Article does not give a single not-smart-tv option. The journalism quality is outstanding .
The Betteridge's Law of Headlines strikes again.
Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
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Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#12The Spectre brand sold by Walmart has quite a few 4K dumb TV’s . I bought one a few years ago and connected my Apple TV and works fine.
The TVs are okay for picture but the audio is terrible. An inexpensive soundbar or speaker system goes a long way on those TVs.
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#13From a (cynical?) content and affiliate point of view, I like the style of taking user questions (bonus points if H.B. is a real person) and answering it - rather than just a bland list of products by "expensive but good, less expensive but less good" that wirecutter is.
This lets the authors also recommend extra tangential items ("get a projector!").
On another note, my trust in these types of things have gone down overall (every google search for "best yadda yadda" yields a list with affiliate links now, unless perhaps you append "reddit" to your search).
Wirecutter still has some trust for me. Anyone else?
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#14A couple years ago, I bought the domain "DumbTV.com" and considered looking to source my own television sets from China to sell at a premium with no added features besides HDMI ports. Should have followed through on that.
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#15idk why people are against Smart TVs. It's not like the vendors put a 5G modem on it and pay for the ads to be served to you themselves with their own internet.
buy your tv, don't connect to wifi. connect to your device of choice, done.
trying to avoid smart tvs is so silly, as you basically exclude nearly all of the good ones.
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#16Article does not give a single not-smart-tv option. The journalism quality is outstanding .
The point is that you can't buy a decent quality TV that doesn't come with smart features, all you can do is keep it disconnected from the internet.
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#17The approach I’ve taken is to just keep my TV off the internet (never join a WiFi network) and make it smart via an Apple TV, which I personally believe to have the strongest privacy protection of any smart TV device. Another bonus is my TV UI hasn’t changed despite changing and upgrading TV brands.
Hasn't some models (thinking Samsung) been shown to connect to any WiFi network they can? edit: Appears to be an urban legend, with not much substance to back it up!
Sure but if everyone has WPA2 encryption enabled on their network, such as is the case in my neighbourhood, then there is no network for the TV to connect to anyways.
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#18Digital projectors are usually 'not-smart' and some of the short throw projectors can be placed quite close to the screen or wall if space is an issue.
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#19For the HN audience especially, a simple computer monitor seems like the obvious answer. Set it up however you like.
Maybe it's a little more complicated if you still have cable or something, but unless you're watching live sports, there's not much value there.
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#20The approach I’ve taken is to just keep my TV off the internet (never join a WiFi network) and make it smart via an Apple TV, which I personally believe to have the strongest privacy protection of any smart TV device. Another bonus is my TV UI hasn’t changed despite changing and upgrading TV brands.
Hasn't some models (thinking Samsung) been shown to connect to any WiFi network they can? edit: Appears to be an urban legend, with not much substance to back it up!
But that would require an accessible WiFi network.
I'm sure someday it'll be impossible because they'll embed 5G chips and do it over cell without involving your consent, but that day isn't here yet.