My next TV purchase will be a dumb TV.
Good luck finding one, but this has nothing to do with Smart TVs, and everything to do with what you hook up to a TV.
Disable wifi on the TV and use an AppleTV.
Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
51–60 of 181 posts
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#52I'm in a subculture where people mostly don't own televisions (I do watch shows on my laptop, occasionally) but so I have never seen motion smoothing - is there a demo, online, like on youtube or something, that can give me a sense of what you are talking about?
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#53Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can put any android TV into dumb mode ("Basic TV") during setup, which disables many-most of the smart features without affecting core display functionality: https://support.google.com/googletv/answer/10408998?hl=en .
You're still greeted by a full-page ad on the main menu. But yes; it is better.
> You're still greeted by a full-page ad on the main menu.
The same ad every time, or is it still phoning home for new ads?
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#55I'm in a subculture where people mostly don't own televisions (I do watch shows on my laptop, occasionally) but so I have never seen motion smoothing - is there a demo, online, like on youtube or something, that can give me a sense of what you are talking about?
It looks like a 90s/2000s soap opera, like Days of our Lives. I always turn it off on TVs I use.
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#56"If it ain't broke, don't fix/update it." That's my moto. Apart from Firefox, my banking apps and Signal, I don't update anything, ever. Not the TV, not the media-box, nothing. Eventually it leads to tragedy and discomfort. Sometimes I custom update my Win machines for Security patches, but anything that has to do with usability, UI, function, etc. I leave it as is. (I firewall all my apps in my machine anyway).
I don't even give my TV the wifi password. I'm paranoid that it's going to update something without my consent. I fear the day they come with cellular modems and bypass the wifi entirely.
Cellular modems and passwords? No need, it will just connect automatically to some mesh network outwith your control: https://www.wired.com/story/how-amazon-sidewalk-works/
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#57This is why I buy my TV and never connect it to the internet. Between the invasive conversation monitoring and ad spots on the menu, it's much better to buy an Apple TV / Nvidia Shield.
Nvidia Shield was one of the best purchases I ever made. I also never made the mistake of updating it like the author of the above article. If something works, and does everything you want it to do, you should never "update" it unless it is absolutely necessary. More often than not these "updates" only serve to restrict the device you own or inject more ads and spyware.
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#58My next TV purchase will be a dumb TV.
Unlikely. They don't really exist any more, at least not for a price you will be willing to pay.
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#59I'm in a subculture where people mostly don't own televisions (I do watch shows on my laptop, occasionally) but so I have never seen motion smoothing - is there a demo, online, like on youtube or something, that can give me a sense of what you are talking about?
Which subculture is this? I also do not own a tv. But I’m not part of any subculture that I know of.
Re: Dear Roku, you ruined my TV
#60What would be the downsides of simply buying a big computer monitor instead of a TV? It seems to me like an easy way to avoid all the crapware that comes with Smart TVs.
Ironically I bought a big TV to use as my computer monitor because it was so much less expensive. Never connected it to the internet or did any sort of "setup" other than setting it to HDMI mode.