WEBVTT

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these days there are a lot of things that have unnecessary smart features

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built into them but you'd think the familiar television would be a good

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candidate for a smart device with as many streaming services as we used today

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it's a good idea to have them all built into your tv right

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unfortunately smart tvs are actually about as smart as the common garden slug

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with clunky user interfaces poor responsiveness and even instability in

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some cases and this isn't restricted to the bargain basement models that you

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found at an abandoned kmart my favorite childhood haunt even on some premium

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four figure tvs you'll see no shortage of people complaining about the built-in

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operating system so why are these nice tvs coming with such slow interfaces to

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begin with well it helps to understand the business model of the average tv

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manufacturer some of them are companies who primarily manufacture tvs such as

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vizio while other companies like samsung might make tons of different products

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but their tv division might be left more or less to its own devices these

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companies and divisions don't focus very much on either software development or

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powerful hardware the same way a phone manufacturer would even though many of

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the same video streaming apps we find on smart tvs are also on our phones phone

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manufacturers know that their products rely heavily on app driven experiences

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and laggy unstable behavior on modern smartphones would quickly put off

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consumers tv manufacturers don't have the same set of concerns their primary

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objective as it's been for a very long time has been to make a tv with good or

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at least acceptable picture quality at a competitive price having a good software

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experience is not only something they aren't focused on but it's also

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something they haven't had to worry about until recently it was only around

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a decade ago that it was very easy to get a dumb tv that had on-screen digital

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menus and HDMI ports but lacked any kind of fancier operating system that

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supported apps or web connectivity and there are other reasons why tvs were

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historically dumb but we'll tell you them right after we thank ifixit for

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techwiki and find your perfect tool kit today now something else to consider is

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the fact that the tvs themselves are rather low margin items meaning they

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don't typically make a whole lot of profit for the manufacturer especially

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at the low end as it's become easier to manufacture tvs over the years there's

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lots of supply to go with increased competition driving prices down and the

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fact that smart tv manufacturers get revenue from all the ads their sets

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contain means prices have dwindled even further to the point that it's not hard

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to find smart tvs for below 200 us dollars but why does this necessarily

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mean that your tv has to insult you by being so slow and laggy it doesn't care

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about your time well a big part of the reason is that smart tvs often use low

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end processors as better hardware would cut even further into their already thin

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margins besides when customers go into a store or even browse for televisions

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online they're mostly still shopping based on size and picture quality

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meaning there just isn't very much incentive for manufacturers to improve

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the user experience especially when you consider these tvs

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all have HDMI ports that mostly allow the user to bypass the smart features

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and just plug in their own chromecast or whatever indeed small streaming sticks

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or boxes from companies like roku google NVIDIA and apple tend to offer much

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better performance since so many streaming devices offer a similar suite

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of apps including many apps you can already get built into a smart tv there

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is a bigger incentive for them to provide a solid user experience not to

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mention these companies focus more on well-designed software and incorporating

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hardware that can run it properly to begin with many people have switched to

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using external streaming devices for just this reason even though they can

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get the same content directly through their smart tv now the situation might

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get a little better as time goes on as there's been a trend for tv

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manufacturers to replace their own proprietary and

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bad operating systems with Android tv or the new google tv which are typically a

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lot more stable but again standardization only helps if the

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hardware is up to scratch so let's hope that over time it ends up making more

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economic sense for tv manufacturers to use better chips

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unless you just really love dongles

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hey that was a tech wiki oh my gosh thanks for watching guys hey like the

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