LG Ads Solutions reveals alternative smart TV OS

LG Ads Solutions has announced the launch of its new smart TV operating system.

River OS, the company said, is “built for ultimate personalisation, seamless navigation across apps, devices, and services, and advanced voice-controlled TV features at affordable price points”. 

The operating system will serve a different target audience to LG’s webOS, which is deployed on the company’s own-brand TVs along with a number of other OEMs. River OS-powered smart TVs will launch first in India by the end of the year, with expansion plans to the US and beyond in 2022.

The OS will be deployed by a number of unnamed OEMs, while LG Ads Solutions said that major content streaming services will be available on the system.

A core feature of River OS is content discovery and enhanced voice control. For the latter, the OS uses natural language processing to determine who is watching TV and provides the user with tailored suggestions. 

John Gee, chief business development officer for LG Ads, said: “With streaming dominating viewing time today, it’s still too hard for people to find, discover and enjoy the programs they want to watch, across literally thousands of content sources available. River OS solves that challenge in an elegant way and delivers new, fully voice-controlled smart TV features that consumers will find innovative and essential. And we’re able to package ad-supported content in a way that allows our OEM partners to deliver a high-quality product at an affordable price point.”