That sounds like you have an overly shitty ‘smart’ TV. Plenty of external devices (I’m partial to AppleTV) have no significant lag.
Or it could be you’re using some niche service that has its own issues.
Or it could be you’re using some niche service that has its own issues.
Even switching between 2 series in my currently watching list can take an exceedingly long time. Sometimes I try to switch back and forth to force and update and it feels like I’m back on 56K.
The Apple TV HD is old, technically legacy, but still supports tvOS 26. I have an Apple TV 4K in the house as well, which I’ve been meaning to migrate to, to see if it’s any better. But the HD works fine for pretty much everything else. Peacock as a service seems to have an extreme amount of lag.
The way developers use the UI toolkit that the Apple TV provides also seems to tend towards apps where it's very difficult to figure out what's the active selection, which is of course _the_ critical challenge.
Apple left a large generational gap because they kept selling the HD for many years (until 2022) as an entry-level device alongside much more capable 4K models.
> ”it's very difficult to figure out what's the active selection”
Yes, based on my observation this seems to be one of the biggest challenges people face with the AppleTV interface, along with accidentally changing the selection when they try to select it (because of the sensitive touch controls on the remote).
I don't think is the fault of the 3rd party devs, Apple seemed to start this and other devs followed their example.
I tend to make a small circle with my thumb in the center of the select button, or just slightly move it back and forth, to see what thing on the screen starts moving with me.
On an older Roku Ultra Peacock also isn't great but not nearly as bad as you describe - maybe they just ported over their Roku version somehow and it has horrible Apple TV performance.
Anecdotally I have heard the newer Nvidia Shields to be very fast
I hooked Peacock to the Apple TV app, and while it shows my next playing episode, launching from the Apple TV app just launches the Peacock app, which feels rather pointless.
Technically, you could also configure the pihole to allow the specific hosts that the Paramount+ app needs to access. However, I found that there were many hosts, and they also change from time to time, so it can be annoying to keep them updated when the app starts crashing again.
And don't even get me started on the times where the app opens and plays OK. Then you go to ff/rw and all it will let you do is pause. So you have to re-start the app to get control. Then it forgets where you are.
And, of course, the crashes. I don't think I've ever seen an app crash this much. It makes me very worried for the codebase.
Later I subscribed to paramount+ via amazon, and said goodbye to the glitches.
I still prefer Apple TV for various reasons, though, responsiveness being one of them.
Even a second lag is insane. I don't understand how people tolerate that.
I Piholed mine with an edge router and redirected port 53 traffic that didn’t come from the Pihole, back to the Pihole with a script.
However I’ve upgraded to a Dream machine pro, and haven’t worked out how to do that so just removed it from having any network access.
And that’s assuming the apps are well written, which they are not.
Absolutely kills me.
No one else in the house notices when sound is from the shitbox tv speakers rather than the soundbar. It’s a high end Sony, and it’s sound quality is shameful.
Can we sacrifice a few cm of thinness and have some sound?
That would let them glean information about you every time you use said app.
You’re still getting around this with a 3rd party device like an Apple TV for the most part but if it’s required to even turn it off or on it’ll be enough to sync any metadata that it holds
The tv remote sensor stopped working (and broke again after servicing), so now the only way to use the TV is by the LG app on my phone.. which asks for permissions to Nearby Devices, Location, Camera, Microphone, Notifications, Phone, Music&Audio...