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I believe you can still get “dumb” flatscreens, but they’re getting rare, and they cost at least hundreds more than their “smart” brethren. So of course those sell very slowly.
The older I get the more I miss the sheer freedom that was built into our daily lives back when technology was just a notch or two less advanced. Phones that stayed trapped on their wall, not in your pocket, tracking you. TVs that were made of dumb stuff that could still pull free content from the air. You had to be part of a special “Nielson family”, fully set up with a little tracking box and all that, for the TV to tell anybody what you were watching.
People expected you to basically fall off the earth for 8 hours at work, and didn’t expect to contact you for less than a housefire-level emergency, which meant you spent most of the day free, and not just while you were at work. Nobody blinked if you stepped out for the evening to go shopping and could not be contacted for hours. Now people end up in screaming arguments because they didn’t answer that text fast enough. It’s misery.
I had a shock the other day, watching some YouTube short featuring a young woman (an adult, not a minor) complaining humorously about her mother, who always knows where she is, and thus has all sorts of unwanted opinions on her location. Mother always knows because of an app called Life360, which is basically the kind of spying app that an abusive spouse would hide on your phone. But it’s not hidden. You force your children to install it on their phones. It’s a leash. So now this adult woman, who of course cannot quite afford to leave home, because economy, cannot simply delete this spying app from her phone without consequences and arguments, so she has no privacy in her movements, from anyone, never mind the government and such. Never mind what actual minors are now putting up with.
We have officially left the era where the adults pissed and grumbled about them damn kids wanting them damn phones they don’t need, and we are now in the era where some kid has absolutely been beaten with a belt because he tried to leave his phone in the bedroom and slip out of the house in privacy.
Things like Life360 are normalized among children and parents, so other people will now expect to track you and treat a refusal of tracking as a violation of trust, and probably a sign that you are elderly, thus your rights are becoming debatable.
Again, 5 minutes ago this was evil shit that abusive spouses snuck onto people’s phones, suddenly, it’s normal, and people will just expect it.
I guess the ongoing shock is that we expected Big Brother to somehow slap a shackle on our necks that we can’t take off, but this is all worse. This is putting the shackle on your neck, every morning. It doesn’t even lock. You could, theoretically, throw it into the lake at will. Nobody would stop you. But you don’t. All the chains are made of other people. The whips at your back are the opinions of children, and what they think is normal. The surveillance cameras do not loom from posts in the sky, no. They’re in every pocket. They’re much harder to hide from than a security camera ever would be.
I hope I’m just melodramatic, or something.
Great writeup, hope the world moves away from crap like this
I’ve still got an old 1080p LG TV.
I got it early in the chord cutting days, and knew that Smart TVs were going to be at shitty option.
Smartest decision I ever ever made.
(which is quite sad really, it’s just a TV).
“The greatest form of control is when you think you’re free, when you’re being fundamentally manipulated and dictated to. One form of dictatorship is being in a prison cell and you can see the bars and touch them. The other one is sitting in a prison cell but you can’t see the bars and you think you’re free.”
-David Icke
Imagine quoting david Icke unironically lol
A broken clock is right two times a day.
Who knew my anti-consumption / general frugalness would lead to me having a better TV experience than people who buy the high end gadgets
You can buy the high end gadgets, you just can’t connect them to the internet.
Best way to turn a 8k HDR 120fps smart TV into a 8k HDR 120fps dumb TV.
I have a 50" Panasonic plasma from 2008 in my bedroom. I’ve replaced the power board once, in '18, but it plays for 8 hours a night plus any other use.
I have a 60" samsung in my livingroom, it’s been serviced by some geek 3 times since I bought it in '19.
My solution: Buy a very large monitor.
Then connect some streaming box to it you can easily replace if/when it gets shitty, instead of having to replace the whole TV.
The fuck you getting a 55 in monitor from?
This one for example.
I own an older model version of it from a few years back, combined with a Google TV Chromecast.
