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If anyone is interested, I wouldn't mind collaborating to create a privacy oriented SmartTV or PC for devs or simply an industrial grade dumb TV. I have experience designing and building 70" industrial displays that utilize Samsung LCD panels. These "industrial" panels are normally twice the price of consumer grade ones but are designed to operate 24/7 with a MTBF of 100k hours (approx. 11 years) and are usually twice the brightness of normal ones (a very noticeable difference). I also have direct relations with Samsung for sourcing. Displays I've designed and built: https://bit.ly/3vV9jVm

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I think there’s a market for this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26290427

“Make it OLED, dumb TV, instant on, Apple TV box plugs in. Separate box with front facing ports that connects to screen with one cable. A remote designed by someone who thought about it for ten seconds (why do modern TVs have dozens of buttons no one ever uses?).

This entire market is in desperate need of someone to make something decent. The best available option today is LG and it’s still laden with ads and takes a few seconds to boot up.”

I would buy one at least, there’s definitely some low hanging fruit.

I'd probably even lean into it and name the company 'dumb electronics', plus there's a nice sort of symmetry to the word 'dumb' and 'db' would be a decent logo.

I am 100% in on making this. Another recent thread where I chimed in on making something with fewer buttons. I also lament about the latest LG offerings. I even propose ditching a first party remote in favor of just connecting with your favorite one. Why add to the problem of too many remotes by adding yet another one?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26993846

I would love to chat with someone who knows more about the hardware side. How do you get a panel with a "dev kit" where you can load on the copy protection and all the modern stuff needed to play DRM content? I would be up for building a new OS from scratch.

My 2020 Samsung TV remote has only 3 or 4 buttons (I still don’t use it)

Yes thats why I am saying just get rid of these remotes :)

When you finally do make such a TV, you must sell it for more than a smart TV to be taken seriously, and only use the highest quality materials.

The controller in my industrial display accepts serial commands for control and has a fairly simple IR remote you can use as well. For customer application, we developed a simple .NET utility that they use to control approx. 240x individual displays at each facility from a single control room. Knowing that RS232 can be controlled using NodeJS these days, I'm sure more creative solutions can be developed for a personalized remote control.

I'm not sure why TVs still use IR - haven't all other forms of wireless moved past that to much better performing standards that don't require direction or line of sight?

Nobody is pointing their xbox controller at the console.

Cheap IR supply line?

My Roku remote takes several seconds to wake up and connect (over bluetooth?) every time I turn on the TV. It's infuriating. Give me back IR with its line of sight limitations!

It's simple and it works. It's cheap, it's responsive (button presses are responded to instantaneously, all of my game controllers take several seconds to power on and connect before they're useful), it's completely passive when not in use and gives you great battery life, in regular use (i.e., one TV per room) there's no practical issues with pairing or interference.

The only limitation is that you need line of sight to the TV.

Which might be an issue except generally if you're using a TV, you have line of sight to it because... it's a TV and that's its function.

I guess I've had more issues with it.

Line of site is often a pain with things in front of the TV or appliances in TV stands behind a cabinet.

The responsiveness is often slow (granted this is the fault of the TV's UI/software more than it is the fault of the infrared).

Having to point the remote at the TV is annoying - often it doesn't register unless you're sticking your arm out (takes a few tries for me most of the time).

The Xbox controllers work instantly and it doesn't matter what's blocking them. Latency is also low (latency matters in game consoles).

I'm not sure I'm persuaded to IR benefits.

The latency is low once the controller is on and connected. How long does that take? With all of my game controllers (switch, ps3, xbox 360, steam link) it's several seconds.

Latency to register a button press at the other end doesn't really matter for a TV remote unless it goes to extremes. It doesn't matter if you try and turn the volume up and it takes 50ms instead of 10ms. It does matter if that jumps to several seconds.

And since your remote can now travel through walls (and your TV can now receive remote controls through walls!) you now need to worry about security and pairing since there's no longer isolation being provided just by the simple act of having walls. I definitely don't want to try and support my mother in pairing her remote after the batteries need a change every three months.

Have you tried replacing the batteries in your remote? Is your entire room covered in mirrors? It could be something silly like that or maybe that your remote is just terrible. The basic technology has worked for pretty much everyone for decades now without much issue.

