It's the same mismatch of lifecycles that you get with entertainment (and navigation) electronics in cars.
At least in some cars, you can still replace the ICE if it accomodates single or double DIN units. The newer cars with hidden "brains" and a proprietary display though, will that be the equivalent of having an 8-track player mounted under the dash in a few years?
It reminds me of a very good Mitch Hedberg quote: "An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience."
Worst case: "This is moving down way too fast! Aaaahhhhh!!!" -screamed by hundreds of people, many of which will die as they pile up at the bottom of the escalator.
Now imagine the brakes failing on an escalator that leads down into a subway with an electrified rail.
The usability issue is starting to be fixed. My daughter bought a cheap TV from Amazon that has the Roku software and it works incredibly well. The TV was something like $165 for a 32" display.
I don't know what the long term prospects are for this. What happens if our LAN goes IPV6? Or Roku's agreement with Netflix changes? etc... I'm not terribly concerned because in a few years a replacement will be $100.
That's great, as long as it isn't because they are making money on showing ads, replacing ads, or selling your viewing data (without proper disclosure, of course).
At some point, if we value our privacy at all, real laws are going to be required to halt the race to the bottom that is already well underway.
I value my privacy, but I don't put a terribly high value on it. If Google or Apple wanted to track my TV habits with the promise of serving me better in some way, I would probably sign up for that in a heartbeat. But when my off-brand TV wants to, I would decline.
That may mean some products and services aren't easily available to those that put a high value on their privacy.
Or we could decide that some things are too high a price to pay and not allow the businesses to include mandatory surveillance technologies. Are TV makers really going to stop making TVs if they aren't allowed to spy on their customers as well? Are TV prices really going to be lower with that spying going on if everyone in the industry is doing it anyway?
Regulation is what you do when competition no longer provides an acceptable level of choice in the market. What constitutes an acceptable level of choice may well depend on how important or even essential a certain type of product or service is, but in any case preventing a lack of real competition from causing this kind of customer-hostile race to the bottom is a valid use of statutory regulation IMHO.
I personally have changed from being that guy who always used cash, who responded to every privacy notice that was mailed to me, who never signed up for loyalty programs, to really not caring about it anymore. For me, I see tangible benefits and only theoretical harm.
On the other hand, I am also far more technically knowledgeable about the potential implications of privacy intrusions than the average person, and unfortunately I have all too often seen what can happen to friends and colleagues who aren't as careful as me and wind up victims.
The harm may only be theoretical in your experience, and I've no reason to doubt you. However, just thinking about my personal contacts over the years, I have heard of lost jobs (multiple times), credit denied for a mortgage, a gay friend living in my country whose society back home is still hostile to homosexuality being publicly outed by mistake, identity thefts (multiple) including a huge financial loss to a company I sometimes work with where someone authorised to make large payments was very carefully impersonated using a range of information gathered over a considerable period of time, leaks of potentially embarrassing healthcare records (multiple times from multiple sources), cyberstalking (really creepy remote access to unsecured in-house devices like baby monitors and cameras) and a couple of big surprises (on the scale of a marriage proposal) spoiled by careless disclosures. I'm not aware of any personal contact of mine who has been a victim of something like burglary or having their children taken as a result of a criminal discovering and exploiting their household routines, but obviously these aren't out of the question either.
Now, obviously I'm not suggesting that someone spying on your TV habits is necessarily going to lead to harm on that scale (though I note in passing that if you hold a public office and watch the "wrong" TV programmes then it's not entirely inconceivable, hence laws like the Video Privacy Protection Act in the US). But the risks from excessive surveillance, including the collection and use of incomplete or inaccurate data, are not theoretical at all. If you've never known anyone suffer the kinds of problems I mentioned above then I'd guess you and your friends have been extremely lucky; it's not like this stuff happens in my social group all the time, but I'd estimate that I've heard about at least one or two serious problems a year over the past decade or so.
