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Comment by ghjfrdghibt | Hacker News Reader

I WISH they would make a comeback. Smart TVs are the single worse piece of (shit) consumer electronics on the market. Any time you take anything electronic and connect it to the internet you're asking for trouble. Throw an operating system in it controlled by parasitic advertisers and that's where we are today.

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Thinking about it too much makes me furious. We have supercomputers in our pockets and TVs but it all spies on us and nobody gives a shit because everything is cheap. It's a Faustian deal that sucks! Nobody would actually choose this yet here we are.

I feel this same fury. It's nice to know I'm not alone.

It's not that nobody gives a shit, it's that the alternatives have been taken away

I have the alternative of just plugging in an Apple TV, Nvidia Shield, whatever Google or Amazon makes, any computer with a digital video out port, tons of IPTV boxes that stream tons of pirated channels.

All I have to do is not put my wifi password into the TV.

For now. We are probably going to start seeing manufacturers, shipping, TVs and other devices with LTE chips built into them, so they can go around our Wi-Fi to get the sweet sweet data. At that point, my biggest fear is that all the people (myself included) who thought we were being clever by depriving the TV of the Wi-Fi password are going to be sad that we didn't instead throw our money behind a manufacturer building ethical products.

We already see signs that it might head this way. Numerous IoT junk (Facebook portal and Google Home Minis come to mind), will ignore DHCP-provided DNS servers and use their own (usually 1.1.1.1/8.8.8.8 respectively) if they don't get successful connections to their mothership. My devices are old enough that they don't try DoH, but I'd be shocked if most of these haven't moved to that by now.

This is what Amazon sidewalk is really for too.

So, does the FCC allow LTE jammers in any form or power level, nowadays? Because that's a compelling reason to burn the entire connectivity industry down.

Edit: probably easier to open it up and simply disconnect the LTE antenna.

If that isn’t the reality today, how could an alternative “ethical” manufacturer even compete?

There are existing brands that sell dumb TVs. Sceptre is one that I'm fond of. They compete on they aren't the cheapest usually but quite reasonable. Most people want to buy cheaper "smart" TVs though and deprive them off the Wi-Fi password, which makes it harder for dumb TV manufacturers to stay in business and get cheaper through economies of scale, which further compound the problem.

I’d really like to go with a dumb set, but their panels seem way behind.

Comparing their flagship 86” set: U860CV-UMRD (claimed) to Hisense U8 (measured, native/worst case):

3000:1 vs. 9449:1 contrast

300cd/m2 vs. 910+ brightness

60hz vs 144hz.

The hisense is significantly cheaper, so I think the comparison is fair.

Oddly, sceptre reports percent of NTSC gamut and not a modern color space. The percentage doesn’t imply poor color representation, but its a strange choice.

Some TVs put up a periodic nag screen if you do this. Others have a blinking led behind the IR sensor.

Samsungs silently mesh network with other Samsung devices.

My LG does none of this.

It's also never been connected to the internet, and my router also has a static IP reservation to give the TV an IP that is not on my subnet in case someone in my house ever tries to connect it to the internet.

> Samsungs silently mesh network with other Samsung devices.

What? Supporting link?

There’s a disclaimer about this in the manual of another samsung appliance we own. I imagine the tv manuals mention it too.

So no then..

They haven't you're just not buying them. Almost all manufacturers are also selling "digital signage displays".

Millions of people actually chose this over their other options.

Consumers regularly vote with their wallets against their best interests.

> Millions of people actually chose this over their other options.

What other options would those be? What non-"smart" OLED TVs exist on the market right now?

The decisions were made months or years ago, when there were non-smart options. Cheaper surveillance TVs won out.

I agree but the reason they were cheaper was hidden. If spying were an opt-in popup that says "spy on me" nobody would choose the spying. It won through sleight of hand.

The fact that you don’t agree with the choice doesn’t mean that consumers didn’t make one.

If they were unfit for purpose, they would have been returned.

Most people don’t care about being spied on.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-o...

When iOS let users opt out of tracking 96% opted out. If people don't care about being spied on then why do so many opt out?

it's cute that you think people read popups. /s

You missed the point. You don’t need OLED. You’re just following the crowd for the next shiny dumb new thing yet drives enshittification.

You don't actually need most things. Any yet here we all are, all on the same website. Not because anybody needed to be, just because we wanted.

I only ever use mine as monitor ("PC mode") and have a different device drive it. It would take some major market dysfunction to lose large monitors with this feature.

A quick search for "Dumb TV" on amazon shows two Sceptre models, a 43-inch and a 50-inch. The 43-inch model says it's been ordered 500+ times in the last month and the 50-inch claims 50+. There is also a Pro Scan 40 inch that doesn't have ethernet connectivity. So they do exist, and it looks like there is at least some sales activity with them. I don't know if that's the last dying breath of the dumb tv as a product or if they are trying to make a comeback, though.

I think the smart car trend is worse, and much harder to work around. I can only buy old cars from the south for so long before that dries up as well.

Smartphones are just as bad.

and the bloat. Long boot times and cluttered menus / functions.

I don't need a tv home page.

what about laptops? can we connect them to the internet? tablets? phones? :)

Yes, the ads infiltrating Windows, for example. Linux and Mac seem to be holding the line for now.

