[Poll results out] Should NVIDIA Shield & other Android TV devices get option to enable/disable Google TV UI?

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…

Original story (published on June 25, 2021) follows:

Starting a few days back, Nvidia Shield devices began getting an updated user interface that’s not too different from what other Android TV devices bagged in February.

While the biggest change is obviously the addition of a new Discover tab, the All Apps screen has also been tweaked a bit to display more apps at once.

All-in-all, the new UI has obviously picked up cues from the Google TV software on last year’s Chromecast.

However, one change in particular hasn’t gone down well with users at all due to which the entire OS update has been deemed trash.

This is the new “content recommendations” feature that eats up a huge chunk of the home screen estate. Recommendations is just another buttered-up term for ads and no one is fond of them, particularly when the previous UI didn’t have them.

Sure these ads are pretty relevant since they’re exclusive for movies and TV shows that can be viewed on Android TV, but they can be quite an eyesore nonetheless. The resultant feedback has thus mostly been extremely negative.

I was seriously pissed when I saw ads on my Shield. So I spent a few hours playing around with new launchers and settled on this one. Got dirty with ADB to enable the weather widget and set this as my default launcher.
Source

Forced ads, anti consumer, zero respect for your hard earned money. I rolled it back because f**k this. Not only do the ads suck but they also removed the left interaction menu that let you quickly enter apps.
Source

But it’s not just Nvidia Shield TV devices that are suffering because of the so-called content recommendations. As it stands, Google is hell-bent on moving all Android TV devices to Google TV.

Therefore, the negative feedback isn’t from Nvidia users alone. All Android TV users have been looking for ways to disable the new Google TV UI on their respective devices and roll back to the previous one.

While many have successfully downgraded by uninstalling updates to the Android TV Home app, a few have reported that they keep getting forced onto the new UI update even with automatic updates disabled.

This is because the update is likely a server-side tweak due to which device owners have no control over whether to accept or reject the updated changes like the case with OTA updates.

Some have even gone as far as installing custom launchers like Sideload Channel Launcher 3 to get rid of the new Google TV interface and disable all of its ads.

In such a scenario, wouldn’t it make more sense if the concerned Android TV device OEMs at least included an option to allow users to roll back and stay on the old Android TV UI without hassle?

Given the lack of any official way, paid or unpaid, to disable the ads from the home screen, such an option will sure do away with all of the negative feedback.

So what do you guys think? You can drop your opinion through the poll below or as a comment in the section at the bottom. As always, the poll results will be out next week.

11:07 pm (IST): Only 10.7% of the voters are of the opinion that there should not be an option to disable the new Google TV UI on Nvidia Shield and other Android TV devices while an overwhelming 85.7% majority feels that there should be. Take notes, Google and Nvidia!

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