Been hanging out for a new telly for years now but never got round to it as this ones never broke!! However the sound is starting to fail and I've been having a look at the smart telly's. Are they any good or is it just a gimmick, can you actually use them for browsing, or is it just say YouTube and iplayer?
Sony jobbie here. Good for iPlayer and Love Film. Never used it for YouTube.
No browsing.
Not got a smart tv but have one of the new Apple Mac Mini's connected to my 42" plasma. Turns the tv into a big computer, have the bluetooth Apple keyboard and Trackpad to use with it. Great for YouTube and streaming movies.
I have a Panasonic Viera used it a bit for Flikr and youtube but now have a laptop plugged into it which is much smarter and easier to use with a blue tooth keyboard. So never use the smart TV function apart from plugging in an SD card to view pics.
Anyone have a smart telly plugged into a NAS box for video/music streaming? Can never work out what formats are supported...
We have a Sony one in the kitchen with a usb wifi connection, never use it to access the net tbh, our broadband is a bit slow mind.
We do use it to playback pictures for our camera though, which is great for.
Been meaning to work out how to use video skype calls on it though, as we use that quite a bit for foreign calls.
My blu-ray has access to the net and i use it for lovefilm and iplayer. The former is buggy and slow, however.
Have a Panasonic Viera.
Used Youtube on it once (not very useful tbh, seeing as 99.999% of youtube links you might want to click on will be in your email inbox or a forum post, not on your TV). Might be handy to subscribe to video podcast or something though.
PicasaWeb can be handy though if you like to see pics full screen.
Everything else "app" wise, seemed a gimmick.
@thebunk Got a Samsung LE40C580 linked to a Netgear ReadyNas Duo and streaming films work really nicely. Does any format I've thrown at it, but I tend to just stick mkvs on there.
The only negative is the format of the Mediaplay list (when you browse your Nas videos on the tv) - icons are too large hence too many pages to scroll through.