There’s a lot to talk about when it comes to smart TVs. No two smart TVs are ever built the same. While one smart TV may have a specific set of features, the next may have a totally different set of features! As such, many people often have a number of burning questions regarding these helpful devices.
Whether you’re hoping to grab your very first smart TV, or you’re hoping to gain mastery over one of your own, this guide is for you. We’ve put together this resource to cover some of the most important topics that often surround smart TVs. After reading, you’ll be able to make your smart TV even more enjoyable to use!
What Is A Smart TV?
Because smart TVs are now so ubiquitous in the world of home entertainment, it can seem difficult to define them. However, put simply, a smart TV is a television that can connect to your local internet, while also providing a number of extra features.
A Smart TV is not specifically related to 4K TV or 8K TV resolution, and nor is it purely associated with television technology, such as OLED, QLED and QNED TVs.
Part of what makes smart TVs special is that you don’t technically need to connect any external devices to them. Smart TVs across the market pride themselves on providing direct access to streaming platforms. When a weekend binge-watch beckons, all you need to do is boot up the dedicated Netflix or Disney+ app, and get streaming!
If you had a standard non-smart TV, you would need to connect an external device. Both to connect to the internet and to stream your favourite content.
A smart TV is an internet-connected television that provides a number of advanced features you wouldn’t find on a standard TV. The best smart TVs are easy to navigate, and fun to use!
In order to make smart features accessible, a smart TV needs a good operating system. This is where many smart TV models differ. The operating system that a smart TV uses will depend on the manufacturer. For instance, LG smart TVs make use of WebOS, while Samsung TVs make use of the Tizen operating system. These operating systems differ in terms of how they present information to the user, and in terms of features they boast.
Truly smart TVs are those that are easy and pleasurable to navigate. And in order to operate in an efficient manner, a smart TV needs a good processor!
What Does A Smart TV’s Processor Do?
A smart TV’s processor is best thought of as its brain! Of course, the more powerful this brain is, the better the smart TV will perform.
Whenever you interact with a smart TV, the processor is tasked with managing all of your inputs. While doing this, the processor is also focused on managing your TV’s most crucial functions. Processors with more storage space are able to more efficiently manage all of this data. This will result in the smart TV feeling more smooth and intuitive to operate. As such, if you’re ever in the market for a smart TV, it’s worth looking for one with a powerful processor!
Your smart TV’s processor may also be able to learn directly from how you interact with it. Let’s say you had a preference for the Netflix app over other streaming apps. The processor would be able to recognise this, and then make it easier to access the Netflix app! The best smart TVs are those that are able to work in direct concert with their users!
What Features Should You Look For In A Smart TV?
Whether you’re looking to grab your first-ever smart TV, or looking to upgrade an existing one, it’s not always clear what to look for! As we mentioned earlier, smart TVs can differ massively from one model to the next. No two smart TVs will ever share the exact same set of functions.
Luckily, there are a few crucial features that we think should be found in any good smart TV. Let’s take a look at each of them!
User-Friendly Interface
There’s no point in grabbing a smart TV packed with features if you end up lost trying to find them. A user-friendly interface is crucial to a pleasurable smart TV experience. Luckily, a number of top smart TV models feature intuitive controls and interfaces.
The user interface of a smart TV should be uncluttered, and easy to understand at a glance. A screen that’s cluttered with hundreds of buttons will be daunting and inefficient to use. A good smart TV interface understands what’s important to you, and presents information accordingly. As we mentioned, a good smart TV is able to learn from how you interact with it. By learning what apps are your favourite, a smart TV can make it much easier to move around.
A smart TV is only as smart as its user interface. With an inefficiently-designed user interface, your smart TV can very quickly feel not-so-smart! Your smart TV should be easy and effortless to navigate!
As well as the user interface of the smart TV’s home screen, you’ll want to make sure the user interface of the TV’s controller is equally intuitive. Again, the best controllers are those that aren’t cluttered with buttons. Using your TV’s remote control should feel like second nature. If the controller is filled with extraneous buttons, it can be really easy to get confused.
Picking a smart TV with the right user interface is also crucial for older users. Again, the user interface should be easy to interact with at a glance!
Voice Control
If you want a smart TV that’s truly efficient to navigate, we’d also recommend opting for voice controls! Voice controls make it much easier to navigate through a smart TV’s features. This is because users can simply state what they are looking for, and they will be taken right to it. This completely cuts out the need to navigate through an endless maze of menus!
