It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV
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So we are actually paying more(of course, lots extra hardware cost) for less. But it does not end there. Vendors put lots of Ads in them, some vendors even put boot-up Ads regardless it is connected to internet or not. The worst I guess was mentioned in a couple of day ago some rouge vendor even started to put customized Ads based programs we are watching on air.
I guess my replacement for a TV would be a big monitor.
In fact, even the ideal HN approved setup is just a smart TV where the online bit is a removable stick on the back. The average consumer just doesn’t care about being able to swap it out.
Manufacturers definitely jumped on the chance to add software and an internet connection to TVs. Why sell a product once, when you can do that and then sell your customers to ad agencies?
I can't understand what anyone involved in the production of this monstrosity was thinking. It's a gigantic failure at the level of product design, product manufacturing, and house furnishing.
There is not even any "convenience" aspect to attaching your oven to a microwave.
But they saw the vertical integration possibilities and took advantage of it here. I'm not sure you are even getting a hardware discount to view those ads.
The fact consumers love something doesn't make it a good thing.
For example, I do not care if a TV is smart or dumb. All I care is how quickly it turns on because I am connecting it to an Apple TV anyway. Even as a person who would rather have a dumb TV than a smart TV, my actions continue to support smart TV manufacturers because I am not willing to spend the time and effort required to seek out dumb TVs, since I have already found an acceptable solution.
The much simpler explanation is that TVs plastered with ads and surveillance are more profitable to companies.
Also, TVs went from dumb to smart, so empirically, sufficient buyers voted for smart even when they had an option for dumb. The alternative is all the manufacturers simultaneously pulled all dumb TVs out of the market even though selling them would provide a competitive advantage in a razor thin profit margin business, which does not seem likely.
Also, TVs went from dumb to smart, so empirically,
sufficient buyers voted for smart even when they
had an option for dumb
The implicit assumption here is that this must be what consumers want, because it's what they "voted" for.
But voting (whether democratic elections, or just free-market consumer spending choices) only leads to optimal outcomes when the "voters" are sufficently knowledgeable in terms of both general domain knowledge and the choices themselves.
For all but the simplest choices (say, a choice between a bucket with a hole in the bottom and a bucket without a hole in the bottom) this is difficult.
There's no reasonable way for consumers to know how shitty the inbuilt OS/apps of a "smart TV" will become over time, or what onerous software updates the manufacturer will pump out, etc. A lot of this stuff is difficult or impossible to know even for savvy, educated people looking for a TV.
I wonder what sort of reaction you have when a successful, legally approved medicine turns out to cause death or injury in the long run, or merely proves to be ineffective. Or when a specific model of car develops problems after a couple of years.
Do you say, "well... this is clearly what consumers voted for?"
You read a few TV reviews, see that LG OLEDs have been the best choice for many years. Hard to get this wrong.
Maybe, but it has been a decade since smart TVs became prevalent, and I would bet everything I have that if you put a dumb TV for sale next to a smart TV in Costco, no matter how shitty the software on the smart TV is, the smart TV will be chosen enough times that the dumb TV maker goes out of business.
This is not about what should the consumer do. This is about what the consumer will do. And they will choose to pay $30 less in exchange for giving all their viewing data to the TV manufacturer. Try to educate them otherwise, I doubt it will be successful.
There is also more data out there than ever before in history about TVs, but I doubt most people would ever care enough to read in depth reviews on rtings or whatever.
There is also more data out there than ever
before in history about TVs, but I doubt most
people would ever care enough to read in depth
reviews on rtings or whatever.
There's also the larger issue of whether it's reasonable for consumers to do so. Educated, informed consumers are always the goal, but at some point this is not reasonable.
1. Consumers can't be experts on everything. Cars, prescription eyeglasses, medicine, home repairs, computers, shoes - there are simply not enough hours in one's life to become a domain expert at everything.
2. A lot of people are, frankly, not the brightest. As the saying goes, half of the people in the world are below average. I don't mean this insultingly, in fact: quite the opposite. Human beings are human beings. We are all worthy of dignity and respect. But being an uber-savvy consumer is less practical for some.
Also known as the market for lemons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
Akerlof's paper shows how prices can determine the quality of goods traded on the market. Low prices drive away sellers of high-quality goods, leaving only lemons behind. In 2001, Akerlof, along with Michael Spence, and Joseph Stiglitz, jointly received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, for their research on issues related to asymmetric information.
Some smart TV features are indeed necessary if you want to watch anything via streaming (i.e. any halfway relevant modern series). But as GP said, you can usually get those via some kind of HDMI stick.
So one explanation might be that most people want to watch Netflix but don't know this is possible with a dumb TV + stick as well. Or they know this but don't understand why fiddling with two devices would be preferable to having one device where everything is built-in.
So far that's a reasonable stance, I believe - especially if you don't know all the tracking smart TV vendors already have done. This might change though if ads and other overtly user-hostile features are rolled out more widely.
Even after spending tens of thousands on home theatre equipment I struggle to understand why I should want to use some kind of stick to watch netflix from.
Never a great assumption really.
> working at these large TV companies who can ascertain reasonably well what kind of demand there is for a dumb TV.
Companies are focused on maximizing profit. Demand is secondary.
The hardware cost difference between a smart TV today and a dumb TV is negligible, but the loss of years of spying on you and serving you ads isn't.
Isn't that the same across the entire world?
/s
The same argument has been posted multiple times for small phones. Yet, every time apple releases small phone, they are disappointed in sales.
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/03/28/apple-cutting-iphone-se...
- Most Apple users want larger screens, which means larger phones; or
- Small Apple phones are not small enough, so there's no point.
About the second point, that's where I am. I've been looking forward to a USB-C iPhone Mini. That was until I actually tried to use a Mini. It's smaller than the regular size iPhone, but still very hard to use single-hand as I have small hands. I want something the size of the iPhone 5. The Mini is just not small enough to make the small screen worth it.
I’m not sure I have actually ever seen an iPhone mini in the wild. It seems to be almost evenly split between the pro and the pro max.
Back before the turn of the century, Micropose released Falcon 4.0, arguably one of the best military flight sims. It was complex, had good graphics for the day, had a vibrant community of users, a vibrant aftermarket equipment ecosystem (HOTAS, foot pedals etc). I love playing it, and couldn't wait until better and better computers came out that could make the graphics photorealistic. I also played EF2000 which let you fly the Eurofighter. Same game idea, a bit less accurate, and a bit more user friendly.
