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In Defense of Dumb TVs

frame.work

331–340 of 391 posts

Re: In Defense of Dumb TVs

#331

Vizio's CTO confirmed in 2019 that smart TV data harvesting subsidizes their prices: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/7/18172397/airplay-2-homekit...

The best thing about smart TV's is they are cheaper than otherwise and you can dumb them by not connecting them to wifi/internet. Just add in your own NUC running linux and you have the best of both worlds. Get a logitech mx ergo as the "remote control" and you're good to go.

Re: In Defense of Dumb TVs

#332
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in the market for speakers, trying to find ones without "bluetooth" or "Alexa" support is just as difficult. I ended up buying speakers built for computers because they were simple and dumb and just played sound.

I don't quite follow the problems with having bluetooth support. Could you please elaborate?

Not OC, but I guess that if you're using Bluetooth, you depend on whatever DAC they've put onto the speaker, which may or may not be good enough for your taste.

Re: In Defense of Dumb TVs

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The device manufacturer will eat the cost of the 5G subscription, since it will likely be lower than the revenue generated from the harvested personal data.

How low can you get these ? Even at $5/month, that's $60... is a single user's data worth that much ?

When we had satellite TV (more than a decade ago), one of the conditions was to keep the receiver plugged into the phone line. If it wasn't plugged in, there'd be a $5 surcharge on the bill that month.

I figured this was because they were collecting data on viewership habits. Each customer profile must have been worth $5 or more, based on the surcharge amount.

(The phone line was useful for other things too, like ordering PPV/on-demand/premium channels through the menus directly, as opposed to calling them in through a 1-800 number.)

Re: In Defense of Dumb TVs

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Assuming your voice assistant works first time. Otherwise the dialog would go a little more like this: Me OK Google mute Me> OK...Google....mute Me> OKGOOGLE mute G> Sorry, I don't understand Me> mute... Me> MUTE MUTE MUTE MUTE MUTE Me> OKGOOGLE MUTE G> What would you like to mute? Me> The TV Me> Mute the fucking TV Google Me> OKGOOGLE MUTE THE FUCKING TV G> Sorry, I don't understand Me> Fuck it. I should have…

I got into a very similar conversation with Chase's robo call the other day. Went like this: C: bla bla bla, if you want to speak to a representative say "representative". Me: representative C: sorry i couldn't understand, please chose an option or say representative to speak with one Me: re-pre-sen-ta-tive C: (same answer as before) Me: REPRESENTATIVE C: (same answer as before) Me: GO FUCK YOURSELF C: Ok, I'll call…

If I roar "I WANT TO SPEAK TO A HUMAN" into the phone, this works about 66% of the time.

Re: In Defense of Dumb TVs

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My LG CX "just works". Turns on in seconds, all the apps work fine, and everything is integrated really well. Certainly beats having to juggle three or four other things to get all the same services and figure out how to get the HDR/Dolby Vision and 4K-ness working between them all.. I'd probably need an HDMI switch as well. Instead I have one device with update-able apps and it works flawlessly. The only thing I nee…

fair enough. I guess I don't have such high expectations regarding the multimedial experience. it seems a 30 to 40 inch display would be more than large enough for my home cinema activities (at the moment I'm actually using a 26 inch monitor). and soundwise I'm anyway wearing bluetooth ANC headphones. all connected my notebook.

Yeah, I'm really into watching movies at home (though not quite enough to have a lot of separate expensive gear) so there are a few tick boxes that it's nice to have wrapped up in one purchase :-)

If I wasn't really into movies though, then yes, I would just want the simplest thing.. HDR, OLED, etc. are all an expensive waste if you're not watching content aimed for them.

Re: In Defense of Dumb TVs

#336
post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit worried about the TV having some kind of internal clock set in the factory configured to throw an undismissible prompt after a year or two because your firmware 'expired' and you need security updates to keep your internet connected device that is not connected to the internet safe. You won't know if the TV has such a feature until someone encounters it years after the device is first sold.

