I just purchased a new LG TV (physical device) and was surprised to find a built-in apple tv (an app) which I presume is something Apple (the company) has written for my TV. So this begs the question: Should I now just get rid of my Apple TV (the device) and use the Apple TV (the app) built into the LG TV (the device). What’s the advantage or disadvantage.
For me, one less remote is a big advantage. I’ve tried watching something on both and see no difference.
One advantage is that the makers of TVs and their apps are not concerned about user privacy. They track what you watch, for how long, and sell advertisements based on that data.
Apple does not do this with Apple TV hardware, and if you keep the Apple TV connected and do not connect the LG TV to the internet then LG will not be collecting this data (if you do keep the LG connected then it probably will - I believe that TV firmware tries to analyze what you are watching based on what’s shown on the display.)
That’s perhaps the one big advantage of a discrete Apple TV.
Personal preferences will vary, of course, but I have had an LG OLED TV with the Apple app (as well as myriad apps for other TV channels that I subscribe to) for years, and I definitely prefer using my Apple TV device, and very rarely use any of the LG smart TV apps.
Why?
I find the interface and capabilities of the Apple TV box far superior to the LG Apple App. The Apple TV now playing list is my first and foremost place to look for something to watch. It integrates shows from most of the individual apps on the device, and allows selecting which service I want to watch the particular show on. For example, many shows are available on both Disney+ and Hulu, similar but some have different 4K options depending on the channel chosen. Some shows are available both on Hulu (shown with commercials even though I have Hulu with no commercials) but also available on their “home” channel (e.g. MAX or Paramount+) with no commercials and sometimes higher quality. The big exception is Netflix which refuses to integrate with Apple TV – therefore their shows are only on the Netflix app and do not appear in Now Playing (or Continue Watching).
The Apple TV app (whether on LG or other smart TVs) does have a Continue Playing list, but it only includes Apple TV programs – none from other channels.
I do use the LG apps on those (rare) occasions when I have difficulty viewing a show on a channel on the Apple TV box (sometimes apparently due to a problem with the feed to Apple.)
The Apple TV box connects to my paired HomePods for convenient and good sound; the LG does not.
The LG provides an excellent picture and good sound, but has no advantages to me for viewing channels that I buy. It does have many additional channels not on Apple, but I don’t use any of them and there are possible privacy problems with using them.
My LG does have internet access but I have turned off all of the features that allow LG to sample what I watch.
Thanks for the great responses. Based on your feedback I will disconnect the LG from the internet (was thinking of that already) and just do my streaming via the Apple TV (device). We watch very little streaming other than movies so I think it will work well.
Thanks
John
Here is a good summary of how TVs track viewers now (note one major maker, Vizio, earns more money from tracking than selling its devices!):
Before you unconnect the LG, turn off automatic content recognition. ACR will save fingerprints of everything you watch, and if you reconnect the LG to the internet (say, to get a firmware update), it’ll upload that data then. All the smart TVs do this, more info and tips at How to Get Your Smart TV to Stop Spying on You | Reviews by Wirecutter
EDIT: Halfsmoke beat me by mere seconds.
I recently (and reluctantly) got a Samsung “Smart” TV after the old Samsung dumb TV had turned into a radio. It looked like the only way to set it up was to use their Smart Things app, so I did that. But once that was done, I cut off the TV’s access to the internet. My Asus router software makes that really easy. I have also deleted Smart Things, which wants to collect all kinds of info about your home.
The Amazon Fire TV by TCL also requires an Internet connection before it will function at all. Once I performed the setup, I deleted its network access.
Note that I’m speaking of the television with built in Amazon Fire TV software. Not the Fire TV box. Amazon struggles with naming too. 
As pretty much everyone has said here, I just use the AppleTV box. For starters the interface is ridiculously easy to use. And looks nicer. I also have my two HomePods attached to it and it sounds great. My TV is a Sony Bravia. Great picture but unfortunately it runs Android and it’s a mess to navigate. I turned off the internet on it and never looked back. The AppleTV remote also works my Sony as well so I don’t have to fiddle with two remotes just to turn on the TV
ditto for Brave Bear. We have a philips smart TV in the bedroom. It kept insisting on an internet connection during set up but we resisted.
It has an aerial connected and an Apple TV.
Occasionally it will be used for a live over the air viewing but most of the time its just using the ATV.
The TVs own remote is an abomination.
Daughter has a home cinema set up with a big sony screen and a NAD AV receiver.
Everything is controlled via the Apple TV remote. They don’t watch OTA stuff but use the ATV (albeit a few seconds delayed) when they actually want to.
I, too, have an excellent OLED LG TV but prefer to watch via the Apple TV for most things, due to the far superior interface and a remote you don’t have to wear glasses to use.
However, my son pointed out that the black level sometimes dips up and down slightly while watching Apple TV(+) via the Apple TV box, but not via the TV’s Apple TV(+) app. He’s right, but it is probably imperceptible for most people.
However, the main disappointment here in the UK is the BBC iPlayer app for the Apple TV. The BBC usually transmits HD pictures but it has this fantastic catch-up app, which most people use to watch TV now. Some programmes are shown in UHD (TV’s 4K) but this facility is only available on the TV’s app, not the Apple TV’s iPlayer app, which is extremely disappointing.
Everyone has already given you great advice (of course – this is TidBITS Talk, after all), but please allow me to add some details for readers who have an older Apple TV and/or live away from their “home country”, and for whom these points might have been buried in (albeit very important) discussions of privacy concerns.
I have an older pre-4K Apple TV box. That’s an important detail. I live outside of my “native country” – another important detail. I also have an LG OLED 4K TV, a model from about four years ago. It was our first Internet-connected TV and I had exactly the same question you posed.
