Hands on with the Philips Android TV System 2015
Last year Philips tried to bolster its Smart TV arsenal by introducing Android TV to some of its 2014 TV range. None of these Android TVs found their way to UK shores, but that may have been for the best – they used the outdated Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, meaning the TV experience they delivered wasn’t all it might have been.
Thankfully Philips is getting much more serious with Android in 2015. For starters it’s moving to the new 5.0 Lollipop flavour, which is far more television-friendly than the previous version. Also, Android is now available across a much wider selection of Philips’ new TVs than before – 80% of the latest range, in fact.
We took an early look at some of these new Philips Android TVs at a launch event in Barcelona…
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The first thing that struck us during our time with the new TVs was how much more effort Philips has put into foregrounding the Android experience. There’s now a dedicated button on the remote control, and this immediately opens the same Home Android menu screen familiar to users of other Android devices, including Sony’s upcoming TVs.
This menu is much cleaner looking and better organised than Philips’ previous Android attempt. It’s organised in so-called shelves that you can scroll along horizontally, with the top shelf showing recommended content. These recommendations can come from any app that chooses to support them, such as YouTube, Google, and video apps like MaxFilm. Netflix has opted out for now, though, as it prefers to use its own recommendation metrics.
It’s worth adding that the Recommendations shelf will only feature content suggested by apps you've installed on your TV, so you won’t find yourself clicking on a link only to be presented with a "you need to download the app first" message.
The second shelf down is the Philips TV shelf. This shows links to stuff Philips thinks you might like, such as new apps or popular apps you might not have downloaded yet. It’s easy to imagine this descending into a glorified advertising shelf, but Philips assures us it intends to treat it instead as a means of helping you expand your experience. During our hands-on, for instance, the shelf was suggesting that we tried out the new Spotify app – something you may not have realised was available, but which you may well want to use.
Below these two top shelves are the app store, game and Setting shelves, which do exactly as you'd expect.
One thing that feels like it’s missing from this shelf list is an easy way of accessing and tracking TV broadcast content. Instead, Philips has added a separate TV menu – accessed via another dedicated remote control button – which lets you separate TV shows into specific types and genres. It's just not as neatly integrated as it is on some rival Smart TV offerings, such as LG's webOS 2.0, Samsung's Tizen-based system and, to some extent, Panasonic's Firefox OS-driven My Home Screen 2.0, which all treat broadcast content as apps.
Another limitation of the Android home screen is that it doesn't permit customisation. So, for instance, you can’t set up your own personalised shelf containing just links to your favourite apps. Nor can you tailor the home page in any way – even the recommendations shelves – for individual members of your family, say. The same home page greets all who access it, and the recommendations made cover the gamut of show types watched by everyone in your household. Though fans of "mature" content will be pleased to note that the recommendations list is time sensitive, and so won’t suggest material that’s not suitable for children ahead of the watershed…
Obviously you have to allow the TV to share your viewing habit data with Philips’ servers if you want the recommendations system to work effectively. If you don’t, this shelf will only be able to show content that’s generally popular in your territory.
Getting back into more positive territory, Android supports multitasking, enabling you to have multiple apps running simultaneously. In fact, a multi-view option lets you actually see two at once. Plus there’s "hot-swapping", so that if you switch from one app – YouTube, for example – to another and then go back to the original one, it will pick up that first app where you left it.
Android opens up a few extra control options too. There’s now a mic built into the newly designed remote control to support voice recognition, and Google Cast support for enhanced control and content sharing with other Android devices.
The new Philips smart remote also features a swipeable area, so you can move around the menus and built-in browser more quickly without having to use a normal set of up, down, left and right buttons.
We were disappointed to note, though, that the new Philips Android TVs don’t support free floating point control – in other words, you can’t use the same highly effective "point and click" approach possible with TVs from LG and, more recently, Samsung. This is because the Android platform doesn’t support point and click, not because Philips didn’t want to offer it as a control option.
Also, the remote's swipe pad and voice control options are only available on the relatively high-end 7000 series models in Philips’ new range. You don’t get the smart remote on the 6000 series or below.
