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Comment by amarant | Hacker News Reader

The trick is to not buy a "TV".

Get a really big computer monitor/screen, and put it where you'd normally put your TV.

This trick unfortunately falls down above a certain size, especially if you want to game at a good fps, and stay in the consumer space (price) rather than the commercial display space. That gigabyte 45 inch is too small to use above your fireplace and view across the living room.

In my case I compromised on needing 4k, and got an lg 65 inch with only HDMI.

Are projectors the alternative?

Projectors can be an option but the price point to get anything comparably good in terms of picture quality puts you squarely back in commercial TV pricing.

I have been doing A/V systems professionally for many years and the best system I have found recently is a Sony TV with an Apple TV. No sign-in needed for the TV for basic setup, can be easily set to come on to a particular input, works well with the Apple remote, and functions well with no internet with just a little corner pop-up saying "no internet" when you first turn it on.

You should update the TV when you first unbox it (ideally via ethernet) and then disconnect it. If you don't like Apple TV then your streaming box of choice.

Apple + Sony sounds like a pretty nice combo, although unsurprisingly, right? It is a combination of premium brands. (Of course often premium brands are actually garbage in a nice shell, so maybe it is surprisingly not surprisingly bad, haha).

> You should update the TV when you first unbox it (ideally via ethernet) and then disconnect it. If you don't like Apple TV then your streaming box of choice.

Can you update via USB? I know my (couple years old now) Samsung TVs have firmware downloads available so you don't even need to connect the TV to anything.

Yes. I've owned a couple Android-based Sony TVs in the past decade and they both support updating firmware via USB thumb. They also support installing/removing packages with ADB, just like one would with an Android phone, in the case that there's some offline app you want to use on it. The newer models also do a neat thing where if you have external speakers hooked up, its internal speakers can be repurposed for center channel audio which is super cool.

I'll echo the Apple TV + Sony TV combo. It's very solid.

> You should update the TV when you first unbox it (ideally via ethernet) and then disconnect it.

You also need to wipe the storage cache for the launcher app after disconnecting to get rid of the junky ads that get downloaded.

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