There are many smart TV platforms these days: the humble Roku, various Amazon Fire TV devices, Samsung’s Tizen-based platform, screens with Android TV built-in, the Nvidia Shield, and even the (relatively) new Chromecast with Google TV. As the Android Police, we clearly care a little more about some of these platforms more than others. Given the apparent popularity of the new Chromecast among our readers, we’re curious to know how many of you use an Android TV or Google TV device.
For obvious reasons, we’re streaming more than we ever have now, but there are a lot of ways to project those shows and movies into our eyeballs. Most of you are probably reading these very words on a phone, and it’s a convenient (if small) screen to stream from. Tablets and PCs also get plenty of use, with the advantage of a larger display. But for many of us, the TV remains king, even if cable has gone the way of the dodo.
Within the world of Android TV, we’ve got both the “legacy” version that goes by the same name and Google’s new Google TV, which debuted on the self-titled Chromecast with Google TV. There are differences and some points of branding confusion — Google TV is a platform and an app, as the new name for Play Movies & TV, which you can watch on your Android TV — but deep down inside, they’re both running Android, just with a slightly different (and slowly converging) look. TVs with the skinned Google TV built-in are planned later this year from folks like Sony and TCL, but none have materialized yet.
If you’ve got a smart TV (or a box or dongle to make it smart), is it running Android TV?
