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From the sound of it, the ads only appear when using smart TV apps? So you could still use a "smart" TV but with normal inputs.
Then why not just save yourself some money and get a "dumb" TV? I can only imagine they jack the price up a hundred or two for the "smart"
> Samsung explained that these sorts of ads were supposed to be opt-in only and was working with Yahoo to improve the system. No user would opt-in to commercials, ever. I don't believe for a second this system was designed with opt-in in mind. Whenever an ill conceived feature like this is brought to the light, it's always explained as a bug, glitch, or some screw up in engineering. Well, it's not a bug. It was speci…
Smart TVs are a good idea. Who doesn't want less crap plugged into their TV? However, TV manufacturers – for some reason – are ill-suited to developing the software that would make for a good experience.
A display panel should last you more than a decade and probably costs many 100s or 1000s. The 'smart' bit is probably worth less than $200 and is probably going to be obsolete in a couple of years.
EDIT - another thing. I want the people that make my 'smart' box to be nimble, forward looking new media companies - not box shifters like Samsung, LG, Philips et al. Most Smart TVs have awful software (LG's purchase of WebOS might lead them to be an exception here)
I've been asked by non-tech friends and relatives about SmartTVs many times and my answer is always "don't touch them with a barge-pole" and a link to a Roku/Chromecast/AppleTV etc.
So... do smart TVs actually have a single feature that's actually useful to the consumer?
> By either selecting that I agree or by not selecting that I disagree, I agree to the Yahoo Connected TV Terms of Service Written under the deselected "I Agree" checkbox, with no "I disagree" option visible. This has to be some kind of record. And on a TV that you paid hundreds if not thousands of dollars, not in some spooky shareware download.
agree = iAgree || !iDisagree;
Do what I do: buy the TV for the nice screen and get a Roku 3. Your life will get easier.
Personally a dumb tv/roku/media server has been my go to choice. This whole smartTV hype is still beyond me. Could someone please touch on the advantages of a smart TV offerings over my setup?
Advertisements during your locally stored content, possibly for whatever the hell it is that they are smoking at Samsung.
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This means even simple things such as pressing the 'Source' button to view the source list (you can't just press it to switch, you need to press this then select the new source from the menu) takes 30 seconds to load. Is that an exaggeration? 30 seconds is far beyond what I would consider unusable, and a TV which takes that long to switch between sources would be quickly returned.
No, I've used a Samsung Smart TV a few times and this is hardly hyperbole. When you "start" the TV it's in some sort of lite mode, actually going to one of the menus requires booting up the secondary operating system which can take a few minutes. Every menu is painfully slow to navigate, the interfaces are displayed at a few frames a second, and the wifi built in is beyond useless. Trouble is, it's almost impossible…
The next time I buy a TV, I'll try out the Source selection in a showroom first.
Personally a dumb tv/roku/media server has been my go to choice. This whole smartTV hype is still beyond me. Could someone please touch on the advantages of a smart TV offerings over my setup?
I purposely bought a Philips smart TV this year as the only stuff I really watch is Netflix, iPlayer, YouTube and my own ripped content. This TV advertised apps for all of that and DLNA support, so I figured I wouldn't need any other boxes. I have used XBMC before and that worked great, except there is still no Netflix support, so I figured I'd try something with it built in. Netflix works perfectly, and I really can…
I see an opening for a 'TV Smartify' business selling customized Rasberry Pi's (or some equivalent) that you attach to your TV, plug in with HDMI/power/network, and go. Include a custom OS ready to go, a HDMI cable, wireless Keyboard/Mouse, customer case, and a power supply and sell it upmarked as a convenience (since the target market would be those who wouldn't even know what a Rasberry Pi was).
A bit disappointing that a hacker community's first reaction is to position against smart TVs. Smart TVs are awesome, we just need open source firmware for them in the same way that we have DDWRT/OpenWRT, XBMC and such. Imagine the control scheme using a wiimote-style pointer, built-in webcam, quad core CPU and an API to give you access to your viewing habits, or interface with other smart devices around your home. R…
(I put the PC in place after a series of set-top-box/PVRs from BT which came with the "BT Vision" service. That suffered from adverse updates that gradually made the interface infuriatingly slow.)
TVs really ought to pick up on HDMI activation/deactivation. I suspect the reason they don't is that it works 99% of the time but there are broken devices which would steal focus.