The perfect TV | Hacker News Reader

The perfect TV

technology.siekerman.nl

58 pointstvtechnology60 comments

I agree to most of the points of the post but this

> It does not need a traditional TV tuner, cable or antenna connector or any other remnants of a previous era in TV technology. They drive up the cost, increase the complexity and bulk up the form factor, while serving no modern purpose. It’s time to throw them out.

Even the USA still has free to air TV channels. They are the norm everywhere else. I'm watching news right now on a TV through the antenna connector and the built in DVTB decoder. That's what marks the difference between a TV and a monitor to me.

Edit: spelling.

There are many decent Tuners on the market that you can connect via HDMI.

There are many HDMI hubs that you can connect to a TV with just one single HDMI port. That doesn't mean "the perfect TV" should have just a single HDMI port.

Does every country have the same tuner specification?

There's a handy map on Wikipedia:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Digital_broadcast_st...

Edit: There's nothing technically stopping you from having multiple tuner ICs and using the correct one along with some form of external adapter if there's a difference in connectors.

Isn't the USA like most other western countries that have access to the free to air channels over the Internet?

Granted, I think a better title/conclusion would be to do away with TVs completely and just have pure monitors with a separate STB, or PC with a TV card.

In Sweden we have a silly law requiring all citizens owning TV equipment to pay a special fee. I for one would like a large "TV-like" display without a TV tuner just to avoid having to pay that fee. More about this silliness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_Sweden

In Germany it is even worse. You have to pay the fee regardless of you having any devices capable of receiving. It is a flat per household fee. It used to be like you said it is in Sweden now but they changed 3 year ago to a pseudo tax.

I think I'd rather see it as pseudo tax than requiring its own administration apparatus that costs ~18 million USD a year to run.

I would agree but the running costs[0] did not change much since that switch for reasons not clear to me.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARD_ZDF_Deutschlandradio_Beitr... (German content)

How much is the fee per household?

In Bosnia & Herzegovina, the fee applies if you have any TV or a radio device, which is just silly considering that like every single mobile phone for the past 20 years usually has an FM radio built in.

A company made such a TV. Xiaomi latest 60 inch TV in China is just that. They took the smart parts out of the TV set and added it to a separately bought and optional soundbar which only costs 99usd, meaning you can keep replacing it when it becomes obsolete without having to replace the whole panel.

What the author of this article doesn't understand though is that TV manufacturers want you to replace your TV as often as possible so they can continue to make money.

More information about the Xiaomi TV for the curious: http://en.miui.com/thread-173353-1-1.html

I was a bit off with the Soundbar's price (it costs 157 according to your link) but I guess still cheap enough to replace every 1-2 years rather than buying a new TV

> What the author of this article doesn't understand though is that TV manufacturers want you to replace your TV as often as possible so they can continue to make money.

The general idea, not understanding which leads to a lot of confusion, is that companies do not care about providing value for customers. They care only about extracting value from users. The two are sometimes related; often the easiest way to make money is to sell things of some value to the customers, but that in no way means that customer value is being optimized for. On the contrary - the more competitive the market, the more likely it is that what you're buying is the worst thing a producer can make that people will still buy.

TV makers don't care that your smart TV will lose half of its functionality next year because a third party decides to obsolete some API. You've already bought it, and they're pretty sure you'll buy a new one. And the feedback that a device barely works after a year does not even register with people, because they can't believe that the top-of-the line, flag product of a respected company can be utter crap (see also: the cell phone market).

Actually, since we're speaking about TV, and TV means movies... I broke through my illusions only recently. Illusions that were in part shaped by books and movies, in which (in the genres I like) humanity often brings its state-of-the-art technology to bear to fend off an impending threat. And the joke is, in real life we don't have state-of-the-art-technology. Even the military doesn't. I finally lost my hope when I heard that American soldiers complain that they're being put to fight with inferior rifles, which are inferior because someone was making money off that. And everyone knows the F-35 saga (we're probably overdue for a next episode on HN anyway).

If alien invaders from outer space came to conquer our planet, they'd be perplexed by seeing a civilization with so much potential, which yet choses to use like 5% of it.

I like it. A lean TV/Monitor with HDMI. Add a decent AV receiver and a set of decent speakers. All devices connect to the AV receiver and just one HDMI cable to TV/Monitor. You can attach your favourite OS thingy. Mine would be an Apple TV 4. Next a cable TV app on Apple TV so I can get rid of my TV decoder (and its crappy OS).

I though that, what the article says, was obvious and I always assumed that this was also obvious for the manufacturers, but that they are not interested, even it would be the more convenient thing for consumers.

I don't know well the market but my impression is that if they follow that path they will become commodities producers.

They don't want to be only displays manufacturers because then a TV would be only an accessory. They want to capture a market. They want to be "the platform".

