TV manufacturers are responding, often clumsily and based on their self-interest (data collection), to what consumers want.
Trying to find a dumb TV is like trying to find a car without a built in radio. You're welcome to leave it switched off.
Smart TVs are dumb if they aren't connected to the internet. Some may be slow. Some may have a poor interface. I'd worry about solving for that rather than expecting manufacturers to cater to a very niche group.
The worry I have with these TVs is that basic functions like channel seeking or brightness controls now rely on a computer running Android. It feels like a 1000-fold increase in complexity and risk for something to hobble the TV part of the TV. Say the CPU overheats due to poor heat design after 3 years--it doesn't seem like manufacturers have a dumb mode to fall back on. Similarly, I'd be very worried if a car's radio prevented the car from driving.
It is sad that wanting a simple, modular display that we can upgrade peripherals around is niche these days. In a way, car makers took a step in the right direction with more radios adopting CarPlay & Android Auto, acknowledging that their own radios can't outsmart an evolving mobile ecosystem.
The TV of my childhood took so long to warm up, you'd be standing there for at least 5 seconds wondering if it had turned on at all before seeing something. Usually it was the click of a relay and the hum of a capacitor soaking up a field that was the real clue.
> TV manufacturers are responding, often clumsily and based on their self-interest (data collection), to what consumers want.
No, they're not. They're collaborating to eliminate choice. The vast majority of the market being taken by smart TVs is a theoretical result of the market. The fact that no manufacturers slip in to clean up the 5% of the market who are willing to pay a slight premium not to have a smart TV is evidence of tacit collusion.
I didn't make a claim about how typical I am. If you don't know non-technical people who don't like smart TVs, you rarely talk to people about their TVs (which is not unusual.) This is akin to the oft-repeated claim on HN that nobody but people on HN cares about privacy.
What people are is utterly powerless, and living in a kleptocracy that allows markets to be funneled in particular directions by eliminating all alternative choices.
Part of it might be that consumers want smart TVs, but it's definitely the case that consumers are very price-sensitive when it comes to TVs, and that selling ad space (and selling/leveraging data gained by stalking your users—why this shit is legal is beyond me) on an integrated OS lets you sell at, or even under, the cost to deliver the hardware, and remain profitable.
This is also why it's really, really hard to build a Roku competitor starting from 0, without a lot of starting capital. You won't be able to match them on price, and also won't yet have the scale to subsidize your own devices with ad sales, so you'll need to sell at a loss (remember: you also need to get onto shelves in stores to compete, and they'll have harsh price requirements, calibrated by what your ad- and spyware-subsidized competitors are selling for, if you want shelf-space with an unknown brand) for quite a while.
They are not. Smart TVs are slow as hell. I don't want a TV that has "to boot" and takes time to turn on because it has to load a full Android OS, takes 10 seconds to load the channel guide, have a ton of buttons that you didn't ask to open Netflix or other services for which I don't have a subscriptions to press by mistake (and each time you loose 10 seconds or so of the programs you where watching).
Really, I find modern smart TV too lagging, it's like you press a button on the remote and the TV responds even 1 seconds after, it gives you the impression that the remote is not working properly, but it's not there the problem.
A TV has to do one thing, and do it well, let me watch some TV programs, from external sources or from the aerial, with a good image and sound quality (but the last one it's impossible to find on any TV these day and you need always an external sound system). I don't need Netflix or other video streaming services, if I need that I just plug a media center PC in the HDMI port, why complicating the TV with stuff that still doesn't work well and it's slow as hell?
Speaking about car radios... car radios these days are horrible. They present you DAB radio as the primary choice, that has an terrible sound quality. FM reception is still bad. The quality of the speakers either as bad. And I'm taking about the car radio of a Mercedes car that costs 40k euros. The stock car radio of my 2010 Volkswagen Golf is far better, better sound quality, better radio reception, better responsiveness of the radio (physical knobs and buttons that I can operate without looking at them VS unresponsive touch screen interfaces that are dangerous to use when you drive).
And the worse thing? You cannot update the radio in every modern car. They destroyed the market of aftermarket car stereos, how can you replace the radio if it's not only a radio but it's the interface that you use to control all the car functions?
I just want a TV that actually responds quickly to button presses. With the latency you experience hitting the volume buttons or navigating menus on flat screen TVs, it feels like they haven't touched the hardware since 2002, and with the computing gains over those nearly 20 years you'd think a TV could at least turn instantly on and off like a desktop monitor by now.
You can! You just need to replace your Smart TV every couple of years to keep up with the software updates.
The expensive LG TV I bought ~5 years ago was snappy and fast when I got it, but today it's extremely slow and unresponsive. That's my fault for being a bad consumer and not buying the latest model every year.
