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Comment by RL_Quine | Hacker News Reader

The smart features of a TV subsidize its price. A "non smart" device manufacturer has to sell at a dramatically non competitive price because they aren't selling user data or flooding advertising into the content shown. Sitting on a shelf, who would buy a TV with less features for double or three times the price?

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We don't know, because manufacturers made sure that doesn't happen. There is no equivalent, premium-priced privacy-respecting TVs sold next to "smart" ones. And they definitely don't advertise the user-hostile "smart" features, such as telemetry and forced ads, as prominently as the price.

What we do know is that even the least price-sensitive consumers, that buy the most high-end TVs, aren't given the option:

Buying a product knowing it has ads in it is one thing, but users on Reddit and elsewhere are understandably angry about ads suddenly being patched into their devices—especially in cases when these devices are multi-thousand-dollar 4K Sony televisions - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/04/google-pilot-program...

The least price sensitive people are also the most valuable people to sell ads for.

To be honest that's what they want you to believe. Last time i opened a smart TV looked like the most expensive thing was the standing foot and the plastic frame. The rest was power supply (which was broken - planned - died just when warranty expired) and a cheap android computer. I think they cannot resist to the idea that if they have Android why not sell some ads.

Oh I really hate this meme because even folks at HN repeat it like a broken record though nobody even cared to back it with a real BOM analysis.

Only source I've seen so far for this ridiculous claim is "an executive of Sony said so in an interview". Yeah, a really neutral source of information, indeed.

55" open cell panel costs less than $100 and this is by far the single most expensive component in a TV.

So a $300 Walmart special Roku TV might needed to be subsidized a little, but doing the same on a fancy LG, Samsung or Sony would be purely out of greed.

I think you're underestimating just how much money there is to be made after the sale. Vizio now makes more money on ads and data harvesting than on hardware sales.

Somehow I doubt the large OLED panel in my TV is cheaper than its little stand.

Netflix / Disney pre-installed on the smart TV are probably the features that allow the manufacturer to reduce the price thanks to subsidize from those subscription vendors.

Does Netflix (still) subsidize TV vendors to include their app? Or is it the case that TV vendors would not be able to sell their products if they didn't come with built-in Netflix?

I read some representative from Nvidia Shield explaining that they were forced to add a Netflix button to their remote in 2019 because Netflix would no longer allow their app to be installed on devices without a dedicated button.

For TVs, absolutely, that's a hard value proposition to beat. But you can't tell me that there's anything like as much profit delta between 'dumb' and smart...refrigerators.

There's a hot tub brand who include LTE radios in their hot tubs to ensure that they always have an analytics channel irrespective of what the user configures. Why on earth? It means they can target advertising for consumables and services. Same goes for fridges which need replacement filters, fresheners, whatever, you've just got to dupe the user into giving you internet connectivity, or accept the cost of putting a cellphone radio in your product.

That is amazing and bananas in equal measure, and I seriously hope it's true (in a sort of black mirror-esque way) -- it's just the perfect parody.

And the perfect example! If I was choosing between two otherwise-equivalent hot tubs I would /definitely/ pay more for one without the ability to call home. Are there enough people who would also be willing to pay more, and pay enough more to make up the difference in lost advertising revenue? I guess...not?

  > There's a hot tub brand who include LTE radios in their hot tubs

Is there any disclosure that the device includes such a radio?

No idea, I saw it on a list of "product success stories" for a IOT cellular provider.

I'm guessing you're referring to Particle?

Mandatory registration to the FCC?

you can still damage the LTE antenna or put aluminium tape on it.

Not if the antenna is somewhere that's filled up with epoxy for waterproofing.

Which hot tub?

I think you mean something like $20 more, and that's likely overshooting.

Some smart TVs can milk money from subscription partnerships, but on a per-tv-sold basis it's not really that much.

I've never seen any ads in my smart devices and I have a hard time seeing how the user data could be worth so much that dumb device startups can't even enter the market. Do you have any source with numbers on this?

I mean, I can understand the value of user data from Facebook but a stove or a fridge? What exactly are they selling?

Edit: realized now we're talking about TVs but still, is that data really worth that much?

https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/328967-vizio-makes-2...

> double or three times the price

I'd like to see sources on that.

Amazon's tablet is like $20 cheaper if you buy it with integrated ads. A TV will have a hard time showing so many ads through the day that it'll halve the price.

I'd like to see sources on that.

I just checked a (Swedish) price comparison site and the cheapest 65" 4K TV currently available was literally less than half the price of the cheapest Not Smart TV.

Also with Smart TVs I had a choice of over 200 different models, while with Not Smart TVs I had a choice of 2.

If they also leave out the dsp, and settle on a standard form factor with no plastic clips and with standard mounts for all internal stuff. I'd buy in a heartbeat.

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