Smart TVs are a good idea. Who doesn't want less crap plugged into their TV? However, TV manufacturers – for some reason – are ill-suited to developing the software that would make for a good experience.
A display panel should last you more than a decade and probably costs many 100s or 1000s. The 'smart' bit is probably worth less than $200 and is probably going to be obsolete in a couple of years.
EDIT - another thing. I want the people that make my 'smart' box to be nimble, forward looking new media companies - not box shifters like Samsung, LG, Philips et al. Most Smart TVs have awful software (LG's purchase of WebOS might lead them to be an exception here)
I've been asked by non-tech friends and relatives about SmartTVs many times and my answer is always "don't touch them with a barge-pole" and a link to a Roku/Chromecast/AppleTV etc.
If you are looking for a top of the line TV it may be hard to find (but is the display really better than a budget Samsung, are we paying extra for Smart features?).
The largest one a normal person can afford is of course a different question.
>Is there a best TV with no apps (or 3D)?
>Not really. Nearly every TV worth considering is also a Smart TV. There used to be several great midrange “dumb” TVs, but they’re all pretty much gone. You don’t have to use them, and you’re probably still better off getting a media streamer (since they have more content sources). As far as 3D goes, we’re starting to see good TVs that lack 3D
I use one of those as a TV. Is wonderful. Will probably last 20 years. Prior to that I used a panasonic commercial plasma. Still running after 10 years.
Neither of them have any smarts whatsoever. They're not even that expensive, which makes sense because many installations use 8 or 12 of them at a time as screenwalls.
http://www.necdisplay.com/p/large--screen-displays/p462?type...
That said, simply not plugging a smart TV into the network will solve most of the problems with it.
Well, at least for now.
I will continue to use my plain old "Dumb" TVs and Roku devices.
I imagine the televisions you tend to see ads for or that are displayed most prominently in stores are those that they want to sell (no shit) and thus those tend to be the smart tvs.
So, photocopiers are a bad idea? Because that's what that is.
But, actually, scanning+printing photocopiers (rather than traditional photocopiers) suck too: http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_...?
With TVs you're not usually lugging the devices around, but the TV has to be turned on and have volume (and sometimes other settings) managed with a separate remote. Since they typically have multiple HDMI ports, while the set-top boxes you mention don't have HDMI passthrough, you're encouraged to multiplex devices from the TV too, which requires manually selecting between numbered inputs with only a dumb OSD to help coordinate things. (If you have external speakers you might use a receiver to multiplex instead, but now you have a third remote and another dumb UI, not to mention potential latency issues for gaming.) In practice, the result is that among regular users, nobody can use someone else's TV without first being coached on their particular idiosyncratic combination of remotes, let alone try to play their own content by plugging a device in or wireless streaming or something shocking like that. Supposedly HDMI CEC helps with this somewhat by letting the device control the TV; I haven't used a setup with it, but there's only so much a standard for connecting disparate devices can do.
I want one remote - with the option to use my phone or voice control if I lose the remote - and a single, good UI that controls everything. That's only going to happen with a smart TV, but maybe the right device has yet to be made.
(One potential solution to obsoletion is for a manufacturer to make the brains of the TV a separate detachable part that fits into the design, like a laptop battery. Another would be to standardize on one HDMI port per TV, with CEC support and no UI when something is plugged in, so that you're basically required to plug in a box that then takes over the experience. Yeah, like that's going to happen.)
There isn't a solution to devices becoming obsolete because manufacturers would sell less of a new product if the old one worked fine in perpetuity. Not only this but old iPhones, for example, run worse with new iOS versions because new versions are coded for new hardware. Hence the need to upgrade periodically. How many of us have a 486 that will run Dragon Age?
http://www.samsung.com/us/2013-smart-evolution/
It being Samsung, the hardware upgrade was apparently offered after a single year and completely redid the UI, but there's no reason the same principle can't be executed competently.
So from what I understand about the Evolution Kit, it attaches to TVs 2012 and later and provides them with a boost to put them almost on par with 2013/2014+ TVs? Doesn't this cannibalize sales of new Smart TVs?