Windows offered me 3 separate subscriptions during setup. After managing to decline all 3 and complete setup, it then re-ran the Windows setup process a week later to help me "finish setting up", where it re-offered all 3 subscriptions.

I don't see the problem here. Badgering you to subscribe to some crap helps make more profit for MS, and this is good for MS shareholders. It might make the user experience worse, but who cares about that? It's not like Windows users are ever going to abandon the platform, so what's wrong with making them miserable in order to increase profits?

In the past 15 years I have gone from 100% Microsoft to 0% Microsoft. This is a direct consequence of Microsoft’s spitefully anti-user behavior.

They lost me for productivity 10 years ago and gaming 3 years ago.

I was a customer but I never will be again.

That's great, really, but people like you are a tiny minority. MS can afford to lose a very small number of customers, since they'll much more than make up for the loss by doing anti-user stuff like baking ads into the OS. In the last 40 years, I just haven't seen very many people get fed up enough with MS to leave, and instead I've watched MS's stock price and valuation continue to rise.

Well Microsoft already lost the consumer market. Apple and Android dwarf Windows market share. Microsoft is an also-ran for consumers. Where they still have some presence is corporate productivity and gaming, both of which are eroding. The future is not bright for Microsoft.

>Well Microsoft already lost the consumer market. Apple and Android dwarf Windows market share.

For phones, sure, but we're talking about PCs here. MS hasn't tried anything in the smartphone market for ages now. Android isn't a PC OS at all, and Apple's laptop and desktop computers are a tiny fraction of MS's.

>Where they still have some presence is corporate productivity and gaming, both of which are eroding.

"Some presence" is a huge understatement. The corporate world is still mostly running on Windows, unfortunately. Macs are not a serious contender here at all except maybe for some design stuff. Their domination for gaming might be eroding, but they're still highly dominant here too.

>The future is not bright for Microsoft.

Their financials look excellent right now. Of course, they're actually pretty smart, pushing into cloud services and such instead of just clinging to OS sales, so that'll probably continue.

I'd love to see everyone suddenly switch to various Linux distros and for MS to dry up overnight, but I just don't see it happening in the real world.

People have changed habits: most people do not use a PC for their everyday computing. They use a smartphone, and at a stretch, a tablet. There are a sizable number of people, not weirdos who don’t use tech but the average person who does banking and gaming and books flights and checks instagram, who has never used a desktop or laptop outside of an office. It’s all mobile devices. It’s Apple and Android.

This is apparent if you frequent social media that isn't tech focused like HN.

Spend a bunch of time on reddit and it becomes incredibly clear: The extreme majority of people on the Internet (In the USA, at least) are doing it from a phone or tablet.

> people like you are a tiny minority

According to some rumors, Valve is currently developing a Linux-based computer with software stack ported from Steam Deck. If the rumor is true and the device will be good, Microsoft will be very surprised with how many people will switch from Windows 11 into that new platform.

I have "free offers" for Apple Fitness, Apple Music, Apple News+ sitting in the Settings app on my iPhone 16 Pro, not sure how that's any different from the Windows offers (and until you ignore them at least once, they even show up with a badge on the App icon to draw you in).

Except for Ubuntu, which puts ads in the terminal:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hfs4v9/ubuntu_is_put...

https://x.com/omgubuntu/status/1574759306544701443

MacOS will gladly serve Taboola ads in first-party apps and beg you to use Safari in push notifications. If that's not infiltration by advertisement, I'm not sure what is.

> MacOS will gladly serve Taboola ads in first-party apps and beg you to use Safari in push notifications

You may think you are ‘sticking it to Apple’ by making-up this sort of thing, but what you’re actually doing is ruining the debate, and disempowering the customers who are trying to improve the situation.

I’ve been using MacOS for over 25 years, and never seen a “Taboola ad” in an Apple application, or received any push notification about using Safari as my browser (which I willingly do anyway).

> I’ve been using MacOS for over 25 years, and never seen a “Taboola ad” in an Apple application

Try booting up Apple News. It's a recent change, but a real one and not "made up" in the slightest: https://www.axios.com/2024/07/16/taboola-apple-news-deal

> or received any push notification about using Safari as my browser (which I willingly do anyway).

Well that's probably why. Imagine how enthused I am to use MacOS knowing that my browser of choice isn't good enough to satiate Apple?

It is a real problem, too. Been one for ten long years, as a matter of fact: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253602135

> or received any push notification about using Safari as my browser (which I willingly do anyway)

"Do you want to use Chrome or Safari?" - _after_ I have both installed Chrome AND set it as my default browser.

I think they're talking about Apple News

Really? What apps have ads? Never seen that. My personal MacBook is too old for the last few MacOS updates but I haven’t seen what you describe on my up-to-date work laptop.

Final Cut Pro CONTINUES to beg the user to buy the iPad version on any possible opportunity. That's a $300 app, btw.

TV.app is just non-stop ads for various movies and TV shows, some of which are paid extras.

That’s effectively what you wanted, though? That’s what TV is?

If you open up Books.app, you’d be surprised that it’s going to sell you books.

Ah yeah I have never used that app. Are they Taboola ads though? That seems egregious.

I don't get your point. Laptops, tablets, and phones are made for that.

> Any time you take anything electronic and connect it to the internet you're asking for trouble.

you said if I have an electronic device and connect it to the internet I am asking for trouble :) phone was AMAZING before some moron connected them the internet and now they are “smart…”

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