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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

I have an older car that missed Carplay by one year. I want to replace the rather crappy dashboard screen with poor touch sensitivity with a nice new carPlay dashboard so i can navigate and listen to my podcasts.

Last time I asked it was 1500 quid plus install from the dealer. I could probably get under a grand now.

If there existed a car with no entertainment system at all, and I just stuck a specially adjusted tablet in there, with industry standard connectors, everyone would be happy, and if anyone hacked my entertainment system they would not be close to the important stuff

Cars should be the mobile equivalent of a dumb TV screen. But no-one wants to make them.

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Hey, almost no one really wants smart TVs that phone home every minute, yet nobody makes modern dumb TVs anymore (or at least privacy respecting smart TVs).

It's cartel behavior. Producers just silently agree to not do stuff that would disadvantage them on the long term.

Everybody keeps going on about "yeah, but someone will undercut them, free market, bla bla", but it never happens in practice.

Also, the spyware TV's can be sold at a discount because they make money back off selling the user's data.

> Everybody keeps going on about "yeah, but someone will undercut them, free market, bla bla", but it never happens in practice.

I asked about this a while back on HN. I’ve heard enough people complain about smart TV’s even outside of the sort of tech privacy bubble that I wondered why no one tried to take a dumb-TV angle or how difficult it might be to do so.

Was basically told, that consumer hardware is mostly a commodity business and that margins are super thin so it’s not really a profitable idea. So the companies turn to smart TVs where they can make up the cost by things like advertising.

FWIW in a later discussion elsewhere, I was pointed to a handful of Dumb-TVs being sold at Walmart, etc. I don’t recall whether you have options for high resolution or large sizes though. Commercial displays also get brought up in this discussion, but if my experience with other commercial hardware is any indication, general consumers may have a hard time getting their hands in those.

Seems like a good opportunity for some enterprising young individuals in China to being producing dumb TVs, or at least dumb TV screens that can take a variety of inputs...

And too few people will buy them because users don't really care and this business will just die off. That's what happen in practice. How many security and privacy focused smartphones, laptops, etc. do you know? All the ones I know are Kickststarter types which generally have been in more or less the same stage for years and years and from the get go their hardware was at least 1 generation (if not more) behind the latest ones.

There are non-smart phones, at least

True, but I, for one, want at least a decent GPS / map, for example. And that kind of needs a bigger screen.

The Walmart TVs brand is spectre. They have cheap large 4K displays but the quality is not considered good - works for me, but I slightly prefer a 1080p projector.

An increasing amount of people I know don't have a TV screen and show no interest in getting one. They just use computer screens to watch instead. Not that that's better for privacy since they've at the same time been switching from physical discs to online data-harvesting services like Netflix. So they're really just building DIY smart TV's.

I don't think you can buy monitors over 43" without paying huge amounts of money.

Many (like me) don't care. TV prices are abusive (where I live at least) and smartTV never interested me as an offering. I have a 10yo that I didn't turn on for more than 1y and if it brakes I'm sure the second hand market will have a lot of them still if I want one.

> Many (like me) don't care.

Not everyone can afford to not care. You probably make a lot of money :-)

What do you mean? I cannot afford to NOT buying a smarttv?

Googled around a bit, the biggest monitor I could find was this:

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Double-49-Inch-Monitor-LC49RG...

49", curved, $1100.

An average Smart TV:

https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-55-Inch-Crystal-TU-8000-Built...

65", straight, $550.

So, yes.

I just bought a dumb TV for ~$130. I don't care about having an enormous screen. Maybe the GP doesn't either.

How big was it?

28"

I think I didn't express myself correctly. I don't own a Smart TV not do I intend to. I have and old normal TV for a long time, and if I decide to replace it there's a lot on offer from second hand market. What I own is a good quality 19' monitor and that's what I use for movies. Not rich at all.

Not everyone can afford to buy TV-sized monitors

This sounds like something I would've written before I had enough money for a living room, a couch, and a screen large enough to share

How old are your peers? My house in college was full of "DIY TVs" but once I got my own place I was tired of squinting at a 24" display

My TV is 65". That's not a monitor, and a monitor isn't a replacement for that size, and the closest monitor is the 40-something inch HP Omen which costs over four times what my TV cost.

So I'm not sure what you're talking about

It came up in the last thread about dumb tv's - they exist. Wal-mart sells Sceptre tv's. 4K resolution, dumb tv's. And they're super cheap; they're actually cheaper than smart tv's. I have no idea why people say they don't exist. They're just not popular.

Outside of HN, people do want smart features, from what I can tell, and don't even consider that their TV is a privacy concern.

Most of the non-technical people I know buy an Apple TV or Roku and get confused when they sit on the tv remote and accidentally bring up the smart tv netflix instead of the Roku netflix. Ignoring the privacy concern, the dumb TV is a better option for those who are going to buy an Apple TV, chromecast, or roku anyway.

