STACK #205 Nov 2021

LIFE TECH FEATURE

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GET SMART! continued

NOT SO SMART

Way back in the early 1980s, engineers worked out a way to send data via a regular free to air TV signal and have it display as text on supported TVs. This eventually became a service offered in many countries – including Australia, where it was named Austext, offering news, weather, quizzes and even racing results, all of it typed in manually by staff at the TV network. It was shut down in 2009, just as smart TVs started to appear.

new Sony TVs now come with Google TV.

This new smart interface is heavy on discovery – learning what you watch across a huge range of streaming services and recommending stuff to you based on what you might like. It makes for a great “pick up the remote and see what’s on” experience – but it also keeps track of where you’re up to with your shows on almost every streaming service, including Netflix and Stan. Of course, being powered by Google it has full Assistant support for everything from finding stuff to watch to controlling the same devices a Google Home can handle – lights, cameras, locks and more. LG A brand known for bringing OLEDTVs to the masses – as well as some seriously great LCD

Pluggable Smarts While a huge percentage of TVs in homes have some smart features, older ones can be a bit of a pain to use, with slower menus and app performance. But there are ways to smarten up your TV just by plugging in a device to do the heavy lifting. Amazon’s Fire TV Stick range has been a popular upgrade for streaming-hungry TV fans for years, and their latest version – the 4K Max – is hard to beat as a seriously fast smart upgrade for any TV with an HDMI socket. It’s been upgraded with faster performance, Wi-Fi

It’s a big, interactive step up from LGTVs of the past, and comes with a new version of the company’s acclaimed “magic remote” – basically an “air mouse” that you can navigate the interface with instead of having to click through menu options. It works brilliantly, and has Alexa and Google Assistant support built right in. It’s only year one for this new smart interface, but it’s already turned LG’s superb TVs into home hubs with a lot more “smart” on board than merely loading up apps.

TVs that deliver incredible bang for the buck – LG has used an interface called WebOS for years now, with it being a fairly innocuous row of installed apps that popped up at the bottom of the screen when you hit the menu button. That’s changed in 2021, with LG redesigning the interface into a full “home screen” that brings together live TV, apps, recommendations, smart home device control and more. You can see all your connected devices on the one screen, too, even USB drives you’ve plugged in to play your own stuff.

6 support, super-fast app loading and support for all major streaming services. It connects with other Amazon devices so you can control them with the Alexa voice remote – and even keep an eye on your front door camera while watching a show so you don’t miss a delivery. There’s also the Fetch TV range of devices – including their latest, the Fetch TV Mini 4K, which merges live TV with streaming and on-demand movies for a lot of entertainment from a tiny box. Along with streaming support, it can pause and rewind live TV (if

you want to record TV, the Fetch TV Mighty is the one to go for) and lets you buy or rent the latest movies and shows from your remote. You can even subscribe to Fetch’s own premium streaming TV channels. Smart TVs are getting smarter, and their screens are getting better and brighter. Plugging in a smart streaming device is a great way to easily upgrade – but if you’ve been thinking about a TV upgrade, be sure to take a look at what smart TVs can do now. Streaming is just the start.

42 NOVEMBER 2021

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