For the second year running, Netflix has announced a list of recommended smart TV sets.
Netflix started issuing TV recommendations last year as a way to push TV makers to improve the general UI and navigation experience. Given how sluggish and downright awful smart TV and set-top-box interfaces used to be (and often still are), we can only applaud.
This year the company is taking its recommendation system global, and is making the criteria even tougher. There are now seven categories in which Netflix judges smart TVs.
Those criteria cover such things as turning on quickly from stand-by and offering up apps (such as Netflix) straight away. They also include fast app start-up and resume capabilities, a dedicated Netflix button on the remote, and prominent positioning of the Netflix app.
Any TV being considered by Netflix must pass at least five of the seven conditions in order to garner a recommendation.
It's perhaps understandable that very few smart TVs have secured a Netflix recommendation thus far. In fact, only the latest TVs from LG and Sony have made the grade, as they did last year.
When you look closer at LG and Sony's latest TV offerings, it's not particularly surprising. In particular, the two brands utilise independently developed and highly regarded software rather than relying on their own clunky bespoke efforts.
LG's 2016 range runs on the famously slick webOS 3.0, which it acquired from HP precisely for this purpose. Sony's top 2016 TV line, meanwhile, runs on Google's latest Android TV OS.