Fast forward two decades and the military flightsim field is basically dead. People will tell you to try MS Flight Sim, but that's definitely not the same.
Why did this happen? Might have been dotcom fallout; might have been just a small niche application field. Who knows? The market moved on and now it's a wasteland. Perhaps VR will revive it since it would add a great deal of situational awareness.
In the end, just because a small group wants something (like dumb TVs or Milsims) doesn't mean that companies will fill the niche.
The correct explanation is probably that since modern TVs are inherently digital devices the most sensible way to implement them is as computers running TV software, and once you are building your TV that way the only difference between a dumb TV and a smart TV is the software.
Because there was a period of several years overlap where both smart and non-smart TVs were available. If smart TVs had been a sales flop they would have been killed off like 3D TVs were. 3D TVs were being pushed hard ~10 years ago. It was supposed to be the next hot thing. But it flopped and has been all but forgotten about. Smart TV could have easily ended up the same way.
"Smart" sets tended to move from the top of the market downward. This meant that if I wanted a "non-smart" set in a given size, it was likely to be the lower-end product-- often with fewer inputs, a lower-grade panel, or from a firm with an inferior reputation for quality.
This makes it difficult to de-conflate if people were buying a smart TV because they wanted the smart features, or the panel/connectivity/brand reputation.
It does make it a good thing for them. Which begs the question: why is it that you get to decide what is or isn't a good thing? Or: why shouldn't people be able to decide for themselves? The answers against the latter are, at their root, paternalistic and elitist.
> they love also facebook
Ah, yes. The old "facebook is as bad as cigarettes" trope. It feels a lot like the claims around TV in the 70s and 80s. "It's rotting people's brains!" But society kept on chugging. It is one thing to object to Facebook's business model. It is another entirely to deem it "Bad For You". Billions of people like using the product and it hasn't hurt their lives. In fact, it has improved them.
It used to be that one of the strengths of our economic system was that you could find something to meet your needs even if your needs weren't the same as the majority.
Are you thinking of an example where that once was true but has changed? I'm open to examples but can't myself think of any that are analogous.
It’s not impossible to not own a smart TV, it’s just the mass market caters to what the vast majority want. Outside of hacker news, no one considers smart TVs harmful.
I consider cars harmful and yet hacker news gets up in arms when I propose banning them from cities.
All sorts of ways to dispute this assertion, the most easy probably just to point to the existence of the multi-trillion dollar advertising industry
I don't believe Facebook or TV are equivalent to cocaine. I don't think your argument is made in good faith.
Exactly. You were making a broad claim that it is "paternalistic and elitist" to decide what is "good for you" vs "bad for you". If it is paternalistic and elitist in some cases, but appropriate in others, then don't we need a way to figure out what side of that line various things fall on?
This is the comment to which I was responding. As I see it, there are two premises here which both have to be accepted (i.e. it is an "AND" not an "OR"):
1) Facebook/TV is analogous to cocaine
2) Cocaine is bad for you
If I reject that Facebook/TV is analogous to cocaine, I reject the entire thing. I was not making a broad claim about people's autonomy vs. paternalism. I was making a narrow claim in relation to two (at worst) benign things: smart TVs and Facebook.
I'm not clear on what your argument is here. Are you:
* denying that there is a fact of the matter about whether, for any item X, X is beneficial or harmful?
* asserting that something's being beneficial or harmful has no meaning apart from signifying present-day user preference?
* merely asserting that users fairly reliably tend to prefer what is good for them, and avoid what is bad for them?
> Billions of people like using the product and it hasn't hurt their lives. In fact, it has improved them.
It sounds like you are making a case here that Facebook is beneficial because it improves the lives of its users—am I understanding that correctly?
> Why is it that you get to decide what is or isn't a good thing? Or: why shouldn't people be able to decide for themselves?
Is that the same as bad? What is this zealotry against paternalism and elitism? Perhaps you could focus more on outcomes than some social engineering crusade you have, deciding that certain philosophies are automatically "bad".
This ignores that companies pour billions into advertising, fake research and lobbying to influence consumer behavior.
It also ignores network effects and lack of choice: if all your friends are in Facebook and there isn't a viable alternative to socialize, you don't have much of a choice, besides being left out (which may not be such a bad option but may also make you miss valuable socialization).
Making an algorithm to addict me is arguably pretty evil though.
The gp never said anything about what consumers want, it's talking about the motives behind development direction. Features are not added because consumers ask for them: demand comes later.
You're mistaking TV producers' desire to capture more of the market pie and invade our privacy with actual consumer demand.
My point is, I don't think many love them, I think they don't notice until it's too late and then they don't think about it too hard and just figure that's how the tv works.
(And I don't think what characterizes a smart tv is just the option of apps and streaming. This could be fine if done in an actual consumer friendly way. It's the other crap an upstream comment mentions)
This is not a defense of Samsung, but something you can try if you're stuck with it: While the Samsung remotes have slimmed down quite a bit, at least on my TV it still responds to the buttons the old more fully-sized remote controls had. If you get a universal remote and program it for Samsung TVs, you may find you get a lot of the functionality back that your remote is missing.
I can't speak for every year's TV; mine's a few years old now. But you may already have a universal remote just lying around, in which case this is really cheap to try.
Yes I am aware some "smart" TVs are incredibly bad(I wouldn't buy a Samsung having read the reviews of many different models) but yeah, having a dumb TV+ extra devices just to stream to seems like a hassle.
You're absolutely right. And I've personally capitulate to this reality...
The way that I see it is that there is really no way around this problem except through disconnected-media, over-the-air or homebrew/hacker/open-source solutions. None of these completely satisfy my media cravings.
So however foolish it may be, I still go with the "stick on the back" approach despite their appetite for all my information, because I still trust Apple, Google, Amazon... WAY more than all of these mysterious IPs pointing back to somewhere in Shenzhen.
What would I do with a dumb TV without apps? Only watch broadcast TV? Drag my laptop in? Pay as much as the TV itself for a media center PC that probably won't be as reliable and snappy ad Android?
Big businesses chronically underestimate consumers, don't try to teach them anything, and don't give them options for fear of confusing them. They forget everyone who works for them and their partners or makes the things they consume are also the consumers they abuse.
Pretty sure 10 years ago I couldn't buy a 55-inch 4K 120Hz TV for $300. So depends on what you mean "less" as hardware-wise it's certainly the opposite.