Yes, it’s more expensive than a midrange TV, but it also lasts me a lot longer and isn’t stuffed with ads. If I’m ever sick of Google TV I can try to jailbreak/root it, without the risk of bricking the entire TV, or just replace it.
Great idea! I know exactly what to buy next + better color accuracy than TV which mostly comes with over saturated color labeled as cinematic mode!
You can also just buy a big tv and use it as a monitor streaming from a box or pc. It is considerably cheaper.
I would love to if they sold 65" monitors lol
Be careful with commercial displays. Some are just designed to show static ads or pictures, which means they have a very slow response time or low resolution.
For those prices I’d rather have an OLED with ads.
I don’t know, I’d be fine with a 55 inch 4k ViewSonic display for under $600. The 65 was $850 and $1200 for 75 inches. That seems relatively normal, right?
Ok. That was always an option.
Google? smh
Monitors are significantly more expensive than TVs and have features that TVs don’t require.
That’s true, but I considered it an investment for longer term instead of buying a cheaper midrange TV. With the exception of lacking HDMI 2.1, my 55" monitor has all the modern features, with the bonus of having dual input modes and a displayport.
It’s basically what “dumb” TV’s used to be, minus the antenna, but that’s fine as a cord cutter.
That’s the idea but being honest there aren’t many nice streaming box. Like there is Roku and the Xiaomi one? What else? Fire TV? Chromecast I do not count because you need to cast to it.
I mean I guess you can setup a PC somehow but…
I have a Google Chromecast TV, good enough and cheap.
Oh so that’s like with Google TV / Android TV ui without need of casting and you can install apps?
Yeah it’s decently powerful as to not lag massively and you can disable most but not all of the ads / clutter they bundle with it.
The Nvidia Shield is amazing.
Oh yeah that’s another one.
Using a PC is definitely the easiest.
That seems like a very expensive alternative to not giving a smart TV your Wi-Fi password.
This is the future that Stallman warned us about. They mocked him and said it didn’t matter. It’s not going to get better until everyone stops buying TVs with spyware built in.
Vote with your wallets or quit bitching. Self hosted is an option these days. But that means not being lazy. And people are really lazy.
Vote with your wallet
When are we going to finally accept that this is nothing but a delusion? How many failed boycotts over and over will it take?
I agree with the sentiment, but really more than a boycott where you’re purposefully not buying something to hurt it, it’s more like people opting out of something that’s just bad. It does take a while of being put through the mud for most people to realize and more importantly take action, but eventually it happens. If you’re following video game stuff, look at what happened with Baldur’s Gate in contrast with Overwatch 2. We need some more time (unfortunately) and one daring competitor to offer the catalyst product.
Vote with your wallets or quit bitching.
I never bought one but I can’t do anything about people who have AirBnB’s who buy them or hotels that install them in every room.
There are ways around that as well. Call ahead and ask what kind of TVs they have. Tell them why you are concerned and you might just get the hotel to worry about this as well if enough people start bothering them. If you don’t have a choice unplug the TV and bring your own laptop.
I can’t call ahead if someone else made the reservation though.
Yes, there are many situations where you will not have control of what room you stay in. Are you going to list them all one by one? JFC
If you don’t have a choice unplug the TV and bring your own laptop.
I mean I bring my own laptop anyway. I can’t stop other people from using the TV.
If your solution is for everyone, everywhere to agree to do something, you’re going to need a plan B.
I’m sitting here wondering if it’s possible to replace the software on smart TVs with something other than what came prepackaged. Something open source, something we can control properly.
I mean, I doubt that any software will just plug and play even if you can somehow get the TV to load it… and I’m sure with enough time and reverse engineering you could cobble it together, but, I mean, something for everyone that you can just flash onto the TV and be rid of the garbage software that came with it.
Is it possible? Yes.
Practical? Not without some very specific skills and tools
You sound triggered.