I generally just leave my remote sitting on the floor when I'm down there playing with the kid or resting on the arm rest of the chair or something and press buttons on it without picking it up. If it's pointing anywhere within like 60 degrees on either side of my TV whether at the floor or the ceiling it registers every time. This has consistently been my experience across pretty much every TV I've dealt with in 20 years (and I still have a 20 year old LCD TV here I use frequently whose batteries I've replaced maybe 3 times now).

Because an LED to transmit and a photodiode to receive cost essentially $0.00 at volume. The rest is software.

A disconnected roku works well once you fumble around and bypass the mandatory setup then activate HDMI-CEC so Google TV can simply and easily power, unpower, and switch inputs without issue.

The remote is simple enough only containing maybe 6 unused buttons.

Roku has ads built into the UI? I'm also not sure how it meets the qualifications of everything else I listed?

What I find amusing is that I never noticed the ads on my cheap Roku TVs until they were mentioned on HN. I never spend more than a few seconds on the home screen, and that's the only place they appear.

Doesn't Spectre fill basically all of these requirements? For example, this 4k offering on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Sceptre-U550CV-U-Ultra-2160p-60Hz/dp/... There is no smart functionality, just some HDMI ports. I haven't owned one myself, but I plan to when it's time to eventually replace my 10-year-old TV.

I have two tvs from them, bottom of the barrel Black Friday deals and they work great and seem fairly durable (they've both been through a few moves)

It's not OLED, also looks pretty cheap?

I don't want a crappy, cheap, panel with no smart features. I want a premium panel without smart features.

Think like Apple Pro Cinema Display in TV form.

Exactly. That's my biggest struggle with finding a TV these days.

I want to make sure that the networking functionality is what I attached to it, not something built into the TV that I have no way of possibly disabling or removing entirely. With some of the relatively recent PiHole posts, it's become clear that some of these smart TVs are including some level of DNS resolution on their end to get around ad blocking functionality. They'll say it's for ensuring they can always download updates, but it's really for retrieving ads.

I want a display that's going to last longer than 3 years. This is one of my concerns with Spectre displays. I'm not sure of their longevity.

I want that display to have a great picture. I also don't think Spectre displays looked particularly great when I looked at them in the past. Maybe that's changed over time.

Just don't give it your network password, don't connect it to the wifi.

And turn off 99% of the picture enhancement options

Ironic advice given what this post is about :}

I find the easiest way to make the TV dumb is to reject every EULA and ToS I'm presented with. Basic TV functionality can't really be disabled (not without making the device unfit for the purpose it was sold), and any further collection of data would expose the manufacturer to some massive legal liability.

As I commented below in another thread: If the demand is high enough, a custom controller can be developed to match controller on-board Apple Pro XDR while keeping the price point significantly cheaper.

Picked up a few of these, they look fine and work great.

Define a standard form factor for a box that can have attachments to it. (Say approximatly 1 x RPi or 1.5 x RPi), that has a secure modular connector that is fed HDMI IN/OUT, Power, a data bus (Ethernet?), and space so custom connectors can be on the other side. Offer panels with a 'startup' block, and maybe 1 or two others for other devices. Ensure there is enough ventilation for passive/silent cooling.

Set up partners to make custom boxes. Things like SSD's in the same form factor storing media to be shared with other media block devices, (HDMI would be unpopulated), a Roku in the secondary/primary position. DTv Tuners with a Coaxial F-Connector for the antenna, etc.

This "Standard media block" connector could even be retrofit to legacy panels by means of an external box, and one master upstream connector.

Does anything like this exist yet? If not, what would be preventing it?

Existing manufacturers make more by locking their hardware into their platform for ads.

This is not a show-stopper.

You can buy a simple office keyboard for $25, but there is a market for custom mechanical keyboards 10x as expensive.

You can watch YouTube for free, but a lot of people buys the premium subscription to remove ads.

Sam thing here: there may be enough people wanting to buy an ad-free, surveillance-free premium TV with user-inspectable, user-updatable open-source firmware, latest HDMI, and in interface for network boxes to taste. Given that it has a good panel, is well-built, has a minimal but premium look, and the producer offers a modicum of tech support, it can easily be sold for at 150% or even 200% the price of an ad-ridden smart TV from big names.

Such a business can be a good business, even though it won't show hockey-stick growth.

>You can buy a simple office keyboard for $25, but there is a market for custom mechanical keyboards 10x as expensive.

