Gadgetory

you know we need here in the C net smart apartment a smarter smart TV sure today's televisions can stream Netflix or Hulu or YouTube but the livering content is what TVs have always done I want TVs that put that cloud connectivity to more creative use I want my Smart TV to be a smart home centerpiece now in fairness Smart TVs already have a couple of cool connected home tricks up their sleeve but none of them are developed well enough for my liking some of them use your TV to help control and monitor your smart home gadgets for instance you can watch live nest cam footage on your TV using nests Apple TV app but in a weird twist you can't do that with any of the cameras that already work with apple homekit at least not yet that's a big missed opportunity on Apple's part on the flip side you've got ways of using smart home gadgets to help you trick out your TV for instance we've already seen the appeal of smart color-changing vyas lighting behind your TV so why don't we have a TV with lights like these built right in philips took a shot at it a couple of years ago with their Ambilight TV sets and it still offers cool ways of synching your philips hue lights up with programming on the sci-fi network but why not something bigger the Olympics the Super Bowl even why not sync up with Playstation or Xbox to coordinate color changing lighting with the game you're playing there's a ton of unrealized potential here the other way that smart home tech can help make TV better is through voice control you've already got Cirie and Alexis powered voice search on Apple TV and Amazon fire TV respectively and you can also sync Alexa up with the logitech harmony hub in order to switch channels and inputs using voice commands like this Alexa turn on watch Hulu it's a slow semi clunky integration though mostly because Amazon still doesn't have dedicated software that tells Alexa how to control TVs now the Google home smart speaker is a little bit ahead of Alexa here you can sync it up with your Smart TV then tell it to play specific Netflix shows or YouTube videos no logitech setup needed okay google play videos by CNET smart home on youtube sure playing CNET smart home videos from YouTube on living room TV still it doesn't support any other streaming services just yet and it can't handle basics like switching inputs or even turning your TV on or off so clearly there's still a lot of work to do in this category but rest assured that we are eagerly keeping tabs on all of it and as soon as things start to get compelling we'll tell you all about it