CES 2025: The next chapter in the TV-OS wars
While most of the world was just getting back up and running at the start of the new year, many in the OTT, Video and Tech industry in general went over to Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), taking place between the 7th and 11th of January. If you’ve followed this blog series over the years, you’ll know what comes next! In this blog we’re taking a look at some of the announcements made in the world of Smart TV and Connected TV, all the things that we can expect to make an impact in the year to come. Let’s dive straight in!
Samsung has been busy
Most of these CES blogs often start with Samsung or LG, and this year is no different. Especially Samsung has been busy with their announcements this year. As with most tech nowadays, a lot of the announcements have to do with AI integrations. Because, yes, TVs get AI too! And plenty of it, with Samsung adding several different integrations into their new 2025 Tizen lineup.
Dubbed ‘Vision AI’, Samsung is adding several AI capabilities to their new televisions, some even in collaboration with Microsoft Copilot. Most notably, and what I expect users will get the most value out of, is the added ability to search information about anything that’s on the screen. In a similar example, 2025 TVs from Samsung can now find the recipe of food shown on-screen, powered by Samsung’s own ‘Food’ app. A gimmicky addition from my perspective, but yet another way for Samsung to keep you inside of their own ecosystem. There are a few more integrations, like genAI wallpapers, which will be especially useful for ‘The Frame’ models. One AI addition I very much like, is the added ability to get live translations for subtitles, in a win for accessibility purposes. Is this the start of having proper accessibility built into televisions (eliminating the need for apps to accommodate for it)?
Other than AI additions, the TVs of course got a refresh too. Okay, supposedly still using (on-device) AI in some form, many of the new televisions get improvements with their upscaling capabilities, color boosting and optimised sounds (e.g. better recognisable speech). But besides that, most of the updates seem rather straightforward. 4K and 8K screens, check. QLED and OLED, check. A new version of Tizen, of course, check. One addition to the 2025 lineup that might be interesting, especially for content creators and app developers, is the newly added support for Eclipsa Audio, developed together with Google. This new audio format ‘allows creators to adjust audio data such as the location and intensity of sounds, along with spatial reflections, to create an immersive three-dimensional sound experience.’, offering new opportunities for the creatives out there. The new format is becoming available via YouTube on Samsung Tizen only first, with no word yet of it becoming available to other app developers. Time will tell, but with both companies seeking to push the new audio format, I do expect the format becoming available as the year progresses.
LG follows suit
Just because it’s the smaller of the two South-Korean giants, doesn’t mean LG is moving at any slower pace. If anything, LG is following suit and stepping up in a similar way as Samsung. LG is also adding a bunch of AI capabilities to their 2025 lineup, all powered by the “Alpha 11 AI Processor Gen 2”, and with a sprinkle of Microsoft Copilot, like Samsung. LG does seem to focus more on improved viewing experiences, with ‘AI Sound Pro’ for immersive audio at a whopping 11.1.2 channels of surround sound, and the improved ‘AI Picture/Sound Wizard’ for tailored audio and visual models for very customised entertainment experiences.
What’s new here though, is the newly launched ‘AI Remote’, previously known as the Magic Remote. Of course, it’s much of the same remote (one I really like actually), but with some added AI-flavor. Specifically the voice input now directly integrates with on-device LLMs, allowing users to control the TV solely with voice. I wonder if this is really going to be used (other than for easy searching of content), or if this really is just a gimmick to be left alone most of the time.
Of course, like all other manufacturers we will go over today, LG has also refreshed their televisions in some way or another. The new M5 model with LG’s ‘Zero Connect Box’ for a ‘visually lossless’ wireless connection between the TV and the controls is an update from last year’s M4 model. Similarly, other models like the C5 and G5 are also available, with better OLED panels and up to 40% increased brightness. In the same trend, LG has also updated its WebOS operating system. With a faster home screen (how much of that is the new hardware?) and increased personalisation, LG sticks to its own OS for yet another year.
Quiet from Roku
Arguably absent at CES this year was Roku. They haven’t actually made any device announcements at all, which is understandable given the launch of the new Roku Ultra at their own developer summit back in September 2024. Roku did announce two things, sort of separate from CES while still making use of the CES-timing-hype: 90 million streaming households, and ‘Data Cloud Collaboration Suite’. The latter giving partners access to analyse and leverage Roku’s proprietary TV data. With more data potentially allowing for better (and thus more expensive) ad-targeting, it is an understandable move from Roku to leverage all the data gathered from their 90 million streaming households.
Panasonic likes Amazon
At CES in 2024, Panasonic announced their lineup of televisions rocking the FireTV OS from Amazon. And it seems that this works rather well for Panasonic, with 3 new models becoming available as announced at CES this year. The three models, sporting different panel technologies (OLED and Mini LED), come with all the things you know from Amazon: ‘Prime Video Calibrated Mode’, Alexa voice controls and the Fire TV Ambient Experience (offering a similar experience as e.g. Samsung’s ‘The Frame’, with curated art and other widgets showing on the TV while not streaming). Panasonic is betting clearly big on Fire TV.
Of course, Amazon had some announcements of their own at CES too. None relating to TV however, other than the extended Panasonic we just covered. They jumped the gun a bit with an announcement back in November last year, where they showcased their new lineup of ‘Fire TV Omni Mini-LED’ televisions. Offering similar functions as the Panasonic televisions, Amazon is in essence competing with itself by both licensing and using their own operating system. Then again, as we’ve seen from the likes of Roku as well, most of the profit comes from the added service, not necessarily from the hardware. So it’s a win regardless, for Amazon.