Funny enough, I had a single remote setup for one brief shining moment in 2008 with the second generation Apple TV; the AppleTV would switch on and off my HDMI TV using some precursor to CEC - the same sleep/wake function that modern PC monitors use - and could also control the volume using the up/down buttons on the remote by modulating the sound going over the HDMI connection. Unfortunately, Apple ripped this audio control functionality out with a software update a few months after the product was released and I was forced to break out the second remote again and eventually replaced the AppleTV. But the point is it is possible to have only one remote with an HDMI connected set top box, but that feature isn't a priority in the world of cable boxes and audio receivers.
Anyway, my experience with smart TVs is that they're a waste of money and incredibly frustrating compared to set top boxes like Roku/Chromecast/FireTV/AppleTV. On top of that, my experience with TV remotes is that I don't want manufacturers like LG, Samsung or Sony making my primary remote control. They invariably feel cheap, slow and clunky whereas Amazon/Apple and even Roku do a very good job.
I think combined printers and scanners are a much better idea than Smart TVs because (1) you get more benefit (footprint savings) from the combination with all-in-one printer/scanners than with Smart TVs, and (2) IME, printer replacement is desired more often than scanner replacement, and the printer is also the more expensive part; so you lose less by tieing replacement schedules together compared to Smart TVs, where the "brain" is the more frequently replaced part when replaced separately, but the display is the more expensive part.
IF I consider buying a Samsung 'Smart' TV in the future, it better have clear abilities to disable this kind of adserving crap. In any case, I forsee some appropriate rules being added to the house firewall.
Additional thought:
Is there a Web site where you can list products or services you HAVEN'T purchased, giving the value lost to the supplier, and why you didn't buy? Might generate some interesting stats?!
Hmm...'whyididntbuy.com' is on sale for over $2K...where can I document my non-purchase of that!?
It's good for TV manufacturers, because old TVs get older faster (outdated processor / software and so on).
For consumers however, having a separate box for the "smart" part of your TV is much better, because it makes it easier to upgrade.
Personally, I prefer the dumbest possible TV. Most of the time, I don't need a new panel, all I need is an upgrade of whatever smartbox I'm using at the moment. So far my Chromecast is carrying me quite well. The biggest upgrade of my TV I'll be doing in the near future will be an upgrade to 4K and/or maybe OLED down the line.
How do you make something so brutally garbage, anyway? Some of these TVs take so long to register a button press you have to wonder if they aren't using a 6502 inside to power the thing.
The only experience that's worse is those set-top boxes the cable companies provide you with. The Amiga had near flawless, real-time response and these things refresh at, maybe, a few frames per second.
I don't know about the American market. Over here (France), set-top boxen aren't so bad. And there are regular software upgrade; some of them even include games and apps.
If some of the credential checks are stored in a separate device (dongle, smartcard ), then it could take even longer.
A lot of places won't define performance requirements, as it's not their forethought to do so. They care about functional requirements, and if it meets those, then in their mind, their work is done. I've worked in several places (big names, too), that don't define non-functional stuff until after their beta is shipped and people start complaining.
Amusingly enough, my completely dumb pair of computer monitors (also made by Samsung, but before they started making things "smart") has a 6502-based SoC driving the OSD, and there is no perceptible lag at all.
These "smart" TVs seem to be based on ARM SoCs running at few hundred MHz to 1GHz+ and probably have more processing power than a high-end desktop PC in the mid 2000s.
I think it's all because of the software - tons of bloat.
I don't. For the same reason I don't want all-in-one desktop computers -- the display is both a substantial portion of the expense and the part that gets outdated the slowest. So, I'd rather replace the parts that provide the content to display separately from the display.
I'd rather replace my Chromecast for new functionality than replace my TV.
It is an amazing device for work. In 2 or tree years I will change my computer, but not my screen.
People are buying 4Ks screens today, with quantum dots LCDs and OLED you could display color for which no specification exist yet!!
In one or two years you will have devices that could use the color space.
There is very little content for 4K. No affordable computer is going to display google earth at 4Ks and 60 fps, but in the near future they will appear.
I don't have Netflix to watch on it. I don't share files on the network to stream from it. I don't watch Youttube on it, either through my phone or through the TV's app. I just plug my laptop into the HDMI port, my wife watches cable (most basic package with internet), I maybe play Xbox 360 twice a year. Most of the non-smart features are also useless for me. The standard settings are so good enough for me that I only switch input ports and change the volume.