The cost of cheap TVs
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Do you have a reference for this? I guarantee that it would be interesting for people.
I second that. Will need a new TV soon and before buying a much more expensive signage display I would consider a SmartTV that would work as "dumb" screen without complaining, or worse, forcing me to connect it to the Internet.
1. CostCo models have 3-year manufacturer warranty instead of 1 year. (mine bundled coverage through AllState to make it 5 years warranty total)
2. CostCo models have a physical switch for the built-in microphone (used for Google Assistant, Alexa, and tuning audio for the built-in speakers) to turn it off. Mine is turned off and left off out of the box. [2]
3. In the fine print on superscript 2 in the spec sheet[1]: "Use of TV without connecting to a Google account allows only basic TV features and certain apps."
So #3 there, basically means if you don't accept the T&Cs and connect the TV to the Internet it acts like a dumb display with just support for HDMI, etc inputs. I am using mine with an Xbox Series X connected to it and that's how I watch Netflix, as an example, or play games with Game Pass. The TV itself has never had an Internet connection, and all /display/ features work perfectly fine, it just doesn't do anything "smart" in basic mode. In basic mode it basically reverts to a dumb TV. It also doesn't nag you after you make a choice.
This differs from the non-CostCo models, which in some instances /force/ you to connect to the Internet and accept the T&Cs within some time frame in order to be useable. As far as I am aware, CostCo has agreements with most manufacturers to produce CostCo specific SKUs and always enforces points #2 and #3 for these TVs. It's the primary reason I bought my TV through CostCo.
[1]: https://mobilecontent.costco.com/live/resource/img/static-us... [2]: https://www.avsforum.com/threads/what-is-the-difference-betw...
Does Costco do stuff like this in more instances? Are they for real some kind of consumer super heroes?
I'm reluctant to call any company a super hero, but, costco does some fairly great stuff aside from this TV thing (which I wasn't even aware of).
Costco are fairly famous for cost optimizing with their vendors, but, in contrast to how others do it they have a much different model from what i've read and heard. They try to help their vendors to optimize their own costs and thereby sell things cheaper by using their extensive operational knowledge to help them both understand their own cost structures and what they can do to reduce their costs. Unlike most other brands they then just pass that savings on to members. Many other companies would chose to use this information gathering to undercut their vendors and eventually supplant them and/or force them out of business (I'm looking at Amazon as the prototypical company here for this bad behaviour) but costco seems to value their relationships more and doesn't really do this (see https://www.trendymatter.com/fast-gallery/these-big-name-bra...).
Anyway, i'm hesitant to canonize any corporation but I do love their food.
I bought a treadmill from costco, a proform 2000 pro.
It said stuff in a weasely way 1-year iFit membership included (internet required for ifit).
I didn't care about that at all.
I just plugged it in and after a bunch of "now lets set up your treadmill" screens and asking for wifi access... you can see "manual mode" in the corner of the screen.
That's all you get. You can press start and then press the speed or incline buttons but nothing really useful.
I called them and they said there are canned workouts that will unlock if you connect it to the internet, but without doing that, you only get manual mode. jerks.
[edit] looked it up, it's this one: https://www.lg.com/us/tvs/lg-55UM7300AUE-4k-uhd-tv
Of course, who knows if they've since updated the OS and make it impossible to use without establishing a network connection..
Without internet there is no guide data for off-air TV even though it is not only part of the ATSC stream, Sony is decoding it. I know this because the pop up menu for the channel line has the name and time of the program being watched. That had to come off air if the internet is disabled.
Declining everything and setting up the TV as “basic” still has the underlying Google TV OS reaching out to the Play store, Android update, plus something in the Google IP block in China. Yes, China. And three net blocks from Microsoft.
Carefully selecting and permitting only the AWS Cloudfront net block will restore guide data, but it will cause the Google TV OS to howl loudly about no internet access. Allowing it to hit www.google.com shuts most of it up, but I will be poking at the OS to find out what needs to be shut off. Developer mode is available.
Sony is not using anything to report what the user is watching, network traffic is non-existent when viewing something on HDMI inputs.
