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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

#221

Post by everdrive »

rosndo wrote: post #208
everdrive wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fun novelty. You can find VHS for free at yard sales and other places. It often costs less to get a VHS than rent a movie on Amazon or something else. CRTs in general are honestly superior in a number of a ways. They effectively have built-in anti-aliasing, they tend to have better color depth, and usually have better speakers than a flatscreen TV. They're also better for most retro video game systems. Where I…

No offense intended, but if you truly believe these things you might want to have your vision checked.

None taken -- I've got 20/20, or relatively close to it. It's not as if I can't see the difference, I just don't feel that sharper inherently equals better. At least in the case of watching movies or TV.

My intuitive sense is that people don't actually care about increased resolution, but simply know that they're using the "inferior" option, and claim not to like it. I'm not suggesting this is actually the case -- it's just that caring about a sharper picture is foreign enough to me that it's not my most natural conclusion. Logically, I can certainly understand people probably do care about image sharpness. I'm just not one of those people.

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

#223

Post by Kye »

rosndo wrote: post #216
JohnBooty wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, TVs went from dumb to smart, so empirically, sufficient buyers voted for smart even when they had an option for dumb This is one of those areas where consumerism/capitalism trips over itself and leads to sub-optimal outcomes. The implicit assumption here is that this must be what consumers want, because it's what they "voted" for. But voting (whether democratic elections, or just free-market consumer spending c…

> There's no reasonable way for consumers to know how shitty the inbuilt OS/apps of a "smart TV" will become over time, or what onerous software updates the manufacturer will pump out, etc. A lot of this stuff is difficult or impossible to know even for savvy, educated people looking for a TV. You read a few TV reviews, see that LG OLEDs have been the best choice for many years. Hard to get this wrong.

This works until a fresh MBA or PE firm takes over and decides to pump and dump, and the quality craters quicker than the reputation.

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

#224

Post by gambiting »

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.

I don't think I'm an "average" customer at all(but then, maybe no one does), and I would hate to own a dumb TV. We have an LG CX with all the apps built in, it's super convenient to have everything just built in right into the TV, to be able to control all of it with just one remote, to be able to cast directly to the TV from pretty much all of my devices. The TV and the apps start up pretty much instantly too, I have no issues with the responsiveness of the entire system.

Yes I am aware some "smart" TVs are incredibly bad(I wouldn't buy a Samsung having read the reviews of many different models) but yeah, having a dumb TV+ extra devices just to stream to seems like a hassle.

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

#225

Post by lotsofpulp »

JohnBooty wrote: post #210
lotsofpulp wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume there are capable people working at these large TV companies who can ascertain reasonably well what kind of demand there is for a dumb TV. Also, TVs went from dumb to smart, so empirically, sufficient buyers voted for smart even when they had an option for dumb. The alternative is all the manufacturers simultaneously pulled all dumb TVs out of the market even though selling them would provide a competitive a…

Also, TVs went from dumb to smart, so empirically, sufficient buyers voted for smart even when they had an option for dumb This is one of those areas where consumerism/capitalism trips over itself and leads to sub-optimal outcomes. The implicit assumption here is that this must be what consumers want, because it's what they "voted" for. But voting (whether democratic elections, or just free-market consumer spending c…

> There's no reasonable way for consumers to know how shitty the inbuilt OS/apps of a "smart TV" will become over time, or what onerous software updates the manufacturer will pump out, etc. A lot of this stuff is difficult or impossible to know even for savvy, educated people looking for a TV.

Maybe, but it has been a decade since smart TVs became prevalent, and I would bet everything I have that if you put a dumb TV for sale next to a smart TV in Costco, no matter how shitty the software on the smart TV is, the smart TV will be chosen enough times that the dumb TV maker goes out of business.

This is not about what should the consumer do. This is about what the consumer will do. And they will choose to pay $30 less in exchange for giving all their viewing data to the TV manufacturer. Try to educate them otherwise, I doubt it will be successful.

There is also more data out there than ever before in history about TVs, but I doubt most people would ever care enough to read in depth reviews on rtings or whatever.

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

#226

Post by cassianoleal »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #145
andrepd wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if there are no dumb TVs for sale, how do you know if that's the consumer's desire or not? The much simpler explanation is that TVs plastered with ads and surveillance are more profitable to companies.

>But if there are no dumb TVs for sale, how do you know if that's the consumer's desire or not? The same argument has been posted multiple times for small phones. Yet, every time apple releases small phone, they are disappointed in sales. https://www.macrumors.com/2022/03/28/apple-cutting-iphone-se...

A couple possibilities come to mind:

- Most Apple users want larger screens, which means larger phones; or

- Small Apple phones are not small enough, so there's no point.

About the second point, that's where I am. I've been looking forward to a USB-C iPhone Mini. That was until I actually tried to use a Mini. It's smaller than the regular size iPhone, but still very hard to use single-hand as I have small hands. I want something the size of the iPhone 5. The Mini is just not small enough to make the small screen worth it.

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

#227

Post by rosndo »

oneoff786 wrote: post #222

Use a computer and an hdmi cord as your media source and you can’t go wrong. I just wish the pi was powerful enough to cleanly stream high res content. It’s so close.

Yeah, good luck with getting dolby vision and the likes to work.

You’ll also have to deal with substantially degraded experience from streaming services unless you’re willing to deal with the inconvenience of pirating everything.

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

#228

Post by BrandoElFollito »

andix wrote: post #37

TVs without a tuner are quite popular in Austria. You save around 30€ per month on payments to public TV stations, if your TV is just a monitor and has no tuner. You can get for example one of those (german, but you probably can read the specs anyway): https://nogis.at or https://www.gisbefreit.at/ Most devices are not high end though.

> Most devices are not high end though.

Do you mean that their quality is meh, or whether they lack functionality?

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

#229

Post by MiddleEndian »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #166
sgjohnson wrote: post #154

I for one enjoy that my Smart TV is subsidized by all the morons who think that my data is worth anything. It's not connected to internet. It's connected to Apple TV box. Thanks for the discount.

> It's not connected to internet From the article: “As a dumb TV fan who has bought several sets in the last decade, I’m usually told something akin to: “well, just don’t connect the TV to the Internet!” But that route locks you out of firmware updates, and some TV makers remove functionality if you refuse to participate in their online ecosystem. Many smart TV GUIs also need to load before you’re even allowed to swi…

Why would I need a firmware update for my TV that I use as a big monitor? It has no network access, I switched it to "PC mode", it displays pixels, it makes sounds, I very occasionally switch inputs.

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

#230

Post by cassianoleal »

schwartzworld wrote: post #92
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But consumers would buy dumb TVs with dongles if that’s what they made. We used to buy digital set top boxes. Antennas. VCRs. DVD players. Manufacturers definitely jumped on the chance to add software and an internet connection to TVs. Why sell a product once, when you can do that and then sell your customers to ad agencies?

In the days of VCRs, they sold tvs with those built in too! An obvious convenience until the VCR part broke, which anything with mechanical components will eventually.

That's not too different from when they stop updating the OS and apps stop supporting the version you have on your "smart" TV.
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