I am not a big TV watcher (OK, with the exception of March Madness), and I have not kept pace with TV upgrades. Does anyone have any recommendations, good or bad, regarding HDMI TVs to use for development? Any features which higher-end consumers will be demanding, now or in the next couple of years? I apologize for posting this in the tvOS beta, but I didn't know where else might be a good place to ask.
Best regards,
Hank Murphy
Beyond HDMI 1.4 & maybe a 4k screen, not sure...what's your budget?
I recommend a TV that has the ability to display both overscanned and full TV images.
My Samsung TV has 2 types of HDMI ports - some that give an overscanned image that cut off the edges of the picture, and some that show a full view. I believe a TV that is useful for development should be able to show an overscanned image and a full image, as some consumers will not / cannot switch off overscan. A trap for young players is to code too close to the edge of the screen, particularly using auto layout, and then get 90 pixels cut off on the extremities of the screen when they are displayed on overscanned TV's.
Apple have designed the system UI on Apple TV to work in both overscanned and full layouts by having large borders around the edge of the screen.
Honestly, my best suggestion is to get a couple different fairly crappy TVs. Most users are not going to have the latest and greatest in TV technology; they're going to have a terrible bargain-bin Vizio or a ten-year-old Samsung with some godawful DLP tech that some Texas Instruments engineer called up from the pits of Gehenna. And when you want to see what your app will look like on a great screen with excellent color reproduction, the tvOS Simulator on your MacBook can do that. Make sure you test with at least one 720p TV, too—your interface had better survive downscaling.