On a serious note, I wonder if there's a jailbreak scene for smart TVs? It'd be awesome to be able to replace their spyware garbage with a basic OS that only lets me change inputs, or maybe something like Kodi if I'm feeling fancy.
There was a really interesting article posted to HN a few months ago now, detailing a deep dive into the firmware of a new Samsung smart TV and what would be required to jailbreak it and run your own firmware.
Smart TVs are dumber than a dumb-TV if they aren't connected to the internet. My Samsung TV stays disconnected from the internet, but to change the input between devices I have to scroll past ads that were preloaded onto it in 2018. If I accidentally press the channel up/down buttons on the remote it switches inputs, takes 10 seconds to realize it isn't online, and then tells me "Samsung TV Plus is not available".
Someone says this every time smart TVs get discussed, but has anyone ever cited a verifiable case of it actually being done, noting that it would clearly be illegal to do it in much of the world?
Now, if we're talking about the danger of devices incorporating their own wireless communications and phoning home on a network of their manufacturer's own choosing without the knowledge or consent of the owner, that is a serious risk, and one that IMHO should be mitigated by regulating it out of existence before it has any chance to become established practice.
So I just had a rather annoying experience. I own two Samsung Smart TVs, which honestly gave me the heebie jeebies to purchase. With that said, at the end of the day I decided that as long as I didn't hook it up to the net, I'd be good to go. I've been using them for a few years, and have felt pretty comfortable with the situation, so imagine my surprise when I sit down to watch something on the living room tv (which I don't use all that often) and my show is interrupted by a notification that "SmartHub" had updated.
After digging around in settings for a moment, I realized that one of my next door neighbors had installed an open router with internet, and my tv had silently automatically connected to it and began doing its normal internet stuff. I have no idea how long it was connected like that.
After looking though the settings and a few Google searches later, I realized there was no actual way to disabled the wireless connection on that TV. It expected an internet connection, and intended to get one. Ultimately, I managed to get it to stop what it was doing by letting it connect to my router and then blocking it via access control. I then followed up by going into "IP Settings" and setting that to manual, while leaving all the values at 0. It complained, but allowed me to keep the setting.
Anyhow, figured I'd share, since I imagine quite a few people here are also not keen on a smart tv connecting to the net, given some of the history surrounding them.
There are a million things TV manufacturers could do that would be a problem but I think we should be focusing our attention on what they actually are doing.
Hardcoding DNS for example which makes Pi-hole ineffective. That is increasingly happening and should quite rightly be criticised.
I think we should be focusing our attention on what they actually are doing.
It's absolutely necessary to try to anticipate the future, because the future always becomes the present. If we don't try to anticipate, we will be stuck with whatever is given to us. Like the introduction of ads on Android TV.
> Smart TVs are dumb if they aren't connected to the internet.
Until manufacturers start selling TV's that don't work at all if they're not connected.
Or, as is the case with my Samsung TV, they could just be arbitrarily annoying until you do connect - pepper the user with requests to connect and put up modals everywhere until they finally relent.
Mine does this, and also when I disconnect CarPlay, it immediately turns on the radio at full blast.
My "smart" TV does the same thing: whereas on older dumb TVs, when I told it to sleep, it worked 100% of the time, on my newer TV, it works 30% of the time.
Sometimes it decides to switch to Tuner input (even after I've disconnected the antennae! Argh!). Sometimes it just leaves the whole display on, with no input.
Finally, one time in 20, when I try to turn on my TV, it just gets into a reboot loop.
Everything about having Android TV is objectively worse for my use cases than my old dumb TV, which just displayed the most recent input and turned off when I told it to.
I don’t want to pay a premium for dumb TV though. Just like a laptop without crapware is more expensive because the crapware actually subsidizes it, a dumb TV can be more expensive.
But if you pick a good (quick, without annoying UI, allows USB upgrade and offline configuration and so on) smart TV and just don’t connect it, I think that’s probably a better idea than getting a commercial monitor for example.
I bought a mid-range Vizio about two years ago. Vizio has progressively made its OS more and more laggy every few months and filled it to the brim with unblockable ads. Software updates would regularly break things for a few days/weeks at a time until the changes get rolled back.
When Apple came out with their new Apple TV, I bought one, connected that to my TV, and disconnected my TV from the internet. Now life is good since the Apple TV is buttery smooth and does not have ads.
The TV shows ads? In menus? Or while watching TV channels? Or at startup? Or, when? I’d pull the internet cable in a heartbeat if I saw an ad on it, and I’m on my second smart TV for the last 10 years (although my current one is 7 years old).
I mean I don’t actually use any of the “smart” stuff. No Apps or anything. Not sure why anyone would want to? I watch my TV channels on the built in receiver (90% or more of what I watch is regular scheduled TV, I love my old fashioned TV channels!), and I cast stuff to it when I want to stream Netflix or sports.
