this years tvOS update, if not more. How many devices has google announced and buried since then?

    • glimse@lemmy.worldEnglish
      72·
      4 months ago

      Not to mention the AppleTV is just…a good product. It’s really inexpensive for being the best streaming device for the masses on the market. Updates aside, I don’t think Google could even make a competitor that’s on par.

  • hightrix@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    4 months ago

    They want me to buy a streaming stick from an advertising company and tell me it is going to be the experience that I’ve been looking for? Yeah… no.

    This will either be canceled or enshittified immediately.

  • zelifcam@lemmy.worldEnglish
    123·
    4 months ago

    All of my TVs have never seen an internet connection. I know the Apple hate is strong, but I’ve been throwing ATVs behind them since they were first released. No ads, no BS. Just a very clean experience that has never changed. I couldn’t imagine thinking putting a Google device from the largest advertising company on the planet would be some kind of upgrade.

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      31·
      4 months ago

      All of my TVs have never seen an internet connection.

      I don’t want this device, or one like it, because it’s proprietary and there are good, open “streaming/media/PVR device what connects to a TV” devices out there. I can get HTPC hardware and put Kodi or MythTV on it.

      But.

      This isn’t a TV. It’s a device that connects to the Internet on one side and to the TV on the other, like a cable box.

      For me, at least, there’s a very large difference there. I absolutely do not want a TV that connects to the Internet for a long, long range of reasons. I want a TV that is a dumb display. I want it to be a good display, but just a display.

      • All-in-one devices need to get thrown out when some part of them is obsolete. The streaming aspect has been rapidly changing, as well as the computing aspect. Sometimes new security issues arise. Sometimes new functionality (like wireless) arises. Dumb displays, in contrast, can often serve for a very long time. You can use an old, analog TV quite some decades after its manufacturer has gone out of business. I want a modular setup, not an all-in-one, given the considerable disparity in when each component is likely to become obsolete. Same thing with stuff like building Android computers into cars – that Android computer is likely going to be obsolete long before the car is mechanically obsolete.

      • A “smart” TV sees and can act on everything that you’re viewing. An attached box only knows about what it is outputting to the TV.

      I’d also add some other points, not specific to the all-in-one aspect.

      • You may not want to use a commercial streaming service at all. But if you do, I’m not aware of any that offer a no-log policy. I mean, personally, I get a lot of good out of YouTube and would happily buy YouTube Premium if I could be certain that it’d come with a no-log policy, but what Google’s selling, as best I can tell, is no ads. If I pay for YouTube Premium, it just reliably links my financial information to my profile. I don’t want that. And the same is probably, though I haven’t gone through and audited them, true of other streaming services. Frankly, if I were to buy one, I’d rather have any such service that might be data-mining me on a little box that only talks to my TV and the Internet, not living on an Android device or personal computer that I use.

      • Even if a company doesn’t do ads, they’ll likely outsource it to someone. Like, even if a company offers a commercial service and has premium, ad-free service, my guess is that they will probably also have an ad-supported mode of operation to appeal to customers who don’t want to pay the fee. I mean, most television in the US, even in the pre-Internet era, traditionally has been substantially ad-supported. If a service cannot insert ads, then people have found other routes to get ads in front of people’s eyes, like paid product placement in the actual media that you’re watching. Even if I were going to watch ads, I’d rather have them separate from the media that I’m watching than worked into it.

    • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      4 months ago

      Yeah, it’s not cheap, but if you were willing to pay (like you would with an Apple TV) and want Android, it’s a pretty easy choice.

    • BorgDrone@lemmy.oneEnglish
      51·
      4 months ago

      If only Apple added support for bitstreaming I’d replace my Shield with an AppleTV in a heartbeat.

      Don’t get me wrong, the Shield plays everything you throw at it. The hardware is great but the software is so janky. It’s often slow to respond to input, it needs a reboot every couple of days because it just gets more laggy and choppy over time. Sometimes it just forgets my TV supports Dolby Vision until I reboot it. Support from Nvidia seems to have dried up as well.

      • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        Just posted about ATV switch from shield myself. I agree with you, the bitstream issue is noticeable on my atmos setup for sure, but all and all I got so fed up with the exact issues you described that I threw in the towel and switched. Overall I think it’s worth it. With some adjustments in my sub crossover I’ve compensated for sound issues a little. I held out because there were all these rumors about Apple finally releasing a new appletv, but now looks unlikely to happen. You have shield or pro? I had both and at first I really didn’t find a whole lot of difference in performance, but for some reason with time the shield tube really started having far more issues than the pro.

        • BorgDrone@lemmy.oneEnglish
          1·
          4 months ago

          I have the 2018 pro. The problem with lack of bitstreaming is that no matter what you adjust, you won’t get 3D audio (i.e. height speakers) out of the LPCM streams. You can do DD+Atmos on streaming services but you miss out on TrueHD+Atmos and DTS:X on bluray backups. That’s not something I want to give up.

          • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            Yeah, its very strange Apple didn’t value this. Unless you are exclusively viewing that kind of content, I’d almost consider running an appletv for everything else maybe if you find one on sale - I don’t miss the shield headaches (I do miss the light up remote a little though)

    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      “That CPU bump probably means this thing still falls short of the Nvidia Shield TV and Apple TV 4k” Which is just pathetic. I left my Shield for the apple TV. The processor performance is just better on ATV. It’s so much more pleasant to have snappy response times in these devices. Slower than shield sounds awful to me. I also noticed better speed test times on my ethernet ATV than my shieldpro ethernet.

  • hedgehog@ttrpg.networkEnglish
    72·
    4 months ago

    This product looks awful.

    First, ever since they added ads to Google TV back in 2021 (even on the Nvidia Shield TV), it’s been a subpar experience. Well, it was for me, at least - maybe it’s improved, but I switched to Apple TV as a result and haven’t looked back.

    Second, why would anyone get this over an Nvidia Shield TV or an Apple TV, other than ignorance or an incredibly strict budget? The Apple TV 4K is $130/$150 new and the Shield TV is $150 new. The Shield TV, which came out in 2017, is faster than this. The Apple TV 4K is 16x faster. And if you get either refurbished, get an older Apple TV,

    For anyone on a strict budget, the $30-$50 Chromecasts make way more sense than this device. Yes, they’re ending production of those, but there are still competitors near that price point.

    The only thing I can think of is that they’re banking on brand recognition or are hoping the segment of people without smart home hubs who are unaware of alternatives (like the $35 SmartThings Hub Dongle) and who aren’t in the Apple ecosystem is big enough.

  • fluxc0@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    3 months ago

    I just got a chromecast, and suddenly they want to change the MO to a set top box?

    the motherfucker is 2 years old. a product should last more than 2 years. anyone know any better options for streaming hardware? i loved my chromecast but if its clear that this company is just gonna throw it out in favor a “shiny new thing” then i won’t seek replacement.