• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

PSA: Twitch app "retired" from Samsung SMART TVs.

SparksterMeta0

SparksterMeta0

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,396
NOTE: I saw the notice on my TV, but never thought about taking a picture as proof.
But there is this article about it: https://luckbox.com/esports-news/article/twitch-app-removed-from-samsung-tv

As someone who has used the app every almost daily since buying a Samsung SMART TV one Thanksgiving, hearing about this is a low blow for me, since there was virtually no warning that this was happening afaik.


I know I have my PS4, PC, and phone, but still this is lame.

Was there any news about this beforehand?
 
Last edited:
Roy

Roy

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,471
Didn't even know this was available. But speaking of which, the Netflix app has been freezing a lot
 
cptodin

cptodin

Member
Oct 27, 2017
98
My LG doesn't even have a twitch app. I get around it by opening twitch on the browser. It runs slow, though
 

Deleted member 24907

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
5,354
Smart TVs continue to be trash.

But hey I'm sure they will never "retire" that oh-so-convenient data mining they do on you every single day.
 
Bjoern

Bjoern

Member
Oct 26, 2017
626
Germany
There never was an official Twitch app available for my Samsung.
It must've been retired a long time ago.
 
Inugami

Inugami

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,995
Acquila said:
Stuff like this is why I just rely on Chromecast.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yep... My TV has a bunch of smart apps, but even in just the 2 years since we got it the performance has tanked or just become unreliable. It's best to just get a third party setup box which is going to be supported much longer.
 
Ocean

Ocean

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,691
I tried it out recently and gave up about a minute in. Couldn't find a way to log in, app was hot garbage.

Oddly enough, my Samsung TV has surprisingly snappy Netflix and Plex apps. Everything else on that Tizen store seems trash though.
 
FunMouse

FunMouse

Member
Apr 30, 2018
1,291
Oh wow you're right, I just went and double checked my app and it tells me to delete it now. That's a shame, I was just using it two days ago :(
 

teacup

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
686
SparksterMeta0 said:
NOTE: I saw the notice on my TV, but never thought about taking a picture as proof.
But there is this article about it: https://luckbox.com/esports-news/article/twitch-app-removed-from-samsung-tv

As someone who has used the app every almost daily since buying a Samsung SMART TV one Thanksgiving, hearing about this is a low blow for me, since there was virtually no warning that this was happening afaik.


I know I have my PS4, PC, and phone, but still this is lame.

Was there any news about this beforehand?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


What is the reasoning? It was a fairly bad app to be fair though
 
MrH

MrH

Banned
Nov 3, 2017
3,995
KojiKnight said:
Yep... My TV has a bunch of smart apps, but even in just the 2 years since we got it the performance has tanked or just become unreliable. It's best to just get a third party setup box which is going to be supported much longer.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I just use my PS4 for everything (Netflix, Prime, Twitch), is there a benefit to say a Fire Stick or Chromecast over it? I've never used such a device.
 
Dekuman

Dekuman

Member
Oct 27, 2017
19,026
Smart TVs and blu rays with smart apps all suffer from this sort of obsolescence and other shenanigans.

Set up a (admittedly lower end) BR player for my mom and due to us being in Canada and it being a cheaper LG tha'ts a couple of years old model, literally all the apps are not available in Canada or retired by LG. Only Youtube and Netflex and National Film Board of Canada apps are left working and YouTube is incredibly slow.
 
ShinobiBk

ShinobiBk

One Winged Slayer
Member
Dec 28, 2017
10,121
Was Twitch TV app as trash as their phone app?
I'm shocked such a big site has such a shitty app. It's embarrassing
 
Inugami

Inugami

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,995
MrH said:
I just use my PS4 for everything (Netflix, Prime, Twitch), is there a benefit to say a Fire Stick or Chromecast over it? I've never used such a device.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Not really aside from possibly convenience. I can just queue up what videos I want to watch from my phone with Chromecast without having to turn on any other hardware.
 
GooZ

GooZ

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,724
Was using it this morning, just checked right now and it's suddenly terminated. Guess I'll just stick with the browser from now on.

teacup said:
What is the reasoning? It was a fairly bad app to be fair though
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Agreed. The chat never worked on my smartTV and navigating through the application is a pain. It's been like that for months and seemed Twitch didn't bother to improve/fix the application.
 
Lump

Lump

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,965
For the vast majority of Smart TVs, there's just really no good built-in substitute for a good 4K box (like Shield TV or Apple TV 4K). I find getting a box like that to be just as essential to the tv buying process as decent external sound.
 