This was not a cheap TV, Sony promised they would honor my requests not to be monetized, but my need for their guide data suggests otherwise (PSIP is not entirely broken, just slow). That doesn’t matter, Google is there to pick up the slack on the over the shoulder browsing.
It will be relegated to HDMI use only, just like the Samsung it replaced.
How? If you don't give it access to your WiFi, how does it make an IP connection?
5G.
I have an LG C8 OLED. I wanted the convenience of a smart TV without being tracked so I carefully went through every setting and turned it all off. I followed an article detailing what all the tracking settings were, how to disable them, etc.
I deliberately disabled all tracking options years ago.
Imagine my surprise a couple of weeks back when I looked in the settings. All of it was magically enabled again. Personalised ads, screen recognition, you name it, all switched on. How long for is anyones guess.
My trust for smart TVs is at an all time low.
Regardless it's convenient that it forgets my tracking preferences, defaults to the most permissive options possible, and doesn't forget all my other settings.
I want to use the built in apps for Netflix, YouTube, etc.
LG gave me the option of being tracked. I declined. That’s the only thing that should matter.
I just never accepted the terms on my LG and use a Roku instead, although I'm not sure it is much better. But the interface is a lot cleaner.
Consenting (possibly under duress) to one thing is not the same as consenting to all things.
You might consent to doing various intimate things with a significant other. That doesn’t make you a free for all buffet for everyone else.
For example, Roku sends back two screenshots per second of what you are watching.
https://advertising.roku.com/resources/blog/insights-analysi...
It still constantly tries to call home, but it never passed my acceptance onto LG, and with root I can do as I please.
though doing this with a raspberry pi is more fun.
[EDIT] Oh nevermind, this is about making sure nothing can wake up and phone home when not explicitly powered on.
i also have a few of the Conserve Switch models, which have a wireless radio switch but is otherwise not "smart": https://www.belkin.com/conserve-switch/P-F7C01008.html
both have been handy and going strong. i'm still puzzled why belkin basically discontinued the conserve line of products. seemed like the logical launch off point for their smart home stuff (now under the wemo brand name).
Thinking of getting an AppleTV instead, haven't gotten around to it yet.
(1) https://kodi.tv/
(The idea was that fancy HDMI cables could also carry Ethernet, so an AV receiver or TV could also be an Ethernet switch for connected devices.)
"observed" in this case means "random reddit user claimed so, but no reputable organization was able to replicate such a easily to replicate claim".
I'd assume firetv, appletv, even the PS5 I use to watch streaming services on my TV is doing basically the same thing.
Really? I thought there was some weird hardware requirements (eg. compatible cpu and gpu)[1][2], but otherwise worked fine?
[1] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23931 [2] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/55764
See: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-tv-app/
Remember, what companies consider to be "non-personal information" is often extremely personal. It's often trivial to identify an individual based on "anonymized" or "non-identifying" data, and even aggregated data my not be enough to prevent individuals from being identified.
It's not clear what "disabling ACR when Apple services were in use" actually means in practice. I'd guess it means that Apple TV+ content isn't being snooped on directly by anyone except apple, but it's hard to say.
Compare and contrast the Apple TV privacy policy you linked with Roku's, for example: https://docs.roku.com/published/userprivacypolicy/en/us
Quoting from B.1:
We may receive information about the browsers and devices you use to access the Internet, including our services, such as device types and models, unique identifiers including advertising identifiers (e.g., for Roku Devices, the Advertising Identifier associated with that device), MAC address, IP address, operating system type and version, browser type and language, Wi-Fi network name and connection data, and information about other devices connected to the same network. We may also gather the WiFi MAC addresses and broadcast signal strengths of your router and other Wi-Fi routers in your area. For Roku Devices, we may also collect the name of the retailer to whom your Roku Device was shipped, various quality measures, error logs, software version numbers, and device status (including the status of battery-powered accessories). When you enable Bluetooth while using Roku Services, we may collect your Bluetooth usage, such as connection quality, the name of the device connected to your Roku Device, and the start and stop time of your connection.