More competition in the US with Sharp and TiVo. And… Xumo?
In a move that a lot will have seen coming, TiVo OS announced that it will enter the US market in the beginning of 2025. Together with initially only Sharp, televisions with TiVo OS enter the already fierce battle between the likes of Roku, Amazon, Vizio, Samsung, LG and many others. Becoming available in February, this first US Sharp model with TiVo will rock a QLED panel and comes with support for Dolby Atmos. It’ll be interesting to see this launch unfold, with TiVo of course aiming for a sizeable footprint in the US; something they have been working on at the other side of the water (Europe) for some time now.
Okay, Sharp, but you also announced televisions with Xumo’s OS, at the same CES! It would be interesting to learn some of the motives behind this split in different operating systems for the same market. Of course, with Xumo already being a well-known name in the US, also because of its FAST offering, I can understand Sharp opting for the OS. So why TiVo as well then? Not putting all your eggs in one basket may be one thing, but they might just be taking a gamble on TiVo hitting it big in the US — and with Sharp being a launching partner they will likely have some say in how the OS shapes up to be. Interesting times for the US CTV market, with even more fragmentation coming our way in 2025.
Lacking excitement
I’ll be honest, and maybe it’s just me, but, many of the TV updates at CES this have felt a bit… lacklustre. We’re going through a lot of the same motions as in last years. A little OS update here, a bigger screen size there. A lot of the focus of these operating systems and manufacturers has been on incorporating AI in some way or another, which many users will likely not have much (known) interaction with. Still, let’s take a brief look at some of the additional announcements:
Whale TV has announced a profit sharing program for with the launch of Whale OS 10. With this profit sharing program, TV manufacturers shipping with Whale TV can now get as much as 40% of Whale TV’s OS monetisation revenue. Without having to do any of the heavy lifting of maintaining a TV OS, while still getting a decent portion of the revenue, this might be a very good option especially for some of the smaller TV manufacturers out there.
The name we see every year, Hisense, has unveiled some of their new TV sets at CES too. Rocking either VIDAA U or Google TV, Hisense continues to bet on two different operating systems, even with VIDAA being a subsidiary of Hisense. Of course, Hisense too has added AI to a lot of things in their TV, with the Hi-View AI Engine X chipset capable of optimising every frame with AI-based algorithms.
NextGen TV is not standing still either, with the ATSC 3.0 standard continuing to see better coverage in launched televisions. As of now, 76% of US households have access to NextGen TV broadcasts, with more to follow given more brands opting for support in 2025. Standards for the win!
Google continues to be a household name in TV too, with not just Hisense as mentioned earlier, but also TCL opting for Google TV with their new lineup. Of course, Google itself also showed some things at CES. With Google betting on AI like most of the others, they showcased a preview of AI capabilities with Gemini directly on Google TV. It’ll be interesting seeing how those features will be used on Google TV-supported models, and if they will be on-device like the ones from Samsung, or require an active connection and will run in the cloud.
Some others in the industry have been notably absent. Vizio, just recently having gone through the acquisition by Walmart was only present with their ads team so no real device updates from their side. Similarly, Titan OS has not shown many new updates at CES either, but they do frequently post of new apps becoming available (e.g., with CNN and HBO Max being added just before the end of last year), so they aren’t standing still either. We’ll likely see more updates from both, as well as the likes of others as the year progresses. Especially with Ventura from The Trade Desk coming to play some time soon, CES has really just been the start of the OS wars in 2025.
A resurfaced gimmick
You may remember the fully wireless, battery-powered television from Displace two years ago. Well this year they are back, with a similar wireless screen, now actually going to become available! Unlike LG which does require a separate device for their wireless experience, let alone a normal power connection, Displace uses a battery-powered approach. What you might not know about these televisions, is that they use a rather odd mounting mechanism. No screws or anything like that, no. The mounting mechanism uses suction cups, allowing it to be easily attached and removed again (you do need to replace/recharge the batteries after all). It’s a fun gimmick, I’ll admit.
Of course, Displace does come with an OS, and in yet another contribution to the OS wars, it does so with its proprietary Displace OS. Powered by no other than AI, Displace OS comes with a big set of proprietary implementations, not just with the OS itself but also the remote. Seemingly looking to shake up the competition, especially the input looks interesting to me. With hand gestures for play and pause as well as multi-touch control, Displace looks for a different and new approach to TV-remote input. I look forward to playing with the TV, but as always, this does mean yet another operating system to support for app developers out there.
Rounding up
Okay, it definitely seems like, once again, much of the name of the game was AI. With Samsung, LG, Google, Displace, Hisense and basically everyone else adding AI-powered capabilities to their platform in one way or the other, there isn’t much room left for other innovations it seems. Of course, that’s me making it bigger than it really is, there is definitely movement on the screens and panels, and with Samsung and Google going for the Eclipsa Audio format, the world of TV is definitely not standing still.
Looking at the OS-side, the amount of fragmentation still continues to increase. With TiVo and Titan OS coming into play last year and continuing to grow into 2025, we’ll see even more operating systems entering the market as the year progresses. Displace TV has their own proprietary operating system, and with Ventura expecting to launch somewhere either this or possibly next year, the OS wars are definitely still on. That can only be demonstrated even more just by the sheer amount of operating systems mentioned in this blog. Roku is still present, as are LG and Samsung with their own operating systems, Amazon with Fire TV on both Panasonic and their own devices, and Vizio with Smartcast (which, albeit being absent at CES, will likely make big moves after the Walmart acquisition). Not a boring time to be a TV-app developer!