(Admittedly I’m disregarding the recent rebranding by Apple of “Apple TV+” premium content from Apple to “Apple TV” to lessen confusion, even though just this sentence might be confusing!)
Here’s where we landed over the years…
Quick summary:
Our LG OLED TV provides 4K but our (older) Apple TV box does not, so we watch Apple TV+ content using the LG Apple TV app to watch in 4K quality. We do this also for a handful of services that can be watched in 4K “natively” via an app on our TV (such as YouTube, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, when we are subscribing).
We cannot access on our TV all apps we seek because they are not available at all or are not offered where we live. We use our Apple TV box for those.
We use a VPN on our Apple TV box to address geoblocking and download US-based apps and content, in part because have not found an easy and reliable way to do so on our TV.
We turned off our TV’s tracking.
In sum, you’ll need your Apple TV box if you want to access non-Apple TV+ content (and games, and utilities, and other non-content-delivery apps) not available to view via apps you can download from your TV’s app store, and/or if you want to use a VPN solution not available only on/to your TV.
In much (too much?) more detail:
Early on I turned off all the tracking done by my LG TV, having read the Wirecutter article cited above and other advice. Definitely do that (unless for some reason you seek to have all of your viewing tracked, and that data sold to who knows).
The Apple TV+ app on our TV only provides Apple TV+ programming, and does so in 4K (which obviously our Apple TV box cannot). (If we ever get a new Apple TV box with 4K output, we’d move away from using the TV apps entirely, using only the Apple TV (4K) box to enhance our chances at better privacy.) So we watch Apple TV+ shows via the Apple TV+ app on our TV, and a few others for which we have apps on the TV (such as YouTube, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, when we are subscribing). All other apps (e.g. US news station apps in particular) are on our Apple TV box and can only be used via that box, so the box lives on (even though it’s not delivering 4K quality, which is just fine for us). (For those of you about to say, “But wait, Jeff, you can download apps to your television,” please pause briefly and read on.)
My country of origin and where I was raised is the US, so I have a lifetime affinity for US-based programming. I now live outside of the US. Our Apple TV box is logged into my US Apple Account and I download apps to the Apple TV box. But even so, often we are geoblocked from viewing US-based programming.
We tried a few VPN solutions over the years at the server level, but they were fiddly, unreliable and caused other problems. Only recently did I discover that I could access my NordVPN account and use my NordVPN services on the Apple TV box – some time ago NordVPN released an app for the Apple TV box (I had been trying to keep an eye on that but somehow missed the release announcement). Interestingly, the specs for that app don’t include my older Apple TV box yet the app works just fine. Now we have the VPN connected to a US server all the time on our Apple TV box and I can watch more US-based content (not all, but more).
I don’t have a VPN solution for my LG TV (and don’t want one anyway — we do watch local content) , so I can’t download or use (pushing on through geoblocking) US-based apps or access US-based content on my TV. My LG app store only presents apps available in the country in which I live, and some providers geoblock the content. Yet another reason to use the Apple TV box.
In sum, you’ll need your Apple TV box if you want to access non-Apple TV+ content (and games, and utilities, and other non-content-delivery apps) not available to view via apps you can download from your TV’s app store, and/or if you want to use a VPN solution not available only on/to your TV.
I think I might have overexplained some things and neglected a few details, so…
… fellow TIDBits Talk colleagues, please fill in the gaps (and of course make corrections), and
… @jdanilson (and anyone), please share your questions. We’re all here to help each other get these things right!
Hope that helps.
I bought my current TV, a Sony, about eight years ago — when the news about Vizio was current — and decided I’d prefer not to have my TV to be “smart” (read “Consider me to be the product, rather than a customer”) in any way, if I could configure it to avoid connecting to the Internet. The “smarts” were being provided by Google, and I had already decided to have nothing to do with them. Fortunately, when it came time to configure the Wi-Fi connection, the TV couldn’t find my home Wi-Fi. For some reason, there was no control to simply say, “I don’t want to connect this to the Internet,” but after two more unsuccessful attempts by the TV to connect to my home Wi-Fi network, it simply gave up and said, “We’ll try this again later.” It never did, fortunately.
I realize I may be missing some “important” firmware upgrades over the years since, but I suspect that most of those are important only to the customer-as-product business model. My Apple TV 4K HD may want to sell me movies and TV series, but that’s between me and Apple, an outfit I trust not to share my transactions and other personal information with anyone else.
I’ve used LG TVs for several years now, and generally prefer their interface to that of other brands. It is not an Android machine. It uses “WebOS,” which is what the Palm company’s OS eventually became, at least at its origin. I have it set to start up with HDMI 1, which is the Apple TV box, and identified as such, rather than merely HDMI 1. My wife can easily navigate the app and move from YouTube TV, to Amazon Prime, to YouTube, Frndly, etc.
Miscellaneous items:
Enjoy the new TV!
To add just a little to this already amazingly detailed and helpful thread….
We had no television at all for a number of years, using EyeTV devices and direct streaming to watch television on our iMac. COVID lockdown saw us watching more TV, and so I investigated … and investigated….
I don’t remember all the details that went into our selection of an LG OLED TV, but we’ve been quite satisfied. As others here have recommended, we almost exclusively use our Apple TV (the device), straying into the LG’s WebOS mostly for the (very) occasional time we watch live broadcast TV.
But I do remember that both WebOS itself and (as considerably less awful than the other possibilities) and comparatively less tracking were both important points. Please note the scare italics above: to be clear, I am not saying that WebOS is good or that LG does no tracking. But compared to all the other contenders, it was at least somewhat superior.