Smart Stuff

Setting up the smart stu proves especially simple if you already have a Google account. The TV generated a code number to enter into a website using a computer on the same network, and then you just press the enter key a couple of times for permissions.

While powered by Android, the actual Androidy stu is thoroughly hidden. The Home screen is organised more or less as a traditional smart TV screen, with blocks of content and controls grouped together by function. Many apps are included by default — Netflix, YouTube, Google play Music and so on. But many, many more are available through the Google play store. This isn’t the whole shebang, but a relatively limited range of apps that work well with a TV, mostly such things as media players, games, and various specialised streaming sources (including lots of news and sports ones). Most are free, but there are a number of paid ones (you pay via your Google account). There are also a few utilities, such as ES File Explorer, which is (or ought to be) known to most Android users.

The supplied Music, Photo and Video apps did a nice job playing back most of my content, both from USB and more importantly served up by my DLNA network. Music happily did FLAC up to 192kHz (although not DSD, notwithstanding this being a Sony TV). The Video app ran the usual files, including UHD content encoded in H.264 and, importantly, H.265 (the codec of the future). The photo app displayed photos at full UHD resolution, including with 4:4:4 colour resolution, without bottlenecking the material. At least it did with JPEG… it only gave a weird, low resolution display with PNG content.

The TV operates happily as a DLNA renderer for music, videos and photos. And also as a Google Cast receiver without the need for adding a Chromecast unit. (That’s one advantage of using Google Android as your OS.) With Google Cast you can display tabs from a Chrome browser, and send YouTube videos to the TV, from any network-connected computer.