>I have a Chromecast from 2016 that still runs just as well as it did when I bought it.

Which, in my experience, is better than the new Chromecast with Android TV. I switched to it from an old school Chromecast and was just astounded at how badly the menus performed. Like the entire role of this device is to operate my TV, it's 2023, they can't make it do that without the UI animations dragging and occasionally crashing altogether? Not to mention the ads, ads everywhere, "recommendations" all over the home screen, crammed in every available space, and no doubt dragging performance themselves.

I switched to an Apple TV and it's a bit better, but there's still a full-screen "recommendation" video at the top of the home screen and it still doesn't run perfectly, which sorry not sorry, would be my expectation for such an incredibly simple UI in this great year of 2023.

Sorry to hijack the thread, but is there a single company making a set top box today that #1 consistently performs well in software and #2 isn't riddled with advertising disguised as "recommendations" for content I would never watch? Is that Roku? I haven't used one in years.

Oh, yeah, it's definitely possible to put Roku on hardware that's so incredibly shit that it runs poorly. And Roku's software (like everyone else's) has definitely been bloating for a long time. I discovered that when I bought a Hisense, because I needed a new TV and Costco didn't sell the previous brand of dirt-cheap Chinese Roku TV I'd bought before. God damn did that brand cheap out, the other brand's older TV that cost the same performed so much better. It even crashed sometimes, seemingly from OOM-like pressure, which I'd never once seen happen on the older one.

But it's also the case that decently-performing Roku devices exist running on hardware that surely wouldn't do very well if its "apps" were Webtech-based. JavaScript, sure, that could probably be brought in (and would surely be an improvement over BrightScript, as far as dev-ex) but a whole browser engine? Nah, they'd have to greatly increase their min specs, and their whole niche is "runs twice as well as Android-based TV UIs, on half the hardware".

In my experience at least with somewhat newer low end smart tvs, Roku is far and away a better experience than Android or Fire TV. Even higher end TVs with Android TV are a laggy mess. If you're looking for a cheap bedroom TV I would only choose Roku.

I have a standalone Roku, third generation, so it is sitting on ten years now. It's dandy.

My suspicion has been that building in anything into a television is fraught. Dumb TVs + some kind of box for the win.

As a counter data point. I have 2 TVs with Roku built in. One from 2020 and one from 2018. Each is still very responsive and stable.