Who's selling dumb TV's again, Samsung? Who else? I'll happily pay a thousand bucks to not get screwed by my TV.
On Amazon, you can find a few here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/industrial/18746933011... (which are mostly Samsung).
Amazon and Walmart say they are out of stock, with no expected date.
My conclusion is that Sceptre, the last holdout in the dumb TV industry, has quit in favor of focusing on monitors/displays for computers. Now I'm not sure if I'm going to ever replace my TV!
The dumb models are very cheap and the picture is faithful due to lack of framerate-doubler and other picture-enhancement shenanigans.
The reports of user-disconnected TVs jumping on open wifis or Amazon sidewalk by themselves are not credible. All of the problems stem from connecting the TV so don't.
I would be surprised if a truly dumb TV would be as good quality as modern LGs etc for the price. Maybe I'm wrong. But please don't pay _more_ for a dumb TV.
Seems like the only options are:
1. Buy a smart TV and not connect it to the internet and/or physically neuter it by unplugging the Wifi/Bluetooth module. I wish there was more info about this out there as I assume there are some models that don’t allow this
2. Buy a projector. I’ve been using a cheap $80 projector for a few years due to space constraints in the apartment I was living in. Now that I’m in a larger apartment, I wanted to buy a TV. But all this has me wondering whether I should just buy a better projector
It does have the “drawback” that it can only be used after sunset (assuming you don’t have a basement or blackout curtains or something). But I find that this provides a natural hard cap to the screen time that everyone is trying so hard to cut back on
"I bought a TV with NO 'Smart' Features": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJh72_O4pXE
It's pretty much "this is cheap, but the picture quality turns out to be crap". :(
These are nicely dumb and cheap.
I set the TV up and was immediately pleased. The first thing it did was ask me if I wanted "smart" or "basic" mode. I selected basic mode, skipped the network connection, and disagreed to as many policies as it would let me. One week in, it hasn't nagged me a single time to connect to the internet or tried to push any other BS on me. I have it hooked up to an Apple TV and my Switch, and it seems to just work.
So yeah, I hope I'm not jinxing something here, but TCL was a great way to go for a delightful dumb TV experience.
So lots of manufacturers support this.
Until smart projectors are a thing, I suppose...