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Comment by mgr86 | Hacker News Reader

We used to love our roku. Still do, and we have owned various versions for nearly as long as you. Even went with a roku tv at one point.

I bought an LG OLED CX this past November. I was planning to hook a roku up to it. My experience with smart tvs in the past has been hugely underwhelming to downright unusable. But I've been more than happy with just using the apps on the LG tv. Your mileage may vary, but I have a good picture quality and I'm pretty happy with the remote. It allows me to program the keypad to hard-press them to launch an app of my choice. Additionally, they have their own channel offerings similar to Pluto.

I have heard great things about the Shield as well. That is probably the closest you can find to without building your own HTPC.

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Everyone seems to love the LG WebOS software, I seem to be the only one that absolutely hates it. I have the LG E9 (previous generation, one year old). The picture is great but I hate just about everything else about it. Having to point at things with the "magic remote" is the least usable input interface I've ever encountered -- I'm not sure if I'm just completely devoid of motor skills but I find it ridiculously difficult to point at a particular thing on the screen, especially if it's a small hitbox. I genuinely don't understand how anyone likes it (but I know they do). I guess I'm the only one who still sometimes watches linear TV but the on-screen program guide is basically unusable; it takes literally a full minute to load 2 hours' worth of shows for the currently displayed 10 channels sometimes (and then repeat if you scroll to view a different 10 channels). Meanwhile my cheap Samsung dumb TV from 5 years ago works flawlessly (other than being only 1080p) and it's easy to browse with the arrow-key-based remote.

> Having to point at things with the "magic remote"

Yeah accidentally switching that one caused some grief the first week as I fumbled for the "right" button to dismiss it. But Having to use it is not my experience. Does the previous generation insist you use it?

We generally use the same 3 or 4 apps. Embarrassingly it took us a couple months to figure out we could program the keypad and hardpress the button to launch custom apps. Not its merely telling the other to "turn on 2" etc.

> . I guess I'm the only one who still sometimes watches linear TV but the on-screen program guide is basically unusable; it takes literally a full minute to load 2 hours'

That is a fair complaint. I've not really had that experience, but I don't watch much linear tv. But I doubt you are not the only one to watch tv this way.

We chose this TV after our Roku TV broke after 2 years. Surprisingly enough Amazon gave us a full refund for the broken TV. Even gave us an extra $30 to purchase a TV box.

> Yeah accidentally switching that one caused some grief the first week as I fumbled for the "right" button to dismiss it. But Having to use it is not my experience. Does the previous generation insist you use it?

You're right, it can be dismissed that way. I looked for a way to disable it completely and quickly found that wasn't possible, but I did discover the right-arrow trick you mentioned. But it doesn't make it disappear for long, and I never managed to build up the reflex of pressing it regularly (it's kind of non-obvious, you have to admit), and to be honest I'd mostly forgotten right-arrow did that. But thank you for reminding me, I may have to try to work on that muscle memory.

One downside to many SmartTVs including those sold by Samsung and LG is that they do ACR (automatic content recognition). It tells the TV manufacturer what you're watching so they can sell it to ad networks. I _think_ a pihole kills it, but the safest thing to do is to unaccept any privacy policies or to not give it wifi. Either option will disable built-in apps.

This is very true. I've been losing this battle with my wife in other areas of our life and have just, generally, given in I suppose. She still thinks I'm a nut and its only a coincidence that the arcane thing we were just discussing is now showing up as an advertisement somewhere.

Don't all the set top boxes (other than open source) collect and sell your info as well?

The AppleTV does not as far as I know.

yeah, until they start putting cellular modems in these things. only a matter of time. don't new LG/samsung TVs connect to open wifi now if they can't connect to yours?

Not agreeing to the privacy policy should prevent that. Until of course they say you need to agree in order to use the TV at all.

Another happy LG OLED and Shield owner here! I use the Shield when playing more difficult-to-play media from Plex (stuff like high-bitrate HDR content with lossless audio), and the built-in apps on the TV the rest of the time. Heck, even Apple TV is available as an app on the LG.

yes the biggest complaint I have is the no DTS support. A lot of my plex library has DTS audio. I've generally been able to avoid it now, but it took me by surprise the first time my file had no audio.

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