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Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

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Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#441

Post by jjoonathan »

WithinReason wrote: post #427
jjoonathan wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, auto-dimming is rough. I turned it off. 60% constant brightness for work, uncapped HDR mode for play.

How do you switch? Can you do it with just the keyboard?

I boot into Windows for gaming and when I launch a full screen game an "AutoHDR" badge pops up and the brightness limit is lifted. A similar thing happens when I launch a streaming app in the TV. I don't consume content through Linux because as far as I can tell linux doesn't support HDR yet.

Speaking of booting into Windows, I finally figured out how to make it painless: use a separate hard drive, not a separate partition. I wish I could go back in time 20 years and tell myself that. The number of hours I wasted debugging poorly written installers, bootloaders, and updaters exceeds the cost of hard drives by a factor too terrifying to calculate. Ah well. Now I know.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#442

Post by hazza_n_dazza »

jjoonathan wrote: post #195
Hamuko wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They get money from the ads, they get money from selling your usage data, they get money by selling space on the remote for streaming apps, and probably through some other means as well.

Sure, but my intuition says they might get a few hundred dollars that way, tops. Is my intuition off by an entire order of magnitude?

your argument requires that advertising is cost effective for the advertiser. what if therre was a competing ecosystem, in which advertisers pushed up prices overall in a bid to out-compete each other? essentially, the cost of advertisments is added to the cost of consumer and all other goods. advertising increases cosumer costs, and decreases consumer choice.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#443

Post by myself248 »

MerelyMortal wrote: post #174
tombert wrote: post #109

It's a kind of hackey way of handling this, but what I do is open up the TVs and removing whatever components are required for the WiFi to work. Sometimes you can just remove the network card easily, but usually the easiest thing to do is find and break the antenna. It's inelegant, and of course the smart features are still there , but it at least reduces or eliminates the tracking crap.

I removed the WiFi card from my LG TV before I first turned it on, it's been great since. Apparently some TVs are bad at nagging about missing the hardware, so another suggestion would be to add a load or something to the antenna. I forgot what that's called, and at the time, couldn't really find any details online.

"dummy load", specifically "50 ohm dummy load", because that's the standard impedance of most antennae. (Oddly enough, the TV antenna is engineered for a 75-ohm impedance, but that's beside the point.)

However, even dummy loads radiate a little bit. It's common to test handheld radios a few feet from each other with dummy loads screwed onto the antenna ports, because when you've got 115dB of link margin and your dummy loads are only eating 50dB on each end, that's still plenty!

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#444

Post by mindzspace »

Bought 55" Sceptre about 2 years ago, still works extremely well. Sceptre was the only "dumb" tv maker that I could find https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm.... Some outdoor tv makers provide some but not a decent indoor viewing experience. Downside with Sceptre is their stock on the website is out at the moment. I've seen Walmart's occasionally carry them dependent on size your looking for in stores just depends on what part of country your in just keep your eyes out. Buyer beware though, you will want to pickup a sound bar/ set of speakers as their built in ones are tinny , but is usable. Not going to mention the other options as appears comments have covered them, good luck

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#445

Post by myself248 »

One approach is to buy a smart TV and remove the controller board. Get a new control board (sometimes called a scaler, since that's its main function) with only the functions you need. These are available mostly on aliexpress, if you punch in the display panel part number and the word "board". Expect to pay about $90-150 for a 4k board.

This isn't the best option, and it's a giant pain in the ass, but it's very effective.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#446

Post by throwaway81523 »

danielheath wrote: post #417
behnamoh wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some better alternatives?

Plex, if you have a spare machine to run it on. Free if the household share a username/password.

Plex also phones home, I thought. I could never understand why anyone uses it. What is wrong with mplayer running purely on a local client?

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#447

Post by mindzspace »

I bought a 55" Sceptre 4k "dumb" TV about 2 years ago still works great, bought it directly from manufacturer website. Only manufacturer I could find making them other than some outdoor tvs (not recommended for indoor viewing use). Monitors could be viable but pricing goes up steeply with size of course. Downside with Sceptre is their website is out of stock at moment, I've heard that Walmart in some areas carries them occasionally on their website / in stores dependent on what part of country your in, just gotta keep looking. Buyer beware though if you get one, you will want to pickup a set of speakers or sound system as speakers are usable but tinny.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#448

Post by bscphil »

vineyardmike wrote: post #365
femto113 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another approach is to look not for things advertised as "monitors" but instead look for "digital signage"[1]. Nowadays most of these contain some networking features but they'll be oriented at local control (i.e. by you via something on your LAN), not some third-party control center accessed via the internet. Anecdotally this is the approach I took ~20 years ago when buying a (then slightly exotic) plasma flatscreen…

But does digital signage have good panels like "real" TVs? Eg. the high end oleds with deep blacks and stuff?

My experience is that not only are the panels generally worse, support for things like color calibration or Dolby Vision is almost impossible to find. Which is understandable because it's not obvious what advantage HDR would bring to digital signage.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#449

Post by kingcharles »

neltnerb wrote: post #347
Volundr wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sadly not really true. I have an LG that I (thought) I was using this way until one day in the middle of watching some TV I get a prompt about a OnePlus phone trying to control my TV, do I want to accept? Needless to say and didn't, but I was baffled by what happened. Turns out that the stupid TV is controllable via an app over bluetooth, and there is no way to turn bluetooth off. I'm just stuck with my TV con…

I imagine they'll happily let your neighbor accept the terms and conditions you have yet to accept too =P That's a failure mode I hadn't thought about, I didn't realize people tried to control a TV with bluetooth. Why would you do this? Initial configuration but then never again? I can't think of a technical reason it meaningfully helps when you can already type in a wifi password with the remote, so I'm inclined to…

I was given a nice TV with no remote. Used Bluetooth remote app to control TV.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions?

#450

Post by bscphil »

austinshea wrote: post #66

Sceptre is fantastic for this. e.g. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sceptre-55-Class-4K-UHD-LED-TV-HD... Zero smart features, and all modern capabilities. It's also a TV, as opposed to a computer monitor, so it has the expected TV speakers and ports.

I assume the tradeoff is probably panel quality, right? I doubt they have OLEDs on the level of an LG or Samsung TV.
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