LG Announces Additional TVs With AirPlay 2 and HomeKit Launching Between April and June

[Anonymous Freak]

Sucks they wont give this to 2018 oleds

Agreed. Screw you, LG! At least provide it for TVs you still sell with a firmware update like Vizio!

 

[Pupi]

Can anyone tell me what Homekit support for TVs consists of? Turn on and off, change channel and volume? More than this? How's the UI in the home app?

 

[nutmac]

Can anyone tell me what Homekit support for TVs consists of? Turn on and off, change channel and volume? More than this? How's the UI in the home app?

Federico Vittici at MacStories wrote an in-depth overview:

• Home app shows the status, whether it's on or off, and if it's on, which input is active
• Home app lists all the inputs and lets you switch input
• Home app lists apps native to the TV as inputs (e.g., YouTube)
• Virtual remote control (e.g., play/pause, navigation control, info), invoked from the Control Center
• Change volume via iOS's volume control

 

[Chaos215bar2]

LG's concern may be to protect the sales of new TV models, not necessarily to punish customers who bought their TV 1-2 years ago.

Their thinking may be that if LG were to offer HomeKit and AirPlay 2 to last year's model, some folks would be steered to more heavily discounted last year's TV models instead of brand new models.

For instance, LG's C8 OLED TV currently sells for about $1700-1800 for 55" and $2700-2800 for 65". Their newest C9 series will sell close to retail price for next several months, $2500 for 55" and $3500 for 65". At $700-800 savings, many folks would no doubt overlook improved performance and new features, especially if they can get HomeKit and AirPlay 2 via firmware update.

Many years ago, Apple sold software update that brought new features to the older OS or hardware, such as FaceTime macOS app ($0.99) and 802.11n ($1.99). Perhaps LG selling HomeKit and AirPlay 2 to older model may offset some of the loss sales to newest models? Say, $200?

I'm sure that's exactly LG's thinking. No sane company sets out to punish their existing customers, yet that's exactly what LG has done, repeatedly. LG makes it extremely clear that they value today's profit (be that in the form of advertisements added after sale to a TV that originally retailed for upwards of $5000 or through simple lack support, as seen here) over the lifetime experience of owning one of their products.

As an LG customer, they had the opportunity to hook me on their brand with their admittedly amazing OLED panels while they literally had no competition in this space. Instead, they've stated, restated, and driven home the point that all the features in the world can't make up for a company that refuses to support their very much non-disposable products after sale.

If you think about it, LED is also BS. It's just LCD with LED lighting (instead of CCFL).

Many folks think QLED is equivalent or superior to OLED!

I'm sure this was just an omission. To me, the "LED TV"" marketing nonsense (We went from marketing the actual display technology to the backlight?) is nearly as bad as AT&T's 5G E branding.

Then there's the obviously entirely unintentional similarity between "OLED" (a truly revolutionary display technology) and "QLED" (huh, another evolutionary backlight improvement).

 

[jimthing]

I'm sure that's exactly LG's thinking. No sane company sets out to punish their existing customers, yet that's exactly what LG has done, repeatedly. LG makes it extremely clear that they value today's profit (be that in the form of advertisements added after sale to a TV that originally retailed for upwards of $5000 or through simple lack support, as seen here) over the lifetime experience of owning one of their products.

As an LG customer, they had the opportunity to hook me on their brand with their admittedly amazing OLED panels while they literally had no competition in this space. Instead, they've stated, restated, and driven home the point that all the features in the world can't make up for a company that refuses to support their very much non-disposable products after sale.

Agree. I'd almost certainly never buy another LG product, as it their support that is the worst I've ever dealt with.

I needed a replacement TB3 cable, as the one that came with one of my two LG 5K displays was faulty. But I just couldn't get one from them any way I tried; so in the end, as I had to get insulated displays from Mar 2017 onwards, I just sent the original two displays back to Apple and rebought new ones, as it was easier all round.

While I like my LG 5K displays enough to keep them for the last couple of years, the lack of properly 100% fixing all the minor bugs with how a couple of things work, still leaves me rather incredulous.

The couple of bugs that remain are things that a MOST BASIC software update should have been able to fix properly in a heartbeat, but no, they did a couple of updates that fixed the main things, then gave up.

They still work really well as displays, mind you (as has been said, LG panels are great), but they're simply not up to the standards of integration I expect to happen with a display and my Apple products – how they could manage to not match what I even got with the 27" ACD display I still have, whose integrations are better (but screen obviously is only 1440p), is just weird given Apple gave them so much apparent 'help' with getting a separate 5K display out in time for their 2016 TB3 MBP release (though they came a bit later of course: Jan 2017 first lot, then from Mar 2017 ones with the fixed insulation).

 

[Pupi]

Federico Vittici at MacStories wrote an in-depth overview:

• Home app shows the status, whether it's on or off, and if it's on, which input is active
• Home app lists all the inputs and lets you switch input
• Home app lists apps native to the TV as inputs (e.g., YouTube)
• Virtual remote control (e.g., play/pause, navigation control, info), invoked from the Control Center
• Change volume via iOS's volume control

Thanks for this.