Need a new tv for downstairs. Quite fancy a smart tv. Lots of reviews but they all read the same, ( like many bike reviews 🙂 )

Anyone got one and can tell me about the user interface for the smart tv bit. Ideally want to watch YouTube, Iplayer and mirror stuff off tablets etc.

Need a new tv anyway so rather have it built in and have less clutter rather than go down Apple TV etc type box.

Samsung SmartTV here. I’d say 75% of what we watch is on demand through iPlayer etc. YouTube is ok, but slow to enter text off the remote. Vimeo works ok though. Other “Apps”….rubbish. Worth it for the on demand in my book.
Also, Samsung’s All-Share is good too, playing content from the pc etc.

And, don’t let them sell you a £60 WiFi stick, an Ethernet cable goes straight in.

A mate’s got a Phillips its rubbish, the remote takes ages to react to the screen & it constantly boots off a connected smart phone via its own app. My mate has decided the smartest thing to do is connect his laptop via hdmi. Which obviously negates the point of a smart tv. So I would say don’t buy a Phillips. Not played with other brands yet….. Personally still happy using the ps3.

Cheers, just the kind of info I was after. Current tv is a Samsung and I like it but ui is not brilliant. Sounds better than the Philips though.

Got Samsung smart and TV’s and they are OK, the widgets are alright but not great. As mentioned you either need to buy a WiFi dongle or go via powerlines. Power lines are a better option in that instance. OR…… I’ve just built a Raspberry PI XBMC media and quite honestly I can see it changing how I watch TV in the future. You can watch all the usual free TV channels, you can (almost) watch any TV series aired from anywhere in the world and you can watch virtually any film you can think of. Everything is streamed so you need a decent internet connection.

Another Samsung TV owner here. Bought it off the back of a top review in What HiFi and its great. Like takisawa2 said, a LOT of what we watch is via LoveFilm/iPlayer/5 OnDemand etc because with young kids we rarely have time to sit and watch stuff when its on the first time!

Certainly makes life easier and the ability to view video/pictures from your PC is fantastic. Instant access to every digital photo I’ve taken since I first got a digi camera in ~1997! Fantastic!

Brother has a Samsung smart TV. iPlayer works quite well on it, we don’t bother with any of the other stuff.
We’ve got a jailbroken AppleTV (v2) running XBMC in one room and a Raspeberry Pi in the other room – both are great but the RPi is especially brilliant. We stream stuff straight from t’interweb and movies stored on network storage.
My feeling is that built in apps in a TV are always going to be a bit of a compromise, but I could be wrong.

Juanking: could you chuck me an email with where you’re getting some of your movies/series? 🙂

Just got a new Panasonic smart TV, very, very pleased with the picture and the ability to play stuff from USB/NAS etc etc, but the Smart functions are a bit meh. I knew this before getting the TV but Panasonic are in now way as good as Samsung/LG maybe Sony at the Smart TV lark. The have a lot fewer apps generally but they do have iPlayer, Lovefilm and Youtube, but not ITVplayer, 4OD etc etc. The Smart phone “remote” does make navigation through YouTube etc much better than the clunkadelic UI of selecting letters from an onscreen keyboard. Interface is pretty good but a wee bit laggy, kinda wish I’d gone for the dual core processor (yes TV’s now have dual core processors on them) model.

Another fairly happy Samsung owner – but they need to sort pit Allshare to stop it playing audio in alphabetic track name order!

I have the panasonic smart tv.

I think its worth the extra if you have no other smart channel eg virgin media

the ability to stream youtube and iplayer is great, I watch drive channel on youtube for chris harris and it is in hd quality, so as long as you have a good speed 20mb or so I guess, then its good.

Having said all that, I can achieve this with my other panasonic tv but I have to connect a laptop to it, so it takes the computer out of action.

I think given the price difference and where the market could go, I would get it

Before you buy check how the cables fit into the back.

We have a Sony TV and they’re all over the place: HDMI on the left, AV / HDMI in the middle and power on the right.
This also means that the TV pushes out from the wall a bit – particularly by the time you’ve also plugged in the AV1 socket for the DVD-player, and the AV2 for the Wii.

And budget for the bracket if you’re hanging it off the wall.

The user-interface on the Sony is clunky (probably no worse than any other) but works OK. It does iPlayer, 5, and Lovefilm (which the Samsung didn’t do when I bought it), Youtube etc.

Another Samsung here. Older generation LE40C650. Iplayer/vimeo/netflix all great. No actual web browser. No new apps being generated for older models, so no 4OD, Demand5, ITVplayer, despite them being on newer Samsungs. I use the £40 Samsung dongle and it’s OK. Android phone has a Samsung app which makes typing in search terms etc on YouTube lots easier.

If others are having the same experience as me that older tellies don’t get updated or new apps, then I’d be tempted to go with one of these Android SmartTV dongles which run off USB power and have HDMI output. Not tried one yet but tempted to make the missing on demand stuff easier than hooking up a laptop.

I’ve recently got an LG Smart TV, it’s brilliant. It’s Full HD/3D! All the usual Smart TV apps (iplayer, 4od, Netflix etc) it’s got built in wifi so no need for any ethernet cables. It also plays files straight from my HDD which is another reason I bought it instead of a dedicated media centre, the only downside is it doesn’t seem to play .mkv files. I paid £599 for it in 42″ guise. It’s model number 42la620v.

only downside is it doesn’t seem to play .mkv files

This can be a problem with TVs – they wont nec. play all the formats you want them to.

it’s got built in wifi so no need for any ethernet cables

Built in wifi is fine if you’ve got a great wifi signal but in reality you can’t beat being connected to the router with a bit of wire when it comes to moving video files around the place.

We’ve got a Samsung blueray to do the smart tv thing through our old plasma.
Connects with wifi. can pause & record live tv. Needs tvmobili to stream content from a mac, but it can work. Samsung really doesn’t want to play with apple.