My Android TV expertise was painful till I bought the Google TV Streamer

For the previous three years, my primary sensible TV expertise has been with a 43-inch Android TV from Xiaomi (the TV P1). The whole lot began out simply advantageous, however the expertise slowly degraded to a degree the place, about a few times a month, the TV utterly froze, forcing my husband and me to dig behind it to unplug it and power a shutdown and reboot.

Then, a couple of month in the past, I bought the brand new Google TV Streamer and I used to be immediately greatly surprised by how clean the Google TV interface has been with it. Is that this how a pleasant TV viewing expertise ought to be? Effectively, sure, and it’s not simply Xiaomi’s fault, both. I believe we have to flip our heads in direction of Google for creating the issue earlier than attempting to unravel it with the brand new TV Streamer.

I do know I hadn’t sprung for the highest-end TV on the market, however after I bought it, Xiaomi’s TV P1 wasn’t shabby in any respect. It ran a MediaTek MT9611 (quad-core as much as 1.5GHz) with a Mali G52 MP2 GPU (as much as 950MHz), 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage; clearly, there have been worse sensible TVs and worse Android TV bins on the market.

And it ran advantageous for a couple of months, a lot in order that I relegated my Chromecast with Google TV to a secondary spot. I’d activate the TV, not the Chromecast plugged into it, and use that. With time, although, points began surfacing.

First, some apps like Plex and YouTube would power shut the second I opened them. I assumed they had been being up to date within the background and needed to be restarted to use the replace. However when that occurred again and again, with a number of apps, twice or 3 times in a row, I began questioning my apologetic concept.

Then, the dreaded lag began creeping into my expertise. At instances, I might transfer by rows of things, click on, exit, and transfer once more, all with out a hitch. Different instances, nothing would occur for a couple of seconds till the TV caught up with my clicks and did every part in a flash.

Ultimately, although, the TV began exhibiting extra disruptive points. We’d flip it on and see the sunshine flashing purple, however nothing would present up on the show. Flip off, activate, and we could get fortunate. In any other case, we’d should power-wash the TV by digging behind it to unplug and replug it. Then it began utterly freezing mid-use, going unresponsive for a very long time, and forcing us to additionally power-wash it.

Oh, and overlook about updates! My TV was caught on some pre-Google-TV Android TV model that lacked lots of bug fixes and new options just like the facet panel and a number of profile help. The one which irked me probably the most, although, was that Google had, for some befuddling cause, given the YouTube app on Android TV a second-tier therapy and stored the playback velocity characteristic away from it. If I needed to observe any video at 1.25x or 1.5x, I needed to change to my Chromecast.

Ultimately, sufficient was sufficient, and I began utilizing the Chromecast extra, regardless that it, too, had the odd problem right here and there and was restricted to 8GB of storage for my apps.

After I plugged within the Google TV Streamer and began utilizing it as an alternative, it was as if I’d purchased an entire new TV. Simply change to HDMI enter and let the extra highly effective {hardware} deal with every part.

Google didn’t specify the Streamer’s internals, however we all know it has a quad-core MediaTek MT8696 chip (as much as 2.0GHz) and a PowerVR GE9215 GPU (as much as 850MHz). On prime of that, it comes with a whopping 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.

For a telephone, these specs can be abysmal, however for a sensible TV platform, they’re nearly an excessive amount of. However that’s precisely what your entire Android TV and Google TV expertise wanted to be smoother, quicker, and fewer buggy. For a month now, I haven’t had a hiccup, lag, bug, or problem with the Streamer — or my Xiaomi, as a result of this sensible TV is only a dumb show now like my colleague Rob advocated for not too long ago.

So why doesn’t Google simply require producers to incorporate extra highly effective {hardware} from the beginning? Why isn’t there a better minimal entry level to make sure that everybody’s expertise on Android TV/Google TV is quick, clean, and bug-free?

It’s not like a barely quicker processor or 2GB extra RAM would add such an enormous value to the TV’s invoice of fabric. And for a product you’re supposed to maintain for no less than 5, if not 10 years, paying a couple of further {dollars} and getting extra future-proof {hardware} for a smoother and bug-free expertise with longer help down the road is a straightforward upsell.

Sadly, evidently Google goes within the actual other way and dropping its necessities for Android TV even additional. Based on Mishaal Rahman’s findings, producers will be capable of make 1080p Android TV 14 units with simply 1GB of RAM (1.5GB for 4K, and 2GB if you need a Google TV certification on prime of Android TV), which I assure will present a great expertise for all of 5 seconds at the beginning turns into an agonizing wait. After which we surprise why folks flock from Android to Apple…