Quoting from B.3:
If you use the Roku Media Player to view your video or photo files or listen to your music files, Roku will collect data about the files viewed within the Roku Media Player, such as codecs, and other metadata of the local files you play through the Roku Media Player.
When you use a Roku TV with the Smart TV experience enabled, we use Automatic Content Recognition (“ACR”) technology to receive information about what you watch via the Roku TV’s antenna (including live television content and ads), and via devices connected to your Roku TV (including streaming players, consoles and cable and satellite set top boxes). For example, we collect TV viewing information such as the programs, commercials, and channels you view, the date, time and duration of the viewing, and how you use the on-screen TV guide. We collect TV viewing information both when you access live TV directly through your Smart TV’s interface and when you access live TV from within a Third-Party Channel. If the Smart TV experience is enabled on your Roku TV, we will use this information to personalize your TV viewing experience and ads.
Or quoting III.B:
We may disclose personal information (including Roku account registration information when you sign up with the channel or content provider, and information about your interactions with their content and the Roku Services), with partners whose services are available through the Roku Services such as providers of Third-Party Channels, Roku Direct Publisher Channels and other content providers on the Roku Services.
So much "nope" from me...
> One of the researchers working on this guide said, "It had such a scary privacy policy, I didn't even connect it to my TV." Another researcher referred to Roku as a "privacy nightmare." (https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/roku-st...)
Before this TV I just used a first gen 4k Apple TV, but I noticed it was a bit stuttery and didn't support as many formats so I've been using the native TV apps. Maybe I rushed too quickly on that.
The only way to have any control at all over your devices is to make sure that nobody else is able to modify them without your consent. Keeping our devices offline isn't always possible. Our computers and phones typically depend on internet access to stay useful, but you can at least make sure your TV is never connected to the internet.
I set it up normally at first, but software updates and such were annoying. LG TV has been connected to my router using wifi, so I simply clicked the "block internet connection for this device" in my router settings, and that was the end of my issues.
As for how I deal with outdated apps and such on the smart tv, I have never used them in the first place. AppleTV has been hooked to the LG TV the entire time, and all apps are used from the AppleTV side. Haven't had a single "update your tv software" dialogue even once since then.
With full internet access the tv takes significantly longer to load and navigate.
I finally bought my first new TV in 2020, a Sony with Android TV. I have never connected it to the Internet. Instead, it displays an AppleTV or a gaming machine.
It has been an amazing reliable display at a reasonable price, every bit as good as the imagined ideal dumb TV.
So why all the pearl clutching? Do other brands require Internet to turn on and display HDMI?
for surface-mount antennae (which cant be used for 5g or 5ghz wifi) you would just brush the same metallic fingernail polish on the trace :)
Those people deserve a solution, too.
I've bought smart TVs, not connected them to WiFi, and that was the end of it.
You can hear whispers about all kinds of sneaky things like refusing to work, but some of the best TVs out right now are LG smart TVs that will function completely identically to a dumb TV if you don't connect them to the internet.
Here's the thing: At the end of the day, a smart TV has capabilities that I don't need or want, including to change how it functions without warning or consent. However unlikely the possibility is, a smart TV still has the capability to connect to an open network, phone home, and start doing shit I don't want, which means I have to trust it to not do that.
On the other hand, my old dumb TV has none of those capabilities, so I can trust it precisely because I don't need to trust it. I know it can't do anything except display what it receives on its inputs.
Therefore, any time I've considered replacing my TV with a newer one, I've always weighed predictability against uncertainty and opted in favor of the predictability of what I own.
Maybe that's overly paranoid of me, but at the end of the day, I just haven't wanted a new TV as much as I've wanted something I can trust.
#anecdata
So any 2 bit hacker wannabe in an apartment complex? I mean if I was a teenager in the wifi days I would have been playing games like that.
Or buy an older used TV
Why should I destroy my property?
Why Isn't, for exanple, using my property to spy on me a criminal offense?
What happens when the same practices filter through to cars? Oh, wait, they already have.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-9526109/Is-...
