Well the point on ads is definitely moot, its a single button press on the remote. I couldnt believe reading a review on an LG on rtings.com and talking about ads! I dont pay that amount of money to see ads.
As for any HTPC, I have one, if Im not mistaken it doesnt even do 4K. It is old, I dont use it really, it was meant to stream movies but even that job has been taken from it. Thats the thing with tech, it moves on. My main TV in the sitting room is a 2nd gen Sony 4K, it doesnt do HDR, no matter what box I may attach... tech moves on! Despite it being their flagship, tech moves on. It doesnt feel laggy tho, other than a rather sluggish 6-8 sec start up time, beyond that its good to go. Ive never been flicking up between tiles thinking "this is slow". I have a 4th gen Sony 4K in the bedroom, its perhaps twice as fast to start the app (a few secs), and again beyond that its good to go. If I turn off the TV while using Netflix, it comes back on right where I left off, it doesnt get faster than that!
So between the many devices Ive used Netflix on, theres a few note worthy differences to me. I hate on screen keyboards (thankfully, rarely needed). Convenience & Speed - a single button press is as convenient as it gets and while it may take 3 secs to start the app vs pretty much (thanks logo!) instant on a PC its not something Ill lose sleep over, Ive not timed how long it takes between hitting Play and the program starting, but Id say its a hair under 2 secs on PC vs a hair over 2 secs on the TV, that also goes in the 'not lose sleep over' pile, your time may be more valuable than mine tho, I dont know! And then there is FF/RW, being able to directly manipulate the duration bar cant be beat, I hate how the app on I think on any device that doesnt allow that (TV/Console/Apple TV) can be annoying if you missed a word and want to go back a few secs and end up back 20 secs because it clumps it in 10 sec segments, so on that front PC/iOS/anything that can directly interact with the duration bar wins easily.
Anyway thread derailment over for me. I dont see you convincing me a 3rd party box is needed. All tech moves on. All of it. Even as nice as the TV in my sitting room is, its a few years old now and Im itching to move on to a nice OLED. It would be very naive of me to think this next one will be the one thats going to last and last, I know in >5 years of buying that TV something else will have caught my eye. The seconds saved using PC isnt worth talking about (for me personally), and it is even saved? You need to ignore the time it takes to switch input on TV, so I wouldnt even be that confident whos going from zero to watching their show! And franky its not something I want to spend time debating!