So I looked around and eventually bought a Philips 559M1 55” monitor instead. The price difference compared to an actual TV is a little tough to swallow (~£1,200 vs £?00), but the size, the resolution, and the overall picture / sound quality upgrade is very nice. The HDR leaves a lot to be desired but that’s probably inevitable when getting an LCD panel instead of OLED (which was not considered because of the likelihood of burn-in).
Worth it? Eh… maybe. When compared against the available market for “TV-sized monitor” or upgrading from 1080p, absolutely. But if you’re coming over from an equivalent-sized OLED TV, you’ll be paying a hefty amount for a visual downgrade, just to escape the ‘smart’ features.
TV's show a compressed or upscaled image. TV's have much higher latency.
And thats why something called a monitor is so much more expensive for the same size display.
TVs can show a "compressed or upscaled image", but that doesn't mean it can't show uncompressed full resolution images (ie. HDMI input). In that regard they aren't that different from monitors.
>TV's have much higher latency.
>And thats why something called a monitor is so much more expensive for the same size display.
This is more due to their firmware containing image processing logic (to improve image quality), than TVs being intrinsically lower quality than computer monitors.
No ads ever bother me. No camera to scan me. It doesn't do anything. Even when I disabled my AD blocker on my router it didn't go ape.
And you no longer always have the option to prevent a net connection unless you live in a faraday cage.
The only way they won't all be smart eventually is if there is a market for dumb monitors that outweighs what the manufacturers make from putting remote agents into them.
I doubt that will happen. The people that even know or care at all are few, and even fewer of those vocal.
This an understatement!
I recently watched a review for one of Samsung's new monitors and it turns out you don't even need to connect it to any source.
I don't just mean media sources like Netflix, Amazon, TV, etc... You can literally connect to MS Office and perform trivial desktop activities on it once you connect a mouse and keyboard.
All of this at a pretty compelling price even if you take all of this bloat out of the equation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pVapqSSccc
> The only way they won't all be smart eventually is if there is a market for dumb monitors that outweighs what the manufacturers make from putting remote agents into them.
And really, if one of the manufactures is doing this, they all have to... There will be no way to compete with those that are able to lower the cost of their product by subsidizing it through these agents. The average consumer isn't savvy enough to understand this difference and chose the "better" product.
Kicker is, I don't even necessarily mind that as far as it goes.
As time goes on it's just sort of inevitable that more and more functions get performed by little computers instead of hardcoded electronics.
There is some engineering argument against that. It makes systems more complex and thus less robust and generally less performant.
It's just that it also makes them more flexible and in some ways makes the hardware simpler even though a cpu is more complex than a few diodes. It's simpler once a cpu is taken as a black box unit where the complex magic is all hidden inside, and it's cost to design and produce is amortized to nothing by economy of scale. And it allows for potential better perfmance through tuning that isn't available in a fixed system.
So fundamentally as a general rule applied to just any random thing, you can't really say the cpuization of more and more ordinary devices and functions is necessarily a net negative.
What makes it all bad is only who controls all these cpus and what purposes they put them to.
If my freaking tv was open source, fully open including all the special modules for wifi and hdmi and booting etc, I would have no problem at all that my monitor now has a cpu and ram and net connection. Or at least a whole lot less problem.
It's only that "Who is this stuff working for?" that makes it bad.
I wish I could somehow poison the money I pay for the TV with my own agenda against the wishes of the manufacturer and retailer the way they have my tv. So that the money would somehow do my bidding after I gave it to them, just the way the tv does for them after they gave it to me.
I am also delighted to hear that a 55" 4K monitor can be had for well under 2000 EUR, and will gladly do that when the Bravia finally bites the dust, because that's the only way we are taking that thing off the wall over the piano!
We are actually paying less, because all these sponsors and ads pay the manufacturer, which in turn lowers the purchase price. So if you don't use the smart features, it is actually a good deal, and if you do, well it is still a good deal. The one who pay for your discount are those who pay for the advertised services (ex: Netflix) without buying the TV. Probably the best thing to do is to buy a smart TV you can use dumbly (offline).
Big monitors tend to be much more expensive than similarly specced TVs. You may still want it for things like gaming-related features (g-sync, etc...).
Even if they sell a third fewer models, the ad revenue way more than makes up for it, and it’s recurring revenue to boot.
Inflation-adjusted, on average, AAA games have slowly decreased in retail price over the years. At the same time, they have become much more expensive to produce. Technology have improved, HD graphics, storage and computing power is now cheap, but creative work is as expensive as ever, if not more. And someone has to make all these assets and feature-film level animation that newer hardware supports and that players now expect from AAA games.
That increase in production costs compared to a relative decrease in retail prices explain a lot of things regarding the AAA game industry: in-game purchases, a general lack of originality (originality is a gamble, and with $100M+ games, investors want guaranteed returns), few consoles exclusives (producers want the largest market possible), lower pay than in other industries,...
Why is it wrong? Because AAA games are absurdly profitable, even before microtransactions are brought into play. AAA publishers and studios are making billions, with a 'B', of dollars of profit. That's not the sign of a struggling market that's weighed down by inflation and rising costs of production. That's a sign of an exceptionally healthy industry.
Remember, cost only sets the floor of a product's price. And with a near zero duplication cost, those up-front investments are quickly paid back with no practical upper limit to the sales potential.
For example, CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077 cost around $316M (including marketing). It presold, as reported on wikipedia, 8m copies. That means they made their investment back before the game had even released, plus a minimum of $20 profit per each of those 8m pre-orders (remember, $60 is the lowest price paid in a pre-order). And every post-launch sale is pretty much pure profit, thanks to that nearly-free cost of making copies.
Now then, CP2077 had issues which probably ate into the company's profits post-launch... but that initial investment, the one you've pointed out? Paid for the day the game released.
Are you sure that’s always true?
What about smart TVs that seek out open wifi networks or try to access the internet via HDMI?
The problem with smart TVs is that you loose control of what they’re actually doing.
i.e. LG smart TVs searching your network for media and sending a log back to… somewhere.
Or Samsung smart TVs sending hashed images of what you’re watching back to… somewhere.
This happens regardless of if you’re using the smart features or not.
What I meant that you can buy a smart TV and take advantage of the lower prices but you should make sure that you can actually use the TV without a network connection (and yes, that it doesn't try to hack your wifi).
