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.
Monetizing my private life is nowhere near in the same category as killing me, unless you believe in some philosophy where privacy is as important as life.
Making an algorithm to addict me is arguably pretty evil though.
Do you honestly believe that? The TV manufacturers will subsidise a cellular connection to allow users to stream hours of 4K content in exchange for a few pennies of ad revenue? Smart TVs don't make any sense unless they are connected to a home network.
The 5G connection can be limited to phone-home functions.
What would be the point?
So they can track that you keep the TV tuned to HDMI 1 all day?
There are still some dumb TVs manufacturers like SWEDX in the EU and Sceptre in the US. I don't have any of their products so I can't tell about their quality. https://www.swedx.com/ https://www.sceptre.com/ Also some Samsung models use Tizen as the OS, which hopefully could be more easier to jailbreak. Another option are signage displays, which usually (not always, though) are big dumb unconnected monitors. They're…
50-inch Sceptre here. Good stuff, would recommend. Mine shows some very, very faint shadows when the screen shows pure white, but could just be my setup.
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…
Would be interesting to know why consumers want smart TVs so much. Some smart TV features are indeed necessary if you want to watch anything via streaming (i.e. any halfway relevant modern series). But as GP said, you can usually get those via some kind of HDMI stick. So one explanation might be that most people want to watch Netflix but don't know this is possible with a dumb TV + stick as well. Or they know this bu…
Personally, I'm really into cable management and hate clutter. Having one less external device to plug in helps with that. It's not like a Roku or Apple TV or Fire Stick can't track you and show ads in all the same ways a Smart TV can, so it's hard for me to see the downside. Since you have to login to most of these services anyway, even if you're watching Netflix on a Linux laptop, they're still tracking you. I guess at least Samsung isn't tracking you on top of Netflix if you're just watching on a dumb monitor, but frankly, the way to handle that should be, if market-based, Smart TV providers that don't do content recognition and interest-based advertising, and if that doesn't work, legal regulation that bans abusive practices. We shouldn't be stuck with 80s technology forever because devices with integrated computers will inevitably be used for spying.
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.
My mother bought a house in which the oven and the microwave were, for some inconceivable reason, one piece. We all hate and despise the microwave. But we can't get rid of it, because it's part of the oven.
I can't understand what anyone involved in the production of this monstrosity was thinking. It's a gigantic failure at the level of product design, product manufacturing, and house furnishing.
There is not even any "convenience" aspect to attaching your oven to a microwave.
> 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…
> buy a smart TV you can use dumbly (offline). Are you sure that’s always true? What about smart TVs that seek out open wifi networks or try to access the internet via HDMI? The problem with smart TVs is that you loose control of what they’re actually doing. i.e. LG smart TVs searching your network for media and sending a log back to… somewhere. Or Samsung smart TVs sending hashed images of what you’re watching back…
I am not aware of a TV that requires internet access to show a picture, but I haven't looked in a long time. I don't think a TV will try to hack nearby networks, but it is possible that it strongly suggests you to connect to the internet, for example by showing nag screens, locking out essential features, or fixing breaking bugs that should never have been allowed to ship.
What I meant that you can buy a smart TV and take advantage of the lower prices but you should make sure that you can actually use the TV without a network connection (and yes, that it doesn't try to hack your wifi).
Until your neighbor enables an open, unprotected wifi, your smart TV connects to it and auto-updates to start showing you ads.
Are there any TV models that are proven/documented to do this? I hear this claim all the time but I can't find a single demo of it happening. A previous HN thread [0] couldn't come up with any examples either. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25275350
Samsung TVs do show an interface called 'p2p0' along 'eth0' - I think this is visible in the Netflix diagnostic screen. Dunno really what it means or does.
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…
BTW, Plex sadly requires a network connection, I'm looking at alternatives. Seems silly to have local media and not able to play it.