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What is the best dumb TV?

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Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#481

Post by Aeolun »

kebman wrote: post #207

I don't have a TV, only a few monitors (it's very liberating, actually). So instead I'll talk about my microwave. Yes, unironically! :D It has two dials. OMG how do I survive with only two dials? How do I program it? Well, the answer is, unsurprisingly, that I don't program it. Instead I crank it to watever wattage I need (usually the top one), and the time I think it'll take until the food I becomes hot. Aaaand that…

I kind of like that my microwave has a button (in addition to a gazillion others that we don’t use), that somehow determines what is inside and how long it will take to heat up. And then automatically sets time and wattage.

No more thinking, just press the button and get hot stuff. It even gets it right some of the time.

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#482

Post by natch »

microcolonel wrote: post #451
natch wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My microwave has one round dial that turns. That’s it. And zero buttons. It’s fantastic. Turn the dial, and it starts. The farther around you turn it, the more time you get. The scale is clearly marked around the dial with large readable numbers and gives progressively more coarse as you turn through about 340 degrees or so (less than 360). To abort and turn it off early, just turn the knob back to the zero. Otherwis…

> Oh, the things it won't do! It won't baste, mist, sense, probe, convect, or take your food for a horsy ride. It doesn't care to know if you're cooking pork or potatoes, or if something's thawed or frozen, solid or liquid, or 1 lb. or 5. It doesn't issue odd advice ("Stand and Cover"! "Pull Apart"!). You can't use it as a nightlight. It won't tell you the time. It won't match your decor. It won't even cook anything…

Hmm that’s not me but it sounds about right.

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#483

Post by paleogizmo »

kebman wrote: post #207

I don't have a TV, only a few monitors (it's very liberating, actually). So instead I'll talk about my microwave. Yes, unironically! :D It has two dials. OMG how do I survive with only two dials? How do I program it? Well, the answer is, unsurprisingly, that I don't program it. Instead I crank it to watever wattage I need (usually the top one), and the time I think it'll take until the food I becomes hot. Aaaand that…

I've never got the meme about numpads on microwaves being needlessly complicated design. On about any decent microwave made in the last 10 year, pushing 1-6 gives a cook time of 1-6 minutes, respectively. Pushing start again after cooking has started will add 30 seconds. For longer cook times, press "time cook." Maybe this sounds a bit complicated, but it's efficient and all written down on the keypad. Mechanical timers really don't work well for less than 5 minutes. Good microwaves with a dial use a rotary encoder and increase time logarithmically. It sure looks elegant on the builtin over your stove, but log scaling really isn't intuitive outside volume controls, and probably more fiddly than buttons.

If there is a gripe to be had about microwave numpads, it's the useless popcorn setting. The microwave popcorn bag tells you not to use the popcorn setting. It's like something out of bad standup. /rant

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#484

Post by mateuszf »

girvo wrote: post #468
867-5309 wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is it possible to bypass? if it is the only thing available then it is impossible to use an alternative

They use their own DNS rather than PiHole’s.

If they use own DNS then maybe it can be disabled by IP rule in firewall?

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#485

Post by daniellarusso »

em-bee wrote: post #457
theshrike79 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you're not getting a dumb one, I think LG has the best "smart" TVs around. Just don't give them access to the internet and they'll do the job of displaying anything you give them via a HDMI port. Integrates nicely with home automation with an API too. Oh, and they don't have ads in the menus like Samsung does.

no power on ad either? i use our smart tv the same way, as a huge computer monitor via hdmi. then i run kodi on a laptop as a media center. works fine, and the only irritation is an annoying ad every time the device gets switched on. fortunately it's just an ad about a tv, and probably because of no internet, it's always the same ad too.

That would infuriate me.

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#486

Post by mateuszf »

klodolph wrote: post #81

My main problem with smart TVs is that they might take a while to turn on.

I'm reading these comments, and am quite happy that I bought an LG B9 TV. It's smart, fast, has no ads, the UI is quite cool, has a lot of inputs and has an excellent video quality. The only downside was the price, but that's because of OLED.

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#487

Post by vestrigi »

lloeki wrote: post #441
vestrigi wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in Germany but the tax is a fixed price of EUR 17.50 each month per household and no escape from it except for very few special cases (e.g. university students receiving financial support from the state). Personally I agree with a mandatory monthly cost but it is way too high, should be in proportion to household income and the people in the upper ranks of the broadcasting companies shouldn't earn absurdly high…

It’s 138eu here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence#France The issue for me is mostly that I refuse to pay for the bucketloads of despicably low quality content they put out. A shame, because there’s Arte (TV) and FIP (radio) which have quality stuff, but they only get a fraction of it.

I guess that‘s always the case with the preferred content. I don‘t care about Schlager clap-along shows with enormous budgets but it‘s what a lot of people like. On the other hand most of the people won‘t care about my beloved Arte and late night shows.

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#488

Post by ryukafalz »

ascar wrote: post #455
moksly wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My microwave has a wheel to turn the timer, a wheel to set the WATT, a stop button and a start button. If you press the start button it’ll automatically run for 30 seconds, if you press it again it’ll add another 30 seconds to the current run. It took me maybe 4 years of owning it before I learned of the start button feature. Not sure what the hell people are doing with microwaves that connect to the internet, but I…

I want a smart TV so I can access Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ etc. right from the TV and don't need a separate device for it. Many people suggest buying a dumb tv and then an apple tv. The problem is, now I have two devices and instead of trusting [TV manufacturer] I have to trust Apple. I don't see a big gain in it and also don't consider Apple to be especially trustworthy. [TV manufacturer] should just sell me a…

> [TV manufacturer] should just sell me a smart tv without customer hostile "features".

Unfortunately there are basically zero TV manufacturers who will do this.

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#489

Post by avh02 »

blame_lewis wrote: post #327
kllrnohj wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if there's enough users who refuse to give their TV wifi to justify such a crazy expense. Which seems highly unlikely.

There are IoT SIMs available on most major carriers, which are intended for economical occasional low-data usage on large numbers of devices. They're popular in GPSes among other things. 5G is looking to reduce the cost of them further as LPWA is a key part of the standard.

maybe one way to fight this is by finding a way to abuse these SIMs/connections to use a lot of data en masse until they get cut off or dropped altogether.

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#490

Post by jon-wood »

867-5309 wrote: post #432
lostlogin wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some devices bypass the Pihole, and while you can catch them at the firewall, it’s a tedious game.

how is it possible to bypass? if it is the only thing available then it is impossible to use an alternative

Piholes just replace DNS results, so a device using hard coded DNS servers allows it to bypass that. This leads to people redirecting all port 53 traffic to the Pihole, which leads to devices/apps doing DNS over HTTPS, at which point it’s game over unless you can get your self-signed cert onto the device.
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