It is our first sustainability week, which means that we highlight some of the best environmentally friendly developments from the world of Hi-Fi and home cinema.
TV sets are not the most environmentally friendly devices in our houses. They are cumbersome and (mostly) made of plastic, which makes it difficult to recycle. So if you get a new television, you will probably want to hold it on as long as possible.
Sounds logical, isn't it? However, this is easier said than done because intelligent operating systems are included.
These are currently integral parts of practically every television on the market, because we rarely see a television that does not show one of the various intelligent operating systems such as Tizen (Samsung), Webos (LG), Vidaa (Hisese), Firos (Panasonic) or Google TV (Sony, Philips and TCL).
The problem is that consumers are delivered to TV manufacturers to maintain these intelligent platforms for the coming years, otherwise they can slow down and in some cases the support for some important streaming apps.
So far, TV updates have been sporadic at best. The promised support was never guaranteed, but was expected from the largest television manufacturers.
In the past year or so, some important players have announced an extended support at the television market, which keeps their television longer without taking care of the software group.
Lead the Pack is HiSense, which promises software support for his Vidaa TVs announced in July this year.
In view of the studies that consumers will replace their televisions every 6.6 years (based on data collected in the USA from Circana), it is great that HiSense supports his televisions over a longer period of time that exceeds this average.
Next is Samsung, which promises a similarly impressive seven years of software support for its Tizen software platform, which also covers the average TV life. Samsung receives bonus points to extend this to its smartphones, which means that devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and Z Flip 7 are still supported in 2032.
And quite close behind LG, which offers “over five years” of software updates as part of its new program. This is not quite as long as Samsung or Hisense, and it is a bit vague, but at least five years of promised upgrades are decent.
Simply put, if you are looking for a television that has not been stuck by outdated software in the coming years, these three brands are the best choice, but what about the others?
Sony, TCL and Philips have not committed themselves to a fixed number of years for which their respective television software updates received. This is probably due to the fact that you do not have your own software systems and instead rely on Google TV for a large part of your respective lineups.
It is a similar case with the Fire OS platform from Amazon, which Panasonic recently took over and offers TCL on some of its cheaper sets. There is no guaranteed minimum time for which televisions support this operating system, so that Amazon is responsible for updating the platform and keeping it compatible with older models.
It is a high order to ask these companies out of the air to whip their own intelligent platforms out of the air and to keep them for seven or eight years.
However, it would be good to see that Google and Amazon connect consumers to a certain confidence with Samsung, Hisense and LG so that they know that their television will not be stuck by outdated, slow and not supported software in the coming years.
The most important thing is that televisions that take longer reduce the frequency with which people have to replace them, which is an immediate victory when it comes to sustainability.
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Check out more Sustainability week Article here
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