Samsung SmartTV – Building the Hope for Apple’s TV

I just bought a new Samsung 46″ LED SmartTV and I’m very happy.Still waiting for the real smart Apple TV, though.

The “Smart” part shows the great potential the internet+TV combo has, but it seems we will have to wait for Apple to “Get it Right”.

One thing I learned is that the TV is much better for consuming content like videos and songs on Vimeo and YouTube.

The TV comes with a wireless internet connection, integrated browser, Application store and VOD service.

The things I liked :

• Price of about $1200 including installation+delivery+ wireless + wall mount+ Israeli VAT of 17% (we have wars to finance)
• The non smart TV functionality is great – colors, lightening , connectors , etc
• Installation was very straight forward. More of an appliance style than computer style
• Having an alternate VOD with an excellent quality really shows the promise of breaking the tie of content and infrastructure providers.
• Comprehensive localization in the configuration and VOD content as well
• Vimeo is a great web site with an excellent app and high quality content
• It was fun the watch the War on Channel 10 and Ynet at the same time with PIP (Picture in Picture). Well , the war was not really fun, but you see what I mean.

Facebook App Download on Samsung Smart TV

The reasons why we need Apple iTV for are:

• Browser runs “Out of Memory” for the majority of web sites
• No way to change the home page from “Bing”
• Keyboard entry is extremely slow, unless you buy the wireless keyboard
• Auto Updates are cool, but why don’t they happen in the background
• Auto Updates are too frequent , almost every day
• Integration with Google,Facebook,Picasa and online identity  is quite hard. Entering my password was quite a nightmare.
• YouTube is full of much junk and songs get stuck frequently
• No “Ad-Blocking” for the browser and pop-up windows consume the main screen
• The iPad remote control is not working on iOS6 (and I did not get it to work on ios5 either)
• Samsung online registration is  as bad as Nokia’s PC software used to be. Early warning signs 😦

Vimeo on Samsung Smart TV