Cloudtv facebook5/21/2023 ![]() To be fair, having MGR appear in a prominent window on the Cloud TV Home Hub may prove enough of a constant reminder to persuade some users to add the USB storage eventually. Such ‘memory’ TVs have appeared at various times in the past without anywhere near so compelling a reason for having them as MGR, after all. With this in mind we think it would be a great idea if Toshiba did a Cloud TV model at some point that ships with some built-in memory. Even if people say to themselves that they’ll add the USB later at some later date, the reality is that many people never return to any set up features once they’ve completed the initial installation. We can readily imagine households not being bothered to take this practical step – or being unwilling to find the extra cash for the external HDD. The simple reason for this is the need to add an external, not-supplied USB hard drive in order for the MGR function to work. Much as we love the MGR/Recommendations combi, we can’t help but think there will be a good many households which may, tragically, never use it. Hopefully Toshiba has some updates in the wings. The android apps in particular seem very flaky at the moment, routinely refusing to recognise and fully ‘handshake with’ the TV. The same is not true, alas, of the apps Toshiba provides for using the TV in conjunction with smart devices. In fact we didn’t experience a single crash or lost link during our extensive tests. The latest Cloud TV platform also seems much more reliable than last year’s iteration despite its extra complexity. The MGR system is the first time deep dive’ extra content finding has felt properly integrated and intuitive. You can find the same sort of information on other Smart TVs – but only by going online with an open browser or following through a much more convoluted menus path. They work together in Toshiba’s new, faster infrastructure to deliver a seriously impressive, properly joined-up smart system offering exactly the sort of information we suspect many users actually want to see on a Smart TV (as opposed to a PC or smart device). We really need to stress, too, how engaging the new MGR and Gracenote support features are. Basically you can’t see ‘the joins’ between functionality resident in the TV and functionality resident in the cloud, and that’s just how it should be. There’s no overstating how much more inviting and organic this increased running speed makes Cloud TV feel versus last year’s version. Even the ‘full’ system with MGR worked impressively quickly on the 47L7453 we recently tried it on, including the fairly intensive bits like cross-referencing content with Gracenote and switching between apps. Having found Cloud TV to run painfully sluggishly on most of last year’s Toshiba TVs, it’s great to find it running much more slickly this year. The menus put too many obscure network set-up options at your disposal. Toshiba could also do with simplifying the process of connecting Cloud TV to your Wi-Fi router. The TV does tell you where these sections are if you try to use MGR without all the necessary bits set up, but it would be nice if the TV automatically took you to the right menu spot rather than just telling you where it’s hidden. The process for setting MGR up is rather cumbersome, involving trips to two rather obscure sections of the TV’s menus. There’s a bit of jargon in places though, and we also think Toshiba needs to work harder at this initial install phase to ‘sell’ the MGR functionality, stressing the need for an external hard drive to be added, and making sure all the right settings in the menus have been selected. Toshiba provides a pretty helpful initial installation system, using a two-window ‘flow chart’ approach that helps you follow where in the process you are and provides pretty comprehensive instructions. Setup, Performance and Conclusions Review. ![]()
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