From the wal-mart website, it looks like the 55" Sceptre is dumb but the 65" is smart. When I bought my 65" tv earlier this year, I couldn't find a dumb tv that fit all of the specs I wanted so I compromised and got a vizio (simple, chromecast based smart tv) and just never connected it to wifi. It doesn't seem to nag me about the smart features or connecting it to the internet at all

Sceptre dumb 4K TVs go up to 75". Whether or not they're available right now due to supplychain issues, no idea.

Availability of “dumb TVs” seems to be extremely location specific. I tried finding one in Denmark and it’s pretty much impossible. Romania has a nice selection, as some one on HN showed me a while back.

I don’t know anyone who uses the smart features in their TV, except my wifes parents who use the Netflix app in their Sony TV. Everyone else just use an AppleTV, ChromeCast or a box from their cabel/internet provider.

> I don’t know anyone who uses the smart features in their TV

Because the current generation of TV buyers are used to the concept of purchasing separate hardware to deliver content. That is changing now.

I had a similar realization about streaming v piracy. 15 years ago everybody my age was pirating music and TV. It led to a lot of viruses and malware for some, but everybody more or less knew where to go to for that stuff, even as P2P networks were being shut down left and right.

Today, young people don't really do that. Spotify, YT and Netflix apparently fixed enough UX and content gap issues that torrents and stuff aren't considered necessary anymore.

The same will happen with TVs.

I have a large Sceptre TV. Very happy with it.

Most consumers don't care/know about security or privacy. They just want new features. If the reality shows the opposite then for sure someone is going to build those privacy respecting devices.

Almost any car that doesn’t have CarPlay/etc can have the standard entertainment stuff stripped out and a CarPlay head unit put in using a double-din dash conversion. Costs about $4-500 for the head unit and $1-200 for the dash conversion depending on your car.

I’ve done it on both my and my wife’s cars. They now have standalone CarPlay units for music and maps and calls, yet zero integration into the car itself and it’s perfect.

Would you recommend the unit you have?

Definitely. I’ve got 2 different Pioneer units (DMH-W4660NEX and another I forget atm) and I’d basically recommend any of theirs. Just get the best one you can afford from their series. Even the cheaper ones are decent but obviously get even better the more you spend.

I wasn’t a fan of the JVC one we had previously though. Not very responsive and the lag made it annoying to use. The Pioneers are fast and pretty much perfect in comparison.

For most common cars you can also use the steering controls adapter kit which lets all your factory steering wheel controls for volume and answering/making calls.

All the cars I've looked at this year that have CarPlay / Android auto only available on the mid/upper trim levels, on the lower trim levels, the entertainment system also contained the climate controls and couldn't be removed.

> If there existed a car with no entertainment system at all, and I just stuck a specially adjusted tablet

Please no. I don't want a giant screen or touch screens in any car of mine. I like my knobs and buttons that provide tactile and position feedback.

The US has a federal law that all new cars must have backup cameras. So there will be a screen in the car.

I too want only knobs and buttons for controls, and I think it can be done well, unfortnately I'm not in that field though. Oh well.

Backup cameras do not require giant screens.

> If there existed a car with no entertainment system at all, and I just stuck a specially adjusted tablet in there, with industry standard connectors, everyone would be happy, and if anyone hacked my entertainment system they would not be close to the important stuff

I got my hands on a VW Up! in part because they decided to not bother with an entertainment system: you have a better one with your phone. So you get a USB port, a phone holder and an app if you really want useless crap.

Back in the day you had a slot in the car for the stereo, and you could install pretty much any stereo you like.

As others have pointed out, you likely can install an after market stereo in there. (Not affiliated, but a happy customer!) For self installs, I purchase everything from https://www.crutchfield.com/ , as I know if they say it fits in your car, it will fit, and they make sure you have all the instructions you need to install it.

I did that to my older car so it could have wireless car play for my spouses phone (but mainly because the native entertainment system was awful).

That mounting point for that screen is probably a 2DIN slot. You can install random Chinese $60 Android stuff from Amazon there if you so insist.

I thought this was about avoiding cybersecurity risks, not introducing them?

The last thing I want is a cheap lithium ion battery sitting in my 150 degree car for months at a time.

There are still some cars that have a regular 2 DIN slot. I think at least the Toyota GT86 and Dacia Duster are like that with the latter not even coming equipped with a radio as standard.

>If there existed a car with no entertainment system at all, and I just stuck a specially adjusted tablet in there, with industry standard connectors, everyone would be happy, and if anyone hacked my entertainment system they would not be close to the important stuff

The "extra super base" trim models that they make half a dozen of so they can advertise a low "starting at" MSRP are often devoid of radio/infotainment.

Yeah, my current car came new from the factory with no radio. Every few years I upgrade the electronics like it was a B-52. It's...nice.

I'm sure you can grab a bluetooth OBDII dongle? Would that do much for you?

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