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It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

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Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#41

Post by mrjin »

Smart TVs were created for all kinds of agendas but none were actually for us the consumers. All those agendas require an OS which takes time to boot. Making it worse, some of those TVs' CPU are crap and thus every operation takes much longer than those dumb ones. Lots of vendors also start to ship new remotes that removed all the essential buttons, especially the video source button, and I have to press 5 or more times than before just to switch to a different source.

So we are actually paying more(of course, lots extra hardware cost) for less. But it does not end there. Vendors put lots of Ads in them, some vendors even put boot-up Ads regardless it is connected to internet or not. The worst I guess was mentioned in a couple of day ago some rouge vendor even started to put customized Ads based programs we are watching on air.

I guess my replacement for a TV would be a big monitor.

Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#44

Post by tpxl »

yywwbbn wrote: post #36
izacus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premium for a dumb TV screen is about 500-1000$ though. Are you ready to pay that? Because manufacturers will earn more than your 100$ with ads and all other smart features on you if they don't let you buy a dumb screen.

> Because manufacturers will earn more than your 100$ with ads and all other Is there any evidence that this is the case?

[0] indicates they earn some 10-20$/year for vizio and 40$/month ([sic], article probably meant year) for Roku from advertising. With a lifetime of a TV at about 5 years this puts you in 100-200$ extra territory.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-adver...

Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#45

Post by vortico »

chii wrote: post #10
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #6

Every TV is "stupid" when it's not connected to the internet, and none of them can transmit your data when disconnected.

If it turns out that too many people are disconnecting their tv, the manufacturer would merely add in a sim card. They don't yet ATM because they don't need to - too many people are stupidly connecting their wifi.

Wouldn't the free market simply provide modifications with the cell networking removed for an extra $50 or so? The "discount" you get from buying a smart TV verses a dumb TV (which is a niche product so it would cost hundreds more) would still be positive after subtracting the cost of modification.

Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#46

Post by pbhjpbhj »

bojangleslover wrote: post #32
cookie_monsta wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: > I’m usually told something akin to: “well, just don’t connect the TV to the Internet!” But that route locks you out of firmware updates, and some TV makers remove functionality if you refuse to participate in their online ecosystem. Many smart TV GUIs also need to load before you’re even allowed to switch laggy HDMI inputs. (although this is exactly what I did with the Samsung smart TV I picked up on a bargain…

Who needs firmware updates on a TV?

BBC iPlayer stopped supporting don't older TVs. I think it was a codec issue, they only now support more modern codecs? In which case a firmware update might have provided a fix.

I know several older people who changed TV because of it.

Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#47

Post by Havoc »

lordnacho wrote: post #11

What's frightening is that I can see on my PiHole the huge spike of requests that happens when one of my TVs comes on. Just the standard graph in the front page is enough to see exactly when the kids have turned it on. Most of the requests are rejected though, maybe someone can say whether that is enough to protect me from corporate surveillance.

Not just TVs...I can see my freaking lightbulbs in my pihole charts. What a time to be alive.

Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#48

Post by rcarmo »

andix wrote: post #37

TVs without a tuner are quite popular in Austria. You save around 30€ per month on payments to public TV stations, if your TV is just a monitor and has no tuner. You can get for example one of those (german, but you probably can read the specs anyway): https://nogis.at or https://www.gisbefreit.at/ Most devices are not high end though.

These seem great. I wonder where they have them manufactured.

Re: It’s Still Stupidly, Difficult to Buy a ‘Dumb’ TV

#50

Post by mrjin »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #6

Every TV is "stupid" when it's not connected to the internet, and none of them can transmit your data when disconnected.

It's beyond that. Dumb TVs are virtually instant on, those so called Smart TVs take a while to boot. Also the design of the UI were changed a lot by removing or hiding frequently used functions/remote buttons etc.
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