Comment by czx4f4bd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by czx4f4bd | Hacker News Reader

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This is what infuriates me the most. I keep thinking about replacing my cheap-ass no-name TV that I've been using for the last 8 years, but the only quality options are all smart TVs and I hate it.

I just loathe the idea of having a TV that (1) is going to have a smartphone-class SoC built-in that I won't even use for anything and (2) is going to be yet another computing device I don't control.

I begrudgingly tolerate the fact that my PS4 and my phone are computers I don't control, because at least they offer functionality that's useful to me, but I draw the line at smart TVs because they aren't even useful in the first place. I'm just going to use my PS4 for everything on it anyway, but then I'll have have another device where I have to worry about software updates and shitty anti-consumer practices.

/rant

I was looking at monitors the other day and wondering who buys the large format gaming monitors. Gigabyte has a 48" OLED right now that looks pretty good for about $1100. Philips has a 55" VA panel for $1600. Both are 4k/120Hz and support an HDR standard, and afaict these are just monitors, no smarts.

I'm not sure what you give up with these other than the OS.

> Gigabyte has a 48" OLED right now that looks pretty good for about $1100.

I'd recommend against that one. While it's the same panel as the LG OLED, the software is much worse, with an aggressive backlight limiter that can't be turned off and progressively dims the screen, and a panel refresh cycle that demands turning the monitor off every few hours (and doesn't happen automatically when the panel is turned off by the computer going to sleep).

I'd love to find a high-quality 4k+ OLED (or ideally QD-OLED) panel with no associated "smarts".

My suggestion here is to use either a game console or set top box (Roku, Shield, AppleTV) as the primary interface. My TV likes to show ads and all, but I never see them because as soon as I boot the TV i immediately go to my Xbox and do everything else from there.

Pretty soon though I feel like even this "loophole" will be closed and TV manufacturers will start placing ads even on HDMI outputs.

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