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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

#391

Post by basch »

philistine wrote: post #363
basch wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A dumb TV would not need firmware updates. Post processing, and other parts of rendering are still occurring. For example, if you game, have an Xbox, and a Sony TV, VRR is a feature that gets added to the TV after you buy it.

Can you point me in the direction of a TV that adds basic features like VRR through firmware? I'm on my second Roku OS TCL tv, and no new features are ever added to those. The firmware updates strictly deal with the app environment.

A TCL Roku example would be the FALD engine. Firmware updates "enhance" the backlight algorithm. One update added it to Game mode.

VRR being added, as I stated, is something Sony has been doing this year.

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

#392

Post by raffraffraff »

navjack27 wrote: post #342
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?

That's a hilarious opening question. I just watched an excellent Columbo episode from 1976 on a 10 year old LED screen, willingly, and I didn't even throw up.

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

#393

Post by MandieD »

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…

This will make you feel better about that 1200 GBP: we're still rocking the 55" 1080p Sony Bravia we bought in 2010 for 2000 EUR.

I am also delighted to hear that a 55" 4K monitor can be had for well under 2000 EUR, and will gladly do that when the Bravia finally bites the dust, because that's the only way we are taking that thing off the wall over the piano!

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

#394

Post by dunefox »

Havoc wrote: post #47
lordnacho wrote: post #11

What's frightening is that I can see on my PiHole the huge spike of requests that happens when one of my TVs comes on. Just the standard graph in the front page is enough to see exactly when the kids have turned it on. Most of the requests are rejected though, maybe someone can say whether that is enough to protect me from corporate surveillance.

Not just TVs...I can see my freaking lightbulbs in my pihole charts. What a time to be alive.

Light bulbs?!

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

#395

Post by Gigachad »

JohnFen wrote: post #263
next_xibalba wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

But something is seriously wrong with a society where it's impossible to avoid a thing that you consider harmful to yourself just because the larger market prefers it. It used to be that one of the strengths of our economic system was that you could find something to meet your needs even if your needs weren't the same as the majority.

How is it impossible to avoid smart TVs? I don’t own a TV at all, I just use my desktop monitor. And then there are a bunch of examples in this thread about commercial displays.

It’s not impossible to not own a smart TV, it’s just the mass market caters to what the vast majority want. Outside of hacker news, no one considers smart TVs harmful.

I consider cars harmful and yet hacker news gets up in arms when I propose banning them from cities.

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

#397

Post by Gigachad »

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 good rule of thumb is that it hacker news claims there is a huge unserved market for some product, there is almost certainly no real demand for it outside of this website.

I’m not sure I have actually ever seen an iPhone mini in the wild. It seems to be almost evenly split between the pro and the pro max.

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

#398

Post by Gigachad »

cassianoleal wrote: post #230
schwartzworld wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At that point the users just buy one of those nvidia TV sticks and move on with life.

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

#399

Post by kwatsonafter »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #141
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.

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…

I love how you refer to buyers as, "voting."

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

#400

Post by MandieD »

JohnFen wrote: post #288
yardstick wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DoH / DoT DNS privacy and security works both for and against individual users. It definitely works against network owners and operators.

This is why I had to set up a MITM to detect and drop DoH/DoT requests. Allowing devices and applications to evade my network management is crazy to me.

Have you written about how you did this anywhere, or do you not want to tip off "the other side"?
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