I also own a Toshiba built FireTV that suffers from those same problems but far worse. Way more ads, much slower interface, and the hilarious part is a hidden power off button in the menus(it's fun trying to turn the TV off without the proper remote).
I'll go as far as to say that you can't complain about a slow interface of a cheap smart TV if you went out to buy it with the purpose of using it just as a monitor which is what you really should be doing. The smart isn't a value add except for being able to use a remote app on your phone especially if you're a HN frequenter. You gotta have computers lying around that can replace all the "smart".
I want it, I can pay for it, it's weird that it's getting harder to do so.
Besides, buy commercial panels. You’ll pay a premium for your premium needs and get a much more robust device in the process.
You got any recommendations?
I thought they subsidized some of the cost with ad money
I suspect this is false and the ads and tracking enabled by smart TVs are instrumental in getting the price down.
Price sensitivity on TVs I suspect is one of the main drivers of this.
Still, I think there’s a real niche for someone to make a tv focused on the HN market. Call the company “dumb electronics”. db even has a pleasing symmetry to it for a logo imo. Focus on speed to boot and switch inputs, optionally sell it as a package with an Apple TV, make it premium and OLED. Basically the tv apple would build if they decided too.
The current best option in the tv market is the LG OLED, but it’s smart and still leaves a lot to be desired.
They plainly are. They are a gigantic revenue stream for TV manufacturers. There’s a reason that TV prices cratered at the exact same time that they all became “smart”
https://www.engadget.com/vizio-q1-earnings-inscape-013937337...
Ah, the dumb monitor. Buy them while you still can!
You can get for example one of those (german, but you probably can read the specs anyway):
https://nogis.at or https://www.gisbefreit.at/
Most devices are not high end though.
Do you mean that their quality is meh, or whether they lack functionality?
When set the system up at home, it worked just like in the store.
Then five days later, an OS update forced ads onto the front page. The entire home page was changed from what I had purchased.
Fortunately, I could reset the device back to the previous OS version and not let it anywhere near a wi fi.
What I purchased and what I was having in my possession became antithetical to what I wanted with a software update.
Is it possible to get one of the latest HDMI cables without ethernet? Are there ways to cut ethernet-over-HDMI off at the media device?
I know that there might be things that can be done through the network or at the router (PiHole,etc), but I'm wondering specifically about this gaping hole through HDMI.
(as I type this, I now remember that my router/Orbi can physically block individual devices)
Of course the next big issue will be when the TVs come with their own internet connection. I recall this is already happening with some HiSense TVs that come with 5g. I guess at this point we'll be forced to open these things up and disconnect the antenna.
Edit: Yep. Any Google TV based television will do this. https://9to5google.com/2021/02/24/google-tv-basic-tv-mode/
I liked it, but hated how slow it was compared to my older dumb TV. Pressing a button and waiting for something to happen on the home screen was ridiculous.
After 2 years, I went nuclear and disabled as many apps and background services as I could. Lo and behold, I suddenly had a snappy TV with only the 3 streaming services I need on it.
This is what I continue to want. A TV that can do streaming without additional hardware, and without the insane level of tracking and ads that are so prevalent.
Most of the requests are rejected though, maybe someone can say whether that is enough to protect me from corporate surveillance.
Assuming of course you are using it as a truly 'dumb' TV and not as a client for Netflix etc.
They can't, but I do have this saved
https://web.archive.org/web/20191224122714/https://www.reddi...
Imagine my neighbor has unsecured WiFi network set for himself, I'm pretty sure he could call police on anyone connected to his network abusing his connection just because it's not locked.
By this logic you can steal unlocked car with key in engine or unlocked bike and that's what these TV would be doing.
You would be probably excused if TV done by itself, but it would land the brand lot of negative publicity and you could try to reimburse defense lawyer expenses on them. They would probably argue you agreed with terms of service when first launching TV, so don't do that if you want dumb TV.
That won't protect against DNS data exfiltration. Extremely low-bandwidth, but works in a lot of cases - people have even written proxy servers to get slow but working Internet on public hotspots that normally require login.
That is enough for the device to emit a DNS query like "pbs.12345.metricservice.example.com" to notfiy some tracking service that the device with serial 12345 just switched to a channel labeled "PBS". The router will resolve that name record at the DNS server for metricservice.example.com, which gets the request and logs it away.
They're firewalled off & the call home address is blocked on pihole
No TV in my case.
Collecting usage data, sure...
Amazon Sidewalk has been brought up a couple of times in this thread and it's got me thinking about how others could also bring up similar ambient/background networks that piggyback off your main network.
If this were to happen, then your TVs and other devices wouldn't even need permission to connect to your main network and instead go through one of the many ambient/background networks.
Perhaps there's good reason to only use zwave and zigbee smart devices instead of wifi ones.
The difference though, is that TV is sitting in our bedroom mostly dormant, since my wife watches it maybe 1-4 times a week while she's getting ready for work.
Thirty seconds poking around the interwebs led me to this Samsung 65” 4K “digital signage” for $1125:
https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/4k-uhd/qb-serie...
43, 50, 55, 75, and 85 also available.
I assume that these are as good as or better than most people have in their homes (esp. with Vizio), but probably not as good as what home theater enthusiasts might want.
Am I missing something?
Also as a note, it’s become increasingly difficult to root TVs. Even getting firmware can be a chore, and forget getting anything other than a bootlog over RS232.
Amazon had many options with varying levels of dumbness. I ordered a Sceptre.
People want a decent TV. They want the alphabet soup 4K UHD OLED QLED etc. They want to be able to pick the size of the TV. And they don't want their TV to spy on them or show them additional advertisements.
My experience with digital sign TVs is they are much more expensive than the equivalent TV. They add on small business tools to display advertisements and in some cases still come with "smart" features. You generally can't get them in a big box store either.
When I bought my "dumb" TV I couldn't get all the features I wanted and I couldn't get one larger than 45".
The jist is that adding and cheap computer to the TV subsidizes it by allowing unlimited data mining and advertising opportunities for the manufacturer. There is little incentive for any company to cater to the crowd that doesn't appreciate this trade-off.
Did I?
The article says it’s “stupidly difficult” to find a dumb TV. I think I showed that it’s not.
Regarding all the other stuff you said:
- It seems like you want the TV makers to cater to you your needs and wants in terms of feature set and distribution channel for your dumb TV. Why would they choose to make it easy to buy a dumb tv when there is more money in selling you a smart tv?
