I bought a Hisense model from Costco and set it to "store mode". For all practical purposes, it is just a dumb HDMI display attached to my computer.
Are you able to adjust its picture settings when it's in store mode?
Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?
31–40 of 197 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?
#32Craigslist an older 1080p TV. People are getting rid of old "dumb" TV's, and sometimes you can get them free. I see seemingly undamaged LCD TV's out by garbage bins all the time. I sourced one such a TV for my wife for $100 a few years ago to use as a monitor - works great. No apps or anything - dumb as they come.
You're missing out on resolution (4K) and picture quality (HDR, contrast ratios, color gamut) improvements by doing this.
My experience with HDR has been pretty abysmal on a $500 4K TV. Badly tuned HDR is way worse than no HDR at all.
I have 20/20 vision, and I really can't tell the difference between 1080p and 4K for video games and movies. I will never do below 4k again on a desktop, but 1080p is more than fine for a TV. Higher framerate makes a far bigger difference than higher resolution for video games too.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?
#33For "fun and interesting" consider an LG WebOS TV. Many can be rooted[1] which allows installing a homebrew channel[2] of unauthorized apps or writing your own. I initially did it for Jellyfin before they made it into the official app store, but the Moonlight game streaming app has unlocked many hours of entertainment. 1. https://cani.rootmy.tv 2. https://www.webosbrew.org/
Only older models that have not been upgraded to latest webos.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?
#34For "fun and interesting" consider an LG WebOS TV. Many can be rooted[1] which allows installing a homebrew channel[2] of unauthorized apps or writing your own. I initially did it for Jellyfin before they made it into the official app store, but the Moonlight game streaming app has unlocked many hours of entertainment. 1. https://cani.rootmy.tv 2. https://www.webosbrew.org/
Can confirm and will add that depending on what model you get, webos UI is a breath of fresh air compared to other heavyweights ( like samsung ).
Re: Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?
#35Re: Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?
#36I wish there were more modular tvs like this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-epPf7D8oMk
Re: Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?
#37For "fun and interesting" consider an LG WebOS TV. Many can be rooted[1] which allows installing a homebrew channel[2] of unauthorized apps or writing your own. I initially did it for Jellyfin before they made it into the official app store, but the Moonlight game streaming app has unlocked many hours of entertainment. 1. https://cani.rootmy.tv 2. https://www.webosbrew.org/
Moonlight is really fantastic. It's worked better than Geforce Now for me. Amazon's thing worked best, but they don't have as many games as my Steam does.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?
#38If you just want it for the HDMI input to use as an aux screen for what ever computer your running than anything with an HDMI input in the size range you want should work. I run all the TV's in my house like this; connected to mac mini's instead of futzing with the onboard software mostly because I despise typing one letter at a time with a tv remote. Honestly all the onboard TV OS stuff I have interacted with in the…
Unfortunately the family likes live TV, and that is very hard to get without compromising the UX.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?
#39Craigslist an older 1080p TV. People are getting rid of old "dumb" TV's, and sometimes you can get them free. I see seemingly undamaged LCD TV's out by garbage bins all the time. I sourced one such a TV for my wife for $100 a few years ago to use as a monitor - works great. No apps or anything - dumb as they come.
You're missing out on resolution (4K) and picture quality (HDR, contrast ratios, color gamut) improvements by doing this.
You're missing out on resolution (4K) and picture quality (HDR, contrast ratios, color gamut) improvements by doing this.
Not everyone suffers from FOMO.
I've only seen one movie that was worth the bother and expense of seeing it in 4K (Rear Window).
The rest of the things you mention are mostly for a very small slice of theoretical people with perfect vision in perfectly lit rooms at the perfect height and viewing angle.
Beyond icons on a sticker checklist, they mean nothing to the 99% of people who just want to watch sportsball or eat popcorn while watching Disney films with their kids.
You can put lipstick on a pig, but most people are still watching pigs.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best hackable smart TV?
#40I have Sony Bravia TV that has Android TV so I went looking for the docs to confirm you can enable developer mode, access adb, and sideload apps. While looking at the docs I discovered I can load HTML5 apps from USB! I never knew that but I'm going to do some experimentation in the near future.
https://pro-bravia.sony.net/develop/app/getting-started/inde...