What happens when the same issues filter through to bionic eyes? Oh, wait, they already have!
https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete
We are going back to feudalism
There is zero evidence of this ever happening.
Because the idea that a TV can spy on me is pretty repulsing. To be in compliance with the GDPR I suppose it should be pretty easy to disable, but the fact is that some moron thought that this was ever a good idea to begin with is infuriating. I don't think it's pearl clutching, it's anger, directed at both the manufacturer and the rest of the population that either doesn't know or care that they viewing habits are being tracked.
Still I just take the same route as you, my TV is just never going to touch the internet. The angry part in me just want the EU to force TVs to display a small blink light in the corner of the screen anytime viewing data is leaving the TV.
I bet all the people crying here would agree to sell their info for tracking for $20 amazon gift card.
That's a foolish bet you would loose then. Some of us already directly pay extra for privacy.
It's not just TVs, it's tracking in general for ad or for anything else. If you want to be tracked then I have no problem with that but I just want to be left alone.
If you want to be left alone then start using usb drives and air gapped laptops. Still you can't stop your personal data like bank details,addresses,SSN etc to not be available since you probably use a public/private banking system.
Once people figured out they can become billionaires off of other peoples data and governments got involved for national security the individuals privacy online is all but a myth.
I think most people just balk at the price of an external media device when their TV has “it” (but of course not the same quality “it”) built in, and so they end up with a crappy, data-mining, ad-riddled, experience. You get what you pay for.
These traits are slowly but surely becoming unavoidable if you're looking for a higher quality screen.
Cached ad insertion in front of the video signal from connected devices is inevitable.
That is not true. For TVs is an inverse relationship between quality and how aggressive the "smart" parts are.
The open WiFi thing was some low end Samsung, and it's been a long while since I've seen an open WiFi network that doesn't have a captive portal that would block the connection.
And I've never seen a TV that would refuse to work without an internet connection, and I can't imagine anything but the most bottom end no-name TV trying to pull that.
Don't bring it to the airport or out shopping? Who has an open wifi network in range of their home? (I'm out of touch though, I live in the woods, and can only occasionally see my neighbor's networks, I get to use all the channels for myself, muhahaha)
> Cached ad insertion in front of the video signal from connected devices is inevitable.
Nobody is willing to run an ad program with cached ads. I tried to set one up at my previous job, because it made more sense than live ads, but nope... not going to happen; advertisers want real time control and stats.
Because it's part of a trend of our possessions turning hostile to us. It's hardware that you pay for and supposedly own, that betrays you, spies on you and acts against your interest, covertly or at least discreetly.
That you are for now able to prevent it is besides the point. An implementation detail, that will change as soon as our corporate masters want it to.
Unfortunately, it seems to be working. Younger people see being measured, tracked, and advertised to as table stakes for having access to anything.
I don't blame the younger folks for this, as much of the motivation for acceptance is the economics involved. They may not be able to afford all the 'requirements' of modern living if they had to pay the 'i am not the product' premium.
In discussions with the client they explained that it was impossible to get lower than about double the cost of a comparably-powerful Roku and still turn a profit, without supplementing with income from spyware, advertising, and various "partner programs" on the box. Which makes it damn hard to sell the things unless you've got some other angle to work (so, Apple can pull off $250 streaming boxes, but some new company? They better have a really good pitch, and they're gonna struggle more than they otherwise might to get on store shelves, which is a whole other thing). In our case they did have a niche they were targeting that meant they didn't want or need advertising and such, but the price point still hurt, and they couldn't do better without getting into adware and spyware.
On initial power-on, the TV aggressively pushed me to set up internet access and accept a terms & conditions statement. It took some degree of dancing to find a way past the setup wizard without completing these.
I am very careful when I select inputs. If I hit the Input button on the remote to switch between devices, I need to make sure I go no further than one step left or right to select the other input. If I go too far, the next selections will tell me that I have still not set up internet and accepted the t&c's and I must do so before I use the feature. This happens regardless of whether I press 'Enter' to actively select them.
