Oof, that screenshot is pretty dire UI.

Do we really need a "next-generation living room web engine"? These smart TV OSes almost always suck ass, I wish all the TV manufacturers would just give up and ship simple panels with just basic volume and input selection control.

Or if you absolutely _must_ insist on shipping "smart" features, why do you still need to ship a full browser engine to show some text, rectangles, and images?

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huslage 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

People watch YouTube on their TV. Having an independent rendering engine makes the TV OS's garbage stuff go away from the perspective of YouTube's app.

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troupo 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

All apps on smart TVs are browser apps. Some, like Youtube, get special privileges (that is, can run their own app), but also need to run some kind of UI since TVs have no standard UI libraries. Youtube decided to run a stripped down version of Chrome (Cobalt). Others (IIRC Netflix) run their own renderer. Or do weird stuff, see Comcast and Lightning https://www.lightningjs.io/

TVs own interfaces are some bespoke one-off stuff that isn't exposed to other apps.

And this sucks because Raspberry PIs have more powerful hardware than even modern high-end TVs.

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seabrookmx 3 hours ago | parent [-]

There's some exceptions to this rule. Google TV devices are Android under the hood and thus, the TV apps are Android apps distributed as apk's just like on smartphones (not web apps).

	▲	izacus an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Most of those are webapps too (just packaged in APK) since it doesn't make sense for most app developers to build a special bespoke version for Android. If you check YouTube version string you'll see Cobalt as well on Android.
	▲	troupo 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		For some reason I forget Android TVs :) In my mind it's always Samsung, LG, Roku etc. :)