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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

#341

Post by chrisjc »

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.

> just a smart TV where the online bit is a removable stick on the back

You're absolutely right. And I've personally capitulate to this reality...

The way that I see it is that there is really no way around this problem except through disconnected-media, over-the-air or homebrew/hacker/open-source solutions. None of these completely satisfy my media cravings.

So however foolish it may be, I still go with the "stick on the back" approach despite their appetite for all my information, because I still trust Apple, Google, Amazon... WAY more than all of these mysterious IPs pointing back to somewhere in Shenzhen.

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

#342

Post by navjack27 »

raffraffraff wrote: post #111

I haven't had a TV for 18 years. I used large monitors for a while, then when I moved 10 years ago I bought an 42" LG "digital signage" panel. They're the flat screens you'd see used for advertising, product display or notification in hotels, stores etc. They still sell them. If I had to replace mine now, I'd probably get the 65UH5F-B, a 65" LED, 500 nits, 3840x2160, 60Hz, HDMI 3.0, DP, DVI, RS232, RJ45, IR.

Gross, 500nits willingly? Why wouldn't you just go for the standard 1000nits where HDR content is mastered for usually or 100nits where SDR is mastered for?

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

#343

Post by baq »

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.

Not really. Content that looks awful on LCDs can look good on CRTs, to the point that there are image processors for old hardware to emulate CRT look on LCD panels.

I've a hard time to find the exact hardware but check out this video for what I have in mind: https://youtu.be/ZsNKu4umHq4?t=218 - 'too accurate' is a very nice way of describing what LCDs do.

Edit: https://www.amazon.com/Gam3Gear-Scanline-Generator-Portable-... - that's one piece of kit

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

#344

Post by navjack27 »

doldols wrote: post #306
superkuh wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this a lot. I've never understood my peers need for complex "plex server" (or related) setups. Why not just store the files on the hard drives of your normal computers? 200TB is why, I guess, but this is hardly typical nor does it require "plex". I do just fine with a handful of computers with ~30 TB between them and some network shares. No "maintainance" required.

Plex actually requires 0 maintenance, it’s the radarr/sonarr bit which deals with content acquisition that’s often a hassle. (Still infinitely better than having to manually choose and download torrents) Even a network share would take more work to set up than Plex. Why Plex? Easy set up, vastly better UI than a network share, works from outside the home. I travel often and frequently benefit from the transcoding fea…

How is playing directly from a computer not a good option? All of my computers on my network are sharing all of their drives all the time and I just go on to other computers drives to get things and I double click them and they play on every computer on my network from Linux to Mac to Windows from H264, 65, vp9, av1... Anything.

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

#345

Post by wussboy »

readbeard wrote: post #311
next_xibalba wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Billions of people like using the product and it hasn't hurt their lives. In fact, it has improved them . I don't believe Facebook or TV are equivalent to cocaine. I don't think your argument is made in good faith.

> I don't believe Facebook or TV are equivalent to cocaine. Exactly. You were making a broad claim that it is "paternalistic and elitist" to decide what is "good for you" vs "bad for you". If it is paternalistic and elitist in some cases, but appropriate in others, then don't we need a way to figure out what side of that line various things fall on?

Bingo.

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

#346

Post by chrisjc »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #131
TACD wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ev…

> Monitors are now starting to go smart.

This an understatement!

I recently watched a review for one of Samsung's new monitors and it turns out you don't even need to connect it to any source.

I don't just mean media sources like Netflix, Amazon, TV, etc... You can literally connect to MS Office and perform trivial desktop activities on it once you connect a mouse and keyboard.

All of this at a pretty compelling price even if you take all of this bloat out of the equation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pVapqSSccc

> 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.

And really, if one of the manufactures is doing this, they all have to... There will be no way to compete with those that are able to lower the cost of their product by subsidizing it through these agents. The average consumer isn't savvy enough to understand this difference and chose the "better" product.

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

#347

Post by navjack27 »

dwighttk wrote: post #151

My TCL has not had any problems not being connected to the internet except it flashes a light on the front to helpfully remind me. I keep telling myself I’m going to take a sharpie to it but it doesn’t bother me that much.

You can connect it to the network and have it download whatever latest updates might be there and if your router is an Asus you could install wrt Merlin and use skynet and diversion to pretty much block everything from Roku and the light never blinks and you could still use your phone as a remote for the TV.

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

#348

Post by navjack27 »

mrjin wrote: post #50
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #6

Every TV is "stupid" when it's not connected to the internet, and none of them can transmit your data when disconnected.

It's beyond that. Dumb TVs are virtually instant on, those so called Smart TVs take a while to boot. Also the design of the UI were changed a lot by removing or hiding frequently used functions/remote buttons etc.

My TCL 4K HDR Roku TV turns on in 2 seconds. I hit the power button on my Roku TV app on my phone in the remote section and I count to two and there is an image on the display and then I hit right once and then okay and then one second later I see my Mac desktop. Amazing!
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