In a previous article, I discussed why you could be better off avoiding purchasing a smart TV in favour of purchasing a high quality “dumb” TV and pairing it up with a streaming box/stick, which would give you a better and smoother experience while paying less in total than going down the smart TV route.
However, there exist many streaming sticks, each running a different operating system, that you might get decision paralysis on picking the right one for your use cases.
To help prevent this and make your purchase a smoother experience, I will highlight the three main operating systems i.e. Android TV, Fire TV and Apple tvOS which currently stand out in the streaming device space in Kenya.
Android TV
Similar to the Android smartphone operating system, Android TV is available to different TV manufacturers to license and use on their devices. These TV manufacturers include Sony, Xiaomi, TCL among others.
Android TV is definitely the most dominant OS in the Kenyan market, mainly because of the affordable streaming boxes that come preinstalled with the OS and also Kenyans’ existing familiarity with the Android ecosystem.
Fire TV
Fire TV largely exists to serve Amazon’s original content.
It is however built on top of Android, and you might find the two operating systems very similar in how they work.
You will only find this operating system in the Fire TV Stick, of which two versions exist. The first, Full-HD Fire TV stick retailing at around Kshs 4,000 in Kenyan stores and the other one, Fire TV Stick 4K retailing at around KShs 7,000 in Nairobi.
There is also the Fire TV Cube, a set-top box-like streaming device powered by Fire OS (pictured below).
Apple tvOS
As expected, the Apple tvOS is based on Apple’s mobile platform, iOS, and it is only designed for its Apple TV range of streaming devices.
Sticking to Apple’s form of business, iOS is not available to license by other manufacturers.
It is also found on significantly expensive devices. The Apple TV streaming box goes for around Kshs 15,000 for the full HD version and Kshs 20,000 for the 4K version, which is higher compared to the Fire TV and Android TV-powered streaming devices which can cost as little as Kshs 5,000. A competitor for the Apple tvOS-powered Apple TV streaming device might be the Nvidia Shield which retails at around Kshs 22,000.
Apps present in the three operating systems
You will find all the common streaming applications like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ across the three platforms. However, when it comes to less known applications that is where the differences start to show.
Since Android TV is developed by Google, most of Google’s services like YouTube, YouTube Kids and Google Play Movies will work best on the platform.
Also, Android TV supports more applications by small publishers compared to Fire TV and Apple tvOS.
Fire TV, on the other hand, serves best the content developed by Amazon like Prime Video.
Unlike Android TV, Fire TV also has the Apple TV app, giving users access to 4K HDR content from Apple that would normally be locked in the Apple tvOS.
Apple tvOS as expected has the least amount of content from other publishers, mainly because of the closed nature of the iOS. Apple closely monitors the kind of applications allowed in their ecosystem, and those falling in the grey area of piracy or illegal streaming are always removed from their platform.
Virtual assistants
If you are a fan of the virtual assistants, all three operating systems have one integrated with them. Android TV has the Google Assistant, Fire TV uses Amazon’s Alexa, while Apple tvOS uses Siri.
Which is the best choice?
All the aforementioned operating systems have their own strengths and weaknesses and picking one should be largely influenced by what one will be consuming most of the time.
If you have an iPhone, iPad or MacBook and have most of your content in the Apple ecosystem, the Apple tvOS is certainly the right route for you.
For those who aren’t particularly fans of Apple but want a clean UI with minimal configuring of things and just want a simple great out-of-the-box experience, the Fire TV is definitely the best option.
For those, like me, who are fans of getting things to work the way they want by themselves, be it sideloading apps that are not in the Play Store or installing their own custom programs, Android TV is certainly the best choice as it offers greater freedom to install what you want.
If you still want greater freedom to do whatever you want, you might consider getting Plex set up, but that is a story for another time.