Or 100x even

I have a Sony x90ch, it has no ads, just a thin panel with some content suggestions which we ignore. It may be because I run it through pi-hole but I don't think Sony tvs do ads in general. I had to make to not accept a particular option for a service, don't remember the name, which does tracking. Pretty stock Android from what I can tell.

Compared to what I've been hearing about Samsung and LG it's been rather nice in this respect.

I think the market for this product is very small.

> I would buy one at least

Would you? At 2x the price (based on the last time I bought one of them) for just the panel, plus an apple tv ($200) plus a speaker/soundbar (let's say $500) - and you're not getting an OLED with ARC at that either.

They exist[1]. The pricing is likely out of your budget though.

The included ads, large volumes, and low margins all drive down the cost of consumer displays. Your dream might also end up quite expensive. [1] https://pro.sony/ue_US/products/broadcastpromonitors

I think that's a different product/market? Aren't those displays targeting high end video/movie production that requires perfect color correction? I'd also guess they're marked up a lot given their customer (movie studios/enterprise). They're also small.

I think there's a middle ground 'good enough' panel that's still high end (think like LG E6) that doesn't have the extra crap and where someone has thought through the design elements (input box, remote, industrial design of case).

I'd expect that to be possible for around $5k - maybe that's just not feasible?

As noted elsewhere, broadcast hardware has much higher manufacturing and performance requirements, so it's not an apples-to-apples price comparison.

I'm sure there's a market for $600 (or $1000) TVs that don't have all the "price-lowering" (I'm skeptical) features of $300 TVs.

I mean, maybe the prices of ad-TVs are so low as a loss-leader to get a new advertising vector into your house? Yes, of course TVs already have ads, but they don't have this particular pipeline, one that benefits the manufacturer/brand more than normal OTA ads.

How much is a less-annoying TV worth to people? I'm guessing more than is usually estimated, and at any rate probably pretty close to price+ad revenue of a "consumer display."

The last time I bought a TV, >10 years ago, a high end, but not top of the line quality dumb TV was ~$1000. I'd gladly pay that again, especially if I think it's going to last 12 years or so.

Ironically, they sell those $300 TVs at a profit of about $500, after advertising deals.

Do you have a source for this? Not that I don't believe it but that sounds like a really good deal for them.

Are they really that expensive? I looked up the device that I probably would want, and that would be the 55 inch 4k TV. Searching for a place to buy it revealed this link, that gives a price: https://www.uk.insight.com/en-gb/productinfo/lcd-tvs-and-dis...

It seems pretty reasonable to me. Is there a catch with that device that makes it not appropriate to use as your main TV?

Unlike the broadcast OLED displays, those Bravias use normal LCD panels. They're closer to consumer TVs, but lack the TV tuner for legal reasons.

If you're just using it over HDMI, it would work fine as a main TV. The added brightness would may be appreciated.

The gotcha is that it already runs an outdated version of Android(9.0). Sony consumer TVs that released back then didn't have ads. It was only a later Google update that added ads to the UI.[1] No guarantees these signage displays will be safe if you updated them over the internet.

[1] https://www.rtings.com/tv/tests/ads-in-smart-tv#remove-sony-...

That’s interesting. Can you make something that’s higher end than the most high end consumer TV?

(If Tesla had to be “a better car that’s also electric”, I think this would need to be “a better TV that’s also private”.)

Higher-end can mean a lot of things, especially when talking consumer grade. I generally translate consumer grade high-end as being more aesthetically pleasing vs operationally. My expertise are more aligned with industrial grade equipment where size is typically not the limit. I've deployed a 16ft x 9ft high-res LED display for a customer in the past. That's something you don't normally find at BestBuy or even at their Magnolia outlets.

How much does something like that go for?

I was involved with a project that had an approx 2m x 7m LED sign as part of it, and that portion cost roughly $500k.

It used the same components that you'd find in the LED billboards alongside highways in the US.

approx $75k with control system for a 5mm pixel pitch. The control system is required for source input mapping/transformation onto the display. Here's footage from 4ft away https://bit.ly/3y5AuhW running at 30fps 60hz.

Let's say: Something that can match LG OLED CX 77 2020 model priced $3,099.99

I'd be happy to pay at the same price without the smart features.

