alt Hacker NewsI always found most tv apps have some performance issues. I've seen netflix, prime, even youtube crash, lag, or have some issues now and then that just made me think that maybe tvs are just not powerful. Don't even want to talk about Disney+, HBO, or Hulu.
Then I got an appletv+ subscription, and was pleasantly surprised it performed far better, on an android tv even. I wonder if it's beyond just the company standards for performance, and that the lower compatibility for porting between swift and the android sdks compared to idk react components or flutter, forced them to start from scratch for performance on android tvs.
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TV's are optimized around decoding video, At least they can generally do this at full speed, this is coupled with the cheapest cpu the manufacturer can find. Even this would be manageable, There have been great UI's on weaker hardware. But then they want to program everything in html/javascript/css 7 layer lasagna stacks, this is where things start to get bad. Then the marketing team gets their slimy hands in and proceed to stuff the telemetry in until full. It is still "technically" usable, but nobody is enjoying the experiance. Package it up and sell it to some rube as a "Smart" TV.
TVs are NOT powerful. It’s like writing software for the Lunar rover.
My 2 cents: if you are big enough and the competition isn't as strong, users will give you a pass on some performance issues as long as they get the content they want.