When I bought my first TV 5 years ago, it turned out to have a minor display defect. So after a few months, I replaced my TCL Roku TV and decided to go for a Hisense 55Q8G instead. I thought that going with Android TV was a sure way to get something reliable.🙄
The issues I had with that, even just to watch the national news (CBC’s The National), are appalling. There is the flaky, erratic remote, which seems to eat batteries and has stopped warning me it was time to replace them years ago. There is the TV itself, which sometimes becomes mute.
But the worse part is the YouTube application (which unfortunately is less bad than CBC Gem). I have lost at least 1 person-hour, quite probably 2, just because of bugs browsing the channel to simply play yesterday’s full show. After being intermittent for years, that seems to have been solved a few months ago. But a couple months ago or so, the YouTube app brought a new issue: a prompt to select which account to use. Every time I open it, even though a single account has ever been used on that TV. Of course, without a choice to remember.
I was so sick of all that wasted time that I felt ambivalent when I read There’s more film and television for you to watch than ever before — good luck finding it. Part of me is reassured to know I am not doomed or getting crazy, but the other part has its hope of soon seeing things fine after a few lucky bugfixes lowered.
The positive point is that it prompted me to search for that latest YouTube problem, and see that I am not alone having to select my account every time. And more importantly, find an interesting workaround: using a different application to watch YouTube! So 2 weeks ago, I switched to SmartTube, a free software client which is non-trivial to install, but which has been working better so far. I just hope its main/only developer (Yuriy L) sticks until more people participate and that using it is legal even if it does not display ads.