Fun fact: some LG displays use Samsung panels internally and vice-versa

Another fun fact: When Samsung started in 1938, they specialized in trading dried fish. They came into the electronics industry in 1960s.

Don't knock it. Salted, dried fish can be delicious after you fry it with onions and chili peppers :-)

There is the rub, the smart features subsidize the price instead of adding to it as it becomes an expected revenue stream.

You can already get dumb TV, they are often used for signage or other commercial purposes, but they cost a lot more than consumer equipment.

I did not know that.

Is the "smart features" actually making money for the TV manufacturers?

A good question to think about. How can we, as consumers, incentivize the TV manufactures to focus on building good product that actually liked by users, and still making good money.

Very difficult to answer though...

It is quite well know ( mentioned multiples times in this thread and in every other TV discussions for he past years ) the smart features collect data and shows you ads which earn the manufactures a continuous stream of revenue.

They're not more expensive _just_ because of the lack of ads subsidization.

They also generally are just better built. The expected hours of operation and MTBF of the components is generally much higher than consumer displays. Many of the ones I dealt with had metal cases and stronger glass.

They're expected to stand up to much more abuse or often be installed in places where they're inconvenient to service.

If you wanted to build a non-smart panel with the expected lifespan of a typical consumer TV a significant portion of the current cost could likely be cut if it were done at scale.

You can't undercut LG, they control the oled tv market.

If you make this happen consider making them more easily serviceable too. My guess is TVs are a big landfill problem because they are too inexpensive for most people to bother getting repaired.

Personally my ~8-10 y/o Samsung LED has a periodic problem that I’ve been diagnosing with YouTube, it seems like a lot of issues are caused by something simple like loose connectors inside.

Except for the LCD panel itself, everything else (the controller, PSU, wire harnesses, connectors, etc) are already easily serviceable. If you can build a computer, you can service this display.

A big bonus with my industrial design would be that the casing itself is made out of metal and harder to damage than plastic casing of most large format displays.

For your specific case, is that a consumer grade panel? What issues are you having?

Awesome! Yeah it’s a super thin, dumb TV and other than the fact that black shots always revealed some inconsistent lighting on it it’s decent. The recent problem is that once in a while a vertical segment (probably 1/5 or 1/6 of the width of the screen) is discolored and mostly black.

Well, any LCD panel requires 2 things to work: a controller and a power-supply/inverter specifically designed to light up the display LEDs. In consumer grade displays, these components can be 3 different things (ie controller, psu, and inverter) and are fairly cheap to replace. You can generally find them on eBay. The only way to really damage an LCD panel is by dropping it and if that is not the case with your display, you can bring it back to life by identifying which of the 3 components might be bad and replacing it. Don't be scared to get surgical with your display. In the end, you will most likely learn more than you will regret.

If you get weird colours or it's black but fully lit up, then its the TCON board (the LCD controller). These are easy to replace as they're usually on their own board and you can just swap it out for a new one.

If you get the full image but its dark (you can hold a flashlight to the panel to see), then it's the LED strips. You simply take off the panel and replace the strips that are broken (though you should probably just replace them all). Fairly easy to do.

Rarely it could be the PSU that drives the LEDs, but that would usually mean the entire screen is dark.

TVs are actually quite nice to work on. They usually have big circuit boards which are nicely labeled and enough space that you could easily replace a capacitor or two with a soldering iron. :)

My LG display went black. The panel itself was working fine because the logo shows up when it powers up. When I checked online it said it’s the controller. I looked into the cost of replacing it - it was more expensive than the price I paid for the tv itself. Ended up replacing the tv entirely.

I don’t care much about the panel issues - a few dead pixels I can live with and anything worse I’d rather replace it. But everything else should be easily swappable.

Also, I’m assuming you’d at the minimum support HDR and preferably Dolby Vision and Atmos. How easy/hard is that?

I believe that consumer grade displays are inherently designed to be replaced vs serviced whenever they go bad. But, if your mind is wired-up to learn more and tinker with things, you can generally figure out a way to prop it open and fix it yourself. I don't know much about your exact LG model but I am pretty sure you could drive it with another more generic controller off AliExpress.com. What makes consumer grade displays a bit more interesting is that they generally come with the audio component. If that wasn't a big concern, you could easily drive it using another generic controller or an LVDS compatible mini-itx motherboard.

