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Comment by aaron_m04 | Hacker News Reader

> I'd much rather that "Smart" TV's just include their own proprietary stick that plugged into the HDMI input and could be replaced with a current generation streaming stick in a few years.

You mean like a ChromeCast?

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Was glad to see this response here. It's similar to me with the situation we had where high-end automobiles used to put a lot of effort into their touchscreen "entertainment" systems: systems that always sucked and made an otherwise-luxury car feel like a PC Junior. Thankfully, most of them have switched over to Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, where I get a MUCH better UI that, importantly, I can update on a much more frequent basis than my entire car, from companies that know how to build digital UIs.

High end "dumb TV" plus Chromecast (or whatever competitor) is the best solution for me.

It's really amazing. A few years ago I had to drive a Mercedes S-Class every so often. Ironically, it was easily the least pleasant driving experience I've ever had short of a U-Haul. This was entirely because they decided to get creative with the controls, and did a bad job of it. The first time I drove it, I ended up having to pull off the road in order to safely figure out how to change the radio station. Operating the cruise control wasn't worth the effort. And I never did figure out advanced tasks like turning off the air conditioning.

You're spot-on regarding the horrendous nav interface on the Mercedes. I found it dangerously unusable. When I posed that concern to the MB dealer I was rather snidely informed they had training available to teach people how to use it.

Yeah, hard no. Bought a Cayenne instead.

To be fair, the default interface for at least some TVs is just Android TV.

I think the OP knows they exist. But the point being that the TV still ships with a TV OS that is out of date in 2-3 years. It'd be nice to buy a high quality 4K HDR TV panel with a barebones OS to select sources and tweak the picture.

Like, even if I used a Chromecast and only a Chromecast, my TV would still be an Android TV that randomly crashes now and then or has audio which randomly cuts out.

There's at least 3 different manufacturers that make these things. There's absolutely no reason to point out ChromeCast over Roku or Amazon's FireStick, e.g.

I don’t think the parent was intending to privilege one over the others, just pointing out that these things already exist.

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