This is why my TV is not connected to any kind of network. It is a TV, and it should behave as one and just take any video input I give it
Exactly that. I’ve got it plugged into a Nvidia Shield that’s on my network, streaming stuff from my local NAS and various online sources. My router blocks known ad networks, and all apps I install on the Shield are vetted to maximise privacy.
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Some TVs have firmware updates that improve or downright add important features. These updates only take place by connecting to the network.
Bought mine in 2017. It has never even come close to smelling the sweet, sweet nectar of internet access
Can you give an example of an important feature that was added later in a TV’s lifecycle?
My added VRR (variable refresh rate) about a year later.
Why the hell would I connect my TV to the internet? It’s a display device.
You will take my Display Port/HDMI/RCA input and like it.
RCA? They still make TV’s with RCA inputs on them? It’s been a while since I bought one. Thought my 10yo Sony was one of the last ones.
Yes, RCA is common, even on high end models. Coax aerial connections are also common here in the UK as we have Freeview TV (majority of the UK TV channels are free to receive with any digital aerial and “Freeview” decoder box/TV).
I think RGB SCART is still around here too in a larger way than many realise. my parents got a new TV I set up for them which had an RGB SCART socket. Used it to quickly test out a SNES the other day when visiting and it fucking worked fine lol, looked remarkably good but no match for a proper upscaler obviously
RCA is still great for digital audio if you don’t want to use toslink.
Idk… to display stream video? I know I know it sounds crazy… Who would want to see tv through internet. Watch shows from providers or even their own video field from their own hosted server, that would be crazy.
Dumb tv + streaming box. When the streaming box gets ads and gets shitty you replace that instead of the WHOLE ASS TV.
I totally agree.
You get it.
I’m gonna stream from a device designed for it.
Even watching via Xbox connected to the TV is a better option than that.
I have an Xbox, a fetch tv box and a Chromecast.
Combined with a PLEX server it’s all I could need.Disconnecting my great Samsung display from the network and using it as a display/audio output device only and never seeing another ad was a really good decision.
Yeah good point… if only there were better support for the alternatives to Plex, like Emby/Jellyfin. Well I think there is an Emby app on the Xbox case…but is bad I think.
Yeah, I don’t get how people don’t get this. Like I agree that the ads are annoying and the slowing down is fucked. But the concept behind it is fairly simply. I no longer need to turn on my Playstation to watch Netflix. Other people don’t have to buy a device for that specifically. Just buy the TV and you’re done. It’s pretty fucking great.
But of course capitalism has to ruin that as well.
Once had a “smart” TV, brought it back where i bought it within a month and took a regular monitor, now a PC does the smart and the TV what is supposed to do, display shit.
Too true. Literally monitors are going to become the next Smart TV for just not doing anything special
The special they do is the same kind of special as special needs kids…
No need to put down some kids to make your point
The whole point of Internet of Things (aka CONNECT EVERYTHING TO THE INTERNET) was to make customers’ life miserable in the medium-long run. Anyone who couldn’t figure that out was massively deluded by the propaganda
The internet was a government projekt used for science. It was a choice to let privat companies in without regulations.
This is so true! It’s so annoying. You literally can’t even escape it now there are smart toilets and kettles which honestly nobody asked for
“Please watch this three minute ad before using the toilet”
that’s one way to make people take a shit on the outside of the building…
also in Japan (where smart toilets are a thing) hackers were able to connect to toilets because nobody changed their pin code (it was on the default 0000)… and over in the asian world, they use water to clean their butt instead of toilet rolls.
Now these hackers made the toilets all of a sudden flush without any reason and piss everywhere in the bathroom…
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I have a 55" IPS TV with absolutely zero smart functions, and we use it as a dummy monitor, Audio is not even connected, all is hooked up to a Linux computer that serves all the content. Zero bullshit, Zero advertising and we have full control of everything, and it was dirt cheap.
I’ve been seriously considering the same thing. Would love to see about getting a remote setup for a computer.
