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Comment by SayMyName | Hacker News Reader

You can still get cheap ones. And by cheap I mean TLC/Hisense level quality displays. Walmart sells Sceptre's for low prices and have no smart features, best purchase I've made in years.

We use a lot of Rokus here and my issue isn't the ads, its that every Roku built-in TV gets REALLY slow after a few updates, so now it's just easier to chuck a $20-30 device instead of having to buy an entire $300+TV.

Sure I don't get 120Hz fancyness but at least it's 4k and the picture is good enough for my consoles.

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+1 to Sceptre TVs! Recently (past week) bought a 4k Sceptre TV and it was less than $200. 60hz, looks great, the smartest feature it has is a clock you have to set yourself.

Just make sure not to buy the android or roku ones!

> smartest feature it has is a clock you have to set yourself

And, we've come back around to the 80s. <blink>12:00</blink>

I bought a Sceptre last year and one of the hilarious things about it was it had the "lite" Roku interface, just your input selections with no smart features. Those TV's are fantastic for the price assuming they don't fail (and even then it could be argued that it's still a good deal).

I bought a TCL with smart features and there's no ads and I just dont connect it to wifi.

The Firestick 4k Max I got for $75 advertises prime shows occasionally (unobtrusively) but the UI is 2x as fast as my Chromecast so I very happily use it w/ IPTV, Airplay, and streaming apps.

I have a Firestick 4k Max on our main TV and a standard 4k stick on the other TV. They just work compared to my Shield TV which always seemed to fighting my home theater setup. I got them through a Prime deal, so I think I spent a total of $75 for both.

I've been tempted by some in-app features that only seem to work on AppleTV devices but not enough to spend that much when my current devices do the job so well.

Like some high quality audio streaming or better Airplay integration or something?

I had the same temptations to upgrade to Apple but I've resisted. Android seems to be where it's at for pure variety of software when it comes to TV/streaming media.

Much worse than ads is automatic content recognition (which, of course, is monetized by the TV's manufacturer).

How do you use the smart features without connecting it to the network (and exposing yourself to ACR)?

I was curious and looked up reviews for Sceptre, but according to some discussions on Reddit, they have build quality issues. One of the threads [0] had a discussion on picture quality and build quality issues.

Another subreddit [1] even has an automoderator comment that says getting a smart TV and not hooking it up to the internet is the best option. The automoderator also writes that if one is certain about going non-Smart, then one should "look at a projector or a Commercial Display. A projector means you will also 100% need audio with it. A Commercial Display or Hospitality TV you could pay up to twice or even more for the same TV (or worse) without smart features."

However, I'm not sure how reliable that automoderated comment on r/4kTV is.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/hometheater/comments/a25d5m/are_sce...

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/4kTV/comments/qt9wvf/nonsmart_tvs/

Not hooking it up to the internet soon won't be enough with Amazon Sidewalk and other related efforts.

There is the dystopian version of always connected, but it'd be nice to get firmware updates (supposing those updates mainly fix bugs, add features, improve performance).

I'd rather just upgrade firmware by downloading it and using the usb port.

Imagine when you have to "activate" your tv to use it.

The cheap ones also have a blazing fast non-android menu. This was my last samsung

> gets REALLY slow after a few updates

The curse of smart TVs, I swear.

My TV pops an error and says it's still powering on if I try to change inputs right after turning it on.

Yet, if it is turned on by a device, like I begin casting to my chromecast, or turn on my xbox, it'll go to that input immediately no problem.

> every Roku built-in TV gets REALLY slow after a few updates

My Samsung TV just seems buggy. Certain apps like YouTube will choke on certain videos, down to the point of just randomly rebooting the TV.

And newer apps (like Peacock) never get released for the version of the software that runs on my TV.

I guess at some point we'll just either buy a new TV, or maybe now that Apple 'fixed' the remote I'll dig the Apple TV back out.

I dont like 120Hz refresh, it looks weird. I see it a whole lot on bad 4k transfers of older movies, they're either doing a 3:2 pulldown or something else to up convert the scan rate, but no matter what it is, it makes the motion look weird and excessively fluid.

3:2 pulldown is taking 24fps film and making it work in 29.97fps TV video, generally with a couple interlaced frames. If you're seeing something "excessively fluid" the TV is interpolating frames. Which I love: 24fps needs to die. But a 120Hz refresh TV can also display 24 fps exactly, by showing the same frame 5 times, if the manufacturer has provided such a mode. 60Hz TVs cannot display 24fps without judder or interlacing

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