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Comment by nfoz | Hacker News Reader

LG sells them as some of their "Business" tvs, intended e.g. for hotels. In Canada some of them are branded as "Commercial Lite".

Here's an LG 65" 4k HDR dumb TV: https://www.lg.com/ca_en/business/commercial-tv/lg-65UV340H

I have a similar model from a few years ago (purchased from Canada Computers fwiw), and I love it. Because I don't notice it exists. It just does its job, like a TV should.

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Along those lines are the commercial display panels intended for digital signage and advertising use. They usually have a very bright picture, are very durable, and have typically been quite expensive but that seems to be changing.

Here are some LG commercial displays ranging from 43" to 86" and priced from $745 to $3,850:

https://www.displays2go.com/P-42023/86-Inch-4K-Ultra-HD-TV-A...

Here is a brief article from 2019 detailing the differences between digital signage/display monitors and home TVs:

https://www.itesmedia.tv/en/resources/digital-display-monito...

It's kind of ironic to be using a device made to display advertising to combat advertising itself.

Digital signage isn’t really about advertising. It might be used to eg show departures at an airport/bus station, or show schedules for different rooms at a conference or fair/exhibition/show. Other common uses are to show a few slides on a loop, eg in a reception area of a school showing the school’s achievements.

The uses you mention are common, but digital signage for advertising is big in retail. It's almost always trying to drive you to purchases.

Some network operators run 3rd party advertising to offset costs of running their network.

Also, if you see a sign at person level in a public space there's a high likelihood it's collecting demographics information on (age, gender, ethnicity - via video image processing) on everyone passing by while also trying to identity the mobile device in your pocket to geotag your advertising identity.

I work in a company that provides general interest "filler" type content for networks to display - news, weather, sports e.g.

Don't those signage panels have godawful refresh rates though, like 10hz? I believe it's part of the reliability tradeoff

They used to but now since video is popular they don’t. But they have poor blacks.

And you can view some outdoors in the sun of high noon

Those are usually eye-wateringly expensive but amazing.

It looks interesting, but the lack of pricing information suggests it to be unreasonably high (plus unnecessary hassle: truly "business").

What did you pay?

I recently ordered a bunch of LG Commercial TVs for a job, at 55” they came out to about AUD$1600, which I think is pretty reasonable.

As to the hassle, yes you’d probably find it difficult to buy one for personal use. L

The Scepter 50" 4k TVs recommended in the article are $200 at Walmart. The quality probably isn't as good, but at 1/8th the cost that's a hard up-sell.

I have a sceptre. They're really good for the price and super reliable. I won't buy anything else. In fact I might go get a couple spares so I don't have to worry for a while.

I literally cannot tell if you are joking.

Dead serious. I really like mine. Best cheap dumb panel.

Even has an AV in for my playstation 2.

I also bought a 65" Sceptre because it's a reasonably priced dumb TV. No issues after a couple years.

I grabbed the Kogan 55” 4K HDR (lol that feature is badly implemented though) TV for $550, it’s been excellent.

Dumb TV, decent picture, has worked great so far!

Actually, mine was a bit cheaper! It's 55" 4k but no HDR. It was ~$850 CAD. At the time, LG's equivalent (spec-wise, as far as I could tell) "consumer" smart-tv was ~$1000.

The model I linked here, is $1000 CAD on amazon.ca (through 3rd-party sellers), but I don't know how it compares.

Again that's a few years ago so the market may have changed. And annoyingly, LG seems to have different products for Canada vs the US.

There are two reasons for the US/CAN difference.

One is sometimes english/french or english/spanish manuals. These days though, most manuals are on CD, with tiny 20 language install manuals... so that differentiation is gone.

What I find often happening, is that each large store, BestBuy/Walmart/whatever asks for, and receives, unique model numbers so you cannot price match easily.

There are still models which are generic, but those are used by smaller corps, which cannot negotiate en-masse, and therefore are unable to shrug of price-matching.

Stuff like this burns me up. "We price match!", then "Quick Bob, get on the phone to LG! We want unique models for their product line!"

Even if you're not getting a dumb one, I think LG has the best "smart" TVs around.

Just don't give them access to the internet and they'll do the job of displaying anything you give them via a HDMI port. Integrates nicely with home automation with an API too.

Oh, and they don't have ads in the menus like Samsung does.

Yup. The LGs are easy to keep dumb enough.

Just need to fiddle in some menus to disable overscan and whatever magic TV filters are trendy.

You can use video game mode to disable additional video processing, which also lag time (incoming data to display in screen).

no power on ad either? i use our tv the same way, as a huge computer monitor via hdmi. then i run kodi on a laptop as a media center

LG's TVs are pretty bad as TVs outside of their OLEDs. IPS panels are good for computer monitors where you want color accuracy, fast pixel refresh rates, and good viewing angles, but are terrible for TVs because of their low contrast ratio.

no power on ad either? i use our smart tv the same way, as a huge computer monitor via hdmi. then i run kodi on a laptop as a media center. works fine, and the only irritation is an annoying ad every time the device gets switched on. fortunately it's just an ad about a tv, and probably because of no internet, it's always the same ad too.

That would infuriate me.

> I love it. Because I don't notice it exists. It just does its job, like a TV should.

Yes. This should be the goal of any good product.

Nowadays, every single time I’ve had to help my wife with the TV (you have to help people with TVs now!) it has been because it is the polar opposite of this.

As a result I’ve setup some macros on my Logitech Smarthub to try to force the TV away from these “smart” aspects, but they still sometimes fail.

Smart TVs are just horrible.

But if you don’t plug them to the internet, can new TVs still be used as dumb TVs or do they annoy you with splash screens and other annoyances?

Main issue with these are the lack of inputs. 2 HDMI ports is not enough for most people. And lack of ARC complicated adding a sound system.

Not for everyone I guess, but I've been very happy with a decently modern receiver (in my case Sony STR-DN1080) taking care of all that and acting as an HDMI "switch". 6 HDMI inputs, 2 HDMI outputs and all the other in/outs at least I could possibly want.

"Smart" features are starting to creep into these devices as well, though...

I don't own a TV, so sorry for the question, but why there are more than 2 HDMI ports needed, or even more than 1?

So you can switch between different inputs such as multiple game consoles, DVD-player, Apple-tv/Roku/whatnot, computer/chromecast, etc.

You can get splitters but that's still not as convenient as just being able to switch with the tv's remote.

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