I don't know if this falls in your vision or not, probably not, but I'll say I would pay top-dollar for an Android TV that was veritably privacy focused.

I purchased a Sony TV that runs Android and adore it. I initially purchased it because it was a no-nonsense take on Android with high-rated privacy support. Sadly, over the past year they have begun introducing ads, promotions, and privacy policy readjustments that I don't agree with.

An unlocked Android store would be great value. I can currently sideload Android apps on my TV. I can SSH into it if I want to, run my own server, etc. It has a high powered processor and good RAM so I can even multitask apps in it. I love everything about the TV except the privacy changes.

Anyway, best of luck - I love the idea of dumb/privacy focused TVs :-)

I don't think it'd be that hard. There are these cheap Android chips from China all over the place from companies like Allwinner which can be bought in almost any quantity (even extremely small quantities from an industrial perspective).

You take one of those (which currently have reverse-engineering efforts for drivers ongoing with Sunxi project) and simply run a stock Android AOSP without any code signing. The end user would need to install the Play Store and video wouldn't play above HD for the lack of Hardware-supported DRM, but then you would just model your remote control to work like a Game Controller (which Android supports decently).

Also, further thoughts on this, an example would be the Pine64 series of Boards. They're open source, they've got reverse-engineered drivers coming slowly, they've got Android support already. Basically just take their board, wire the HDMI connector and instead wire that into the TV controller, and you've already got stock Android as long as you can get CEC over HDMI working (for the remote).

> The end user would need to install the Play Store

At that point you're back to square one though right?

Keeping PRIVACY a top priority, my ultimate vision would be to move away from these so called app stores. Considering the current state of things, I know that sounds very unrealistic. However, something inside me still tells me that if you create something of value, they will come!

No no no, stick to your vision!!

½ of these comments asking for AirPlay, the other ½ asking for Android TV or wtf Google is calling it these days. Next someone will want Roku, while someone else wants Amazon, and we’re right back to where we started.

The purity of your idea is in the dumb TV. Don’t put a Raspberry Pi on the back, don’t build a mini-ATX PC in.

5 HDMI ports. Power. That’s it. People can bring their own set top boxes and everyone will be happy.

Exactly. There are probably two groups of people in this thread who are interested in the pitch:

* people who want a completely dumb display with a bunch of inputs, as you say

* people who want a display with some smarts but that is "open", can be "hacked", etc

I totally understand the desire to have more things to hack, but there are already numerous little boxes, pucks, sticks, etc to scratch that itch. What's really missing is a way to get a display that doesn't have any of that at all and also doesn't cost 5x because it's made for commercial entities. (Incidentally, my early research suggests a lot of commercial displays actually have "smart" BS in them already, it's just more targeted at device management than serving content-based ads, so that inflates the cost if I'm not going to use it.)

EDIT: formatting

To be clear, I am ALL for this group below:

* people who want a completely dumb display with a bunch of inputs

This leaves the option to hack it with whatever input device the user sees fit.

I like the idea of one cable to an external box of many inputs that lives in the tv stand.

It separates out the input box from the display (makes it easier to plug things into) and allows just one cable to come from the TV. You can also have a lot more ports this way (8 HDMI?)

Samsung has a TV that implements something like this (of course it has all the rest of the smart crap too that you could nix).

Also this makes it easy to potentially have upgradeable/future input boxes with new ports without having to modify the display.

It's still 'dumb', but I think breaking out the inputs is a better design.

I agree with your vision. Keep it simple, or even better: keep it dumb! ;)

How could they introduce anything if you don't connect the TV to the internet at all?

My Sony OLED smart tv works the same way it did when I got it.

Is that something like this: https://displayy.studio/

I remember seeing them on HN a year ago, I assume that they haven't moved that far because COVID etc?

Sure, that use case can easily be satisfied. For digital wall art, we'd need to use a different model LCD panel which has a very small bezel all around (approx. 0.125in)

I meant their IronCast display that's designed to be basically just a display that takes whatever feed you want.

But they don't seem to have updated their info for a year.

What I'd like is a 55" 4K monitor display that is minimal bezel and has a bunch of HDMI inputs and support HDCP etc.

Displays should be to video like speakers are to audio. I can connect multiple sources to speakers without the speakers imposing their own idea of what to do other than make sound.