In other words, everybody wants to be Apple.

Crowfounding would be a nice idea but I imagine that the technology for good screens is only in the hands of, precisely, the ones that are trying to make TV a platform.

> Crowfounding would be a nice idea but I imagine that the technology for good screens is only in the hands of, precisely, the ones that are trying to make TV a platform.

I wonder how hard it is to acquire TV panels. They're made by mostly the same manufacturers as panels for laptops and tablets etc., however they don't have the same sort of foothold in these markets as they do in the TV market (take LG for example).

TVs benefit greatly from enormous economies of scale. Costs would certainly pose an issue for a crowdfunded project.

> Crowfounding would be a nice idea but I imagine that the technology for good screens is only in the hands of, precisely, the ones that are trying to make TV a platform.

Not really. The majority of displays are made by LG, Samsung, Sharp and a few other manufacturers you probably haven't heard of [0]. A few years ago entrepreneurs in Korea started selling IPS displays using the 'B' grade panels supposedly rejected by Apple [1]. Most of them were usually backed up by other cheap components though (e.g. cheap lights which led to bleeding), but yes what you are saying could be done.

[0] - https://www.avforums.com/threads/list-of-lcd-panel-manufactu... (2008, so maybe a bit outdated)

[1] - http://techreport.com/review/23291/those-27-inch-ips-display...

Then they should just sell their monitor with a HDMI/USB stick. That way they might also be able to increase sales by selling "upgrade sticks"/"special edition sticks".

They won't do that, because they'll earn more by selling you a whole new TV instead of an "upgrade stick". And they don't want a secondary market of TV extensions, because at this point they'll have to admit they're commodity producers.

So something like BenQ ST550K then?

http://www.benq.se/product/DigitalSignage/st550k/specificati...

Or the Philips BDM4065UC but with more HDMI ports?

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/philips_bdm4065uc.htm

As an owner of the Philips-- It's really a top notch panel.

I do lots web development and plenty of gaming, the extra pixels and size really are a joy to work with.

Highly recommend.

Philips is too small and BenQ too expensive (and no stand). Any others?

Too small? At what distance is this?

Sorry, those are the only sane monitors I've seen at an interesting size with UHD or true 4k resolution.

Clearly then you didn't read the article, or even the title. It isn't about monitors but rather TVs. 40" is too small for a 4K TV. $1800 is to expensive.

I'd rather say the article being about wishing that TVs were pure monitors but with an IR sensor and more inputs than a generic monitor.

40" is certainly not too small for any home I've lived in or visited. Besides, the article itself asked for monitors in the range 40" to 60".

As for the Benq, the most expensive price around here translates to about 1400USD. Granted, that's still ~50% more than the asked for 1000USD but that's most likely due to a lack of demand.

If you want a TV that follows the rest of the spec (UHD, >=40", <1000USD, >=4HDMI CEC) then, sadly, it seems like you'll have to live with the woe of a "Smart TV", with its complex remote, such as the Philips 55PUT6400 55" 60Hz (~918USD converted price): http://www.philips.co.uk/c-p/55PUT6400_12/6000-series-4k-uhd...

The BenQ you linked to runs Android. Not quite what the article described.

True, I missed that. But then I wouldn't expect a monitor targeted at being used as an in-store display to be heavy on apps or slow to switch input. There might be an issue in the boot-up though.

i bought myself one of those philips monitors this week, and i'm loving it so far.

unfortunately my early 2013 macbook pro can't drive it at 60hz, since that was only added in late 2013. Guess it's a good time to upgrade anyway.

I like this vision, that's a TV I would want. Lean, minimum amount of software, instant on / off, no worries about privacy and future proof.

I found my myself sort of agreeing but sort of not. The last TV I bought was a nice, thin Samsung. I just hung it on my wall and was done. Sure, the "platform" is terrible but it works.

The thing that aggravates me are how "dumb" TVs are at handling HDMI inputs. Like, only cycle through the inputs that are receiving signal, for starters (or hit them first, at least).

Absolutely not! I can't stand TVs and projectors that try to be too smart with inputs. If you're the TV, you don't know that I'm about to plug my computer in and I've selected the input before connecting it. Otherwise I'll plug my computer in first and it's also trying to be too smart and can't see any TV connected so it doesn't set up the multimonitors properly. So no, they really shouldn't try to ignore unconnected HDMI inputs. I used to have an old style TV that ignored the RGB input it there was no audio signal with it. So to use it as a computer monitor, I had to plug in an extra audio cable for no good reason.

I specifically include the bit about "hit them first" so as not to imply ignoring. Here's my situation which I'm guessing is much more common than yours: I watch ABC in the morning and Apple TV in the evening. So, every single day, I have to press the input button 6 times in the morning and once in the evening. I would never, ever prioritize you're rare situation over my routine situation.

