Which brand?

Each hardware brand has partnered with specific services; content may vary for different players or TVs within a brand. Any manufacturer's offerings can change over time. Such updates might be automatic; if not, you might have to search for them.

Once a TV or player is connected to the network, you generally reach the Internet applications via the remote. Press a dedicated button and icons, called widgets, appear in a row at the bottom of the screen. Several manufacturers—including LG, Samsung, and Sony—include a widget gallery from the search giant Yahoo, which provides access to its news and weather services, plus games and Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube. The manufacturers can also add widgets from other partners, including the streaming movie services.

The widget-based menus were straightforward and simple, much like a computer interface. Sony's T-shaped Xross Media Bar interface was confusing at first, but once we got used to it, we found that it was an effective way to handle the broad range of content. Panasonic's interface was the easiest to use—perhaps because it offered less content than the others—with widgets surrounding the TV's main picture.