What is the best dumb TV? • Hacker News Board

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#631

Post by ptx » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

danielheath wrote: post #400

iforgotpassword wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Found the millennial? The knob design is the much older one as it's purely analog. I don't have a microwave anymore for almost a decade now, but even before I used it occasionally only, mostly for heating up food from the day before, nothing where I'd need sub-millisecond accuracy. Also in general food tastes different/weird if you blast it at full power, so going for lower wattage and longer cooking times would redu…

> Found the millennial? The knob design is the much older one as it's purely analog. Modern microwave knobs are not properly analog. They are so infuriating - an analog control fiddling with a discrete setting. As you turn the knob, it will occasionally (with no haptic feedback) tick over to the next discrete value.

It can be done well. I've used one (I forget the brand - possibly Electrolux) with a wheel that does have haptic feedback on every tick and is actually very nice to use. As the absolute value increases, the increment for every tick also increases in a way that feels natural to me, so you don't have to turn it as much as you would an analog wheel for the same precision .

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#632

Post by volfied » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 1:58 PM UTC

conradfr wrote: post #272

ornornor wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung TVs are an extreme example though. They’re the most obnoxious and the most disrespectful of your privacy by implementing all these dark patterns. Not to mention their QLED bullshit, it’s just LED but it’s meant to make you think it’s OLED and pay extra. I despise Samsung and their junk.

It's sad because I have multiple (ageing) Samsung appliances (amongst them a dumb TV) and they're all great so Samsung would have naturally be a contender for my next TV.

I have had to service/replace parts of my Samsung dryer 4 times in 3 years, have never read any other positive notes about them. Their appliance quality has went downhill and I am never buying Samsung appliances again.

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#633

Post by volfied » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 2:04 PM UTC

bloody-crow wrote: post #221

jjoonathan wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My TCL starts to bootloop if it goes more than a month without connecting to the internet so it can download screensaver ads. The warranty people force me into the support gauntlet. The support gauntlet's first demand: connect it to the internet.

Hold up. What if you don't have internet? Are they legitimately prepared to say "well, in this case your TV is not gonna work"?

Yes and they’re legitimately paid to ignore the fact that internet access is a base need for everyone and should be cheaply available.

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#634

Post by aiisjustanif » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

ziftface wrote: post #197

mkhpalm wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 65 inch samsung tv that kept popping up on my network. I put it on an isolated wifi network once to get the firmware updates. After I did that I turned it back off. But it keeps trying to come back for just a moment every couple of days. I had to ban its mac address since there was no way to get it to stop in the settings or after factory resets.

It's crazy how user hostile TV manufacturers have become.

Just wait till you’ve been to the country it’s made in.

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#635

Post by shyn3 » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

chihuahua wrote: post #583

narwally wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I buy smart tvs because they have ads on them, which makes the initial purchase price cheaper. Then I just connect it to my media server and never bother with the smart features.

Exactly. If you don't connect your smart TV to your home Wifi network, it can't connect to anything and exfiltrate your data. I doubt manufacturers are secretly putting LTE modems inside TVs.

This is not true. It connects to open wireless and updates your software and probably ads. There was a post on here a while ago about it which I can't find from a preliminary search.

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#636

Post by avh02 » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

blame_lewis wrote: post #618

avh02 wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They can easily be remotely disabled if there's any suspicious activity, ie to any other server than the telemetry backend.

Exactly what I meant, and then you use their own SIM to DoS or DDoS them until they or their network provider disconnect the service.

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#637

Post by shyn3 » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

kzrdude wrote: post #370

syndacks wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kodi, and yes, I believe there is a Netflix add-on that you can authenticate to if you need to ;)

Interesting, thanks for the pointer

I use a Chromebit it's really effective and has all the apps you really need.

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#638

Post by Auracle » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

Zolt wrote: post #508

05 wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheap ones, anyway. Expensive models sometimes have an inverter.

Several years back (and things may have changed) Panasonic had a patent on the inverter and was the only microwave that offered it. I purchased a Panasonic for that reason and love it. This from their website: The Panasonic Microwave Ovens powered with patented Inverter Technology™ deliver evenly cooked meals, from edges to center, every time.

I had the same microwave and I loved it. Unfortunately it caught on fire, and according to Amazon reviews we weren’t the only ones. Luckily my wife was in the kitchen when it happened.

I’m sure whatever model they’re selling now is different, so I’m not trying to scare people off. The point is I now have a microwave without an inverter and I hate it. It might end up going to my photography studio and I’ll get a new one for the home.

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#639

Post by textman » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

shyn3 wrote: post #635

chihuahua wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. If you don't connect your smart TV to your home Wifi network, it can't connect to anything and exfiltrate your data. I doubt manufacturers are secretly putting LTE modems inside TVs.

This is not true. It connects to open wireless and updates your software and probably ads. There was a post on here a while ago about it which I can't find from a preliminary search.

Is this the post you refer to? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21002745

Re: What is the best dumb TV?

#640

Post by fomine3 » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 12:38 AM UTC

dwighttk wrote: post #475

bakuninsbart wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't own a microwave, but find routers to be one of the most frustrating machines to deal with. All communication is done via different lights either on/off or blinking, and none of it makes any sense. How much is a freaking display these days?

I never look at my router’s lights. I use 192.168.0.1 or whatever to do stuff in the browser. (There is actually an option on mine that lets me turn off all the lights. (Except the power on light, dang it!))

It's useful to quickly check whether the connection is 100BASE-TX or 1000BASE-T.