- Regarding your dumb tv purchase, I don’t know where you’re located, but these limits for a dumb TV simply aren’t true in the US unless you want something very niche.
- Do you think your needs are representative of the market while also being equally or more profitable than what is currently available? At this point, most people who want a dumb tv are going to have to make a few compromises that, for most people, are minor. I think that’s a fair trade —- sad that it needs to work that way, but fair.
I am US based, and I wrote about my personal experience buying a "dumb" TV in the US.
It's not connected to internet. It's connected to Apple TV box. Thanks for the discount.
The standards for evidence that tech people will accept continue to amaze me. (https://kiwiziti.com/~matt/timberlake/)
From the article:
“As a dumb TV fan who has bought several sets in the last decade, I’m usually told something akin to: “well, just don’t connect the TV to the Internet!” But that route locks you out of firmware updates, and some TV makers remove functionality if you refuse to participate in their online ecosystem. Many smart TV GUIs also need to load before you’re even allowed to switch laggy HDMI inputs.”
The whole idea is to have no functionality on the tv. Just display the images ;-)
But it’s clear there’s a hidden point in the argument; I don’t want functionality I won’t use. I don’t want the risk of connecting my TV. The temptation to see what it looks like.
It's not always the ads or apps.
Post processing, and other parts of rendering are still occurring. For example, if you game, have an Xbox, and a Sony TV, VRR is a feature that gets added to the TV after you buy it.
I'm on my second Roku OS TCL tv, and no new features are ever added to those. The firmware updates strictly deal with the app environment.
VRR being added, as I stated, is something Sony has been doing this year.
I recently spent way too much time trying to pick a new TV - mostly based on using it disconnected.
Someone needs to make dumbtv.com where smart TVs are reviewed based on using them as a dumb tv.
2 update firmware
3 disconnect from internet
Besides, most TVs have an option to update firmware from USB stick.
I got a smart LG and let it go on the Internet to get a feel for the apps and webOS (as a Palm fanboy who was curious of how that story ended), and after trying it for a few weeks, it went back offline. Now the TV is turned on and off by the AppleTV connected to it.
They’re a bit more pricey than a Vizio or something like that, but the quality is great so I think the premium is worthwhile.
The UI is pretty snappy and fast to load up HDMI inputs, and once you figure out how to block the internet without triggering the flashing light, there's not really any loss. The whole POINT is that I'm not using online functionality, so I don't care if I lose it.
Just wait until one of your neighbors gets a DSL or cable contract with a deal like "share your electricity with us to run a public hotspot and get free access to our nationwide hotspot network in turn". There have been complaints about smart TVs automatically connecting to open WiFi networks [1], it's not that far fetched to assume some manufacturer will sooner or later cut a deal with Comcast or other providers.
Or that your smart TV gets its own embedded DOCSIS modem - one would not even be able to spot that except by dissecting the firmware! - or LTE modems. All it takes is the smell of enough profits.
I also haven’t really loved the Samsung TV. The UI is not great and it often forces me into their undeletable live streaming TV app.
I also recently purchased an LG tv, and I love it. The UI is great, there’s no ads, or intrusive apps. I’ll likely only buy LG tvs moving forward.
So in that particular case it appears to be what happened.
(this was a year plus back so I've completely forgotten which vendor, sorry)
https://www.engadget.com/vizio-q1-earnings-inscape-013937337...
Note that Visio is still making profit on the TVs itself, in addition to the ad revenue. Pretty standard operating procedure in most markets these days. Charge for the product, sell either additional features for the product (which used to come included in the price) or the metrics the product provides.
Nevermind that this data is then shared between them. And anyone and anything else getting in through the doors in the back.
It doesn’t change the fact that the people doing the subsidizing aren’t getting the intended value from me.
Apple also does a pretty good job of securing devices against “back access”.
In your opinion, is there actual overall value to still having a TV any more or is it just a habit? The number of ultra cheap space-filler productions (reality TV about police chases being one, but how many cookery programmes are there now?)seem to have diluted everything worth watching to almost zero.
(I do watch DVDs on computer BTW)
It's mainly a UX thing. There's just more friction with TV apps even if they do have a "watch live" option. Channel hopping is just much harder.
YouTube is deep in my filter bubble whereas channel hopping TV channels is a moderately curated selection.
(and YouTube in private browsing is just a firehose of automated recommendations).
There's probably about 10 channels worth watching on UK Freeview and the hit rate is fairly high when my standards are low but I want something easy and engaging.
And that common denominator is appalling!
Importantly, they’re far more forgiving to lower definition content than modern displays, and while retro games are more of a driving force for still using a CRT today, I could totally see a VHS collection being a good reason to keep one around.
The main drawbacks are the size/weight, limited screen size by modern standards, obscene power draw, and the fact that they need maintenance to keep the geometry good.
CRTs in general are honestly superior in a number of a ways. They effectively have built-in anti-aliasing, they tend to have better color depth, and usually have better speakers than a flatscreen TV. They're also better for most retro video game systems. Where I am, you can also still get a decent number of CRT TVs for free.
I've also never understood the obsession with higher resolutions. Particularly in the case of old movies, films were not shot with the expectation that you could see every detail. Even when we still had a flatscreen we'd rent from Amazon at 480p just to save a dollar or two. Higher resolution doesn't really inherently look better in many cases. But, I'll definitely admit some newer movies will flash some text on screen sometimes that is hard to make out on an old CRT.
I guess my primary argument is not really that CRTs are so amazing (although they're better than people remember) -- but only that flatscreens are not really that great either. A great movie is a wonderful experience on either. Once you get into the film, the story, music, and characters really prevent you from fixating on pixels. We're not missing anything, and we haven't spent any money to support this hobby. In the case of VHS and DVD, old movies generally look better on a CRT. In the case of new movies, there is some compromise, but it usually doesn't matter.
My intuitive sense is that people don't actually care about increased resolution, but simply know that they're using the "inferior" option, and claim not to like it. I'm not suggesting this is actually the case -- it's just that caring about a sharper picture is foreign enough to me that it's not my most natural conclusion. Logically, I can certainly understand people probably do care about image sharpness. I'm just not one of those people.
While there’s a plenty of content I enjoy watching even if it’s only available in 480, 4K DV content on the big screen offers a completely different level of immersion.
I really like DS9, but it clearly suffers from its format. Even basic things like the ability to make out facial expressions of the cast become more difficult or even impossible at lower resolutions.
