My Android TV experience was painful until I got the Google TV Streamer

For the previous three years, my most important good TV expertise has been with a 43-inch Android TV from Xiaomi (the TV P1). All the things began out simply wonderful, however the expertise slowly degraded to some extent 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 needs to be? Nicely, sure, and it’s not simply Xiaomi’s fault, both. I believe we have to flip our heads in the 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 good TVs and worse Android TV boxes on the market.

And it ran wonderful 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 have been being up to date within the background and needed to be restarted to use the replace. However when that occurred over and over, with a number of apps, twice or thrice in a row, I began questioning my apologetic principle.

Then, the dreaded lag began creeping into my expertise. At instances, I might transfer via rows of things, click on, exit, and transfer once more, all and not using 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.

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

Finally, sufficient was sufficient, and I began utilizing the Chromecast extra, despite the fact that it, too, had the odd difficulty 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 swap 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 high of that, it comes with a whopping 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.

For a cellphone, 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 difficulty with the Streamer — or my Xiaomi, as a result of this smart TV is just a dumb display 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 price to the TV’s invoice of fabric. And for a product you’re supposed to maintain for at the very least 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 assist down the road is a straightforward upsell.

Sadly, plainly Google goes within the precise wrong way and dropping its necessities for Android TV even additional. In line with Mishaal Rahman’s findings, producers will be capable of make 1080p Android TV 14 sets with just 1GB of RAM (1.5GB for 4K, and 2GB in order for you a Google TV certification on high of Android TV), which I assure will present a very good expertise for all of 5 seconds at first turns into an agonizing wait. After which we surprise why individuals flock from Android to Apple…