As a great real-life example, consider the the Flip camcorder, which kinda came out of nowhere and "stole" 13% of the camcorder market (although I'd bet good money that it actually created new market share). Does it dissolve dog poop? Well, no, but it's still pretty cool:
1) it costs $150 or less. (A lot less, actually.)
2) it has no cables or wires. Just one flip-up USB connector.
3) it has one big red button: RECORD, plus a teeny one for playback.
4) it doesn't take cartridges or cassettes or discs or cards or anything
5) it doesn't have any controls or settings or anything
6) it stores one hour of video and has roughly one hour of battery life
7) it's about the size of a cell phone
8) it records videos that work well with YouTube
9) it comes in pretty colors

I mean, DAMN, those guys knew what they were doing.

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/business-requireme...

Recently bought a Samsung UHD large TV and completely agree, only useful function of the smart tv i found was Netflix, but the media player connected to it already has it (as well as consoles of course) and so does the connected Chromecast, so yeah very redundant.

Then they updated the software for the next years SKU and didnt update the previous years software. Operating systems on TVs is a really one sided deal.

Right on! Smart TVs are dumb!

Smart stereos are even dumber! What I REALLY want is a 21st century sound system. Why do I need 5 hdmi ports on my TV and 5 on my stereo. Why do all stereos have to be fricking huge. Why all the connections in the back? put them on side!!

I don't need a gui on the stereo, a plain black box is perfect. Just have a decent smartphone app and listen for the remote controls volume with a system that does not take hours to config (hours of frustration trying to get these to work). It should support apps like spotify and pandora It should support streaming from your phone. Does anyone actually use USB anymore? 120 watts per channel. Any good audio engineers what to cooperate to make one?

edit:Spelling

I think it really depends on the individual user's use case. For example, I have a large Sony smart TV with all these extra bells and whistles, and in reality I barely ever use any of the standard inputs other than playing games. Quite a bit of the time I'm using the in-built Netflix or YouTube apps or some other media app which works fantastically. My only complaint is that when I do want to use a normal input (HDMI etc.) I have to wait 30 seconds for the thing to boot to change inputs.

The UK still uses over-the-air broadcast tv, so this point is wrong for the UK.

My TV has an integrated DVD player - that is a boon.

You can get TV tuner with HDMI out for 20pounds. It doesn't have to be in the actual TV.

Now just make Harmony remotes cost $5 and be 1000 times easier to use

And now I've got another device sitting on my desk, not what I want..

And worse than that - another thing to plug in.

If they can save a noticeable sum of money by mass producing TVs that have a global market, then people in the UK that use satellite, cable, or streaming only-services would be a sizeable market to aim for.

I don't know why you got downvoted. Over the air is very popular in the UK and most people with a tv will watch some over the air content, but those people will be moving to digital or freeview services, which have their separate boxes.

Out of the four TVs I am likely to watch, all of them have Freeview built in.

> The UK still uses over-the-air broadcast tv, so this point is wrong for the UK.

The US has the same thing available, but not everybody cares about watching that either. I have a TV; it isn't wired to cable, antenna, or any other video source. It has a cable for my laptop, a Chromecast, and game consoles hooked up to it.

Aside from lacking a large number of HDMI ports, home theater projectors meet basically all of the proposed requirements for the perfect TV. An inexpensive A/V receiver gets you the requisite inputs as well.

It is somewhat odd that TVs and monitors have diverged so much while home theater and PC focused projectors are so similar, feature-wise.

> Aside from lacking a large number of HDMI ports

Add $50 to the price of the projector http://www.belkin.com/au/p/P-AV10117/

I am not sure how others have set theirs up but the number of HDMI ports on the projector/TV were never really a concern to me. I need them on my receiver which is the control point for all my attached devices.

Now remotes are one area where more work needs to be done, far too many are just too complicated for their own good let alone large.

If this existed I would buy it, people in comments are saying this is basically what a monitor is, and to some extent they are right, but I havent seen 60" 4K monitors on the market has anyone else?

A perfect T.V. in my perspective has to be virtual reality. A virtual reality not limited to just the sense of sight. Also, allows my friends to experience it with me concurrently.

The T.V. in my living room is just a furniture I don't even touch it. It's main purpose is for decorations and is only used by old people visiting the flat.

Btw, I watch sports mostly in the bar.

Do you guys still use your T.V. and will you guys still be using it in the future?

(In my opinion)

It's not a tv. It's a display.

is it still common to have TVs at home? I watch TV on my laptop, and so does everyone I know.

Yes, if people want to watch sports, use gaming consoles, or just want a big screen to watch movies on.

In the US, the average home has 2.9 TVs. So, yes, it is extremely common.

It should also have a matte bezel, the only reason I can think they used glossy bezels for a few years was so they could sell you a new TV with a smaller bezel in the near future.

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