I've a hard time to find the exact hardware but check out this video for what I have in mind: https://youtu.be/ZsNKu4umHq4?t=218 - 'too accurate' is a very nice way of describing what LCDs do.
Edit: https://www.amazon.com/Gam3Gear-Scanline-Generator-Portable-... - that's one piece of kit
A great example I use is that in the Dark Knight, the thread the joker ties to the smoke grenade while getting into the school bus unwinds from his coat and is also purple. Like isn’t that insane to notice?
Laptop/tablet screens are ok when travelling but after a few weeks I do miss a large screen and no fluffing around with setting up the viewing area, sound, etc.
I'm actually not sure what the complaint is about "smart" TVs. Just don't give them your WiFi password, or else isolate them on a closed LAN. Plug in your own devices to play what you want to play on them. The cross-marketing is what makes them affordable... the special buttons for accidentally turning on Netflix, that Netflix paid to place in just that position on the remote control, are the reason a 60" TV is within your budget. So just control your network and take the free shit. As long as it has the ports you need. If it doesn't have ports, then obviously don't buy it.
Do you watch them alone, or do you have a dedicated screen for that? Or what's your setup? Many people have a "TV" just for the screen, not the tuner, simply because you don't want the same kind (size) of screen at the same position to watch a movie and to do e.g. browse the internet.
It's nice to be able to throw a movie from the plex server on there with my SO and have a stay-in movie night with some popcorn. Especially during covid lockdown we did this almost weekly with movies, documentaries from youtube or netflix, and tv shows we watched together. A computer screen doesn't really provide the same experience.
On Black Friday I found a deal for a new TV and picked it up, but it was a Roku smart tv. I couldn't find a way to get it working without creating a Roku account so I made one with a dummy email address and then disconnected it from the wifi. Only use it with the Chromecast, which we can use for plex/youtube/netflix without trying to futz around with the UI on the TV.
I purchased a HiSense TV with Roku from Costco. When I first turned it on, it asked to connect to Wi-Fi. I said no, and it hasn’t bothered me since. There were no terms of service or click-through licenses to agree to, or accounts to create. I imagine all that comes after you connect it to Wi-Fi.
But never having been connected to the internet, the HDMI ports and TV tuner all work fine.
If that's the case, that's the part you missed, nowadays I think that we're at like 60-70% of usage that IS NOT live broadcast channels.
I do think there is a bit to be missed by not watching live broadcast channels, because it is an easy window to view how a large part of the population think, but yeah overall the content is pretty abysmal.
But, WRT having a physical TV, it's mostly comfort. I want to watch my entertainment (educative youtube video, dumb shut-your-brain-off TV shows, "complex" plot with pretty images TV shows) from the comfort of my sofa, with "happier" colors and brightness (I could say better "picture quality", but since it's mostly post-production changes, it's usually hardly representative of real-life, it's only representative of what the producer wants)
- Playing console games
- Common "sharing ground" when friends are around (let me add something to Spotify queue, let me show something on Youtube etc.)
If you have a family, tv is not a necessity per se but a convenient norm. It allows more than one person to watch the Disney or Netflix show or movie, or even a DVD if your inclinations are toward vintage antiques ;-)
I agree that I have not watched a cable channel in more than a decade.
I dont have cable but I have a TV to watch movies, DVD or BR. More comfortable than watching on a computer.
There is a difference between the TV set and broadcast television.
There has been this thing called “the internet” since the last time you owned a TV and these things called “streaming services”.
Why is this the one area where being ignorant of something that has 90% penetration seen as a virtue?
Buying a B-stock JVC DLA-X790R for 2,300 usd was one of the best purchase I've ever made. Amazing image quality, looks great on the 120 inch screen that drops from my ceiling in the living room and not a iota of smartness included.
Only thing is that it does mean that watching movies during the day is not great without black out curtains. This creates intentionality behind our tv watching. Turning on the video projector, closing the black out curtains and opening the screen means that we don't start watching tv out of force of habit. There's a certain degree of conscious decision behind watching a movie or tv show and I think that's beneficial to us by reducing the amount of tv watching and forcing us to concentrate on higher quality content.
It's a bit similar to using records to listen to music (I don't personally but I can see how it could enhance the experience compared to just turning on spotify) or to making loose leafed tea with proper teaware.
Edit: I think there's just a typo on the HN title. The original title showing on the website is "It's Still Stupidly, Ridiculously Difficult to Buy a 'Dumb' TV" which is perfectly grammatical.
The trick, though, is to connect it to the internet and then block it on your router. For some reason this doesn't trigger the light to blink.
isn't it like this for cars already?
- Ethernet over HDMI
- TVs with modems
- Ambient/background networks like Amazon Sidewalk
- Existing open networks
Because personally I never ever would configure internet on my TV. I just use HDMI as input.
But this is also because I don't have cable TV. Imho dropping cable TV is one of the best ROIs you can make.
Me too, I strongly suspect it is just a rumour or urban legend. I can't find any reliable sources that could name a vendor or model number of TVs that do this. And it is not like it would be hard to prove/verify for tech-journalists, yet there has been no credible report of it.
I do, however, think that there are quite some TVs out there that will just refuse to work if you don't connect them/shut of the internet. But if you get one of those, just return it to the store.
I’d pay an $80 to $100 premium for a dumb TV
I’d even consider replacing a couple
Smart TVs are just terrible
Rethink that. If HDMI were delta-compressed, then what happens if you exceed the bandwidth limit for several frames in a row? To be reliable, it needs to have as much bandwidth allocated as is needed for bitmap streaming. And in that case, why not just stream the bitmaps...
It could also send deltas and achieve much higher variable frame rates.
The need to stream pixels at a constant rate feels like scanning a CRT and makes generating video signals a lot more complicated than it needs to be.
There's no way deltas would exceed deltas that are just full frames. If you can't send a full frame over the wire, then you are trying to push too many pixels and need to downsample on any of the 3 dimensions you have to play with.
Having said that, DSC exists and has been adopted by both HDMI and DisplayPort standards. But only on the highest end of capability because it costs a lot to implement on both sides.
A full-frame 8K image with 32 bits per pixel takes up 128MB of RAM. An FHD one is 16 times less, 8MB. This is not a lot of memory for an appliance in 2002, when HDMI was introduced.
You only need a frame buffer if you are holding a frame.
Because manufacturers will earn more than your 100$ with ads and all other smart features on you if they don't let you buy a dumb screen.
