> people who feel this way have only used low-end set-top boxes
Yes I was thinking about this when I wrote it. All the set top boxes I've seen are crap with terrible UI latency and are slow to load new data. I'll admit that maybe it's possible to make it slightly less crap. But there's no way in hell typing out something on a remote with left-left-left-left-left-left-left-down click right-right-right-right-right-up click down-down-left click up-left-left-left-left click is remotely (ha) a good experience compared to a phone keyboard. And if I'm gonna have a device with a whole damn keyboard on it... it might as well be my phone.
I get that. And while I know "Apple" is a non-starter for some people I love my Apple TV for this reason. It's responsive, loads my plex library and lets me navigate it easily, and anytime I hit a text area I get a notification on my phone that I can tap and enter text from my phone. It's sort of the best of both worlds. Manually entering text via remote does suck, 100% agree.
Yes I was thinking about this when I wrote it. All the set top boxes I've seen are crap with terrible UI latency and are slow to load new data. I'll admit that maybe it's possible to make it slightly less crap. But there's no way in hell typing out something on a remote with left-left-left-left-left-left-left-down click right-right-right-right-right-up click down-down-left click up-left-left-left-left click is remotely (ha) a good experience compared to a phone keyboard. And if I'm gonna have a device with a whole damn keyboard on it... it might as well be my phone.