All of this affects my opinions, naturally. However, perhaps the thing that sways me more than anything else is that I've been noticing recently how much some people are put off by privacy intrusions if they are better informed about what is really happening and the implications. I think a lot of people simply don't understand what they are allegedly consenting to or what might happen as a result, and sometimes you can't even see the results. After all, how do you know whether your insurance premium has been increased, your credit limit affected, or your job application denied, on the basis of information you never knew someone else had and never had any opportunity to check or refute? Realistically, I don't think it's possible to educate everyone sufficiently on these issues for them to protect themselves as much as they might choose to if they were fully informed, any more than you can make everyone an expert on how financial services work or the shady practices of used car dealers. This is why we delegate some amount of protection to people who do have the time and resources to become experts, and who do have a mandate to balance allowing businesses to do business against looking out for the interests of society as a whole.
Sony, LG, Samsung and w/e would love nothing more than to sell you only a panel with video input ports but that is not what people want to buy. People are constantly buying the most feature loaded TV's even at the expense of getting lesser panel quality, inch size and various other things.
And -all- of the interfaces built in to TVs for such things I've used are terrible. Hell, most TVs still can't make a remote/on-screen UI work reasonably. People can talk to their voice agents ("hello assistant, who is the president of the USA") on the toilet and generally expect a reasonable answer. And yet we still have to point some wand at an exact spot on our TVs, press buttons, and hope they register and change channels.
Digital recording is a great feature too, plug in a USB stick for storage then control and manage recordings with the remote. I actually like to have everything integrated, rather than having to fiddle with my OSMC, which, as an example, in the case of recording would need its own signal input.
My only (yet pretty big) issue with the Sony software is that it is slow to start up. From turning on the TV until it will respond to the remote is easily 40-50 seconds, long after the picture appears. You can't even change the channel or volume.
And, oh yeah, the YouTube app has been broken for years, but I use the OSMC for that.
Skype is the next thing that's going to disappear from that TV: https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA34642/is-the-skype-for-tv...
So can my XBox One :). I agree that this is a nice feature, but there is no reason why this can't be part of an external replaceable/upgradable peripheral. I'm also kind of surprised that Apple and Google didn't create an add-on for Apple TV/Chromecast yet, or we could give it to our daughters' grandparents as well ;).
The only smart feature I'm using of my LG TV is playing videos from USB sticks. It doesn't have some audio codecs common in MKV containers, but when it works 40" is better than a tablet screen. BTW, the LG is quick enough at starting up. I usually keep it completely off, not in standby. Switch on the power, push the remote, get the image: 9 seconds. Maybe on par with old analog CRTs.
I never enabled WiFi because of the terms of service. Even if they are not as invasive as other ToS I saw from other manufacturers, they are way more than they should. I should use the TV to watch things, not to be watched. I already have the PC, tablet and phone for that :-) and at least I can fight there with adblockers and the like.
I have a Raspberry 3 connected to the TV and I could do YouTube with that (it's quite OK). Still the tablet is much better. I could chromecast to the TV but it's not worth the trouble.
I imagine the same thing that happens when you get a call on your Desktop and want to move to another room. "Hey, let me call you back."
This same wisdom holds true for TV remotes that have full QWERTY keyboards! TV interfaces just plain suck. They are so slow as to be painful and they are perpetually out of date and always user-unfriendly.
I really hoped Apple would come out with a TV that set a baseline for what a TV interface should be just like the original iPhone did for smart phones (which weren't all that smart at the time).
Maybe so, but I never personally asked the TV manufacturers for a smart TV.
Who I think came up with the idea: TV manufacturers.
Selling hardware that has software/firmware, that will become obsolete in 4-8 years, will result in more TVs sold in 4-8 years than would have been.
We just got rid of a TV that we've had since the late 1990s- about 18 years. It was not smart. We just bought a smart TV and I'm betting we won't get more than 8 years out of it.
If I could have gotten the same TV without any smart features and an external Roku, that would have been better long-term, but almost all newer TVs now are smart.
Its important to remember that "TVs" are just "displays whose bundled additional features include at least a TV tuner".
Unless you absolutely need a TV tuner, you can get displays that include neither a TV tuner nor smart features, but they aren't sold as "TVs" because they aren't.
This is simply a fallacy the fact that the software would become obsolete doesn't make the TV obsolete as long as it can still receive a video input and display it - this has nothing to do with the "smart" features of the TV.
