Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?

#511

Post by mzs » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 12:23 AM UTC

pupdogg wrote: post #418

dogma1138 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signage displays do not need to display protected content, they do not need to support standards like DolbyVision and they do not need to support three-two pull-down to display cinematic content without judder. HDCP isn’t supported on all versions of HDMI it’s not part of the spec it is a standard that is supported on top of w/e display interface you are using.

You're right, firmware designer just confirmed that Digital Signage applications don't use HDCP (he actually said "prefer not to use") but he does believe that our controllers using MediaTek SoCs support HDCP and a separate firmware build could be made for this use case...or maybe even a toggle DIP switch could serve this purpose on the controller PCB.

About 3:2 pulldown, 120 = 24 * 5 so if you get panels that update at 120Hz it's easy to accommodate 24Hz 30Hz & 60Hz.

Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?

#512

Post by actually_a_dog » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 12:25 AM UTC

harry8 wrote: post #414

delecti wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A smart-but-disconnected TV can meet all of those functional requirements, and your nonfunctional requirements (low processing power) frankly don't matter to most people. My smart-but-disconnected TV turns on just as quickly as my PC monitors can return from sleep (a second or two); changing inputs is just as quick (input button on remote, left/right to select, okay to confirm), and the automatic input selection when…

I have a 75" Sony bravia smart tv and it draws 10-20 watts in standby. I have a 70" dell monitor used as a a tv in another room it draws 0 watts in standby.

20 watts standby is only about 14.7 kWh per month. Even at on-peak, summer PG&E rates, we're only talking about $7/month. Granted, I'd much rather pay $0 than $7, and I'd rather not waste energy, but we're probably not talking about anything close to the amount of energy the average household wastes. I'd be looking at refrigerators and other large appliances for energy savings long before I'd be thinking about how much electricity the TV uses on standby.

Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?

#513

Post by fernandogrd » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 12:27 AM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #83

nrp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re not planning to do it, we may be interested in that domain.

'We' being Framework? Did I miss some exciting news, or hear it here first?

You heard here first, but they wrote about dumb tvs a while ago: https://frame.work/blog/in-defense-of-dumb-tvs

Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?

#514

Post by JasserInicide » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 12:29 AM UTC

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #2

The 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.

make it smart via an Apple TV, which I personally believe to have the strongest privacy protection of any smart TV device.

Except that as we saw with the CSAM debacle from a couple years ago, Apple will absolutely be scanning any device they have for anything they deem unsavory. I still can't believe people think Apple is a benign player in all of this

Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?

#515

Post by anonymouskimmer » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 12:31 AM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #490

rolenthedeep wrote: post #376

"just don't connect it to the internet" is such a typical HN response that completely misses the point. A smart TV with no internet connection is still a smart TV. It still has an entire operating system that needs to load wifi, ethernet, Bluetooth, usb driver stacks. It still has an awful, flashy interface that adds unnecessary steps between changing inputs. It still tries to load god knows what apps every time you…

> A smart TV with no internet connection And it's soon going to be impossible to dodge it going on the Internet anyway. Manufacturers are hard at work making sure that if any of any neighbor's Internet of Shitty Insecure Things [TM] device participate in the scam, the smart TV shall use your neighbor's device to escape and access the net. I forgot the name of the protocol / "feature", but it's a very real thing. So u…

> And it's soon going to be impossible to dodge it going on the Internet anyway.

To the tune of the Sesame Street song: Faraday cage, sweeping the signal away

I don't know if transparent Faraday cages are possible, but there's apparently at least one company that will EM shield entire rooms.

Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?

#516

Post by crazygringo » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 12:35 AM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #490

rolenthedeep wrote: post #376

"just don't connect it to the internet" is such a typical HN response that completely misses the point. A smart TV with no internet connection is still a smart TV. It still has an entire operating system that needs to load wifi, ethernet, Bluetooth, usb driver stacks. It still has an awful, flashy interface that adds unnecessary steps between changing inputs. It still tries to load god knows what apps every time you…

> A smart TV with no internet connection And it's soon going to be impossible to dodge it going on the Internet anyway. Manufacturers are hard at work making sure that if any of any neighbor's Internet of Shitty Insecure Things [TM] device participate in the scam, the smart TV shall use your neighbor's device to escape and access the net. I forgot the name of the protocol / "feature", but it's a very real thing. So u…

That is total unfounded speculation unless you have evidence for it. Do you?

