LG joins Samsung and Vizio
By: Sohrab Osati
Tags: Samsung, Smart Home, IoT, Apple, Home Theater

LG joins Samsung and Vizio

We don’t even have to go back to the glory days of Trinitron and XBR TVs to remember a time where Sony was THE player in TVs with beautiful designs and picture quality that made the hyper saturated sets from incumbents like Samsung cry. Fast forward to today and while Sony still offers some sleek looking TVs with gorgeous picture quality, they’re hardly a player in the market.

Though their fall is not directly related to the following, it’s an outcome of what’s plagued Sony’s home theater lineup for years — the inability to act as a forward thinking market leader. Instead, Sony’s home theater ambitions are still tied to the 80’s and 90’s mentality of hardware, hardware, hardware when in fact, it’s software that rules supreme today. As I wrote previously:

At this point, we’ve reached a point that most TVs, even cheap units, look good enough and often the deciding factor comes down to either size/price or features. The 2019 lineup of Bravia TVs were announced way back in January at CES 2019 and have been on the market for a few months now. Yet the features Sony promised, like HomeKit and AirPlay 2 support, are nowhere to be seen or even mentioned on their website, making their low marketshare an obvious outcome. This is doubly true if you’re purchasing a premium TV where you expect the latest and greatest tech.

And that last line is the killer part — Sony has shifted many of their businesses towards the premium spectrum while treating their software like a budget product. Both Samsung

and Vizio

have already beaten the latest Bravias to offering support for AirPlay 2 and the latest company to beat them is LG who, alongside Vizio, is also offering HomeKit support, something that Samsung is not. Juli Clover from MacRumors:

With AirPlay 2, LG TV users can stream TV shows and movies from an iOS or macOS device directly to the television, with no Apple TV set-top box required. A movie can be started on an iPhone and AirPlayed right to a TV, as an example. Mirroring a Mac or iOS device’s screen to the TV is also possible, letting photos, spreadsheets, webpages, documents, games, and more be displayed on the larger screen of a TV set. AirPlay 2 allows multiple audio sources to play the same content, so a song can be played on a single television set, multiple television sets, or a TV and other AirPlay 2 devices such as speakers for whole home audio. The AirPlay 2 functionality in LG TVs is linked to HomeKit, so LG TV sets with the new firmware will show up in the Home app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. In the Home app, LG TV users can do things like switch inputs, turn the television on and off, and adjust the volume. Siri can also be used for these commands, so a simple “Hey Siri” voice request on an iOS or macOS device can adjust the volume or turn the TV on or off, much like other HomeKit products. Siri is also able to AirPlay content from an iOS device or Mac to the TV, which means a command like “Hey Siri, play Big Little Lies on the living room TV” will work as a quick way to play a TV show or movie without having to search for it directly. LG says AirPlay 2 and HomeKit will roll out to 2019 TVs in more than 140 countries this week, with the update “continuing over the weeks to follow.”

As for Sony, mum’s the word and with a history of botched firmware updates, I wouldn’t be hopeful of this arriving anytime soon and when it does, it will be a slow update, unlike the global rollout of others. A long time ago, premium meant exceptional design and picture quality — something that Sony delivers on, but the truth is that we live in a world that even ‘cheap’ TVs offer pretty good picture quality and most people don’t put too much stock in design, seeing how the TV is likely to be mounted. That means that software is king in the world of apps, digital assistants, and smart homes and while you’ll be paying a premium for a Bravia, you’ll be getting sub premium features.

To sum up Sony, their home theater endeavors, and their future, I’ll let RDJ do the talking. In the end, all of this is a damn shame because much like Xperia, there’s so much potential in a company that’s filled with talented engineers that’s often led by management who lack vision.