michael here and almost every day i hear from people who bought a new smart tv only to find
that one of their favorite apps was not available for download the problem with missing apps usually
affects cord cutters with samsung or lg tv sets and that's because those companies have their own
smart tv operating systems but i do not get this complaint from people with smart tvs that have
roku amazon fire tv or google tv built in not what i'm talking about here the biggest apps
are available to download on samsung and lg tvs but some smaller applications are left off these
platforms and the other thing you may notice is that even larger streaming applications may not
be supported on older smart tvs and the definition of older may be a tv set that is relatively new
like five years old so far i've laid out two problems with some smart tvs apps not available
to download and apps that are not supported on older smart tvs but there's another thing that
some new cord cutters overlook simply because they don't know any better i've got a samsung tv but i
didn't buy it for the smart tv features navigating the smart tv interface is a chore compared to roku
aside from more cluttered menus it can be laggy slow and clunky my biggest complaint of all from
a user experience perspective is the remote that samsung gives you with the purchase it is full of
useless keys compared to for example a simplified roku remote if samsung and lg fixed these issues
it would make rokus like this one obsolete but in my opinion we are not quite there yet
and plenty of people agree check this out in a poll of my youtube community
i laid out a hypothetical situation pay 50 bucks more for samsung's smart tv interface or save 50
on a tv purchase and hook up your own streaming media player like a roku more than 70 percent
of people said they would prefer the lower price and doing without samsung tvs interface of course
this was just a hypothetical samsung includes its smart tv interface on all of its new tvs as far
as i know and that is for a very specific reason like all the smart tv manufacturers samsung wants
you to use its platform because it can collect data to target you with better ads it's really
hard to find a so-called dumb tv anymore when i was browsing best buy's website i largely saw
smart tvs and not just from samsung and lg also brands with roku fire tv and google tv built in
i did find an exception with this 40 inch insignia tv that is a best buy brand and you can see in the
description it also says non-smart and if that tv set looks familiar yes it is the one that i
use and some of my tutorials so if you've just spent 500 or maybe a lot more on a new smart tv
i know how frustrating it is to hear the solutions to the problems i've laid out today
but for a better user experience you will want to purchase an external streaming media player
for first time cord cutters i like roku devices but amazon fire tv and google chromecast are very
popular as well and these start at less than 50 bucks if you've got a bigger budget you may prefer
an apple tv device for me to recommend samsung or lg smart tv interfaces over an external media
player a few things have to change here's my wish list first increase the number of applications
available to download second offer some sort of guarantee to reassure consumers that the apps will
be supported and receive updates over the long haul and third include a streaming remote with
fewer keys when you buy tv set in the meantime if you decide to purchase a roku i'll have
links below to my recommendations and check out this video for my favorite roku tips and tricks