Luckily, voice controls are included in most smart TV models. In fact, you’d have a harder time finding a smart TV that did not offer voice controls. Voice controls are most often hosted through some of the most popular voice assistant platforms. Certain smart TVs can be connected to Amazon Alexa or Google Voice Assistant, among many others!
By connecting your smart TV to your preferred voice assistant, you can easily control your TV from anywhere in the home. Let’s say you already have several Google smart home devices dotted around your home. In this case, we’d strongly recommend grabbing a smart TV compatible with Google Voice Assistant.
Music Streaming
Smart TVs can be used for more than just visual entertainment. Thanks to online connectivity, it’s also possible to make the most of your favourite music!
Smart TVs can also be used for streaming your favourite music. Popular services like Spotify and Apple Music can be accessed via most smart TVs! Make sure to grab a smart TV with the best sound features!
If you’re an avid music fan, then we strongly recommend looking for a smart TV that can provide access to some of the world’s leading music platforms. Many leading platforms like Spotify and Apple Music have TV-specific versions of their apps. These versions are easy to navigate, and can easily be interfaced using your smart TV’s voice controls.
Sound Features
Of course, if you’re going to make the most of music streaming, you’ll need to make sure you have good sound!
Smart TVs aren’t just focused on providing you with a great visual experience. The best smart TVs on the market are also able to provide you with great sound. Many do this through proprietary sound technologies. These technologies can perform a number of different functions. From creating directional audio that travels through your space, to enhancing and upscaling audio in real time.
We strongly recommend taking your time to look through each smart TV’s sound features. With greater sound, your favourite content will be more immersive. Be sure to also pair sound features with a good sound system. Some smart TVs are built with standard stock speakers that may leave a lot to be desired. If you want your content to sound its best, we recommend opting for a smart TV with directional speakers. These speakers are placed in specific areas of the TV, to allow sound to move.
It’s also worth looking for smart TVs with built-in soundbars. Soundbars are incredibly wide, which allows them to create room-filling sound through a single unit. If you’re opting for a Samsung smart TV, we recommend looking for Samsung’s own Q Symphony technology. This technology allows a TV’s built-in speakers to work in direct tandem with a connected soundbar!
App Store
Your smart TV should be personal to you and how you use it. We’ve mentioned a few times that a good smart TV can learn from how you interact with it to provide a more intuitive experience. The best smart TVs can be customised how you see fit, and to suit your personal needs!
If you want a smart TV that you can customise to your needs, you’re going to need one with a trusty app store! With an app store, you can choose exactly which apps you want to install. If you make frequent use of Netflix, but almost never use Amazon Prime Video, you can simply install the Netflix app, and delete the Amazon Prime Video app. This helps to keep your smart TV’s user interface free of clutter!
Your smart TV should be customised to your specific needs. As such, it’s worth looking for models that offer access to up-to-date app stores! This way, you can keep up with the hottest apps and services!
New smart TV apps are always being released. So having access to a dedicated app store ensures you’ll be able to keep up with the hottest apps. This way, your smart TV can always be up to date with the best platforms.
Built-In Search Engines
Smart TVs allow you to connect directly to the internet. To help leverage the benefits of the internet, it’s best to find a smart TV with a sturdy search engine.
Many smart TVs come with built-in search engines that allow you to draw upon the vast banks of knowledge across the internet. Want to know a little more about a specific film or TV show? Just ask the search engine to find out more!
It’s worth looking for smart TVs with built-in access to the Google search engine. Google’s search engine, is, obviously, the very best in the world, and provides accurate responses to just about any request!
Search engines can also be used to help find content that is specifically catered to your tastes!
Custom Recommendations
Following on from the above feature, we’d also recommend looking for smart TVs that are able to provide custom recommendations. As you interact with your smart TV, it will be able to learn the kinds of content you best enjoy. It can then use this information to provide recommendations for similar content.
Let’s say you had a subscription to both Netflix and Disney+. If you were a fan of gritty detective crime dramas, your smart TV would take note of this, and recommend content from both platforms that align with your tastes!
Custom recommendations can make your smart TV much simpler to use. Recommended content will show up on the user interface, so you can quickly hop right in!
HDR Compatibility
Most smart TV models are built with HDR compatibility as standard. HDR, an abbreviation of “High Dynamic Range”, is a premium video format that allows a TV screen to access an enhanced range of brightness levels and pixel colours. With HDR activated, your favourite content will pop from the screen. Distinct shapes are easier to make out, and contrast is greatly improved.
