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Comment by jmull3n | Hacker News Reader

Curious to see what HN users believe is the best smart TV to buy in terms of OS functionality, privacy and user experience?

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Whatever has the best panel for the best price, then strap an apple TV (or your choice of NUC) onto it and completely ignore whatever on-board smarts exist.

This is the only reasonable solution. I've got an OLED LG "TV", connected to an Apple TV and a receiver for proper audio (using HDMI ARC).

To turn everything on, I press a button on the Apple TV remote and everything is up and running within five seconds or so (from standby/sleep mode). Powering off the Apple TV also turns off the display and the receiver via HDMI CEC.

Edit: http://www.eiman.tv/misc/power-on.mov

I found that my receiver was still using 50W while in "CEC-ready standby", while it's only 2W in normal standby, so I never use it. I'll just press a few more buttons.

That's incredible. 50W is wholy unnacceptable.

Indeed unacceptable. That figure is quite comparable to S1 sleeping state of a desktop. Whereas a computer consumes ~10W in S3 state and can even wake up out of that when triggered by LAN.

The biggest drawback to this is the lack of support for 4K in the YouTube app on Apple TV.

And that the YouTube app forces its ads and shitty recommendations down your throat. A NUC running Kodi sounds nicer. (Yeah, yeah, pi-hole. It’s a bandaid, IMHO)

Also, Apple‘s streaming services being ever more annoyingly shoved in your face on menu screens.

I think a simple Youtube-dl + web based front end that can run on a Raspberry Pi would be a great way to help lots of people bypass YouTube.com/apps, make it as simple as PiHole for users to get going. Have it organize files in a way that would allow clients like Plex to easily access that content. Easy 4k + ad-free content on any device.

it doesn't have any ads if you buy Youtube Premium

This requires accepting their ToS & "privacy" policy and providing validated billing data to Google, an advertising company already stalking everything you do on the web.

Some people might not be comfortable with this, or not even trust them to begin with. I personally don't mind paying but there's no way in hell I am providing any personal information to Google.

Pihole cannot block youtube ads. You need uBlock, that can block parts of DOM tree inside a page, knowing hosts is not enough.

Pine and others have an opportunity to pair with Kodi, like Pine did with UBPorts and etc. to market a Kodi device.

YouTube app is supposed to support 4k on tvOS 14. I don't know if Google already updated the app or not.

Any reason why an Apple TV and not a Roku or a Chromecast?

Roku and Chromecast do the same BS as smart TVs

...do they?

I have a Chromecast and have never seen an ad.

They don't display ads on chromecast, they collect info for future ads there.

A large form factor monitor hooked up to a PC.

Commercial TVs aimed at the digital signage market are an alternative option to a large monitor, especially at larger sizes. They're less likely to spew advertising than consumer Smart TVs, but are probably less likely to stay clean than a monitor with no Internet connectivity.

I use a Linux PC as a media decode device. It works, but I have no interest in 4K (hardware video decode is sketchy on Linux, which makes 4K difficult) or paid streaming services (if I wanted to watch sewage I'd take up urban exploration into wastewater facilities).

    Commercial TVs aimed at the digital signage market 
    are an alternative option to a large monitor, 
    especially at larger sizes

Do you have experience running one of these? I'm very curious about the pros and cons.

I've seen it mentioned that they tend to lack features like HDR and may not have remote controls. Any other downsides?

I would be fine with the lack of a remote, and probably even HDR. I would also be willing to pay a bit of a premium over consumer TVs.

However, information on these displays is pretty tough to come by. I browse home theater type forums/subreddits from time to time and don't see people really talking about using them in the home.

No experience running them, but looking at samsung digital signage, HDR looks to be a feature of their high end models and extremely expensive. ~$4,500 for a 55" 4K TV [0]. The more competitively priced displays[1] (~$1300 for 70" 4K) don't seem to offer it.

[0]: https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/displays/pro-tv...

[1]: https://www.samsung.com/us/business/products/displays/4k-uhd...

I think street prices might be quite a bit lower than what we're seeing on Samsung's site.

Amazon has a bunch of affordable models from Samsung. Haven't clicked through them all but here's a 65" with HDR for $600.

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Business-Software-Speakers-LH...

However, it's probably not the sort of "dumb" TV we want:

    Setup your TV with custom content quickly 
    and easily using the Biz TV app - available 
    for Android and iOS

Seems like this is interfacing with some sort of app on the TV, so I suppose it's not a dumb display.

They are extremely expensive (however they are built tougher and are designed to stay on 24/24 for years) and indeed lack a lot of consumer-grade features like HDR. They are also hard to actually find & buy, you need to get them shipped and that will add another ~100 bucks to the price.

I guess image quality and response time might be sub-par too compared to a top-of-the-line consumer-grade TV.

They often have serial ports behind them, that serves as the remote control. They may support HDMI CEC for it as well?

Any tv, but you do not connect it to an internet and get an apple tv to do it instead.

Any TV, as long as you don't connect it to wifi/ethernet. I've been using Roku throughout my house with a home DNS server set to block all roku analytics/log servers. No interface/app issues thus far (about a year now on 4 TVs)

edit: Also, aside from netflix, a local plex server with rtorrent/irssi to auto-download tv series I followl

Sceptre TVs.

They are not "smart", but less is better, so in terms of OS functionaliry, privacy, and user experience; they top the charts.

I have a GSYNC LG OLED who has never had internet and it's connected to a barebone PC.

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