When I switch apps (e.g. Youtube, Netflix, Plex, etc.), the switcher has several rows of media that I must scroll past. That media usually comprises of media that I am not subscribed to and would have to pay to access (e.g. mostly random shows or movies). There were no ads (from Vizio) once I was inside of an app.
I don't subscribe to TV/cable/satellite. I only have Youtube Premium (ad free Youtube videos; not Youtube TV), Netflix, Amazon Prime TV, Nebula, and a local Plex server.
Last update for Android TV did the same to me (before I did the same thing as OP, appletv + factory), kept showing ads for shows on apps I didn't have installed
You know what I would pay for is flashable firmware for my TV that, for example, removes the 'google' / 'smart' parts from it.
Currently I just have my tv at stock settings with no network connection but it keeps annoyingly asking for a network connection.
What would be my dream is the apple TV + xbox utalising hdmi-cec to auto turn on and auto switch to the correct source then turn off when done so I didn't even need the tv remote
Monitors have other purposes of TVs, the things that are important on a monitor are not the same on a TV, and a good monitor doesn't necessary mean that it's a good TV or vice versa.
See the same difference in the audio world: there is monitor/studio equipment that has the purpose of reproducing the sound as closely as possible to the original media, and then there is listening equipment that is meant to make the sound more enjoyable for the listener.
Monitors also doesn't include a TV receiver. While that can be an advantage in countries like mine for people that wants only to look at internet content since if you have a TV with a receiver you have to pay a tax, it doesn't work for people that just want's to watch TV, meaning connecting the power and aerial cable to the TV and use it. You need an external decoder, that needs to have a separate remote control, you then need two power outlets, more cables, you then have to install the decoder somewhere, it's not as clean as having it integrate in the TV itself.
I think especially at my grandma, that doesn't have internet, and wants a TV that is as simple as possible, press 1 on the remote and the TV turns on at the channel 1. Press volume up/down and the power button. Nowadays it's difficult to find TV with that requisite, modern remotes have a ton of buttons what will bring up functionalities that then are difficult to exit, especially for an 85 years old woman that never used a computer or a smartphone or anything other than a TV and the landline phone.
Monitors are more expensive for the size and lack features people expect. There is typically no remote control and you're not going to get component or composite inputs.
I use a monitor as a TV but it doesn't have optical out just a horrid horrid headphone jack so I had to buy a HDMI switch and universal remote just to mimic what a TV does.
I find Sony TVs to be pretty quick. I use it them in conjunction with Apple TV, and I never have to deal with the TV itself, and it is quick to turn itself off and on via HDMI CEC.
They are not the high end models either, I have a $630 one from 2016 and a $600 one from 2020.
My Roku-built-in TV is usable in maybe 3-4 seconds—when it's in sleep mode. A cold boot (say, if it's lost power for any reason) does take tens of seconds.
Meanwhile, my dumb LCD TV from ~2008 only does cold boots and comes up in maybe 2 seconds, no matter what.
I assume Roku does not have the sufficient resources to properly equip their products with the necessary hardware to cope with their software, resulting in a compromised product that manifests as slow start times.
Unfortunately, I do not see how some of these smaller players can come close to being competitive with the big players seeing how small the profit margins are on physical devices.
Unless they have a reputation for very high quality, I assume there are lots of compromises being made on the hardware side to be able to compete on price.
> I assume Roku does not have the sufficient resources to properly equip their products with the necessary hardware to cope with their software, resulting in a compromised product that manifests as slow start times.
I dunno—this TCL Roku TV's the best-performing smart TV I've used, including some very expensive ones. It's really fast except for cold boots (again: these only happen if the power's actually been interrupted, or, rarely, on updates). Roku's OS helps, since it's way less resource-hungry than, say, Android-derived operating systems. I've done some work with Roku devices so I've used lots of them, and even the very low-end ones have always performed really well. The OS is weird, but you can't say it's not (relatively) resource efficient and responsive.
... I do have a much-worse brand of Roku TV that is badly under-powered. It sucks. It's the brand that replaced TCL at our local Costco—Hisense, it's called. Looks almost the same, costs almost the same, but is terrible. Fine if you treat it as a dumb panel and just use stuff plugged in to it, but terrible if you intend to use the built-in Roku OS for anything other than switching inputs. Frequent (apparent) out-of-memory crashes, many less-well-made (but major) streaming "apps" are laggy, and so on.
Its not just Roku. Every single TV sold is like this from every single manufacturer. They are all slower and shittier at being a TV screen than my 720p screen from like 2005. What's with that? It's like a giant cabal of an entire industry deciding that their customers aren't worth the hardware, no matter of its some Walmart only entry level TV or the top of the line thousands of dollars screen from a major brand. The only way to get a competent TV is to not even buy retail, but buy the same exact panels without the dumb hardware from the commercial market.