In most cases, an HDR-compatible TV will activate HDR as soon as it detects the right video signal. Smart TVs equipped with HDR are a very worthwhile investment. Allowing you to enhance your content without any input needed!
Image Upscaling
Smart TVs are now incredibly common across the UK. This also applies to TVs with UHD resolutions. 4K content is more popular than ever, as studios produce content with 4K in mind, and remaster plenty of their legacy content to display in native 4K.
The only problem is, not every piece of content can display at 4K resolutions. Some pieces of content are trapped at 1080p resolutions, with no sign of an upgrade in the near future. If you want to enjoy even non-4K content on your new 4K TV, it’s worth looking for a smart model with automatic image upscaling.
Image upscaling is a technology that is able to improve the fidelity of any image that you play on your TV. Essentially, your smart TV will look at your content as it plays, and focus on cleaning up the image. This is most often done on a frame-by-frame basis. The upscaling program will look out for visual noise, such as highly pixelated sections of the image, and then smooth these sections out!
AI can be used to upscale legacy content to appear natively 4K or 8K. This can be done in real-time, performed entirely by your smart TV. This can help you make the most of your TV.
The better your smart TV’s processor, the more capable it will be at upscaling your images. Again, we recommend looking for a smart TV with the best processor available.
Image upscaling is still very much a technology in its infancy, and as such, it can occasionally get things wrong. This is because the processor is effectively “Guessing” what would look best for the image.
Some manufacturers have their own proprietary versions of this technology. Which often performs the function a little more effectively. The Philips P5 Perfect Picture engine, for instance, doesn’t just consider each frame in isolation. It also takes into account the image’s source, its context, and its colours, among other details.
What Role Does AI Play In Smart TVs?
Smart TVs are not only able to handle advanced functions with ease. They’re also able to learn from you, and the content you enjoy. We’ve mentioned a few times throughout this guide that a good smart TV should be able to personalise your experience based on your past interactions with it. To help make smart TVs much more effective at doing this, many manufacturers also fit them with intelligent AI.
On-board TV AI can improve various aspects of your TV experience. From enhancing your TV’s image quality to improving content recommendations. Let’s take a look at the role AI can play in each of these functions.
Image Upscaling
Smart TVs equipped with AI are able to upscale images to a much more consistent quality. AI doesn’t work on a frame-by-frame basis, improving each image as it comes. Instead, AI learns from your content, as it plays, to ensure consistent results from frame to frame. A smart TV’s AI is able to learn from the context of your video source, to ensure an accurate upscaling job.
As well as improving highly pixelated areas of the image, AI is also able to improve an image’s colour depth. By taking the entire context of an image into consideration, the on-board AI can learn which colours should be added to the image in order to improve colour depth. When paired with an HDR video source, this technology is able to create truly striking imagery with fantastic contrast.
Sound Improvement
In order to improve audio quality, AI is able to take an audio track and identify distinct layers of sound. In any film or TV scene, there are always multiple layers of sound playing at one time. For instance, in one scene, there may be background music, the ambience of the setting, and a dialogue layer. Oftentimes, these audio layers are compressed into one audio file alongside the original video file. By identifying each of these audio layers, an AI can then separate them.
Once these audio layers are isolated, the AI can then send them to the correct speakers of your TV’s sound system. For instance, the background music might play from one set of speakers, while the dialogue layer might play on another set of speakers. This allows for more realistic and immersive audio.
By isolating audio layers, AI can also make it easier to hear dull and quiet audio. Ever had to crank the volume of your TV up just to hear what characters are saying? AI will be able to raise the volume of dialogue so that you don’t have to constantly hover over the volume buttons!
Improved Recommendations
AI helps your smart TV to more accurately learn from how you use it. AI will be able to learn your tastes in content and curate new recommendations that would appeal to you. It does this by analysing your interactions with streaming apps, or which channels you spend most of your time on.
AI is able to do this more effectively thanks to the fact that its knowledge banks are always being updated. AI will also be able to draw upon the internet to improve recommendations. Let’s say you were a fan of a specific TV show. Your smart TV’s AI would be able to take a look at the viewing habits of other fans of the same show. Other shows that those same fans enjoy would then be recommended.
AI can be leveraged in your smart TV to help improve recommendations. Your smart TV can learn about your tastes based on what you watch, and then recommend similar content!
This allows for more personalised recommendations. Recommendations will no longer be based on just hard data like a show’s genre. Instead, it can be recommended based on how likely you are to enjoy it!
