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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

#131

Post by Brian_K_White »

TACD wrote: post #107
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 ins…

Monitors are now starting to go smart. Not just the Apple one.

And you no longer always have the option to prevent a net connection unless you live in a faraday cage.

The only way they won't all be smart eventually is if there is a market for dumb monitors that outweighs what the manufacturers make from putting remote agents into them.

I doubt that will happen. The people that even know or care at all are few, and even fewer of those vocal.

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

#132

Post by andrepd »

everdrive wrote: post #74
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…

Our TV is basically just a movie machine in our case. We could watch movies on a laptop on the couch, but it's not as nice as having a TV. For what it's worth, our TV is actually a big old tube TV. We have a small collection of DVDs and VHS, and also a Raspberry Pi 3 which is very capable of playing movie files, and can even stream from Amazon in a pinch.

What, you have a CRT? And you play VHS movies? Mind if I ask why x)

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

#133

Post by FroshKiller »

timwis wrote: post #93

I’ve been trying to sell a dumb tv on Facebook all week, and people keep asking if it has Netflix built in :P

I sold an old 42" LCD on Craigslist this week. The person who bought it was getting it for her kid's apartment. She did not know much about televisions and had a lot of questions. One of the first questions she asked was, "Does it have apps for Netflix and stuff like that, or will I need a Roku or Fire stick?"

If you only use one or two hardware inputs and one's not an OTT box, it's a lot easier to just use the TV's apps. People don't want to have to buy extra gadgets just to have another TV for their kids or in another room.

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

#134

Post by lucideer »

Gigachad wrote: post #61
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…

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.

> 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.

The gp never said anything about what consumers want, it's talking about the motives behind development direction. Features are not added because consumers ask for them: demand comes later.

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

#135

Post by GuB-42 »

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…

> So we are actually paying more

We are actually paying less, because all these sponsors and ads pay the manufacturer, which in turn lowers the purchase price. So if you don't use the smart features, it is actually a good deal, and if you do, well it is still a good deal. The one who pay for your discount are those who pay for the advertised services (ex: Netflix) without buying the TV. Probably the best thing to do is to buy a smart TV you can use dumbly (offline).

Big monitors tend to be much more expensive than similarly specced TVs. You may still want it for things like gaming-related features (g-sync, etc...).

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

#136

Post by deergomoo »

revanx_ wrote: post #123

I bought a 58 inch samsung tv in 2016 for around 250 euro. 1080p, barebone no smart features, two hdmi ports and two usb 2.0 ports. I wouldn't give it up even if someone payed me double today. It works as intended and that's all I care about. I use it daily. Yes, color vise it's a TN lcd panel so about as good as it can be expected but none of that matters because you simply get used to it. I haven't checked but I th…

Aside from the fact that image quality and motion handling are the two most important factors in a TV for me—and therefore I would never settle for less unless I couldn’t afford it—the barebones offerings today are likely to be even worse. Even super cheap TVs are smart now, except they have even worse CPUs and even less effort is put into making the software anything close to good.

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

#137

Post by stonepresto »

betamaxthetape wrote: post #125
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…

That TV is still smart by my standards. It runs Tizen, features something called "Samsung Workplace" (which "supports wireless cloud service access"), and has WiFi (whether or not this WiFi connection can be used by Samsung to update the OS is not specified, but I would think it is likely).

This probably means it tries to do the “device detection” when you switch inputs or plug in a new device. Tbh this is the worst feature for me, it’s exceptionally hard to get rid of even with access to the factory menu. I can blackhole my TV all day on the network, but this problem is persistent.

Also as a note, it’s become increasingly difficult to root TVs. Even getting firmware can be a chore, and forget getting anything other than a bootlog over RS232.

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

#138

Post by pydry »

Gigachad wrote: post #61
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…

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.

The average consumer is no more a fan of privacy invading TVs than they are fans of ads which they watch a lot of nor the shopping channel which they always end up subscribing to.

You're mistaking TV producers' desire to capture more of the market pie and invade our privacy with actual consumer demand.

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

#139

Post by DoingIsLearning »

_moof wrote: post #8
jahnu wrote: post #7

Is there a reason I’m not aware of that not connecting a smart to to a network isn’t enough? Do they auto-connect to open Wi-Fi for example?

Apparently some(? many? most?) of them refuse to work at all until they've been "set up" over the internet. Don't know for sure though; I'm clinging to my old dumb TV like a life raft.

All the sony tvs that I have owned, I just connect HDMI inputs. The TV works as intended. If I use sony's remote and go to the home menu it is still waiting for a connection but it works just fine as a tv panel.

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

#140

Post by LaserDiscMan »

They're not cheap or large, but broadcast monitors can be an option. Very expensive unless used though. Lots of lesser known manufacturers in the space, and some great deals can be found. The largest size most manufacturers will do is around 32 inches.
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