Dolby Vision is worth it - Netflix has a lot of movies in Dolby Vision now. I have my Sony XE9305 and love it - Sony is still the king of video processing. I just downloaded AirPlay support from the Play store (payed app, but worth it) and I have all the features of a 2020 Sony TV. I have tried all of them, here is the best one:
Wszystko w jednym wieloprotokoÅowym odbiorniku strumieniowym dla AirPlay, Cast i DLNA.
play.google.com
I just saw the 2020 the Sony TV's in the store and wow, they have come a long way in 3 years.
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Honestly no sense in buying one if your TV has AirPlay support, especially when you loose YouTube 4K support.
That's not really true. Of course if you are strapped for cash...
But aTV also gives you a HomeKit hub (ie a base station that can run home automation when you are not home, and that can allow you to check on your device) and it allows you to play audio through both your TV speakers and your HomePod(s). This allows you to place HomePods at the back of a room while the TV audio is in the front, and you get a reasonably spatialized audio experience and flat volume across the room.
And I find the aTV interface much nicer (and faster) to work with than at least the LG WebOS interface (which people seem to agree is the best of the current TV interfaces).
And aTV gives you the aerial screensavers. Which may not sound like much, but, damn, these things are beautiful! It's a delight having them running on the TV as constant visual background. The TV makers try to do the same (like LG has an "art gallery" screen saver) and these are certainly nicely done, but they're no match for the Apple equivalent.
Finally I find that while AirPlay is really nice to have available as functionality from my phone or Mac, it's not how I want to watch a lot of content. The connection resets if you pause for too long.
Also if you have an aTV, you can use the Apple TV remote to pause and control the video, but I don't think that works with the TV remote if you AirPlay straight to the TV? Anyone know.
Of course these are pretty much all "nice to have", not "essential". But nice to have is nice to have. If your aTV lasts 4+ years, and costs ~$200, that's like less than 20c a day for something you use a whole lot! I think it's totally worth it.
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So, a HomeKit-enabled TV: does that mean it works as the HomeKit hub for the house, or that it is a device (like a light switch or thermostat) that can be controlled using the HomeKit app/Siri and that still relies on having another device in the house to be used as the HomeKit hub?
It won't be a HomeKit hub, that would require it pretty much to run an Apple OS. (It would have to have the whole Apple crypto+signing stack, full BT support, and, most important, a HomeKit hub needs to be able to run Automations, which means running the rules engine. Right now the HK rules engine is (pathetically) limited, but, oh god we all hope so, at some point soon hopefully HK automation will be basically the same thing as Shortcuts, meaning an HK hub has to be able to run a general iOS shortcut as much as that makes sense -- meaning things like being able to send notifications, open apps, and generally iOS functionality).
So what value is there in the HK support?
For now it's mostly limited to power on/off. What you would hope is that in the future you'll also be able to change characteristics of the TV. So for example you could create a scene named "TV Time", say "Hey Siri, TV Time" and have the TV switch to Cinema mode, while all your lights go dark. Then at the end of TV Time when you switch the lights back on, the TV reverts to some sort of "standard" mode, optimized for a bright room rather than a dark room.
(Or you could hook this toggling into an automation that's based on a light level sensor.)
Right now things like this are mostly a dream; pieces are here but much of the functionality is not present in either HK or the TV. But maybe with iOS 14...