Just about any TV you buy today, except the lowest of the low end, is going to be smart and connected. In other words, besides tuning in regular television broadcasts via cable, satellite, or over-the-air, it will allow you to connect to subscription on-demand services like Netflix and Amazon, and pull in programming from websites such as YouTube and Hulu. It will also likely have a standard Web browser for more general Internet use, and might even connect to your computer or home server to let you browse home videos or downloaded movies.
None of this is particularly new; it started out in the highest end TV models and has been trickling down.
It seems, however, that the TV manufacturers have realized that although they put all this capability in their televisions, too many people were ignoring it. The reason: The user interface, to put it mildly, was dismal. “Smart TV has a high adoption because we put it into TVs, but people aren’t getting most out of it," Tim Alessi, director of new product development for LG,said during a panel session at the 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held in Las Vegas last week. "Yet we keep putting in new features. Making it more user friendly is one of the things we need to do.”
I’m one of those people who has been getting almost nothing out of the smart TV experience except headaches. I bought a smart TV in 2013 and I ignore the grid of buttons that pops up on my screen when I turn it on. In fact, I find these smart features annoying because they mean that I have to find the button on the remote that makes them go away before I can get a full screen view of the program I’m trying to watch. Searching for shows is horrendous: I have to use the arrow keys on the remote to painstakingly walk through an on-screen alphabet and input one letter at a time; I end up watching Internet programming on my laptop instead. (Yes, I know I could purchase and install a wireless keyboard, but I don’t want a keyboard on my coffee table. There are enough computers in the house as it is.)
That’s the state of the art. And it’s awful. So I was thrilled to hear several of the mainstream TV manufacturers at CES say that this year they threw away the old approach to TV control and set out to redesign the TV operating system for the new world that embraces a variety of programming sources. I’d be even more thrilled if they all magically settled on a new paradigm that became standard, so we’d all be able to use each other’s TVs without a lesson, but that day seems far off.
And I was eager to hit the show floor last week and try out the new interfaces. Some, it turns out, were more evolved than others. But they all have a ways to go. Still, the manufacturers are making progress, and that’s encouraging.
Before I give you my take on the new TV interfaces introduced at CES, I'll clarify a few assumptions I made. For one, as I mentioned, a TV interface shouldn’t require a keyboard. The manufacturers agree—they want us sitting back in our couches, not hunched forward typing.
Most of these smart TVs learn your preferences—I didn’t have enough time with any of them to find out how accurate their algorithms are, so I’m not evaluating that feature.
LG
Panasonic
Sharp:
Samsung
Hisense
Photos: Tekla Perry; Panasonic [remote]
Tekla S. Perry is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum. Based in Palo Alto, Calif., she's been covering the people, companies, and technology that make Silicon Valley a special place for more than 40 years. An IEEE member, she holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Michigan State University.