Let's not beat around the bush: Smart TVs almost all suck. It's not always the hardware that's the problem. It's the software.
Some of the flaws in the smart TV experience stem from bad design, but much of it feels downright malicious when it comes to dark patterns and exposing you to advertisers in the crudest ways.
It's why so many of us choose to disable our smart TVs and use devices like the Apple TV instead.
But in 2014, Google released a streaming box that would show us all the ways “smart” TV watching was meant to be.
It's a template that's been built on by Android and Google TV, and that modern proprietary smart TV OSes still fall short of.
Google's forgotten streaming experiment
They sure do try everything at least once
It was called the Nexus Player, and this unassuming little puck was way ahead of its time. Minimal, with a simple remote, this was the first device to ship with Android TV.
It showed that Google was…