Given the huge amount of apps available on the Android platform, any Android TV is going to have to come equipped with some storage. Most of Philips’ new Android sets give you 8GB of internal memory, while the 7000 series doubles this to 16GB. However, given that a chunk of this memory – as much as 4GB – is eaten up by the requirements of the OS, and some of the games you can download from the Google Play store come in at 5GB each, it’s good to know that you can expand the available memory via USB drive.
One of the most important things about the new Android Lollipop system on the latest Philips TVs is the way it can automatically strip out apps that just wouldn’t work on a TV for graphical or control reasons. So you get far fewer apps in the Android TV environment than you do through phones and tablets. However, you still get a very impressive number of apps by typical Smart TV standards – and vastly more than Philips offered through its proprietary Smart system.
You can circumvent Android TV's app screening process by "sideloading" .mpk app files if you wish – though it’s hard to imagine many circumstances where this would be a particularly good idea.
Clearly both Philips and Google will be hoping that app developers will start to work on future apps with TV in mind – and indeed, there are already some promising signs that this might be the case. For instance, Philips assured us that although there’s no Netflix or Amazon UHD streaming support currently available for Android Lollipop TVs, they’re expecting these apps to appear by the summer. Philips also announced new relationships with Electronic Arts and Gameloft, who are busy optimising some of their most popular games for use on the Android TV platform.
This new game support comes on top of the OnLive streamed game platform that was introduced on last year’s Philips Android TVs. What’s more, Philips was keen to stress during our discussions with them that OnLive has been busy making significant improvements to latency, which can so negatively affect streamed gaming. In fact, OnLive has taken the stance of only rolling its service out to different territories once it’s confident that it can achieve a suitable level of performance.
Intriguingly, integrating Android Lollipop into the latest Philips TVs has opened up the possibility of some smart home applications on top of the usual video streaming, gaming and infotainment content. Particularly promising is the work being done with independent UK developer MyLiveGuard to offer integrated control via Android TV of your home’s lighting, doors, security cameras and even a Nest heating control/smoke alarm system if you have one installed.
An increasingly important element of any Smart TV platform is its ability to grow and adapt over time. However, it’s impossible to forget that the Android system introduced on Philips’ 2014 Android TVs can’t actually be updated to this year’s Android Lollipop system. The leap in functionality offered by the latest platform is just too great to be delivered via anything other than a hardware implementation. Google is keen to stress, though, that it believes it will be able to update the Android Lollipop TV OS for three years without the need for new hardware, so a 2015 Philips set won’t be out of date as soon as you get it home.
We mentioned to Philips the possibility of turning towards some sort of external, upgradable processing box for future TV models, along the lines of Samsung’s OneConnect box. But Philips’ response was that their research suggests people are more interested in having all their functionality built into their TV than they are in paying to upgrade external devices.
While there are many things to like about the latest 5.0 Lollipop version of Android on Philips TVs, there are a few concerns too. First, the lack of any personalisation options could make for an awkward and, if your family viewing habits are varied, unhelpful look to the Recommendations shelf that’s such a key part of the content-finding experience.
Next, Android isn’t well equipped to offer the localised catch-up TV services we’re used to finding on Smart TVs now. Philips is continuing to also offer its home-grown Smart TV OS alongside the Android one, but that platform also fails to offer anywhere near the full gamut of key UK catch-up services.
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One other intriguing issue is that any brand that uses the Android OS is suddenly making itself dependent on Google rather than having its entire business model in its own hands. This is already affecting Philips, as it finds itself unable to launch these new TVs until the summer while Google irons out a few wrinkles. Also, Google is a distinctly global organisation, not as accustomed as the TV brands to the sort of localisation processes and deals required for optimising TVs and app support for different sales territories.
On the other side of the coin, though, partnering with Google saves TV brands a small fortune in R&D compared with trying to put together their own individual Smart platforms and content packages. This could potentially help TVs become cheaper, and certainly allows brands to suddenly expand their Smart offering substantially.
Our first look at Philips’ latest Android TVs underlines our expectation that 2015 is likely to be a pivotal year in the development of Smart TV, as in-house systems such as LG’s webOS and Samsung’s Tizen go head to head with "third-party" Smart engines like Sony's and Philips’ Android TVs and, to a lesser degree, Panasonic’s Firefox OS.
Keep an eye out for future reviews to find out which of these very different Smart TV approaches wins out.