291–300 of 434 posts
I have a Panasonic 50" and I just never connected it to the internet. I do everything on my old MacBook plugged in via HDMI which I control via screen sharing on my current Mac.
Ethernet over HDMI is a thing, so this might not work for all smart TVs.
It wasn't that long ago that I think it was Samsung was caught with the mic always on or something? I don't remember.
I hate how TV's have gone. I don't really consider myself an audiophile (or the picture quality equilvent) but I am willing to spend money on good sound and picture. Not spend a ton but cleanly middle ground on sound and high ground on picture quality.
I have a 75" tv right now and eying an 85" when I upgrade this thing. I play a lot of video games, watch a lot of movies, so it is very worth it for me. I would happily pay a premium to not have all of this smart tv stuff thrown in that I will never use.
There are display or other dumb TV's but from what I can tell they lack many of the bells and whistles that the top of the line TV's coming out today have. Which is what I care about. For example, getting rid of the Halo effect around lights. Something that could ruin a dark video game or movie.
You could just say "don't connect it to wifi". Well the first obvious problem, I live in a city. There are a ton of unsecured Wifi networks nearby that it would be very easy for the TV to connect too. Even if not, if they entered an agreement with Xfinity and used their shared wifi network... I would wager they would be able to connect almost anywhere.
Problem 2. I have had a number of times that randomly I would have signal issues with devices that had been working just fine. The only possible solution I could find was to update the firmware on the TV. Requiring me to connect it to the internet (I keep an ethernet cable nearby just for this use case) so it could update and likely send all of the data it was collecting anyways.
I always connect an Apple TV to my tv for any streaming I want to do.
That being said, If Apple actually truly put out a Smart TV that just ran TVos and didn't invade my privacy... I would likely buy it and have no hesitation on connecting it too the internet.
And now even if you do get a dumb tv and connect a new Chromecast (4k) to it you STILL get ads. You even get ads for services you already subscribe to, asking you to subscribe to a higher tier. And you also get the dark pattern of the down button on the remote navigating upwards the first time you press it... So it highlights the giant advertisement first. I'm close to building my own TV DIYPerks style.
Last year, the NVIDIA Shield TV, a $200 device if you get the Pro version, received an update to Android TV that forced a new UI for the homescreen that injects ads from a variety of premium streaming services [1]. There is no easy way to disable it as far as I know other than installing a custom launcher such as FLauncher [2]. The cancers of modern day advertising cannot be understated. [1]: https://www.guru3d.com/n…
Edit: I think there's just a typo on the HN title. The original title showing on the website is "It's Still Stupidly, Ridiculously Difficult to Buy a 'Dumb' TV" which is perfectly grammatical.
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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.
> The fact consumers love something doesn't make it a good thing. It does make it a good thing for them. Which begs the question: why is it that you get to decide what is or isn't a good thing? Or: why shouldn't people be able to decide for themselves? The answers against the latter are, at their root, paternalistic and elitist. > they love also facebook Ah, yes. The old "facebook is as bad as cigarettes" trope. It f…
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…
Amazon had many options with varying levels of dumbness. I ordered a Sceptre.
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Obviously you were lucky. My experiences were based on Sony and Samsung, so TCL might be a different story and also different people have different needs. For me, all I need is really just a instant on big screen with decent speakers, nothing more.
What do you plan on putting on that screen once it’s on?
I want it, I can pay for it, it's weird that it's getting harder to do so.
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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.
> The fact consumers love something doesn't make it a good thing. It does make it a good thing for them. Which begs the question: why is it that you get to decide what is or isn't a good thing? Or: why shouldn't people be able to decide for themselves? The answers against the latter are, at their root, paternalistic and elitist. > they love also facebook Ah, yes. The old "facebook is as bad as cigarettes" trope. It f…
I'm not clear on what your argument is here. Are you:
* denying that there is a fact of the matter about whether, for any item X, X is beneficial or harmful?
* asserting that something's being beneficial or harmful has no meaning apart from signifying present-day user preference?
* merely asserting that users fairly reliably tend to prefer what is good for them, and avoid what is bad for them?
> Billions of people like using the product and it hasn't hurt their lives. In fact, it has improved them.
It sounds like you are making a case here that Facebook is beneficial because it improves the lives of its users—am I understanding that correctly?
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> The fact consumers love something doesn't make it a good thing. It does make it a good thing for them. Which begs the question: why is it that you get to decide what is or isn't a good thing? Or: why shouldn't people be able to decide for themselves? The answers against the latter are, at their root, paternalistic and elitist. > they love also facebook Ah, yes. The old "facebook is as bad as cigarettes" trope. It f…
In what way do your arguments not also apply to cocaine?
I don't believe Facebook or TV are equivalent to cocaine. I don't think your argument is made in good faith.
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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 du…
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.
Back before the turn of the century, Micropose released Falcon 4.0, arguably one of the best military flight sims. It was complex, had good graphics for the day, had a vibrant community of users, a vibrant aftermarket equipment ecosystem (HOTAS, foot pedals etc). I love playing it, and couldn't wait until better and better computers came out that could make the graphics photorealistic. I also played EF2000 which let you fly the Eurofighter. Same game idea, a bit less accurate, and a bit more user friendly.
Fast forward two decades and the military flightsim field is basically dead. People will tell you to try MS Flight Sim, but that's definitely not the same.
Why did this happen? Might have been dotcom fallout; might have been just a small niche application field. Who knows? The market moved on and now it's a wasteland. Perhaps VR will revive it since it would add a great deal of situational awareness.
In the end, just because a small group wants something (like dumb TVs or Milsims) doesn't mean that companies will fill the niche.