Yes, that's easily doable. However, unlike consumer grade displays, it's much harder to find dumb controllers with multiple HDMI inputs for industrial displays. A new growing trend in the industrial sector is to move towards dumb controllers having 1x HDMI input and 1x IPTV (ethernet) input. This might fit your requirements as you could easily put the display and your streaming devices on the same VLAN and stream directly to your display.

1 hdmi input is fine for connecting whatever a/v receiver you want to it that can have multiple hdmi inputs and outputs, as well as speakers and audio zones and such. the only problem is now the receiver becomes the privacy/speed bottleneck. i have an older receiver that doesn't require internet, but now receivers are going down the same invasive road as smart tv's. so while i like my current setup, i think the tv would need multiple hdmi inputs to bypass this issue (and not require a receiver).

I did some research for you and multiple HDMI inputs won’t be an issue.

awesome! to be clear, i'd be fine with a single hdmi input since i route everything through my receiver first (which also manages cec and essentially provides a universal remote), but the larger market would want multiple due to receivers having become too "smart" nowadays.

I might be odd, but even the hint at having some form of tuner (or whatever iptv is) could scare me off. A pretty frustrating experience with the LG TV is the prominent placement of broadcast tv features and connector assuming it would be the primary use of the display. No distractions please just dumb hdmi.

> "Designed for the smart-phone generation; we removed all the hassles and added simplicity."

> "This TV has everything you need, to start streaming your favourite content, from your favourite devices."

This sounds like exactly the opposite of what I want. Just give me a dumb display, ffs.

Completely unrelated but this hanging lamp in the second room pictured in the backgrounds on that page looks vaguely creepy to me due to my arachnophobia

A while back it was called ironcast! The rename confused me a bit

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21302825

Take my money!

Seriously, I don't want any screens in my home that don't respect the user.

This means privacy. It also means I don't want any branding. I don't want any logos visible, either on the case or when the screen powers on.

I want the screen to be completely controlled by my Apple TV. It should implement HDMI-CEC or whatever protocol is necessary such that it does not ship with a remote control of its own. (I have had trouble with various displays requiring me to keep their stupid remote control around.)

It should have no visible lights on the case. When the screen is off, I don't want any lights at all distracting me.

How much do I need to pay for this? Every time I ask a genius at an Apple store, they have no idea.

To you and all the people replying to you: have you actually searched for this already? Sounds like a lot of MOM Test fails in here. For example, [1].

[1] https://helpatmyhome.com/best-non-smart-tv/

MOM test?

Maybe this? https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/...

You shouldn't ask your mom about the viability of an idea because she will be biased towards thinking good things about you (and your ideas). Similarly (sort of...), Hacker News will be biased towards wanting your product and not say anything bad about it.

Out of curiosity, how much would such a thing cost?

I'd love a 'dumb' display, but it would be hard for me to justify dropping thousands to have one, when I'm perfectly satisfied just leaving the internet disconnected from my $400 'trash tier' TV.

This isn't knocking the idea, it's a genuine question that also kinda ties into the question of how much money mfgs are making from this privacy invasion.

Would this dumb tv support things like eARC and HDMI CEC? It would be nice to buy a TV without the builtin streaming apps (and the inevitable advertising and phoning home that comes along with it), because I prefer to use a separate device like an Apple TV anyway. But there are some useful features in modern TVs that do seem to require the processing power of a smart TV.

I'd buy one. Is this something you can do like Drop where you take orders and only release if you get enough orders to make it worth while?

I guess you have to deal with bad units and other stuff but just wondering.

I think people will have different ideas of "dumb". For example.

* A TV with only 1 input. If you want more inputs get an external switch etc...

* A TV with no audio. If you want audio use external speakers

* A TV with no remote. With the 2 things above all you need is on an off? And/Or maybe just support whatever the protocol is so that other devices can control it.

Just thinking out loud, I'm sure there's a big disagreement on what's the minimal features.

I could be wrong, but I would imagine most people consider a dumb TV to be exactly how pre-smart TV's worked: Screen, speakers, multiple inputs, and a remote.

I think a survey would be needed to correctly understand definition of a dumb tv. To me, a dumb tv is actually equivalent to a dumb monitor but with a remote and without a tuner or audio IO/speakers.

All that stuff is easy to not use. Anecdotally, everyone I’ve spoken to wants a fully functioning TV that they can plug their own devices into since they’re going to plug an AppleTV/XBox/PlayStation/Roku/Chromecast into it anyways.

