Hacker News Reader

Comment by idiot900 | Hacker News Reader

You're in luck. Buy a commercial TV, or a hospitality TV. For example:

https://www.lg.com/us/business/commercial-tvs/lg-65ut640s0ua

Other TV manufacturers make similar products.

Commercial signage tvs tend to be much more expensive and never really go on sale though. I can't even find out the price of this product without calling them to talk to a salesperson?

They’re more expensive because they need to make up the lost revenue from advertising and the likes. Or something like that.

Of course, there’s also the simple thing of “enterprise stuff costs more for no reason.”

> They’re more expensive because they need to make up the lost revenue from advertising

If that is the case, shouldn't the product then be labeled that part of the price is subsidized by advertisement so that in a free market customers can make informed decisions about what products they buy and under what conditions? Otherwise there is a huge risk that manufacturers that add such hidden drawbacks can unfairly out compete others who do not, we get a lemon market.

Exactly, the problem is that market research clearly shows that most americans aren't ad-conscious enough to pay $50-$100 extra to not have an ad being the first thing they see when their TV turns on.

> Of course, there’s also the simple thing of “enterprise stuff costs more for no reason.”

That "no reason" is usually a combination of the following:

1) Support avenues - commercial customers want rapid support in case something breaks, including overnight / on-site repair. That infrastructure costs more money compared to consumer appliances where the customers have to ship stuff to a central repair place.

2) Quality. Consumers are used to stuff failing after 3 years and get the next new hot thing, commercial customers want a decade or more in life span with as few maintenance calls as possible - and especially they don't want to redesign enclosures when the model is no longer available so they demand longer shipping times - again, on the order of 10 years or more. Also, these displays generally have to work in a wide variety of environments - directly in sunlight/heat/cold, vibrating/otherwise moving. Higher quality components cost a lot more money. Add more money for certifications required for medical or military deployments.

3) Spare parts. Again, the longer availability terms mean more costs for the support infrastructure - while for ordinary TVs the parts stock can be emptied out after 3-5 years, stock has to be kept around for way longer for commercial TVs, and that includes buying up spare parts when a supplier EOLs a part.

4) Features. Commercial TVs tend to have more selection of (rare) inputs, e.g. BNC or SDI (the latter to drive an array of screens around a spread-out location from a single signal source, you can't do that with HDMI).

5) Firmware. After three to four years no manufacturer except Apple gives a flying f..k about the firmware, which means security holes go unpatched. Commercial customers demand longer update cycles (and better validated ones), again that costs more money.

6) Vandalism and elements protection. This one is huge and ties into the quality part. While your home TV won't need to be protected much against anything, vandals will go and attack anything without mercy - with anything from graffiti over hammer blows to hydrofluoric acid. Add to that nature: bird crap, vomit, tree sap, pollen, drunkards stumbling into your digital signage... or humidity/harsh rain.

7) Loss of revenue from advertising, as you mentioned.

Or because they don’t want to give you a reasonable choice but to send all your viewing data to them. Comparing prices of dumb TVs a few years ago to these “enterprise” ones, it seems unlikely that the premium is to make up for lost ad revenue.

Another possible factor is that enterprises are willing (or even required) to spend more money to keep their data private and secure.

Yeah, I think its primarily market segmentation. Or, you can charge these people more money because they have it. They probably segment based on durability guarantees, these tv's maybe are slightly more durable / last longer in weird temperatures because consumer tv's can cut corners to make the sale, but commercial applications want something that lasts a long time and make fewer sales.

Pro tip: you can Google for part numbers and find people who sell things.

Yeah, and if you're lucky enough to find a seller that way, 9 times out of 10 it will be a wholesaler who will only sell you stuff if you have a corporate account, meaning you either own a business yourself or are cleared by your boss to purchase stuff. Add to that the ludicrous shipping costs for anything weighing more than a box of cereal, insane import duties for anything worth more than say $50, plus a fat VAT slapped on top of all that, and most people in the rest of the world* will probably think twice about it.

TL;DR buying enterprise grade gear of any substance from across the globe as a consumer is a little bit more involved than ordering a pair of slippers frome some seller on AliExpress.

* as in: beyond the next Wal-Mart

they sell it at newegg.

No Newegg in my country, sorry.

Thanks for that, I have a standing need gap for 'Make TV dumb again' [1].

[1]https://needgap.com/problems/64-make-tv-dumb-again-privacy-c...

I was able to do this with my TCL/Roku TV a few months back. My curiosity got the best of me with the announcement of their latest OS, so I upgraded to see what the new features were like. Now I am stuck in the ecosystem, as the downgrade feature is completely disabled (even from a USB stick, with no internet connection, after a factory reset). Luckily, I use a Pihole as my DNS on my router, but still. Super annoying.

That's a valid point, dumb TVs need to be kept dumb by not updating/upgrading the OS although this results in conundrum of not patching existing vulnerabilities in favour of not introducing new vulnerabilities? Vulnerabilities of dumb TVs could still be exploited by plugging in USB devices/SD card or even STB like Roku.

All of the "key features" of this TV are what I want to avoid though. Maybe not as bad a consumer TV, but not that great either:

  Content Management/Group Management
  SuperSign Control Simple
  Network Management Protocol (SNMP) 
  Wake-on-LAN
  Crestron Connected® (Network Based Control)

The difference is that, with this TV, you are the one in control -- not the manufacturer.

SNMP is a monitoring protocol and WoL is a great way to automatically control your screens. You can’t use WoL outside of the local network and SNMP is configurable and secure (if it’s at least v2). It’s not something you should be worried about.

I've asked this in other similar posts: how do you even buy one of those?

I went to the equivalent LG website for my country, and they don't even have a button for contacting them like in the link above.

So I did some searching for the model "LG UT640S" and I only found it sold on one website in my country, but listed as a smart TV (full number: "LG 43UT640S0ZA", parent ends in S0UA).

What gives? Do you need a company to be able to buy one of those? Maybe a sort of line of credit with LG? Buy in bulk? None of this makes sense honestly. I wanna buy a product that clearly exists in the world, but I can't even find someone, somewhere, that will sell it to me.

there's a lot of software in that "dumb" tv

Reply on news.ycombinator.com