ANALYSIS: SMART TV Home Entertainment
Taming the smart TV jungle! The LG C3 TV 18
There’s no shortage of connected TV platforms competing for consumer attention, many offering new content choices like FAST channels and gaming hubs. Steve May goes in search of the smartest buys…
decisive on the showroom floor. This
T
he 4K smart television may be ubiquitous, but TV operating systems and user interfaces remain a hotbed of competitive development – and advocating the right one can prove
year, Fire TV and Roku-powered
flatscreens aim to take business from proprietary platforms such as LG’s webOS and Samsung’s Tizen. The choice is wide and user benefits are not always clear cut. Significantly, German TV brand Metz has chosen Roku for its UK debut range. The screens are positioned squarely at the value end of the market. But with Roku as a partner, they arrive with a tried and tested streaming backbone that offers access to a huge array of smart apps, including Roku’s own free- to-view entertainment channel, home to the award-nominated Roku Original ‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’. “There’s a genuine story for retailers to tell, as opposed to simply box-shifting on the basis of price,” Rob Peacock, Metz TV’s Commercial
Director tells ERT. “Our brand adds value for both retailers and customers. Metz is a well- established and competitively priced German brand with a long history of producing high quality, reliable products.”
A key appeal of Roku as a native TV platform is its ease of use, he says. “Streaming sticks and boxes have their place, they’re a godsend when it comes to keeping older TVs usable, but as retailers know, consumers have an inherent desire to keep things simple. Families especially, don’t want to have to wrestle with a clutch of remotes in order to just watch telly.” Consumers see value in a user interface
that’s easy to live with, he adds. “They want a UI that’s easy for young and old to get to grips with, and super-speedy and glitch- free in daily use. Metz’s Roku-equipped TVs (pictured right) tick those boxes and give you all the same smarts as streaming sticks, but without the hassle of having to plug in additional devices, accommodating another mains adapter and so on.”
The user experience When it comes to TV operating systems, there are key differences when it comes to the quality of the user experience, says Mr Peacock.
“Every set that we sell in the UK has exactly the same Roku OS running on it. That means consumers get the same class- leading experience, with the widest selection of streaming apps.
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