We use a tiny wireless keyboard with a track pad, it’s bigger than a remote, and we still have remote for Amplifier and to turn on the TV, but it works very well for us. Some phones have IR, so we could have just the keyboard, but we have went back to using the remotes.
I love the way my TV turns itself on in the middle of the night on a random channel at full volume.
Bro, that’s a ghost.
Does it at least clean up after?
I had a phone that did that, out of lazyness or malice, it would turn on completely (load the full android OS) any time it had any cpu wakeup from the poweroff state instead of its OEM screens made for that purpose (like the battery charging while at 0%, “need more charge to power on” screen). This includes but not limited to:
- if the device charging state has changed (powers on rather than show the “charging” screen).
- hardware alarms including the disabled sceduled power on or off.
- pressing hardware buttons (like the volume rocker or power button)
That thing worried me.
Sounds like the phone’s battery is weak and so whenever the phone needs a lot of power immediately from the battery it fails to give enough power to the device. That’s what it sounds like from here. You can probably read more if you look into Apple battery gate and how they were slowing older iPhones
So your saying its not a rom issue and actually its browning out and forgetting the interrupt (cpu wake) reason.
I also mentioned the battery screens because they are well known about, not because i saw them often.
The most egregious action I’ve seen was from a Vizio smart TV I bought several years ago. It shipped with a simple remote control, and a tablet with a control app preinstalled. One day I turned the TV on and was notified that in order to use the updated UI I would need to reach out to support to order (and pay for!) a new remote that had additional buttons.
When I buy things like this, I try to buy hardware that supported by open source projects. Like routers that can run OpenWRT or Android phones that are supported by LineageOS.
It’s amazing that sometimes free projects that are made for people are better than commercial one.
Sometimes
Everytime I am forced to use a proprietary piece of software, my head starts spinning, knowing the suffering I’ll have to bear
For those with similar problems, use pihole dns to effectively block all that bullshit
Also, do NOT buy a Samsung TV, it’s the worst offender of them all. Nothing but bad experiences with itl
Don’t buy Samsung anything. Their hardware is junk. They used to be okay, but they decided years ago that they want to be an advertising company, not a hardware company, so they push cheap crap that is used solely as data harvesting and ad delivery devices. Even their home appliances spy on you and break down a few years later.
While they definitely have many products in the cheap junk category, but I think they have pretty good hardware in the mid-upper range.
Software is the real junk in Samsung products; their high-end TVs would be great if it wasn’t for the crappy software and updates.I thought Samsung phones were okay.
Except when they explode
Sadly, if you are using Linux and want your firmware updates for your SSD through the proper native channels, Samsung was the only option last time I checked. Crucial used to have a half-assed solution that they abandoned recently.
Huh, I’ve never actually updated any firmware for SSD or any other drives. I’ve updated my BIOS, but only rarely. Are there any significant advantages for updating HDD firmware? I guess I wasn’t even really aware that was something that you could do.
I got a Kingston SSD once ( yes I should have known better) that kept freezing my laptop which needed to be restarted. I couldn’t narrow it down and put up with it for an embarrassingly long time, until while looking for unrelated stuff I found out that the firmware version was associated with freezes. And then I found out that it was basically impossible to upgrade it, even on windows. After many hours, I was almost ready to give up, until I found some random Russian video (which I don’t speak) that used some ancient version of their shity firmware updater that you could only find in sketchy forums and software sites that could actually upgrade the firmware to a non-crashy version. I think it still freezes, but it’s orders of magnitude rarer.
Long story short, Kingston, not even once.
That sounds like the good old days of computing. I followed so much sketchy advice that I barely understood when I was still learning computing and it somehow almost always worked out. There was that one time when a program started deleting my entire hard drive though, and I had to yank the plug out of the wall to stop it. The internet truly was the wild wild West for a time. Good times!
Kingston! Once king and now just shite.
What is it with all brands of everything that once a brand turns great, it gets popular, and then immediately it turns shit?
