The time has finally come for my Lioness and me to unsubscribe from our Smart TV and switch over to the Android TV box after weighing all the pros and cons. I've also combed the internet to find out whether Android TV boxes are legal here before this.
In a nutshell: they are still considered legal at the time of this writing, though they remain in a somewhat grey area of limbo to be reassessed down the road. If such TV boxes had been deemed 100% illegal already at the time of this blog post, then all the vendors selling them openly in high traffic shopping centres (and they seem to be all over the place) would have been busted by now, no?
So we both went to buy one today without worrying that we were doing something shady and not legit. The brand we ended up selecting is Mele, and we bought a 50 bucks 'Air Mouse' bluetooth controller to go along with it, since I've anticipated that it would be a pain in the butt trying to navigate the menus and such without one.
For me personally, I never cared for conventional TV since the 90's. Since then, I only watched TV like once or twice per year, believe it or not. I got the news I needed mostly via print media and after the internet hit us, the news I've needed was just a click or two away.
As far as I'm concerned, my 'TV' has been YouTube ever since 2007 when I first got broadband connection for my house. Then when I got my first smartphone in 2010 which allows me to be online wherever I happen to be from thereon, that was the final nail in the coffin for conventional TV for me. I'd rather be able to search for what I want to watch right now and right here, then wait for the TV to broadcast my targeted subject matter at goodness knows when.
And no, I'm not the usual TV drama series person. I am very selective when it comes to those since they mean a huge chunk of time investments, and the drama series that really had my attention, I can count with the fingers of one hand. Almost all of them were Japanese with English subtitles that I can still watch online if I wanted to. So no big loss for me when it comes to drama series that I hardly even touch.
I'd go so far as to say that I'd never have subscribed to our smart TV years back if it wasn't for the fact that my Lioness still likes to watch TV. But like me now, she agrees with me that going online is still the best way to go, so out went our Smart TV subscription (and its associated monthly fees) and in comes the Android TV box with no monthly subscription fees - that's just the reality of it, make of it what you will.
Note that this blog post is not to discourage anyone from zapping their smart TV subscription, no. We are all different and there's still something charming about going old school, laying comfortably on the couch and randomly surfing TV programmes instead of having an aim of what to watch. There are times when you stumble upon something that interests you while randomly switching TV channels, yeah? It's like a sudden pleasant surprise.
Also, depending on where you stream your programmes from, you might find that smart TVs (and even the old dodo non-smart ones) gives you a clearer picture.
Even though I personally wouldn't care if I owned no TV in the house (as long as I can go online) if I were living alone (which I'm not), what my Lioness told me is something I agree with: "家里没有电视机会不像家." (A house without a TV will not feel like home).
Our TV at home will be here to stay for a long while, it's just that we have decided to stream online instead of continuing with the conventional way. And I approve of the fact that YouTube comes with our new TV box and I can load apps on it.
Looking back, for better or for worse, the magnitude of changes that the internet brought about when it comes to watching programmes and such, in comparison to conventional broadcasted ways, are certainly nothing short of 'revolutionary'.
(Update from the future: we changed out our Mele TV box for Unblock Technology's which cater to our viewing needs better.)
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