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It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

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Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#101

Post by chii »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #62
chii wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it turns out that too many people are disconnecting their tv, the manufacturer would merely add in a sim card. They don't yet ATM because they don't need to - too many people are stupidly connecting their wifi.

GDPR requires consent, and no feature is allowed to be removed to coerce you into consent. So at least in the EU, there must be an option to switch off data transmissions.

i would imagine that watch-time of a show is not Personally Identifying Information, and thus do not require GDPR consent.

Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#102

Post by lotsofpulp »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #80
Gigachad wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you are out of touch with the average consumer. They absolutely love smart TVs and would consider a TV without apps and streaming to be broken. In fact, even the ideal HN approved setup is just a smart TV where the online bit is a removable stick on the back. The average consumer just doesn’t care about being able to swap it out.

Yeah, they love also facebook, which monetize all their private life or sugary food, which alter your diet balance or cigarettes who can literally kill you. Not to mention all of them are addictive. The fact consumers love something doesn't make it a good thing.

It does explain why smart TVs would be easy to buy and dumb TVs difficult to buy.

For example, I do not care if a TV is smart or dumb. All I care is how quickly it turns on because I am connecting it to an Apple TV anyway. Even as a person who would rather have a dumb TV than a smart TV, my actions continue to support smart TV manufacturers because I am not willing to spend the time and effort required to seek out dumb TVs, since I have already found an acceptable solution.

Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#103

Post by csa »

For a tech periodical, this seems to be a stretch for content.

Thirty seconds poking around the interwebs led me to this Samsung 65” 4K “digital signage” for $1125:

https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/4k-uhd/qb-serie...

43, 50, 55, 75, and 85 also available.

I assume that these are as good as or better than most people have in their homes (esp. with Vizio), but probably not as good as what home theater enthusiasts might want.

Am I missing something?

Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#104

Post by bsenftner »

Seriously, it is dumb to look for a "dumb TV", search for a "monitor" and you'll find what you need. I've got 9 large monitors from 25" to 50" - 6 on my computers and the other 3 on old computers, but displaying whatever - YouTube music playlists and Reddit EarthPorn. As a monitor, I've never paid much over $500 for one, as (stupid) people think they are no good; consumer electronics stores have such idiots as managers they'll have a 55" monitor on the floor for 6 weeks and mark it down to $400.

Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#105

Post by Kinrany »

ramraj07 wrote: post #77
mrjin wrote: post #41

Smart TVs were created for all kinds of agendas but none were actually for us the consumers. All those agendas require an OS which takes time to boot. Making it worse, some of those TVs' CPU are crap and thus every operation takes much longer than those dumb ones. Lots of vendors also start to ship new remotes that removed all the essential buttons, especially the video source button, and I have to press 5 or more ti…

If you’re happy with a computer monitor as a tv good for you. I’m spoiled by super large screen 4K Qdot displays. If I really have to choose not to get a smart tv, the simple solution is actually to get a really good projector.

A friend of mine has a projector and projector screen-colored walls, it's great.

Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#106

Post by bjelkeman-again »

In Europe/Sweden I have been purchasing dumb screens from Swedx.se [1]. Both dumb TVs and a video wall. They are clearly imported from China and not a big vendor, but I’d expect these type of companies selling digital signage to be available everywhere.

[1] https://www.swedx.se/index.php?cPath=133&language=en

Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#107

Post by TACD »

mrjin wrote: post #41

Smart TVs were created for all kinds of agendas but none were actually for us the consumers. All those agendas require an OS which takes time to boot. Making it worse, some of those TVs' CPU are crap and thus every operation takes much longer than those dumb ones. Lots of vendors also start to ship new remotes that removed all the essential buttons, especially the video source button, and I have to press 5 or more ti…

This is exactly what we did. Our ‘television’ was never hooked up to actually receive broadcast signal, we’ve always just used it as a big screen for the media/gaming PC set up in the lounge, and at some point I realised if I’m going to spend my evenings staring at Good Screen I might as well upgrade from this 40” 1080p TV with a dead pixel row.

So I looked around and eventually bought a Philips 559M1 55” monitor instead. The price difference compared to an actual TV is a little tough to swallow (~£1,200 vs £?00), but the size, the resolution, and the overall picture / sound quality upgrade is very nice. The HDR leaves a lot to be desired but that’s probably inevitable when getting an LCD panel instead of OLED (which was not considered because of the likelihood of burn-in).

Worth it? Eh… maybe. When compared against the available market for “TV-sized monitor” or upgrading from 1080p, absolutely. But if you’re coming over from an equivalent-sized OLED TV, you’ll be paying a hefty amount for a visual downgrade, just to escape the ‘smart’ features.

Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#108

Post by syedkarim »

Root_Denied wrote: post #89
zasdffaa wrote: post #65

A serious, non-trolling question to all. I've not had a TV for decades and for me that's a good thing. I've watched TVs in pubs (I'm in the uk) and round my mates' houses so it's not become some strange alien thing, and I'm still happy to be without it (that is, on balance; there are good things about broadcast TV and some bad, and the latter outweighs the former for me). In your opinion, is there actual overall valu…

I haven't had cable for 15 years at this point and don't miss it, but I generally have had a TV in the living room with a Chromecast or Fire stick plugged into it. It's nice to be able to throw a movie from the plex server on there with my SO and have a stay-in movie night with some popcorn. Especially during covid lockdown we did this almost weekly with movies, documentaries from youtube or netflix, and tv shows we…

Did they advertise the fact that an internet connection was required to initially turn the tv on? What happens when a TV like this is purchased for places without internet connections?

Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#109

Post by martyvis »

csa wrote: post #103

For a tech periodical, this seems to be a stretch for content. Thirty seconds poking around the interwebs led me to this Samsung 65” 4K “digital signage” for $1125: https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/4k-uhd/qb-serie... 43, 50, 55, 75, and 85 also available. I assume that these are as good as or better than most people have in their homes (esp. with Vizio), but probably not as good as what home theater enthu…

They don't operate as TVs - no tuners - they are displays for content that is downloaded or streamed.

Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#110

Post by andrewf »

tinus_hn wrote: post #21
rbanffy wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other day I was reading the HDMI spec. I realised, in almost full horror, it’s stupidly streaming pixels instead of image deltas. When every TV has memory enough for several full frame images, this is just crazy.

Sounds clever but it’s pointless because you have to guarantee that you have enough bandwidth for the worst case, in your scheme when every pixel is changing every frame, anyway.

Agreed; it's the "constant work" principle https://aws.amazon.com/builders-library/reliability-and-cons...
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