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Comment by mchristen | Hacker News Reader

They are oftentimes way more expense, I'm guessing because you aren't subsidizing the cost with your data.

No, your average home tv is not designed to run 24/7. These Digital Signage Monitors are supposed to do this. Try running your average costumer tv 24/7 for half a year and see how the color & sharpness is. Also they are repairable (normally).

Sharpness? How does sharpness go down on an LCD panel??

There's regular dumb TVs around too, and reasonably priced.

Walmart's site lets you filter for "Smart = N". Sceptre and RCA are the main brands.

For example https://www.walmart.com/ip/RCA-65-Class-4K-Ultra-HD-2160P-LE...

To offer a non-walmart option, I've been using the Rtings table tool to find consumer TVs are potentially more respectful of privacy. Although I get the impression a number of sets aren't captured here (maybe walmart has some listed that Rtings doesn't), they are fairly thorough.

https://www.rtings.com/tv/tools/table/53948

The trouble with looking at a "no ads" rating is that smart TVs can always put more ads in later: https://twitter.com/JobPlas/status/1235537095755739136

You could say "I'm not installing software updates" and be safe from ads as long as you don't need any bugfixes, but then you're also missing out on security updates. If you keep it off the internet maybe you're ok, but your TV might start connecting to a neighbor's wifi to give you more advertising.

And with a smart TV, in addition to ads you may also want to be on the lookout for Automatic Content Recognition: https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smar...

I'd be much happier just not having a wifi antenna in my television.

I don't understand - every set listed on that page has a nonzero score for "Smart Features".

More likely market segmentation- it's a lot easier to sell a panel to a business for $2000 than it is to sell the same panel to a consumer for $500.

I don't believe for a second that data is subsidizing anything. It's a revenue stream, sure, but prices haven't gone down as data collection went up.

Prices haven't gone down? So before smart TV's were a thing 70" 4K TVs could be had for $650?

That's the usual price drop as these SKUs achieved mass market and got economies of scale.

I worked at a company that was attempting to sell software to consumer electronics manufacturers as per the divx model - some of us remember when you couldn't buy a dvd player without that logo. But when streaming began to replace physical media, I was told that services such as Amazon and Netflix began paying to have their software in the devices. I'm curious whether that's still a revenue source for manufacturers.

I think the bigger factor is that they are b2b, though certainly selling the crapware helps subsidize the consumer models.

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