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Comment by stingraycharles | Hacker News Reader

I own several smart TVs but use none of the smart functionality. They don’t even have internet.

TV makers are horrible software developers, for the same reasons that mobile manufacturers were horrible mobile OS developers until Android came along.

We have similar solutions for televisions in the form of Apple TV and Chromecast.

I honestly feel I’m wasting my money when I’m buying a smart TV these days, but you just narrow your choice so much if you only look for dumb phones, you’re almost forced into buying one.

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Smart TVs often cost less than dumb TVs. If you don't connect your TV to the internet then you are being subsidized by all the people that do.

And frankly that’s all you need to know about the business model. If they’re making money from me using their free service, then I’m the product.

While it could be that your usage data is collected and worth that much to them; the far simpler reason is simply both how competitive the "normal" TV market is, and how much you benefit from economies of scale. Even if your usage were worthless, a smart TV would likely be considerably cheaper.

Also, don't overestimate the bill of materials for a smart TV. Even a "dumb" TV almost certainly has silicon brain simply for controlling the settings UI and various other functions - that's cheaper than buttons, and remotes need something to talk to, so really, a smart TV simply means "a slightly fancier chip" - but still a chip that's several generations old by smartphone standards. It's not going to be a significant extra investment for the producer.

The business model is probably a bit of a hydra. They make a little money from the hardware, a little money from services, a little money from ads.

You also need to know the harm or benefit you accrue by paying for services and being shown ads, as well as the benefit to paying a lower cost for the hardware upfront.

We have an LG with WebOS. Quite good actually, the remote is also very good, the browser is good, the apps work well.

The magic pointer ROCKS

Except you can't shut the thing off, which means I can't have the remote anywhere near me or I'll bump it and make the pointer pop up.

Yeah a physical button to turn it on-off would be amazing. Maybe I can sacrifice a remote and see if I can just add a switch to the sensor. Not my worst idea.

Yes, I HATE that. My other big annoyance is when i have a movie paused and set down a drink on the table next to the remote and the remote wakes up due to the vibration and unpauses the movie..

I honestly cannot believe that there is no option anywhere in the settings to turn that off. The best you can do is make the pointer smaller so it is slightly less intrusive when it randomly pops up. I’m tempted to just pull out the batteries, since I can turn on the TV with the Roku remote and I already have a separate remote for my sound system volume.

My only problem with LG is that it doesn't seem to continuously poll/maintain a connection to SmartThings, so the Google Home-based control will never work and it can take 15-30 seconds before you can control the TV via the official app. Maybe this is because it's hard-wired instead of on wi-fi.

My LG WebOS TV shows an ad banner on the home screen.

Both LG webOS and Sony Android TV come across as polished. If not for the fact that I hate advertisement and tracking with a vengeance, I'd gladly use them.

Yeah, the latest Android TV (Sony) update has ads at the top of the screen that you can't disable.

Will they come across as polished in 10 years, when they haven't had an update in 9 years, and yet the TV itself is still perfectly useful?

I doubt it.

I'm surprised to say but the latest Samsung interface and remote is quite good. Good enough I feel no need to put an Apple TV on it (which happens to have an awful remote).

> the latest Samsung interface and remote is quite good

... at spying on you

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