I've actually had much your opinion for years, but the TV manufacturers really are stepping up their game. My previous Samsung smart TV I was able to use the "just don't configure it" approach and everything was peachy. The landscape is changing.
Even if you do accept the terms the conditions, it comes back as soon as you are disconnected from the internet. I am extremely disappointed with the experience.
https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smar...
So, yes, the pearl clutching is for a reason.
My vehicle has a cellular internet connection that I cannot easily disable. My insurance company is among the many that would love to get at that data. TV's are valuable enough that such a connection will be coming to them too eventually.
I am in UK and don't even need live TV and pay its licencing fee. Smart TV where I can watch movies, songs, play videos from my phone or computer is the TV i need.
Before that, when it was connected, it would show me advertisements over top of my TV signal occasionally.
This severely vexes people with OCD, who want their TV set up "correctly" and maybe to receive updates, but also not to spy on them.
Because we are going back to feudalism in terms of personal rights and freedoms.
In 15 years will own no major possessionns - your electronics, car and appliances can be shut down remotely at any time because you make a tweet elon musk didn't like. And Asset Inflation will ensure noone owns a house. Na dyour door lock will be smart, so if you are behind on rent they will lock you out same day.
And people on here will be chanting 'they are a private conoany they can do what they want'
The last thing we'd want is to get a TV home, get it unwrapped and plugged in, and then have to take it back because it won't turn on without an internet connection. And I wouldn't trust a Best Buy salesperson to be knowledgeable/honest about this.
I realize there are some signage brands that never require this, but often there are great deals on Samsung/Vizio/etc. units at Best Buy/Costco, and I'd rather get one of those if I can use it in offline mode.
With that said, they typically don't have them out for you to do that.
There are things like AW5520QF, but they tend to cost 3x - 4x as much as a TV with the same exact panel because of all the "gamery" features.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1557462-REG/sharp_4t_...
You just made the article's point. What you say you want does exist, but you're not willing to pay for it.
Anyway, I know nothing about the project but there is a WebOS root/jailbreak that works on some LG models. GP might want to look into it.
I have also never been bothered by the "smart features" of Sony TVs. I just do not connect it to a network.
You won't find normal users willingly playing the panel lottery for example
(for those not familiar, that's buying $1,000+ monitors knowing there's a good chance you'll need to return them because of panel defects, and just returning them until you find one that's acceptable)
There's been a bunch of gnashing of teeth about how they'll connect to open WiFi networks, but I can't remember the last time I came across a public WiFi network without a captive portal that would block their attempt to phone home. That seems to have died off in the last few years.
And if you're prone to tinkering you can just as easily connect one through an SBC and block all traffic
Better yet, how many open WiFi networks are there around your house? For me, the answer is currently 0. People don't leave their WiFi open today like they did 15-20 years ago. Even the wireless hotspot feature on your phone makes you use WPA.
Yes they do. From my 1st WRT54G to my latest AX mesh, I have never had a WiFi password. My friends and family that were visiting over the Holidays apricated it. Everyone used it, no one asked me for the password.
Are people still Wardriving? Even if they are, the odds of a malicious hacker coming to my neighbored is up there with getting stuck by lightning. Not losing sleep over it. Why should I?
2) Access control is exactly the point. I suppose you could ban the TV's MAC address from your open network (and I suppose a sufficiently malicious TV firmware could randomize its MAC address), but your stated purpose (allowing open network access) is not exactly compatible with what you presumably wish to do (disallow network access to a smart TV).
I run an open access point and depend on tls or ssh to protect my traffic.
There are a dozen good reasons why every piece of consumer grade networking hardware released in the past 15 years is not configured this way by default.
And there is precedent with Apple for example using everyone's phones to send airtag location data (enabled by default), or Xfinity / Comcast opening a second SSID (hidden or not) if you use their modem / gateway combo.
You don't need to have any of those things, it's enough that your neighbors do for future "unconnected" smart TVs in your home to piggyback on.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/products/Flat-Panel-Displays/...
