I want to make smart Android TV stupid again.

I didn’t have a lot of money to spend on the TV upgrades I needed last year, but one of the few requirements was Android TV support. Obviously, I’m a fan of Android’s open approach to software (otherwise I wouldn’t be here). And we didn’t want to go to a more limited ecosystem of Tizen or WebOS that doesn’t support something inferior. – A famous media app that I really enjoy. Similarly, given that I used Chromecast with Google TV on an older set, I wanted to avoid the annoying and huge ad banners that plague Google TV devices.

Other than that my requirements were very simple. I don’t have any fancy hardware for gaming or video upscaling, and I don’t watch the TV enough to justify an expensive OLED, so a 4K LCD with some HDR capabilities is a good choice. But really, I just wanted an interface that was responsive enough to quickly load the few TV apps I actually use and not get in the way. I thought having more “basic” Android TV software built in would be a smart choice and save me an HDMI slot on a separate Android TV box. I’m not sure it was such a great idea considering how many miles away it was.

Like many other Android TVs, my Android TV has undergone extensive updates mandated by Google, bringing the interface closer to Google TV and adding ads. With no official option to maintain the old look, we’re back to the starting point of a TV interface that can’t be described in polite words. It’s certainly not the interface I bought the TV with. Things have gotten even worse as we’ve been slowly winding down streaming services for our back catalog of old DVDs and Blu-rays hosted on DIY NAS. Google’s ads, while “nice” to look at, constantly remind me of services I have no intention of using.

This streaming-first approach may suit most of today’s consumer habits, but it’s only one part of a larger TV experience. Google’s software and many other TV operating systems fail to meet the needs of people who want to relax and find an alternative to Netflix.

But what’s worse is that this update’s bloated approach to software means that your TV’s hardware starts to strain after being turned on for a few days (which it wasn’t before the update). Apps seem to take a long time to load, the UI sometimes hangs, and if I forget to press a button 20 times, I’m scrambling to catch up. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to force restart my TV to fix a choppy video stream. I thought I had done my research and selected a more powerful chipset than the limited Chromecast with Google TV 4K I had been using, but apparently I was wrong again.

Unfortunately, near-high-performance chipsets plague even the higher end of the TV market, and updates that introduce new features or more demanding UI elements can push already weak chipsets over the edge. there is. The low cost of these chips means that even if you buy a more expensive chip, you likely won’t receive any real Android updates for more than a year, and your TV will receive new ad formats but not core functionality. We are left in the strange situation of not having one. It’s infuriating.

Apparently, Google has not been able to test and verify the impact of every service-based update on every chipset currently running Android TV, and this is the result. While updates that don’t require a full OS patch eliminate all-too-real OEM bottlenecks, they can also be used to push utter crap onto unsuspecting consumers.

One solution to slow UI and lackluster updates is to buy a more powerful TV box. NVIDIA Shield TV is still a top-of-the-line option five years later. Even if it’s all thanks to Google’s home screen ads. Perhaps we will eventually. But being forced to buy a separate $150 dongle just to do something your TV should (and used to) be able to handle out of the box means that many smart It clearly means that there is a problem with TVs, especially smart TVs with cheap Android TV.

Since I started writing this article, Google has released its own dedicated streamer, Google TV Streamer ($99.99 at Best Buy), which also suffers from the same problem as my book. That means you’re paying an extra $99 for the experience you’re supposed to have. It’s standard on real Android TVs. Another option is Apple TV 4K ($129.99 at Amazon). This is what my colleague Carlos advocates in the video at the beginning of this article, a story of Android TV buyer’s remorse. However, I’m not an Apple fanatic, so it would be an odd device in my broader tech ecosystem, and it’s still an expensive extra box.

In the end, I’m left wishing my Android TV was dumber, cheaper as a result, and perhaps never updated at all, but at least then I could buy an Android box and get the extras. You will no longer have to worry about it. Fee. Instead, my TV has all the bad aspects of Google TV and very few of the benefits. A bare-bones OS with no ads, no “keep watching” or “play next” recommendations, and the ability to simply install apps would be far preferable.

There may not be a lot of long-tail money for Google, but certainly TV providers (and consumers) are willing to pay a small upfront fee for a less cluttered, more streamlined experience. I’ll let it go. I wouldn’t mind if the TV cost $25 more for a slicker UI and decent long-term updates to keep it running smoothly.

Sometimes dumb technology is good technology. That’s really how I feel about the current state of Android TV. Maybe I should have gone with Tizen…