Couldn’t you just change the date back a few years in that case? Why do you need an accurate date on the TV?

How would you change the date if you can't get around the prompt?

Re: In Defense of Dumb TVs

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great except for the fact that smart TVs connected to the Internet have all sorts of privacy concerns: * https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/01/fbi-smart-tv-security/ Samsung actually released a TV app to tell you what it's doing: * https://fortune.com/2020/01/18/samsung-smart-tv-data-privacy... Which is nice, in a way, but it'd be better if they just didn't. I'd be much more trusting of Apple TV being connected to the In…

As a bad alternative. By the smart TVs, add a Pihole to the network. Block port 53 if it isn’t from the Pihole and add an as list like the one below. It seems to work well. https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/blob/master/Smar...

That is a bad alternative, as in no alternative at all really. I don't want a device that requires me to do network engineering to prevent it from doing things I didn't ask for or want.

Re: In Defense of Dumb TVs

#338

Vizio's CTO confirmed in 2019 that smart TV data harvesting subsidizes their prices: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/7/18172397/airplay-2-homekit...

The best thing about smart TV's is they are cheaper than otherwise and you can dumb them by not connecting them to wifi/internet. Just add in your own NUC running linux and you have the best of both worlds. Get a logitech mx ergo as the "remote control" and you're good to go.

They're still taking extra time to boot up an OS and using electricity to track what you're doing. There have also been stories on HN about smart TVs connecting to open wifi to send data home.

Re: In Defense of Dumb TVs

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best for who? This is a ridiculous take, nobody wants to roll their own TV UX except HN users looking for a weekend project. What usability / long-term reliability perk does your own software running on a RPI have over an Apple TV plugged into a dumb TV / monitor?

This comment is a part of why TV sucks so hard - ridiculous users. Everyone's idea of 'simple' is rather asinine, unimaginative. The latest Pis come practically preinstalled with everything, just have to load Kodi. But someone who has found 'their' solution i.e. some crap by Apple e.g. assumes this is how everything should be... And we all get stuck with crappy 'smart' TVs (or don't own one - I have survived 10+ year…

In my experience getting Kodi set up is a massive time sink, to the point that the programmer time needed to set it up would easily double the total cost of a typical home theater setup. Admittedly my experience with it is a few years out of date, but a quick search for incredibly basic functionality like running the big streaming services makes it clear that this hasn’t really changed. On top of most of them being limited to 720p, it looks like the canonical solution nowadays is to run them in Chrome from Kodi, which (1) phones home to Google, unlike an Apple TV and (2) necessitates a mouse or other pointing device since you can’t rely on “keyboard” navigation with a remote - this alone would be a dealbreaker for me.

Re: In Defense of Dumb TVs

#340

I’m really pleased the author called out the Apple TV as a device that lets you avoid ads. We tried to go cheap on another of our TVs and get an Amazon Fire Stick and in addition to it being not as smooth (combo of UX and speed) at the Apple TV, it had a good amount of ads all over the place. There’s lots of griping about the cost of an Apple TV 4k, but I’ll pay that extra $100 to avoid ads and not be tracked so exte…

I like the apple tv interface, but I really disliked the remote that ships with it. The touchpad like interface feels really awkward, i would lift it up the wrong way pretty much every time. I remember reading about an apple certified 3rd party remote that was more like a traditional tv remote but that was only sold in the european market for some reason. If they ever decide to switch back to a proper remote i'll tak…

I had gotten used to my Apple TV remote. Sure, it kinda sucked not being able to instantly orient it but I kind-of got used to that too. Sure, it kinda sucked when I would accidentally brush my finger against the trackpad and do something unintended but I kind-of got used to that too.

But it being made out of glass. What where they thinking?! You know how I orient the Apple TV remote now? My fingers know where the broken glass is on it. Making that out of glass was so beyond a dumb idea that I can't begin to imagine what they were thinking.

The end result is, I love the Apple TV, but I don't know that I'll ever buy another one if the remote continues to be made of glass.

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