On my "dumb" TV that is not and never will be connected to the 'net, this feature works fine and has done so for years. On my friend's "smart" TV, the red button feature has been replaced by an "app" that we had to update and fiddle with to get it working, and it won't do anything at all without an internet connection despite the key feature just being a kind of switch between two sub-channels, both of which are served over the usual aerial/cable. You can't even turn this off to get the normal red button back.
I like the interface a lot, but I bought it knowing that at some point, it will not be as cool as it is now. It will probably get in the way, as I'll have to use the Roku remote to browse via the old Roku OS to the port with the box that is the new browseable streaming OS. Maybe the Roku one will get borked by a system update because my hardware is unsupported- I don't know; I hope that doesn't happen, and have had a good experience with my old Roku external box, but it is a possibility several years from now.
Years ago when I bought a TV, never did it cross my mind that "one day the user interface is going to be obsolete".
A TV manufactured today is very unlikely to last 18 years without some kind of hardware failure. There is a big difference in complexity/points of failure and cost-cutting between 1998 and 2016.
It's hard to believe that TV manufactures are shooting for an 18 year mean lifetime. They might work after 18 years, but it is unlikely.
I haven't been on the market for a TV for a few years but I'm not convinced that a lot of people see more apps on a TV as a critical selling point.
No they weren't. IMO it wasn't worth the extra money. After all, just how many times can someone re-watch Avatar? Most other 3D movies weren't actually shot in 3D, they were just faked in post production.
Here's a headline that shows just how dead 3D is:
With a bullet to the head from Samsung, 3D TV is now deader than ever
It may shamble forward zombie-style for a few more years, but without the world's No. 1 TV maker on board, 3D TV is doomed.
Saying that 3D is "doomed" because one manufacturer is not bringing out new 3D models this year is, IMO, ridiculous. Eventually of course it will get much better, with no glasses, head tracking setups that are already in development. So 3D as we know it now of course won't last forever. But it's not like it's going away. Look at the percentage of movies released in 3D today compared to 5 years ago.
To give one example, the Foley artist who makes footsteps and other sound effects not captured live.
Not necessarily a bad thing if it's done well
I've watched a few films that did a good job with it. But they're few and far between.
Sure you still have some viewing angle issues which might make some living/TV room setups not optimal for 3D and most TV's only came initially with 1-2 pairs of glasses and if it was a active 3D setup (had an active switching component inside of them) they could be somewhat expensive but if the content was there it wouldn't matter.
If there were more 3D blurays and DVD's out there and especially if Netflix or any other streaming service would have supported 3D content (3D streaming is still not a solved issue somewhat) the outcome would've been different.
Overall once 3D content is going to be easily streamable (and it's being worked on) and "glassesless" 3D/Stereoscopic panels become slightly cheaper it might make a comeback. Avatar was a nice experience but overall even in the cinema many people avoid 3D atm simply because it's still not there, these issues would be solved eventually and when every content would go through stereoscopic processing it would look pretty nice :)
If there's a 3D Bluray of a movie I genuinely want to watch, I'll pick it up but there are very few. Funnily enough, I've never bought Avatar as I saw it in Imax 3D in the theatre and was pretty much "That was an impressive experience but I don't really need to watch an echo of a not-so-great movie again at home."
In general, animated movies work very well, having watched the 3D versions of Frozen, Inside Out, and sundry others.
But I suspect after a year or two people would buy a new $35 Chromecast, rather than replacing their entire TV.
And they sell a TV with 5 HDMI ports because their competitors sell 4, this what happens when you have a features arms race, there are only what 2-3 panel makes so most TV's are pretty identical (like Cars that you only have a few chassis/wheelbase for each price range) so to have the advantage they load the TV's with other features like more ports, better WIFI, more this more that (just like cars which sell you BS things you don't need).
Of course, the TV manufacturers don't want to do that, because they profit when you have to upgrade the entire TV.
Sunny sells you dongles that take a port, buy symsyng and have all your ports for other devices.
If you are an advanced enough user that you can use a streamer/dongle/set top box or w/e it doesn't matter what the TV has as long as it comes with display input ports.