Is there any evidence that this is the case?
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-adver...
The quality of the picture is much lower than high end budget tvs like the Hisense 55U6G. If youre buying a TV primary for the panel, to watch video, being "dumb" isnt going to take preference for me over the better panel.
https://www.viewsonic.com/us/products/shop/digital-displays....
[Edit] Upon thinking about this a bit more, I am going to assume someone will figure out how to replace the firmware and OS on these. Probably a better question is, what can these devices be used for beyond watching television? How much graphics processing power do they have? Do they have any advanced instructions in their chipsets or any special purpose chips?
Only downside: You pay more (>$/€1000) to have less.
Sigh. I am stuck on a 40" 1080p Dumb tv :(
When it'll be too old to work, I'll replace it with a projector.
However, the day I unboxed the TV there was no internet yet. I only got it out with the goal of testing the new receiver and 5.1 speakers that had just arrived. All I needed was to display the HDMI UI output of the receiver so I could select the proper speaker assignments and validate the speakers were working before mounting them. I could NOT figure out how to get this display to... you know, display! At least not without first providing it an internet connection and spending nearly half an hour configuring it.
The first barrier was accepting the license agreement. But before displaying the license agreement the TV insisted on checking a server to see if there was a newer version of the license agreement. I couldn't figure out any way around this and it's just unacceptable.
Is there possibility to disassemble the TV set to get the display and then connect that to your own equipment, somehow, if you do not want all of the other functions?
One comment in the linked article says:
> A panel with a bunch of inputs should not need firmware updates. Personally, I’d go simpler: one input (HDMI or DisplayPort), no remote, automatically turns on and off depending on signal availability. Maybe with a knob for brightness.
That could work, but I don't like HDMI; other than that it looks like a good idea. (My idea is Digi-RGB, which I had written the specification; I think is much better than HDMI)
Do they auto-connect to open Wi-Fi for example?
But I wouldn't be surprised if Samsung and others would already be working on a solution where the TVs use your phone as a bridge to the internet. Or neighboring IoT devices (similar to Amazon Sidewalk).
> I’m usually told something akin to: “well, just don’t connect the TV to the Internet!” But that route locks you out of firmware updates, and some TV makers remove functionality if you refuse to participate in their online ecosystem. Many smart TV GUIs also need to load before you’re even allowed to switch laggy HDMI inputs.
(although this is exactly what I did with the Samsung smart TV I picked up on a bargain, and I have zero complaints so far)
I know several older people who changed TV because of it.
If the premise is "do not connect it to a network to make it a dumb TV" then the apps that need the internet won't work anyway.
If the only thing is connected to is HDMI (and that device providers any apps you need)... Then surely firmware and software updates are not needed.
If course the key is to never ever give it any network or Bluetooth credentials.
I didn’t accept the various EULAs on my LG C1 TV. I’m able to update firmware but I don’t use any of its Apps. Instead I use an Apple TV for streaming and we don’t have a cable subscription. I haven’t checked how much data the LG is leaking (I really should turn off its Wi-Fi) and I trust Apple just enough to be less shady than LG.
[0] https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00173195
Yes, they do.
Also some Samsung models use Tizen as the OS, which hopefully could be more easier to jailbreak.
Another option are signage displays, which usually (not always, though) are big dumb unconnected monitors. They're also a lot more robust (and pricey) than consumer TVs.
If I had to replace mine now, I'd probably get the 65UH5F-B, a 65" LED, 500 nits, 3840x2160, 60Hz, HDMI 3.0, DP, DVI, RS232, RJ45, IR.
Everything about watching TV now just seems easy, no ads, no crap. Love it.
I'm close to building my own TV DIYPerks style.
[1]: https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/nvidia-shield-tv-update-an... [2]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.efesser.fla...
I mean if you worry about spying just don't connect smart TV to internet, but yeah, the interface will be usualyl slower than dumb TV.
If you are frustrated by outdated software nothing stops you from plugging whatever Android stick into HDMI port, that's what I did with my dumb "smart" TCL with extremely locked Android without app store, without side loading (no it's not possible unless you wanna disassemble the TV and hardwire it) and with Youtube regularly crashing.
But why would you want TV without speaker, that's what makes TV a TV, if you dont want even speaker then it can be hardly called a TV, that's like calling phone something which can't even make call.
Btw. there are always projectors, where it should be better situation and you are also not limited by size.
Many people hook up their TV (or media box) to their home audio system which often has much better sound quality. The built-in speakers of TVs are a bit pointless in that context.
I mean, you can grab some dedicated speakers or a sound bar or something? In fact, some people do this instead of using the TV speakers anyways since it usually results in a better experience/higher audio quality.
You can also always disconnect the speaker if your religious belief is against speaker in TV, though you might void your warranty and I would understand more, if you would have issue with built-in microphone than speaker.
I don't see the problem with this particular technology if it's used lightly, unlike a smart phone, for example, which can pass enormous amounts of personal and location information on you even if you're not addicted to using it all day.
Violating your privacy in unsurprising ways that provide no value to you: obviously when and how you use it, possibly including screenshots and audio fragments to help HQ determine what you're watching
Degrading your experience: basically just ads in places you don't want them that didn't exist when you bought it.
Violating your privacy in "surprising" ways that provide no value to you, and circumventing your efforts to stop it: what other devices are present on your home network, where your home is, connecting to unsecured wifi (or soon mesh networks with your neighbor's TV) to do so.
IMO these are the things to defend against. If they're not happening to you then that's great. It's also fine if they don't bother you. For example, if 3 is happening to me I'm not going to go to the trouble of figuring it out how to stop it, though it will change my future purchasing decisions.
If you only use one or two hardware inputs and one's not an OTT box, it's a lot easier to just use the TV's apps. People don't want to have to buy extra gadgets just to have another TV for their kids or in another room.
Currently have an LG TV; while in theory it's a fairly dumb TV that has services like youtube and netflix built in, it's only dumb because it still allows you use it without agreeing to certain terms and conditions; they have split it up in a number of categories for things like 'smart' advertising (I paid too much for this thing for it to have advertising), speech controls, etc. At the moment it will still nag me to agree to something if I try to open up Amazon Prime, but it can still be skipped.
Probably only a matter of time before it gets bricked if I don't agree to the T's and C's. Probably after three years so the warranty expires.
I have the feeling that "smart" tvs are cheaper because (like the laptops with windows preinstalled) they are filled to the brim with adware and spyware.