Your TV’s AI learns directly from how you interact with it. As such, you can make it more effective at its job by interacting with it regularly. Many smart TVs will allow you to rate your smart TV’s recommendations. This often takes the form of a “Not Interested” button. However, the wording may be different depending on the TV model you are using. Be sure to make use of this button! It helps your smart TV’s AI to better understand you!
Make sure to also interact with content using each platform’s user controls. For instance, when Netflix asks you if you enjoyed a title, be sure to respond. The same applies to YouTube. If you enjoy a video, be sure to interact with it. All of this information helps your smart TV to better understand you!
How Do You Access Image Upscaling On A Smart TV?
How you activate image upscaling on your UHD TV will depend on the model you’re using. Different TV models may list the technology under a different name, or hide it behind a specific menu. It’s worth taking a look at your smart TV’s user manual, to see where the option is kept.
In most cases, the upscaling toggle is located in the system settings of the TV. Simply head to the settings and then choose whether you want upscaling to be applied.
Image upscaling can help non-UHD content to look natively UHD. However, the technology is not perfect. Specific types of content may not take well to upscaling. Most smart TVs allow you to toggle the technology on and off as needed!
Some smart TVs may even allow you to map the toggle to a specific shortcut on the TV’s interface. This way, you can quickly activate and deactivate it while watching content. This means you won’t have to stress about content that doesn’t take well to upscaling. If the upscaling job doesn’t look right, then simply turn it off!
Some models may have upscaling activated automatically as soon as your TV is first booted up!
How Do You Access Voice Controls On A Smart TV?
Again, this depends on the TV model you own. Some smart TVs come with their own voice assistant platforms built in from the start. In cases like this, it’s as simple as finding the corresponding button and making your request.
In other cases, your smart TV may need to be connected to one of many popular voice assistant platforms. Including platforms like Siri, Google Voice Assistant, and Alexa. Which voice assistant you connect to will largely depend on which voice assistants your smart TV is compatible with.
In order to connect to voice assistants like Amazon Alexa, you will need to make sure you have an associated account.
Once your smart TV is connected to a voice assistant, all you need to do is hit the associated button or say the associated command to activate it. With assistants like Google Voice Assistant, you can simply say “OK, Google”, and then make your request. Otherwise, the activation will either be mapped to a button on your TV’s user interface, or to a button on the controller.
Make sure your smart TV also has some kind of microphone. This microphone may be built into the TV screen itself, or may even be built into the remote!
Can You Turn An Ordinary TV Into A Smart TV?
While it’s not possible to upgrade your TV’s existing hardware and turn it into a smart TV, it’s more than possible to give your standard TV access to modern smart TV functions. In order to do this, you will need to hook up an external device that can connect to the internet. This can either be a streaming stick, a games console, or even an existing computer
If you have a non-smart TV, and you’re not quite ready to upgrade, don’t worry. With an external device such as a games console you can still access internet content from your TV!
By using these devices, you can display internet content on your TV without having to change a thing about the TV itself!
Do Smart TVs Use More Power?
Unfortunately, smart TVs do use slightly more power than standard non-smart TVs. This is because of the addition of their high-powered processors, and all of the extra features these TVs boast.
However, it’s worth noting that though smart TVs consume more electricity, it is only a small amount more! You won’t find your electricity bills climbing a dramatic amount upon buying a smart TV!
In fact, in some cases, running a smart TV can actually be the more affordable option. If you’re accessing online content through an external device such as a games console, you’ll have to have two devices activated at the same time. This will result in much more electricity use overall!
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is A Smart TV?
Smart TVs, unlike non-smart TVs, are able to connect directly to the internet. Thanks to an internet connection, it’s possible for a smart TV to access various online content. Smart TVs are also equipped with extra functions that standard TVs are incapable of. These smart functions help to make smart TVs more efficient and intuitive to use.
What Are The Disadvantages Of A Smart TV?
Smart TVs help to vastly improve the TV-using experience. However, in exchange for extra features, smart TVs often cost a little more. A smart TV won’t break the bank, but you may need to more strongly consider the cost! There is also the risk that a smart TV may be too smart! You may only need your TV for the most basic of purposes, in which case, the extra smart features may not be beneficial!
Are Smart TVs Easy To Set Up?
Absolutely! In most cases, all you need to do is plug your smart TV in, and you can get to using it! If you want to use specific smart TV functions, you may need to connect your smart TV to a specific online account. For instance, if you want to connect your TV to Google Voice Assistant, you will first need to connect to your Google account!
