[Nursie]

We bought a Sony with google tv a year or so back. I don't see the issue?

All smart tvs take a few seconds to start up, fill in the UI and that sort of stuff. My LG certainly does and samsungs seem to as well.

Firmware upgrades have so far all been "Would you like to update?"

And given it's basically android, I'm pretty confident that the apps won't go away after a couple of years like they seem to on most tv manufacturers proprietary OS's.

Personally I couldn't be happier.

[bee_rider]

Their mother might be used to the dreadful before-times when TVs were dumb and just instantly did what you told them to.

[Nursie]

1. The before times of CRTs? Go back much before their EOL period and they took a bit of time to switch on and warm up too. Plus if you hit the "TV" button on my sony it goes to the TV pretty quickly because it no longer needs to load the home screen elements.

2. In which case why single out Sony? This behaviour is common across all brands.

3. Pretty sure the "I want everything as separate devices that do their one thing well" war has been lost to a large extent. Apple TV seems popular but the number of separate devices sold is an order of magnitude lower than the number of TVs shifted per year. See also point and click cameras vs mobile phones.