There's been an urban legend going around for years that smart TV's automatically connect to unsecured wifi but nobody's ever been able to demonstrate it a single time. (Probably their kid had connected it intentionally or something.)

So you might be conflating that urban legend with Amazon's network of Ring devices. But that's extremely low bandwidth, and there is zero evidence TV manufacturers are trying to build in automatic connections to it.

Again, if you have actual evidence then please share, otherwise this is just scaremongering and FUD.

Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?

#517

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 12:37 AM UTC

rolenthedeep wrote: post #376

"just don't connect it to the internet" is such a typical HN response that completely misses the point. A smart TV with no internet connection is still a smart TV. It still has an entire operating system that needs to load wifi, ethernet, Bluetooth, usb driver stacks. It still has an awful, flashy interface that adds unnecessary steps between changing inputs. It still tries to load god knows what apps every time you…

[deleted]

Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?

#518

Post by autoexec » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 12:37 AM UTC

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #503

autoexec wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Don't connect it to the internet" might work, assuming it doesn't aggressively scan for open connections every chance it gets, but if this becomes common it'll only be a matter of time until you're forced to sign up for an account at initial setup, and the TV starts refusing to function at all without an internet connection (or it's been more than x days without one), and searches for nearby bluetooth devices of the…

> The only way to solve this problem for good is to regulate the industry At a place like Hacker News I expect there will be people who have the technical know-how to make a non-smart TV, or even a modular, pick-and-choose, TV, and crowdfund it. At the very least. Lots of industries that aren't tech-adjacent, or are very expensive, need regulation in order to stop particular practices from becoming universal trends,…

there's one person in the comments here already who is trying to build dumb TVs, and if they do it, that'll be where I'm buying my next TV, but I fear that even if they are successful eventually they too will turn to spying and ad pushing, because companies will always make more money by doing so and if their own greed doesn't push them to do it, their shareholders will.

Sometimes, it will always be more profitable for a company to refuse to provide what consumers want. There is no price they can charge us that will ever beat charging that same price and also selling every scrap of our data they can on top of it.

If the skills and materials to construct a quality TV were common or easily obtainable, I'd agree that the smart TV problem would be something we could solve ourselves in our own garages, but I'm not convinced that's the case which means nearly every one of us will be dependent on someone else to build and sell us displays, and as long as that's true we'll be at the mercy of their benevolence and their continuing willingness to reject huge piles of easy money.

Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?

#519

Post by kelnos » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 12:38 AM UTC

delecti wrote: post #405

rolenthedeep wrote: post #376

"just don't connect it to the internet" is such a typical HN response that completely misses the point. A smart TV with no internet connection is still a smart TV. It still has an entire operating system that needs to load wifi, ethernet, Bluetooth, usb driver stacks. It still has an awful, flashy interface that adds unnecessary steps between changing inputs. It still tries to load god knows what apps every time you…

A smart-but-disconnected TV can meet all of those functional requirements, and your nonfunctional requirements (low processing power) frankly don't matter to most people. My smart-but-disconnected TV turns on just as quickly as my PC monitors can return from sleep (a second or two); changing inputs is just as quick (input button on remote, left/right to select, okay to confirm), and the automatic input selection when…

> My smart-but-disconnected TV turns on just as quickly as my PC monitors

Probably because your smart TV is never actually turned off, but sits in a standby state that wastes electricity.

Re: Ask Wirecutter: Can you recommend a not-smart TV for me?

#520

Post by wizardforhire » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 12:38 AM UTC

I want the techniques 1200 of TVs.

Classic style, simple functionality with endless ability to fine tune all the parameters.

Essentially a studio monitor. It should become the standard for color and picture by which everything else is measured. If it can effect the picture, than there should be a setting. The utilities interface should be straight forward and burned onto a raid level 4 array of non-volatile memory. And it should never ever need to be updated. The silicon should fail before I ever need to buy another Tv.