ATSC is a pretty awesome standard. There's parts of the newer ATSC standard that even supports 4k over the air. Other parts are more concerning from the data tracking perspective but it seems like there's an opportunity for a SmartTV that actually acts in the user's interest that is actually desirable and has a tuner.
Hell, that could be today, just rotating logs and discarding the oldest.
At least in my 15 years of using flat panel TVs, I have never seen a need for a firmware update.
Never had any HDMI negotiation issues or CEC issues or OTA demuxer crashes, I guess? Or adaptive backlight dimming issues... Lots of software in TVs these days.
https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?ie=UTF8&node=213281...
It could happen with one of the firmware updates you plug in for, and when you plug in it could also dump stored telemetry, in some cases (Samsung) including screenshots of your desktop if you use your TV as a monitor.
Unfortunately the repositories are not very up to date.
With ads and tracking turned off, I haven't seen any ads other than a single one on the homescreen, which I rarely use as it is, for a $25 off thing for LG's website.
It’s shockingly disturbing the amount of traffic my Samsung TV produces, even when watching OTA stations. It easily queries Samsung cloud domains more than any other device on my network. Thankfully I am able to sinkhole all those requests without totally breaking tv functionality, but after paying hundreds of dollars for a television, I don’t need to give them any more of my data for financial gain.
One of the points of the article is that if everybody did this, TVs would be much, much more expensive.
FTA:
"“post-purchase monetization,” and it means they can sell TVs almost at cost and still make money over the long term by sharing viewing data."
I don't think it's tried to get online on its own; it still shows outdated movies for streaming on its startup menu, and I assume those would update if it had newer data.
I expect this TV to last a while, but realistically I guess I'll probably have to buy one or two more. I'm 52; it's only my 5th TV in about 30 years of having one (and I guess we're mildly odd in that we only have one TV at a time).
Now that I'm thinking about it, I think I'm kinda surprised at which of my TVs was the longest-lived:
1. I bought a 27" tube TV in 1991 for a few hundred bucks. Still a student.
2. When it developed financially terminal issues, I bought a MUCH NICER 27" tube tv in 1996 for about a thousand. Picture was amazing. Flat TVs didn't really exist yet.
3. I won a big drawing at work in 2000, and used the proceeds to replace #2 with a 55" rear-projection MONOLITH of a Mitsubishi (about $3300), which was great because I'd moved and the 27" was too small for the new room.
4. Only 8 years later that Mitsubishi developed the Convergence Problem of Doom. Fixing it wasn't a good move, plus hang-on-wall TVs were available. We got a 47" Vizio LCD for about $1400.
5. A really good Black Friday deal in 2019 convinced us to upgrade to the 65" Samsung I mentioned above.
My understanding is that #1 was repaired and used for another year or two by a FOAF before dying the true death.
#2 I gave to my old roommate, who used it until like SIX YEARS AGO, no kidding. It was a fancy enthusiast TV (RCA's upmarket line), so I guess that tracks. Even then it was still working fine at nearly 20 years old; it just didn't have the connectors, capabilities, or the dimensions to be that guy's living room TV anymore.
#4 is, I think, still being used by a friend of our housekeeper, at 14 years.
I paid good money for mine and still tries to spy on me. Cheap they are not.
You have to buy commercial displays or large monitors if you want to avoid it.
There is no choice left in the market.
(I really wished they made an 85" when I was in the market a couple of years ago, instead I bought a TV from Costco and opened it up and disconnected the WiFi module before powering it up for the first time.)
Definitely sucks that consumers don't really have alternative brands to choose from but personally, I don't have an issue with ad targeting and am happy to take the discount. What does bother me is that "smart" devices invariable take longer to start up than their "dumb" predecessors.
Our "smart" TVs are where the "smartness" is useless applications (mostly) but there is no requirement to be connected anywhere (that would be illegal), no ads (that would be illegal) and there are no options to get a TV that would be cheaper because it would show ads.
I thought that customer protection was stronger in the US, or that at least the customer needs where taken into account (like the whole buy-try-return (which we did not have until a dozen years ago))
Then you go in the menu and hit the factory reset option.