For the majority of the shopping channel BIG BOX mart consumers this isn't really an option and they want one box that does everything even if it's not the most optimal solution.
What you are asking for is simply something that the TV maker has no reason or interest to do not because they are greedy but because they don't want to deal with that. They aren't stopping you from buying whatever dongle you want so what exactly is the complaint? The majority of the cost of the TV is still the tuner, panel, and LED and optical assembly the 11$ SoC they use for the smart features won't make the TV's cheaper. If somehow removing those features would allow them to focus on more important things I would understand but in reality it doesn't add up to much if anything.
And that's the good news in all this.
I can buy and use the TVs of my choice and the reality is that I don't really need to pay a material premium because they have YouTube which may or may not continue to work after some day in the future. So I can choose to ignore those features if I want. It's not really a choice between buying SmartTV for $X and DumbTV (which is otherwise equivalent) for $X/2.
For example, I don't want a TV with its own network connection, a built-in camera and microphone, and hideously insecure firmware right in my living room.
Literally the only controls I ever use on my TV are power/standby, volume, and input selector. Everything else already comes from external sources like a set top box or PVR or Chromecast, and it's not like only A/V nerds have that arrangement.
I just want good video, good audio, and decent manufacturing quality and longevity. How on earth did we lose the plot as badly as we seem to have with the "smart" marketing?
And even still if you buy a smart TV you do not have to plug it into the network, a streamer will work regardless of what the TV can do.
Also, the next logical step for "smart" devices is to establish their own wireless connections via alternative channels if they aren't connected to a household network. Privacy is fast becoming a thing of the past if you let anything with sensors onto the premises, and short of wrapping their home or office in a Faraday cage, there is disturbingly little anyone can do about it as more manufacturers reach agreements with network providers to handle their phone-home data needs.
If you want to make it really foolproof, make a mounting bracket for the dongle on the TV itself, such that it would require mucking around with screws to remove.
A few generations in, he doesn't even have to do that soldering; the functionality will be integrated with something else on a single chip.
That makes the integrated TV set cheaper to produce. Guy A pays more.
Margins are paper-thin for televisions, so that takes most of the market. Eventually, guy A can't even buy that set.
With the Xbox, I simply mapped a Samba share (something like \\NAS\XBMC\) full of content and it brought it up without issue and simply played it
DLNA meanwhile every time something changed, I'd have to restart the whole thing to regenerate the "index". It also played maybe half the file formats XBMC did, despite being newer and an order of magnitude more powerful
Things have finally more or less come full circle again, these days I can run "Plex" on my NAS to just spew out media to everything, as long as it runs the Plex app anyway (which covers my Xbox One and Phone, at least). The only downside is having to pay for it, of course
My experience was that cross brand interop is not quite there, but the experience is so inconsistent it doesn't matter. If configured to do it, turning on the blu ray player would consistent turn on the tv, but only sometimes set the right input. That kind of thing.
Do they though?
I mean, everyone I've asked just wants their Microwave to have two dials, Power and Time, yet no such thing exists on the market. Instead it's a sea of bullshit Microwaves with bullshit "value add" features.
I'd wager the same is true of TVs, and myriad other consumer products. The end-users just want simple tech that works for years on end, while Product Managers and Designers want to boost their own status by sheparding these mindless "improvements" into production.
It's branded as a "commercial microwave oven" or something.
Yes, I brought this fridge model because of "features". I even did a feature comparison while searching for a model. The caveat is that all the features I looked for were related to chilling things, or easy maintenance.
I would pay extra for getting rid of the clock - and more yet for just some different software that displayed temperature instead of time.
Well, you and I might buy the Samsung, but most consumers aren't as informed or as savvy with a Chromecast.
I'm not a big fan of smart devices, but I'm not going to pay more for a display with "meh" connectivity that doesn't really seem to be optimized as a home entertainment device. Although annoying, it makes more sense to buy the smart TV and ignore the extra features.
1. High quality LCD panel 2. 'good enough' speakers (optional) 3. 4+ HDMI ports 4. no TV tuner, composite, component, etc. 5. Proper working HDMI CEC support 6. Make it as 'always on' as my Macbook or Apple Cinema Display – hit a button or activate a display and the screen comes on instantly.
