I bought a Sceptre a few years ago for this reason. Best TV I’ve owned, no smart features, great price and picture quality.
Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
211–220 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you survive the lawsuit from Disney, I’m in. I’d prefer a much smaller tv (32-40”) but I’m weird like that. All I’d want is an input for an Apple TV and maybe 2 more hdmi plugs. Doesn’t even need a remote. Good luck.
> input for an Apple TV and maybe 2 more hdmi plugs Add more input ports than you think anybody could ever want, and I'm in.
Did AppleTV output change or is it still HDMI?
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Simple, just put it in a Faraday cage.
It’s surprising how cages work. The MR one at work will leak if the door is open .5mm, it lets blue tooth and wifi through and some phone calls. Works pretty well for MR at 3T (which is actually more like 2.89T) though - 125Mhz ish.
Anyone who says that "blocking" wifi is easy is someone who hasn't tried. Even very expensive professionally built cages don't "block", they attenuate. And modern wifi equipment is surprisingly good at working just fine with weak signals.
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#214Like one with physical nobs to adjust channel and volume? Ebay should be good. Want a remote control and on screen menus? That's a smart TV. The difference is that the price of embedded controller to run built in UI and live guide is no longer any lower than one needed to stream Hulu. Someone also needs to develop TV firmware and Android development is much cheaper than creating new embedded UI from scratch. And Hulu will pay for having a remote button / prominent placement on home screen / actual new user activation on the device. So overall, you are getting a discount for having ability to stream directly from TV, even if you never connect to WiFi. Enjoy!
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#215The 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.
This is 100% the way. Did the same thing with my new Samsung. It's been a very clean experience.
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#216For 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.
I'm pretty sure Cable boxes all have HDMI these days, so that shouldn't be an issue. Monitors won't have an over-the-air tuner, so, you'd need to use an external device to watch broadcast TV.
You don't need a cable box or a TV to watch cable TV anymore, you can stream it over it the internet.
HMDI from a computer to a monitor or a projector would work fine.
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#217I've designed and built many such TVs for the commercial/industrial vertical. I am currently working on developing such a TV for the consumer market and launching it under the name DUMBO.TV Let me know your thoughts. Reference pix of 70" industrial display using Samsung LCD panel and in-house LCD controller with physical OSD menu buttons along with IR/RS232 control capability: https://imgur.com/a/k6zrH3s
* OLED
* eARC
* Dolby Vision and HDR10+
* VRR, preferably with G-Sync and Freesync Premium certification
These are my requirements for a new display, anything that meets them in the pipeline? My biggest problem with existing "dumb TVs" is that they lack features like these, yet cost more than "smart TVs" that do.
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your LG C2 is a dumb tv - if you dont connect it to the internet. You can even buy a $10 IR remote control on amazon and use that to switch inputs. Or, in my experience, all of my external devices support HDMI CEC and auto switch when i use them.
I have an LGCX and if I hadn't connected it to the internet I would have missed out on some important software updates that significantly improved the display performance. I guess you can toggle the internet on and off when updates are published, but it's not the most convenient solution. Edit: But you can use a USB! Woohoo, thank you repliers!
LG (at least for my OLED model) supports firmware updates over USB, and posts firmware updates to their website. It's a very smooth flow -- my years-old TV has never had an internet connection and is up-to-date.
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#219They're not cheap or large, but broadcast monitors can be an option here. Very expensive unless bought used though. Lots of lesser known manufacturers in the space, and some great deals can be found. The largest size most manufacturers will do is around 32 inches.
CRT Broadcast monitors are somewhat of a collectors item for retro game enthusiasts.
Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?
#220I've designed and built many such TVs for the commercial/industrial vertical. I am currently working on developing such a TV for the consumer market and launching it under the name DUMBO.TV Let me know your thoughts. Reference pix of 70" industrial display using Samsung LCD panel and in-house LCD controller with physical OSD menu buttons along with IR/RS232 control capability: https://imgur.com/a/k6zrH3s
You're going to want to change that name... Disney... They have the class 9 Trade Mark for Dumbo, and call out: "television sets;"[1][2]. [1] https://search.ipaustralia.gov.au/trademarks/search/view/115... [2] https://files.littlebird.com.au/Shared-Image-2023-04-08-06-5...
Yes, going to take care of that. Thanks for the heads up. I really looked that one over...didn't think too much of it as the domain was available. It's hard to do anything the easy way nowadays!