If you want to use your own speakers or external video input switcher or whatever then you can still do that, just like you could before, but not including multiple inputs or speakers on a dumb set makes it an incredibly niche product.

The TVs coming out today are great if they just ditched the smart aspect of it.

I just want a display. No speakers please. No buttons or menus to fiddle with to select output.

I like your list. A lot! Yes, possible. We’ve manufactured approx 3000x 70” industrial displays since 2015...since then, we have yet to run into any bad panels. 2 of the panels did get damaged during the handling process but generally, a panel being bad from the factory has never been an issue. I’ll keep monitoring your list for any updates. Thank you!

Sign me up too!

I have a 48" RCA dumb TV from like 10 years ago and I live in perpetual fear of it dying. My list would be: HDMI input and some kind of speaker, although I'd be willing to buy an external speaker if building one in made a bare-bones setup impractical.

An extremely interesting prospect you've got here. What's stopping you from doing it right now?

I would guess the massive investments needed for a hardware startup.

Kickstarter could solve this no?

Most of the upfront cost for hardware is usually setting up tooling and assembly lines for manufacture. In this case, I'd assume most if not all parts already exists and can be sourced. That negates a lot of it.

Nothing. I just realize that as I age, there's only so much a single person can do ;)

I would definitely spend time and money contributing to a "Universal Dumb Display" (UDD?)

Consider making this a kickstarter!

I agree, Kickstarter seems the way to go!

That's very interesting. I wonder if you would consider doing something like the (unicorn) new Google TV devices which have the ability to turn off the smart features entirely - except with Kodi or stock Android for the UI. Heck, even if it was a Smart TV that could run an open-source Android build instead of the proprietary bootloader-locked stuff there'd be a niche for that too.

Yeah, or perhaps build it on Ubuntu Core (their transactional/IOT version of the OS)

Ubuntu actually made a "Ubuntu TV" almost a decade ago that was based on Unity. It never had a TV actually go for sale with it (as far as I know) and the project was abandoned.

Now that you mention it I remember! But Ubuntu core is IMO better suited for this. I find it sad to see it go nowhere (visible to me at least), the value proposition is pretty clear to me, coupled to the snap store and with easy rollback and transactional updates it has all the tech to take it up with Android and WebOS.

Sure. I think it would be best to keep the solution platform agnostic by utilizing an embedded PC and developing a browser based portal (which could work offline as well) for managing playback of various services. With WebRTC in play these days, I'm sure some very interesting solution could be developed.

Why does anyone want a smart TV at all or any other device? Almost everyone I know has an old tablet or laptop that they don't use at home. Get a dumb tv / projector (or even a smart tv but don't connect it to your network and use its smart features), plug the old laptop/tablet in using HDMI and use a bluetooth keyboard with a trackpad as a remote. You get everything you want with it - browser to login and watch whatever you want to, much much better experience typing in login/passwords than your tv remote, install whatever adblocks/security software you want. Added bonus, instead of buying another device you'd be using an old laptop/tablet you'd discard otherwise.

An interesting product could be a TV with swap-able boards. One could be a simple dumb board with inputs, or you could switch it out for a board with privacy oriented smart features. There could also be a gaming targeted board with more even more power. I don't know much about driving LCD/OLED panels, but maybe it could also be useful for updating specs, like you could just upgrade the board when there's a new HDMI version or HDR standard, or to add hardware acceleration for a new codec.

Search for "Universal LCD TV Controller" or similar, it's sometimes already possible.

The gallery I showcased is already semi-swappable in that sense. You are able to change the driving board out for another board or LVDS compatible PC/RaspPi. However, if I'm understanding what you're saying, I think you mean swapping capability similar to a rackmount server hard-drive. Sure, that can be designed and implemented with some effort...let's say 2-3 weeks time.

1) you should have some contact info in your profile so that people can actually contact you.

2) I'll suggest you setup a website with info regarding this with more details and so on, again so that people can get in touch with you, you can measure interest and perhaps even build a few one off TVs for some people to kick start.

Rest will follow..

my apologies. i thought my email was visible in my profile. i updated the about section. thx

Throw up a Patreon or Kickstarter and I'll commit immediately to a set from the first run production.

I think I would be interested in a dumb device to plug some Apple TV in.

