I've been told AndroidTV/GoogleTV devs take a look at this subreddit from time to time, I hope they take into account your personal experience.

I have the built in android tv with sony. the google tv is a massive improvement. i'm sure the Shield is much better than my sony tv though. Google tv has been super smooth for me.

I completely agree there are two things imo that need to happen to make this device near perfect.

1. Highest priority - Make the menu at the top rearrangeable/customizable. The order of the search, for you, live, etc. Tabs should be capable of being put in any order or removed if desired.
2. Make the content selection within each of those tabs more customizable.

Or

1. Alternatively or additionally - enable an option to turn on live tv tab in app only mode
2. Make the UI of app only mode better not an afterthought.

That being said for the price and compared to other options on the market, I can easily recommend this to people who don't want to throw down $$$ on a shield.

Basically I don't have want something on my home screen which I don't care about. I don't want it to run in background and it's should be up to me to decide what I could see on home screen including the apps icons. This is the only reason why I don't prefer firestick. It's like they get paid to shove stuff at you. I am happy with Android tv and I hope google tv will be like it just with smoother interface. You see tv is not one person usage thing (usually) so personalizing it could affect others kinda like how firestick put stuff on your home screen which in popular in your country but you don't care about it.

imo we should be able to set rows for apps like the old launcher and disable not only the apps we dont use but also the rows we do not want (ex. Scifi movies) etc... One thing i would also like is when you leave an app it should leave you on top of the apps row like the old launcher otherwise we will have to scrool always thought the ads (staff picks).

yes being able to rearrange everything would be best option

If they just made the For You page more customizable like the home screen on Android TV I think I would be happy

That's not going to happen as they are paid to put those items in that position above your apps. I'd rather pay 3x for the device and not have to look at the ads than to get a little discount. (The exact reason I'm still running the old "Android TV" home page on my 2015 Shield and will not update that particular app no matter how much it begs me to 😁)

It is strange that they have seemed to demote Youtube content on the For You page. As someone who watches a lot of Youtube, I prefer Android TV where I can move YT content towards the top of the home screen.

I think it depends on what a person is looking for. For me, I want my own content (through Kodi/Emby) to be front and center. I want apps that Google hasn't partnered with to be front and center (MLB.tv for example). I want to be able to customize my own homescreen to look how I want it to.

But for someone that just uses Prime/Netflix/Hulu/Disney/HBO, and wants the content aggregation and recommendations, I can definitely see the new Google TV as being better.

If only there was a way to flip between the two interfaces depending on your preference, it'd be great (Apps-only is not what I'm looking for either, because it doesn't have the features of Android TV, and it doesn't allow Google Assistant).

I wouldn't say it's user hostile lol, just press and hold the app icon in the launcher, click "view details" and then just uninstall 😅

Would be significantly improved by bringing back channels and making sure that recommendations are only for content in apps I have installed / services I actually subscribe to

For me, the new movie discovering panels are enough to switch. It gives my Android TV box a brand new purpose

Hard to uninstall?

You click and hold on app, go to details, uninstall....

I mean only way it would be easier is long hold then uninstall but it's not that much different.

Unless you're on a Sony Bravia TV. Where Android TV is unusable. Complete broken mess.

I'm all for trying new UIs but I gotta say hands down Android TV is the better of the two. Standing back and looking at the bigger picture I can see that Google is trying to steam line the Android tv UI to be more Apple TV esq where it can feel like you never leave the google Ecosystem you just jump into whatever show / movie/ youtube video you chose. Just like others my main complaint is on feeling like the Google TV UI is very Android TV unfriendly, so if your coming from android tv to this it feels very restrictive. I hate that I can't view as a whole screen my Google play movies library, I also can't remove app suggestions it bugs me so much.

I’m using the apps only mode and I like it. I do just about all of my viewing through Kodi though.

This is a dumb question, I'm a newbie.

Can't you just install a 'proper' youtube app?

Thank you, i really appreciate your post! I've been on the fence between getting an Android TV box vs the new Chromecast w/ Google TV. TBH, knowing how Google is when it comes to making this sorta stuff, *cough* Nest Hub *cough*, i was leaning towards Android TV already.
Also, why with the colors? Just...why? Why not at least offer a black option. I can understand wanting to stand out with their product but still.

Yeah, most of Google's UI regresses now rather than improves on all devices.

New launcher should work with old channels too. Great Channels now aren't supported by the new launcher and it's sad like Spotify, NBA app and Haystack News.

GoogleTV (meh) ≠ AndroidTV (meh).... two meh's don't equal a yay :(

The problems we had with android TV don't seem to be addressed with googleTV. Unfortunately google is going further away from fixing "Live Channels" app. Now it's not even included by default in google TV. you can install it from the play store but you need a sideload launcher as it doesn't show up in the regular app list. and on this device the app is missing recording/DVR features. in my Nvidia Shield, live channels app was buggy and lacked many features. we have to constantly toggle the "timeshift" option or else we couldn't pause/rewind live tv. recordings started late into the show. no way to start recording early or end late. but aparently google is trying to push its new youtubeTV subscription software. so they're not investing any time in fixing Live channels app. why make free ota DVR service better, when you can cause frustration in your customers and force them to give up hope and buy into your dumb youtube service?! Now exploring Jellyfin as a free open-source alternative to Emby or PLEX. we run jellyfin server on our QNAP NAS, HDHOMERUN OTA Quad tuner on the network streams to all devices with jellyfin. THe only ongoing headache i keep running into is getting subscription-free guide data to populate in Jellyfin. without paying for HDhomerun subscription, TVguide.com subscription Plex pass, emby premier. what else can i do to work around this? i've read about zap2xml which is aparently now obsolete and now there is something that may work called zap2epg. none of this information is very clear online from what i've found. most forums that discuss all this devolve into a bunch of clowns asking why the original poster bothers with all this effort instead of just paying the service fee and comparing it to a cup of coffee. if you have the urge to do anything like this, don't . just sign off and go away. or go back to watching tiktok videos. :)