For the premium model, add:
1. Ambient light detection to adjust brightness 2. Embedded RPi-like (or actually RPi) on a fifth 'overlay' input (i.e. the HUD/guide/etc). Make it open source, let people hack it and do fun stuff with it, build widgets, whatever.
Don't sell me on 'Your TV can do Netflix now!' Every device in my house with an LCD can play Netflix. My iPad from 2010 can play Netflix, and it can do it better than most smart TVs can. The only thing I own that uses 2.4 GHz that doesn't play Netflix is my microwave, and if it did I might actually use it.
If I buy a $70 AppleTV and it becomes obsolete, outdated, or can't support what I want, I can buy another $70 AppleTV. If I buy an $1800 SmartTV and the 'Smart' features become obsolete, outdated, or can't do what I want, then 50% of my value is gone.
I love my 4 year old Sony tv. Sure, none of the pre-built apps work anymore... but our Blu-ray player does all of it and better.. the screen works great so I'll keep it till that part dies.
They should all just be monitors now. The cost of a Chromecast, Raspberry Pi, or Apple TV is so low that it makes Smart TVs redundant. I actually don't understand why these manufacturers haven't moved to making their own versions of casting/streaming devices. I remember when I bought my Bravia a long time ago it didn't come with WiFi but you could buy their wireless USB device for AUD$80 (they blocked all others). Why don't they do that but instead a Chromecast like device (without blocking out 3rd parties)?
Thing is, it's the ONLY way I can get 4k content. I have an HTPC, WDTV, AppleTV, FireStick, PS3, and TiVo all plugged into my receiver (which was a very high end unit just 1 year ago). However, while the receiver supports 4k, it does NOT support HDCP 2.2 which either is required for 4k content, or WILL be once they start using HDCP 2.2. (I'm not quite clear on this point.. I don't know if today's UHD BluRay discs use HDCP 2.2).
And I'd argue that the SmartTV stuff is not really a reason many people buy a TV; regardless, having it does not remove your ability to use external devices in the future. If Sony drops my AndroidTV apps in 4 years, it probably won't much matter because the devices of the future will do far more for $35 than the software on the TV.
It's a frustrating situation, but, IMO, the Smart TV stuff only adds value (unless you're talking about the microphone in my remote and the possibility of said devices being used to backdoor my network, of course).
I forgot to add, new things pop up all the time that you don't know you want until they arrive. I noticed Google Photos being advertised on TV. I gave it a go on my iPhone and notice a Google Cast button. I don't have any of Google's streaming devices yet, nor do I have an HDMI port free on my receiver to support another device. Well, I hit the button, and what do you know, it automagically knew all about my TV and displayed my pictures at the touch of a button. Sometimes having fancy new stuff is cool, and you get added features you never expected. I sure wouldn't buy a Google streaming device just for this one novelty, but I'm not going to complain about having it.
Well, because streaming as a service to a customer is largely about the contents and about customer support. This is area that Internet providers are controlling exclusively (over here anyway). Every triple play offer has a TV part which comes with a set-top box, and a random streaming device simply cannot compete with "state-supported" traffic (CDNs in close proximity, multicast channels).
Why do the ISPs provide their own set-top box device? 1) They are trying to reduce the volume of calls to hotline, and this area of tech can generate many; 2) They use the customer-premises device as a shop front in selling even more VOD contents. A streaming stick would require lots of customization per every ISP in order to address these points.
The vast majority of TV viewers do not use and do not even understand how to use these devices.
Chromecast/Firestick is at least somewhat usable to the masses, some of the other streamers are more complicated but do you really expect some random person to buy and build a RasPi streaming set top box?
The TV makers can't take out features because people would not buy that TV, people want features, and these features are what the guy at the store can sell TV's by.
And for Samsung/Sony and the likes to get into the streamer business it's pointless, and it would not change the issue it would just move it to another component albit considerably cheaper one. Streaming devices also need to be constantly updated, many of them need to be updated more often than the TV their SoC's get obsolete just as fast if not faster and YouTube can make changes tomorrow that would make the current version of Chromecast incompatible as well.