Overall, seems like the best tradeoff to me.
Looking at you TCL.
My network, my rules.
The last "smart" tv I purchased (Costco) is working fine without an internet connection. Pihole blocks much of the telemetry being sent from the attached XBox. XBox has a Hauppauge USB tuner with OTA antenna for when I want to catch a local sports broadcast, etc.
They just need to buy the display, build a case, and offer software for streaming."
From a purely manufacturing perspective -- that does sound a whole lot easier than spec'ing out complete smartphone hardware -- sourcing and assembling those parts -- and coding a company's own in-house OS for it...
I was very happy to ditch Comcast a few years ago but the streaming landscape has become so confusing that I am about to give up on trying to figure out what subscriptions I need to cobble together to watch the sports I am interested in.
Its been a few months and even with not internet its still fine and hasn't tried any tricks (that I know of..). The speakers are good, but its annoying to have to pay for a computer inside the monitor I'm not using.
Also, are there any service menu hacks to dumb them down?
But these TVs are available [0] - I’ve recommended them many times on this site. I have one myself and been really happy with it for a few years.
The trouble is finding them for sale - they can no longer be bought anywhere directly here in Sweden, for instance.
That’s due to the biggest problem of all: finding buyers willing to pay more for a TV.
(1) https://swedx.se/index.php?cPath=133_149&osCsid=895096b764aa...
The price is obvious before you buy it, the spyware isn't.
NEC makes some nice ones that were all over one of my past companies in fairly rough environments (manufacturing floor).
Looking at one dealer's website in the UK, they're selling a 65-inch LG OLED C2 for £1,700 which is on sale marked down from £2,700. The 65-inch Loewe OLED is £3,900 - more than twice the cost. The price differential isn't just a couple hundred more. It's a couple thousand more.
I think specialty items like this become tough because there isn't the same market pressure. With the LG OLEDs, there's pressure from Samsung, Sony, Vizio, and others on the price. Likewise, there's supply chain pressure - if LG and others start making more TVs, there is pressure to lower the price.
I think the issue is that there usually isn't an option for one to pay a small additional fee to opt-out of this garbage. For example, I don't think Roku, LG, or anyone is making £220/year off each customer (assuming a 10-year TV lifespan). That's the up-charge for the Loewe TV: £220/year for 10 years. If it were just an additional £100-300, I think some people would go for it. Instead, it's more than the price of a second TV.
I think the issue is that these TVs are way more than the revenue that spying companies are making off the data. For example, the article says that Roku makes around 83% of its $2.7B in revenue as "platform revenue". That includes both the ads and spying, but it also takes a cut of subscription revenue from services you sign up for. Let's generously say that two-thirds of that 83% is ads/spying. We're talking about $1.5B/year. Roku has 65M active accounts and I'm guessing an average of 2 TVs per account. So they're making maybe $12/year per Roku device. I'm not saying it's insignificant revenue. It's huge revenue when we're talking about all the users.
But there's no option for me to say "I'd rather pay the $12/year and avoid all the ads/spying." Instead, I need to spend 20x that to get away from the ads/spying.
To an extent, Apple fills this niche a bit, but not entirely. It would be great to see Loewe start selling Loewe os7 devices separate from their TVs. I think there could be a market for a $150-200 smart-TV device that wouldn't be so ad-driven - or maybe a $50 smart-TV device with a $15/year fee. It's hard to sell anything without recurring revenue in a world where you need to keep updating and supporting software. Still, $15/year is a tiny amount compared to the £3,900 TV.
Yes, a smart TV could still possibly do content recognition on what is displayed on the screen, but presumably HDCP should prevent that and I don't think a mainstream TV manufacturer would want to draw that amount of ire defeating copy protection. It would also be a lot of work on identifying the content without the ability to act on it. Sure, you now know what someone is watching, but they're using a platform that you don't control and can't serve ads on. If I'm using a Fire TV and they're spying on me, they can use that information to serve me ads, suggest other content someone has paid them to suggest, etc. If I'm using Loewe os7, they can't do the things that would earn them the money.