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Comment by jamiethompson | Hacker News Reader

My current "Smart TV" setup is a 10 year old 42" dumb tv with an Amazon Fire TV stick plugged into the back. I don't know what I'll do when it dies (it's dying).

I wish you could just buy modern TVs that are essentially just monitors.

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Serious question, why do you need a giant TV? Why not just use a personal device like a computer, tablet, or phone to watch whatever?

I imagine you'll say something about watching TV with other people, which seems fair, but in my experience people don't watch TV "together". The TV is on, maybe one person is paying attention to it, most are just on their phone, or talking to eachother.

Maybe my experience is an outlier here.

No one needs a giant TV, but a lot of people 'like' a bigger screen. A lot of media is just better on a big screen. It's the whole reason a great many people enjoy or even prefer watching movies on a theater screen.

I don't think there's much more a reason that, nor do folk need more reason than that.

I'm staring at a screen 50cm away for 8 hours a day already... it's nice to give my eyes a break and stare at one 3m away for my remaining awake time. ;)

The main reason is I have kids.

In the past, I mainly just used a tablet to watch video.

You can. Just use DVB-C or HDMI instead. Don't connect it with ethernet or WLAN to the Internet. That way, it becomes a "dumb TV". We do pay for the whole package, unfortunately.

Also, you might want to opt out of using an Amazon or Google HDMI dongle for privacy reasons. Another thing to consider is that dumb TVs traditionally have IR which has its pros and cons.

Buy film studio monitors. They can get ugly and expensive though. Although, considering how big TVs are these days maybe there isn't a professional equivalent.

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