Ended up buying a Samsung QLed (marketing bling) TV that I never connected to my network. Switching between input devices requires 6 buttons presses (!) because it keeps nagging to connect the TV to the internet.
I haven't checked but I think you could probably still find something bare-bone today it's just that people want the greatest shit and don't want to settle for less. Maybe try something that isn't OLED or 4K and you might be surprised...
You’ll also have to deal with substantially degraded experience from streaming services unless you’re willing to deal with the inconvenience of pirating everything.
Is it really convenient? Sure! As long as you ignore all the work that goes into setup and maintenance. I’d be deluding myself if I tried to pretend that this is anything but yet another part of a really expensive and time consuming home theater hobby.
Even at it’s best DIY piracy is still miles away from just being able to open up Netflix and start watching.
Of course you can pay for someone else to maintain the Plex server for you, which isn’t a horrible option.
Even a network share would take more work to set up than Plex.
Why Plex? Easy set up, vastly better UI than a network share, works from outside the home. I travel often and frequently benefit from the transcoding feature when dealing with shitty hotel wifi. Friends love it too.
Playing directly from a regular computer isn’t a very good option due to shit format support.
Can you even properly playback 4K HDR content from Linux? I don’t think so.
Format support on desktop platforms is awful.
Unfortunately the margins are so thin, need to be investigating new revenues streams or else the business fails under commoditization pressures. Agree that Adtech is not the answer.
Perhaps I am missing the point because I do not live in the western world. I have observed my people who moved to the west are into large screen TVs, but I never understood the lure.
The state of the TV market is why I haven't purchased a new TV in a decade or so. And the way things are going, I probably never will. When the one I have dies, I'll likely not replace it.
It'll get you a small but absolutely die-hard customer base for a couple lines code
They don't yet ATM because they don't need to - too many people are stupidly connecting their wifi.
The free market doesn't seem so keen on modifications, see phones, laptops etc. All walled gardens where even repair is discouraged.
Or silently use your neighbor's tv (of the same brand or cross-brand network pact) as access point. Not for streaming video, but just for the tracking.
This is where we're headed.
The key is probably to get that interface standardized so you can buy one of their smart TVs and plug in your own, dumb dongle for nerds and hackers.
https://www.asus.com/Displays-Desktops/Monitors/All-series/f...
these are both ATSC tuners so they're fine for me in the US, but there is of course a different broadcast standard in non-US countries so this advice won't apply there.
The market creates a natural power imbalance, and the market has shown that it can't act responsibly here. A better analogy is the power imbalance in the relation company-versus-employees, where you create a union to break the imbalance. Except now it is a "union" of consumers.
Another analogy is democracy: let's not produce stuff that a few CEOs and shareholders want, but instead, let's produce stuff that the world wants. Also helps with resource/climate/environment problems.
You’ve created a government body gating market access. Surprise! Only the incumbents’ products get approved. Even if it doesn’t get corrupted, the wait times and specialist skills required to prepare the requisite documentation and answer questions properly will add a huge barrier to entry for new entrants.
2. You can still go to court where a jury of consumers can look into the case.
3. Surprise, without government intervention the market doesn't function like it should (see this very article).
It wasn't that long ago that I think it was Samsung was caught with the mic always on or something? I don't remember.
I hate how TV's have gone. I don't really consider myself an audiophile (or the picture quality equilvent) but I am willing to spend money on good sound and picture. Not spend a ton but cleanly middle ground on sound and high ground on picture quality.
I have a 75" tv right now and eying an 85" when I upgrade this thing. I play a lot of video games, watch a lot of movies, so it is very worth it for me. I would happily pay a premium to not have all of this smart tv stuff thrown in that I will never use.
There are display or other dumb TV's but from what I can tell they lack many of the bells and whistles that the top of the line TV's coming out today have. Which is what I care about. For example, getting rid of the Halo effect around lights. Something that could ruin a dark video game or movie.
You could just say "don't connect it to wifi". Well the first obvious problem, I live in a city. There are a ton of unsecured Wifi networks nearby that it would be very easy for the TV to connect too. Even if not, if they entered an agreement with Xfinity and used their shared wifi network... I would wager they would be able to connect almost anywhere.
Problem 2. I have had a number of times that randomly I would have signal issues with devices that had been working just fine. The only possible solution I could find was to update the firmware on the TV. Requiring me to connect it to the internet (I keep an ethernet cable nearby just for this use case) so it could update and likely send all of the data it was collecting anyways.
I always connect an Apple TV to my tv for any streaming I want to do.
That being said, If Apple actually truly put out a Smart TV that just ran TVos and didn't invade my privacy... I would likely buy it and have no hesitation on connecting it too the internet.
Works pretty well and I can switch out streaming sticks easily when they start to suck.
All my friends have smart TVs and aren't very happy with them.
The TV manufacturers will subsidise a cellular connection to allow users to stream hours of 4K content in exchange for a few pennies of ad revenue?
Smart TVs don't make any sense unless they are connected to a home network.
So they can track that you keep the TV tuned to HDMI 1 all day?
It has no software, no updates, two hdmi inputs, an USB port and some minor inputs.
I absolutely love it.
Any suggestions for great second hand higher res models?
Yet the money we paid does not have this property.
The money works 100% for the recipient and we retain no influence over it at all. We can't say what it get's spent on or poison it's performance so that it works for us instead of them somehow. We hand it over and it becomes 100% theirs and it works 100% normally, and does so forever, and with no strings.
There is no amount of rationalizing or explaining or excusing that resolves that simple fact.
Any updates you need do it via android tv.
Done.
I feel lazy and useless if I find myself in front of a TV.
Personal laptop, headless desktop for local file backup and music server, WiFi gear, phone, and job laptop, are the extent of my tech at home.
Feels great being decoupled from the consumer garbage churn. The made up frustration not finding what you want, the contrived reviews and story; all make for pretty banal and repetitive social life around you meat based tape recorders.
Let’s face it, it’s not easy to connect a computer or get some set top box that is probably just as intrusive security-wise as a smart tv.
Sometimes we here on HN don’t think about the normal requirements of civilians.
And I’m saying this having bought a few TV sets recently. Both a dumb 1080p panel and 2 smart 4K tvs.
And yes it was extremely hard to find the dumb set in the store here. Almost don’t even bother looking online - it’s the same problems.
But in the end I’m using a Roku box which is no less intrusive than your typical smart set. So really we can’t win.