Would it not be hard to secure licenses for HD-playback for a small player with privacy focus for a smart tv?

One concern on “dumb” though. It’s one thing to skip apps and streaming, but I suppose some smarts are required to support things like upscaling or advanced frame interpolation ( https://blurbusters.com/frame-rate-amplification-technologie... )

Display controller solves that part. If the demand is high enough, a custom controller can be developed to match controller on-board Apple Pro XDR while keeping the price point significantly cheaper.

I think successfully partnering with streaming services might be the tricky bit of a "privacy oriented SmartTV" project? How will you get Amazon, Netflix and Hulu on board?

You might consider talking to PlayOn. They've found a way to record video from streaming services locally and stream encrypted video to DNLA/UPnP devices without encryption for over a decade - despite operating in the US. The Video Stream is only 720p, but it's better than nothing.

With their software, you can record Netflix/Hulu/Peacock/Disney+/Whatever to your computer or stream videos from those services to a Kodi box. They've never been sued from any of these services because of their (interesting) legal argument.

If you could integrate their services or techniques, you wouldn't need any approval from the streaming services.

PlayOn on the PC is on life support at this point it seems. It uses Internet Explorer and may still have dependencies on Flash, though I think that was more a provider dependency.

It's very fragile and almost like they use Selenium or some other automation tester for UI then just screen cap the whole thing. I say this because it breaks frequently when providers change their UI.

Plugins constantly come and go and stop working.

They amount of support required to keep it going is tremendous and they're pushing the cloud as a service to support and maintain it.

I'm 100% in to buy this.

Even better if you can do an OLED copy of this without all of the crap, I'm 150% in:

https://www.crutchfield.com/p_68965CXP/LG-OLED65CXPUA.html?t...

They already exist (I'm sure you probably know about them). About 10 years ago I bought one from Panasonic, essentially a display with swappable input boards, including an embedded PC. No speakers, no legs. I bought it because back then I wanted DVI on my TV.

Dealing with industrial panels for a large fast food chain menu system was pretty enlightening. There was a surprising amount of management and environmental/telemetry information available from the embedded system on the panel.

Based on the application, some manufacturer do create custom controllers that monitor/capture environmental data in order to safeguard the equipment from experiencing catastrophic failure or performing triggered/scheduled reboots, brightness adjustments, etc based on specific events like local temp, fan speed, on-time hours, etc.

These were NEC MultiSync panels and yep, had a fairly rich set of op codes (page 26) - https://assets.sharpnecdisplays.us/documents/usermanuals/ext...

Can it support AirPlay? I hate how AirPlay enabled devices can be so expensive.

you'd have to plug in an AirPlay-capable device, most likely. For a device to support AirPlay natively, you have to sign up to a complex and expensive licensing process with Apple that includes a ton of validation testing.

I was hoping that someone out there has reverse engineered it

Sure, I'd just use a $99 Apple TV for that whenever needed.

edit: I am getting old. AppleTV used to be $99 and it seems prices have gone up a little since. Either way, AppleTV would be my goto method whenever AirPlay is required.

You can't set up an Apple TV without providing a phone number to Apple (because it requires an Apple ID, and Apple IDs require a phone number during setup).

I think OP was concerned about AirPlay which would assume he already has an AppleID. You could setup a Raspberry PI with AirPlay capabilities as well...or, use one of the many SMS receiving sites online to setup a new/private AppleID ;)

This subthread is about avoiding the privacy issues of smart TVs. They're worse with an Apple TV and Apple ID.

Is there a good Raspberry Pi SD image for the Pi 4 that can be used to receive 4k airplay streams and output to HDMI?

I ask because I don't think that is a viable solution compared to the ATV4k.

This looks promising: https://bit.ly/33E4CmS

Grab anyone else in this thread interested, and pitch it to Wyze as a new product division.

Granted, their products aren’t dumb, but they seem to be very consumer and quality focused. I have loved everything they’ve done.

That does sound interesting! It's a bit outside my wheelhouse, but I'm looking for a new project. Feel free to send me an email (in bio) if you want to chat about this more.

i'd be interested in collaborating. I'm a data engineer but familiar with toying with raspberry pi type work as well.

Currently just really frustrated using my roku, which has insanely bad latency and occasionally reboots for no reason.

How would one go about contacting you?

My username at gmail

I’d buy one

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