Castor Archer

Castor Archer

Member
Jan 8, 2019
2,297
Haven't exited the app on one of my samsung TVs, so it still works for me. But my other TV gives me the retire message.
Me on my TV that still has the app open:
 
tommy7154

tommy7154

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,370
My Samsung smart TV is shit tier with many apps. Plex, Twitch, HBO Now... I get issues with them all the time whereas I use the same apps via Internet or Roku with zero of these consistent issues.
 
Rice Eater

Rice Eater

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,814
Not sure about every version of Twitch, but the Samsung version was great. Why do I say that? From my 2 years of experience with it, I never once saw an ad while using it lol. It's not like I installed ad blocker on my TV, I just figured it somehow wasn't capable of showing it for whatever reason. And I do wonder if that has anything to do with why it's being discontinued.
 
Conkerkid11

Conkerkid11

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
13,945
Acquila said:
Stuff like this is why I just rely on Chromecast.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah, Smart TVs shouldn't have ever been a thing. Doesn't make much sense for app devs to maintain that many apps simultaneously. Haven't LG and others literally just dropped their OS at this point and used a tablet as a remote? That makes the most sense.

All my Samsung Smart TV is good for is having worse versions of every app and worse Wi-Fi reception than all the devices next to it.
 
Kompis

Kompis

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,021
Got the message yesterday and had to delete the app on my Samsung tv. It was pretty bad as many here say but it was still convenient to me.
 
Nintendo

Nintendo

Prophet of Regret
Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,367
Lump said:
For the vast majority of Smart TVs, there's just really no good built-in substitute for a good 4K box (like Shield TV or Apple TV 4K). I find getting a box like that to be just as essential to the tv buying process as decent external sound.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Agreed! That's why I use my Nvidia Shield TV for everything. I had Samsung, LG, and Sony TV's and none of them had good native OS and apps. (The Sony has a good Android TV OS but it's slow and clunky AF)
 
lake

lake

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,289
Sometime in the last six months my ~2015 Sony Bravia started saying Plex can no longer be run. Joke's on them, as I can still open the perfectly-working Plex app by laboriously navigating to it in the Opera App Store app.

(Smart TVs are trash.)
 
balhop

balhop

One Winged Slayer
Avenger
Oct 29, 2017
251
Near Reading, PA
I dusted off my Wii U to watch some Twitch tonight because of this, though i guess I could just use my TV's browser from now on.
 
WeskerXXI

WeskerXXI

Member
Oct 28, 2017
55
Found out yesterday and it's really a bummer for me, I used it all the time as bad as it was. Back to having to turn on the PS4 for Twitch all the time.

I'm really thinking about getting a Chromecast or something and completely forget about the crappy native apps of my TV
 
Kitokys

Kitokys

Member
Nov 29, 2017
539
I believe the Twitch app is no longer supported for Roku TVs, either. Luckily Roku allows third-parties to develop and release their own channels, and there's a good one called Twitched. If it wasn't for this then I would have lost access to Twitch on my TV, as well.

I originally used a third-party twitch channel plugin through Plex, but then Plex removed support for ALL channel plugins. Shit got me heated.
 
mute

mute

â–˛ Legend â–˛
Member
Oct 25, 2017
25,062
Apps built into TVs always sound good on paper but the manufacturers just don't seem to be on board with providing long term support, only working on one set of TVs for as long as they need to before hard cutting off and moving to the next series. Edit: or silly ad money shenanigans

A dedicated device like a Shield TV seems a safer bet.
 
Last edited:
rochellepaws

rochellepaws

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,451
Ireland
That sucks. I had it downloaded and used it often but now it's no longer in my apps or on the store. Weird that making their service accessible to a wide audience wouldn't be a priority for them.
 
Piccoro

Piccoro

Member
Nov 20, 2017
7,094
The Twitch app on Bravia Smart TVs was updated recently and works pretty well.
I used to watch it sometimes when I was too lazy to turn on my PS4, lol :p
 

Deleted member 18161

user requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,805
The commercials didn't work on it. I bet Samsung wanted a cut of the ads if they updated it to support them but Twitch was like "nah" so it was "retired".
 
djplaeskool

djplaeskool

Member
Oct 26, 2017
19,734
Does Twitch just not dedicate resources to their app?
I feel like they are quite prone to rendering apps and api hooks invalid, then either not updating their clients, or, as in this case, just deprecating stuff altogether.

Edit: See above post, that's a good catch.
 
OrdinaryPrime

OrdinaryPrime

Self-requested ban
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
11,042
Amazon recently updated the Twitch app on Fire TVs and it's largely an improvement. Having the chat for past broadcasts automatically is better.

Korezo said:
LG has Gamestreams for twitch which is better because its gets around the ads somehow.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is interesting as Twitch embeds the ads into the stream so stuff like adblocking isn't effective.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.