Count the TV apps you have opened in the last month. Then count how many of them did something the website does not. For news, forums, shopping, documentation and most video that is not a licensed catalogue, the app is a thinner version of a page — with its own login, its own update cycle and its own way of hiding the feature you wanted.
The alternative is not "use your phone". It is one browser-shaped app that opens all of them on the panel, with the remote.
The cost of the app shelf
- Five keyboards. Typing a search term with a D-pad is slow; doing it five times, for five services, is why people stop using TV apps.
- Five logins. Each app wants its own sign-in, and TV sign-in flows are the worst of all of them.
- Five versions of the truth. Sites update weekly. TV apps update when the vendor feels like it, if ever.
The one-app version
Install once, enter an address, save it as a tile. Your sites sit in the same place with the same controls, and updates happen on the website's schedule, not the store's. Logins persist the way they do in a browser, so the keyboard is a rare event rather than a daily chore.
Where an app still wins
Credit where it is due: for a big streaming catalogue with licensed content, offline downloads, or casting from your phone, a purpose-built app is genuinely better. Keep those. The point is the long tail — the fifty other sites that will never have a TV app — living in one place instead of in your phone's browser history.
- Pick the two or three sites you actually open on the couch and save them first.
- Add favorites as you go; the recents row covers everything else.
- Let the compatibility layer handle focus and scrolling — you just press OK.
One app, one remote, every site. That is a much shorter setup list than the shelf.
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