[acdha]

> While we (you, me, most of HN) see smart TVs as an anti-feature, most of the public sees them as a huge feature.

There's a lot of truth here but the manufacturers skimp so much on hardware that they're making that easier to understand. When you buy a brand new Samsung 4K TV and it can't play >1080p without stuttering the value of an Apple TV is a lot easier to understand.

> Even if you can convince them that AppleTV can show them netflix you need to get past such insurmountable obstacles as "needing an HDMI cable" and "having two remotes" and "which input does the TV need to be on?" and "which remote do I use for the volume?"

This is incorrect for the last 3 (you need something like 2000s-era hardware not to auto-detect inputs or allow the player's remote to control the volume) and the first one is true but also quite familiar to most people and it's hard to buy one without some kind of “do you already have a cable?” prompt since the vendors all want to sell you one.