Products would be preferred suggestions, but I'm even at the point of considering DIY solutions, if something looks lego-ish enough!
When I turn it on, it will automatically select the previous input, so I don’t have to interact with the “smart welcome screen” or whatever it’s called. It can even be turned on and off by my set top box which actually handles the media playback. I only need to reach for its remote to change the brightness. I think it’s supposed to have some kind of adaptive thing, but it doesn’t work since I’ve disabled everything that sounded like “camera” or “mic”.
It has 4 HDMI ports, dvb-t, dvb-s and can play things from usb. It also has optical audio out and can output audio to Bluetooth headphones.
Image quality and brightness are great for my needs. Audio is surprisingly good, so I can use a low volume without issue.
The model is 65c845 and cost me less than 1000€ new. My understanding from reviews is that the panel is pretty good, but that they skimped on the “smart” side, which was the right choice if you ask me.
$99 for Google Streamer.
This "streamer" is overpriced for the market.
Great panel but the software stinks.
In my case, I did connect it once to the internet, to see what's up, and since it had prime video which is pretty much the only thing I watch, it could have allowed me to not have a different box and cables laying around.
And, indeed, it started showing ads on the homepage and the UI was pretty laggy, even compared to my several-year-old firetv. Fortunately, I was able to do a full factory reset and it forgot everything.
Now I only use the software to switch to an HDMI input which doesn't handle the control bits, like a PC, and to increase the brightness in case I'm watching at noon and don't want to close the blinds. 90% of the time, though, I don't even know it exists, since I only use my set top box' remote to do everything I need (change channels and volume, turn on and off). The other 10% it works well enough that I can't really complain.
But if you check for anything DIY, they're either sourcing panels directly from manufacturers in China, or ripping apart smart TVs (or just "not using" parts of them). There's a happy middle ground and I know, from experience, that's it's not an expensive one, even though I also know from experience that it's often times an extremely pricey one. By which I mean, the panels themselves are cheap for an outlet to get and use, while actually trying to buy a panel from those outlets is reserved for B2B applications and is priced for enterprise work.
What I was hoping for is that someone who knows about those kinds of panels and that kind of work would be able to say "Ah, yeah, here's a great panel that we use for our displays which is a good deal". But, so far, I've never had any takers on that. It's a small industry (or, at least it was when I was involved), so that's not unexpected. But I keep hoping that some dogged youtuber or some experimental blogger will figure out how to source all the bits for the TV that so many of us want, but that there's is strong business disincentives to create.
That's what's most galling, I think. Samsung/LG/Sony could make this and sell it, but they refuse to because it would provide an alternative to the market they really want which is ad capture/data harvesting. And I'm just so tired of that being the only option for that specific reason. Because now I'm stuck here hoping that someone out there makes the least-complex, cheapest, and fastest thing for a TV manufacturer to make, which seems like the dumbest thing to have to hope for.
I'm not sure how to determine which models do or don't ship with cell chips.
IOW, if it has been done, hackaday, et al., would have already shown us how to bypass the weak obfuscation and get free data. Or at least an article on “my new Samsung TV has a cell modem that they don’t advertise. ‘da fuq?”
I don't think Sony or Samsung would be paying consumer prices for cheap low-end cell chips or bulk low-bandwidth data plans.
Otherwise, look at getting an Intel Compute Stick. They are full PCs that plug into an HDMI port. Running VLC on these is a pretty good solution
It’s certainly better in other ways but this thread doesn’t follow
Now your cheap replaceable external box is the internet-connected computer and your expensive wall-mounted TV is an appliance.