In Soviet Russia, SSD freeze you!
I have a samsung phone and its great…
You don’t mind the bloatware software? Or the artificial limitations out on your phone? At least it’s not an iPhone
Yeah the bloatware doesn’t interfere with anything I do. I use some apps like I’m trash so I use a dating app, and I use a podcast app to listen to a show and a banking app.
The bloatware is just kind of in the background and I never fully install it when I get a new phone so it just stays in limbo.
Thats the way to do it if you can. Privicy is a human right that in its purest most extreme form, upheld with paranoya levels of prep. but most will find an amount where their happy.
Oh it still gets through. Also it doesn’t help the loading.
No Vizio or Samsung.
I got a Sony and I’m glad I did. It seems to do what a smart TV should do. The apps I use are first, the shows I’m watching are suggested. It works seamlessly over HDMI with all my other hardware (sound bar, Blu-ray, consoles). They took the beautiful LG OLED display and made it look even better. It has a super minimalistic style, the android OS is unobtrusive, and the remote feels nice in the hand.
My Samsung is the best TV I’ve ever owned. Incredible image. Exceptionally low input lag, tested against my CRT.
Obviously I have it totally locked down as far as web access is concerned. It’s for all intents and purposes, a dumb TV now. Works great.
unless it connects to open wifi networks automatically like some samsung tvs were doing a while ago lol. realistically its probably not doing that but it doesnt make me trust them, thats for sure.
I haven’t seen an open network in the last 3 or so years.
yeah, but my whole city has free wifi so it still can be a concern
No disclaimer you need to accept or anything? That’s usually enough to block IoT devices from auto-connect.
nah, its just open. connects with one click, no captive portals for guest wifi or anything like that.
I just replaced a 3 year old bravia and it was hands down the worst TV I’ve ever owned. I hope you have better luck. I’ll never buy Sony again.
How many HDMI ports did it have?
Just don’t buy something from Sony with promised features. Took 14 months for Sony to delivery the VRR feature update to my Sony TV. I’m surprised it came at all.
Sony software stacks are always clean and minimal but i still want a dump TV
In the case of Sony TV’s running android they’re exactly the same as all the rest except the hardware is too garbage to even run the OS and ends up being trash.
I buy TVs with Android TV built in because the freedom is great. I love I can install APKs, and generally they have every app that Android has. Whereas Roku doesn’t even have an official Twitch app.
Despite that, my fucking GOD they’re slow. Both my $2000 and $650 Android TVs are such a fucking lag fest. Even trying to pause a YouTube video is such shit.
They both run Android TV 9, despite Android TV 12 being out, and 14 in beta.
My CCwGTV is a lot better, but I only use that on my non smart TV because I hate juggling remotes.
Still wont stop buying Android TVs, though. Roku is so empty, those TVs with their own built in OS have even less apps. My sisters $5500 OLED TV only has Plex, no Emby. Which is insane. I think her TVs app store has a total of like 20 apps?
Twitch updated in January with a shitty UI that lags. I just disabled updates and installed an older version of the app via APK. That’s the benefit of Android TV.
EDIT: also can we please get some people on the Android TV custom ROM scene? It’s weird to me that NO TVs have any sort of custom ROM or rooting. You’d think they would?
Custom roms usually require a base like AOSP (Android Open Source Project) to build on but android TV is fully closed-source, so unless someone has the will to start a Linux distro for smart tvs then chances of that happening are quite low :(
I think it’s better to buy separate tv box/stick with pore power and ability to run custom os Like, I’ve got Xiaomi tv stick 4k and it runs times better than TV’s android tv
The custom Rom scene is probably limited by the cheap mediatek and other processors that don’t have working kernel sources. Which means no builds from source like lineageOS.
I guess there are way too many models of TVs which makes it complicated to gather a bigger community that have an interest in rooting these. on the other hand a lot of them are basically just some kind of android phone.