If you are an Advanced user you don't care for all that crap, my best TV still by far is now what a 7-8 year old Toshiba 42" with a 10 bit panel which was actually made in Germany, dumb as you can get (it can show images, play MP3, maybe some MPEG) it has a PCMCIA slot which I used to hack into it and the image quality is still better than virtually every TV out there that doesn't cost 1500 GBP. But I can use it because I'm an "advanced" user I run my own streaming and transcoding server and have a media center PC. But for some one who wants a no hassle turn on TV and get netflix this isn't really an option, even Chromecast isn't very ideal quality isn't that great and it can lag pretty badly on congested networks. The more expensive streamers give you quality that matches the TV native app but they also tend to cost considerably more than the cheap sticks, unless you buy the Android unbranded chinese SoC sticks.
I think a key competitive feature would be to have their own device integrated better than third-party devices. A usb connection to share commands from the tv's remote, for example. Maybe integrated menus of some sort.
If the add-on device is fairly cheap, and major upgrades require replacement rather than just software, the tv manufacturers could get more upgrade sales than they can get for whole tv upgrades.
You can buy any add-on yourself they work with every TV you don't have to worry about brand compatibility or lockouts why ask the TV makers to make the market worse? The minute that Sony or whoever starts selling dongles is the minute they block all other dongles from working on their TV's and everyone would do the same.
As for the TV remote thing this already works, HDMI-CEC is a protocol that allows you to send commands from the TV to the device via HDMI and virtually every TV I had for the past what almost 10 years with HDMI had the support for it. I have several streamers at home that all work with it without any issues.
Every TV is a dumb panel, removing the "smart" features from it won't make it any cheaper those SoC's are cheap as dirt, you gain nothing by removing it and you lose the simple crowd that doesn't want to add other devices and worry about setting them up or figuring how they work, they want to turn on the TV and click on netflix and that's it.
When it comes to the point where it doesn't work anymore they have the choice to buy a dongle or buy a new TV they do not have to do it and there is no commercial trickery or anything that forces them to buy a new TV over a Chromecast or a Roku or Firestick or w/e.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20060627134424/http://www.sony.n...
EDIT: for what it's worth, my tv is predates smart tvs by a year or two. I use an old Tivo with a lifetime service plan and a roku (3rd gen I think, upgraded once) for the smarts.
The only "lifetime mismatch" that still exist on smart TVs is manufacturer DRM that is fulfilling its design goal of not letting you use your device.
The best thing you can do with a Smart TV is never connect it to the internet.
There's no interface for the television. It just has Chromecast built in.
Downside (of the M-Series at least) is they don't come with a tuner installed. If you want a cable or an antenna you'll have to dish out $100 more for a tuner.
The reality is that these products are as expensive or more as regular products (because small batches), and everybody wants a different 20 pct of the full functionality.
Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't have the same kind of support.
When Rec. 2020 becomes a thing, TVs and monitors will have a vastly different gamut and will use different color primaries.
My personal opinion is that if you need a TV, or a display to watch movies on, buy an 1080p plasma (not LCD) that nobody wants anymore. There are models (search the Internet) which have almost reference-grade color reproduction, something you will not find in any LCD that is cheaper than your car, and contrast is much better than LCD too.
I also have a Chromecast and am generally positive about it, however it's very laggy to controller (i.e. app) input. For example, here's a feature I see as pretty basic for a "smart" display: select a bunch of photos from my phone, beam them to my TV, and flick through them using the phone. All the Chromecast-enabled slideshow apps I've tried for this have been laggy and disappointing, unfortunately.
My wife got a smart tv from her employer out of a catalog for being a loyal employee for a long time. It has Roku built in. One day that will be obsolete.
My son is thinking of an Amazon Fire TV stick to use and cancel our Cable TV subscriptions. It is only supposed to be $40 and plugs into an HDMI port. So if you need to buy a new one, it should be only $40 later on.
Can you explain why it makes more sense?
To me, best smart tv is tv with best, long lasting picture quality.
But why do you need a 4k monitor, to use as a TV, since all current material is 1080p? Better buy 4k when there is a need for 4k, then the price will be lower.