Compare
Art for your TV, compared
There are a handful of ways to put art on a television. Here they are side by side, as fairly as we can put it, including where another one is the better choice.
| Option | Price (US) | What you need | The collection | Who chooses the pictures |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Salon | $9.99 once | Apple TV HD or Apple TV 4K, on any television | Nearly 800 paintings, prints, maps and photographs from 8 museums and archives, all public domain | A person, picture by picture, each cut to 16:9 by hand |
| Samsung's Art Store | 30 pieces a month free; the full catalogue is $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year | A Samsung TV that supports it: The Frame, or a recent OLED, Neo QLED or Micro RGB model | 5,000+ works by 800+ artists, including MoMA and Art Basel | Samsung |
| Artcast | Free with adverts, or $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year without | Apple TV, Fire TV, Roku, Samsung TVs; iPhone app | Says 100,000+ artworks, contemporary and classic | Artists upload their own work and are paid by views; curators pick weekly highlights |
| Loupe | Free; sells prints | Apple TV, Samsung and LG TVs, and others | Contemporary art in more than 50 themed channels | Loupe's curators, with channels updated weekly |
| Art Gallery & Paintings 4K | $4.99 once | Apple TV | Says 500,000+ works from The Met and the Art Institute of Chicago | Grouped into collections by era, mood and theme |
| TV ArtFrame | $4.99 once | Apple TV | Historic paintings from the last 500 years, and your own iCloud photos | Curated by the developer |
| YouTube art videos | Free with adverts | Any television with YouTube | Whatever each channel posts | Each channel |
| Apple TV screen saver | Free, built in | Apple TV | Apple's aerial films and your own photos; no paintings | Apple, or you |
Prices and features are from each product's App Store listing or website on 24 September 2026, in US dollars, and may have changed since. Where a number is the product's own claim, the table says so.
When another option is better
- You want modern or contemporary art. Salon only shows work that is out of copyright, which means very little painted after about 1930. Samsung's Art Store includes MoMA and Art Basel, and Artcast and Loupe are built around living artists.
- You already own a Samsung Frame. Its matte screen and frame-shaped bezel make art look more like a print than any app can on a glossy television, and the Art Store is made for it.
- You want your own photos on the wall. Salon does not show them. TV ArtFrame does, and so does the Apple TV screen saver.
- You want as many pictures as possible. Art Gallery & Paintings 4K offers hundreds of thousands. Salon has hundreds, each one chosen because it fills a television and reads from across a room.
- You want it free. YouTube art videos, Loupe and Artcast's free tier cost nothing, in exchange for adverts or a smaller choice.
When Salon is better
- You have an Apple TV and no wish for another subscription. Salon is one purchase, with nothing to unlock later.
- You want every picture to fill the screen. Salon only hangs pictures wide enough for a 16:9 television, each one cut to shape by hand in 4K, so nothing arrives letterboxed, stretched or with a frame drawn round it.
- You would rather not be tracked. The app has no account and no analytics, and collects no data of any kind.
- You want a frame, not a feed. A mat in five colours and three widths, a clock if you want one, favourites and a slideshow, and a picture that stays up for as long as you leave it.
- You would like it in your own language. Salon is in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Japanese. The other Apple TV art apps compared here are in English only.
An Apple TV app. On your Apple TV, open the App Store and search for Salon Museum Art.
Samsung, The Frame, Artcast, Loupe, YouTube and the other names on this page are trademarks of their owners. Salon is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any of them.