By Will Greenwald
Publication Date: 2026-08-09 12:15:00
You probably use video streaming services, rather than physical media or traditional broadcast television, to watch movies and TV shows most of the time. This is so easy to do because nearly all TVs made over the last decade have some kind of smart features on them, and if you have one that doesn’t, you can still get a media streaming device with the same capabilities.
Different TVs and media streamers use different software platforms, and they don’t always offer the same apps and features. You can access Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Disney+, Netflix, and YouTube on pretty much all of them, but once you get away from those huge names, there can be holes in what apps are available on what platforms. And other functions, such as voice assistance and streaming from your phone or computer, can also vary by system.
Currently, there are a half dozen smart TV platforms to be found on TVs in North America: Amazon’s Fire TV, Google TV, LG’s webOS, Roku OS, Samsung’s Tizen OS,…