If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. If you took the evolution drawing showing the progress from ape to man and replaced it with televisions, it would be a long line of large, heavy monkeys for about 60 years, and then a very rapid transformation to the slim, upright human that is today’s Smart TV . Even that plasma TV you owned a mere dozen years ago would be a hairy knuckledragger.
Why? Chances are it didn’t have internet connectivity or apps, and it most definitely did not stream. Of course, then you were getting your movies in the mail-in red envelopes from Netflix, so it didn’t matter. What made your TV make the leap from stone tools to Smart? In short, it cross-bred with your laptop, and in the process gained internet access, powerful processors, user-friendly software, and apps.
The old TVs which needed cable or another A/V source evolved into ones which bring “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” into your home mere weeks after its theatrical release. And like smart humans, they like to hang out with smart friends. Smart TVs now have seamless integration with Alexa and/or Google Assistant, and can do your bidding via voice command.
Some can even control the other smart devices in your house like your lights and your security system. Let’s see your old 100-pound cathode-ray-tube monster with the rabbit-ear antenna do that! So what makes the bes.