I am sure there are plenty of qualified people doing the necessary due diligence to figure out which features, or perception of features, customers are willing to pay for.
I doubt the executives at Sony, Samsung, LG, Vizio, Hisense, etc are sitting there and consciously choosing to keep people away from fast, dumb TVs for the hell of it. It is a cutthroat business with razor thin margins, no one is obviously making much money, so after all these years, I would surmise they are making decisions that allow them to stay in business after all these years.
Personally, I am biased towards Sony, and I am happy with the speed of the two consumer line TVs I have purchased. However, I only use them in conjunction with Apple TV, so I have no idea with changing channels or inputs or any of that is like.
You would think that somewhere in the market there is a price point that means you get more powerful hardware in the TV. It really seems like the TVs at the entry level have the exact same hardware as TVs that cost 5 times as much or more. Surely that markup should afford hardware that is slightly faster and still produce a profit margin. If people are willing to pay 5x more for a panel their eyes can barely percieve the differences in, surely they'd be happier with a smoother UX experience compared to a competitors offering.
> I doubt the executives at Sony, Samsung, LG, Vizio, Hisense, etc are sitting there and consciously choosing to keep people away from fast, dumb TVs for the hell of it. It is a cutthroat business with razor thin margins, no one is obviously making much money, so after all these years, I would surmise they are making decisions that allow them to stay in business after all these years.
Again, at least part of why this is happening is they can't sell ads and spyware-data with dumb TVs. Features that consumers want may be a factor, but I can guarantee you (as in: I've had some actual insight into the industry) that a big reason is that they can monetize their customers' data and eyeballs with smart TVs, and so undercut any competitors who choose not to do that. Price matters a lot to TV buyers, so this is effective at driving sales (and so, keeping your product on store shelves, and avoiding a product death-spiral).
Sometimes they will seek out nearby open WiFi networks to join. There’s concern that in coming years with the spread of 5G availability that smart TVs may start packaging a 5G modem and connecting to cell networks, bypassing the need to be connected to a WiFi network.
Because 5G is intentionally marketed as having this functionality. It helps by allowing more efficient low-speed connections, and simpler radio design for very simple implementation. It also has 'slicing' which would make it much easier to provide a wide 5G network to e.g. all LG devices without LG building towers.
As I understand it, the standard allows a single tower to offer different quality of service levels so operators can sell cheap low bandwidth connections to IoT manufacturers. TVs wouldn't have modems before because no TV manufacturer wanted to pay for a full 3G or 4G connection.
It's supposed to enable much-cheaper options for IoT applications. If the cost of the chip + the cost of low-bandwidth access drops below the profit gained by ensuring all your TVs can always reach an unfiltered network, they'll start adding them.
Because getting the data about what people are watching plus maybe input from microphone/camera is more valuable than a contract with mobile carriers that would give good prices to vendors.
So one Reddit post with zero evidence that has since been deleted? While I understand the distrust I'll take some repeatable evidence (which would be excedingly easy to do) over a random, now deleted Reddit post.
False. You would need to buy (or just randomly happen to have) a smart TV model that exhibits this characteristic, which would be very difficult to find, as there is a very wide spread of smart TV models and features, and obviously this "feature" wouldn't be advertised. This is neither easy nor free.
You're also clearly moving the goalposts. You first asked for evidence, and then discarded the evidence because "it wasn't good enough".
Nor is this capability either technically difficult to implement, illegal, easily-noticed by the average consumer, or abnormal for companies like Samsung, which already engage in highly-intrusive ad-surveillance activities[1].
While I am rather cynical about manufacturers of all sizes and their attitudes towards customers, I agree with the GP.
If this is a common thing, this should be easy to replicate. If it is one unverified reported incident in the whole world then... I have to be skeptical.
Don't get me wrong though, my innate cynicism expects this or similar via 5G to be coming in the near future. But it doesn't appear to be happening yet.
> False. You would need to buy (or just randomly happen to have) a smart TV model that exhibits this characteristic, which would be very difficult to find, as there is a very wide spread of smart TV models and features, and obviously this "feature" wouldn't be advertised. This is neither easy nor free.
If the reddit poster had provided model numbers, not just "Samsung TVs" this would become trivial to verify. They however did not. They also didn't provide any proof other than "it deffo happened guys".
> You're also clearly moving the goalposts. You first asked for evidence, and then discarded the evidence because "it wasn't good enough".
Again, as I stated in my reply while I understand your skepticism and distrust of the industry my standard of evidence is somewhat above one random guy on reddit with no verifiable evidence.
It depends strongly on the brand. LG is well known to be good in that situation. I bought one on the recommendation of HN comments and it seems to work great to me.
Not something I would install to my grandma. Really, she doesn't of course have internet, just the old analog landline phones, doesn't know how to use a computer or a smartphone or anything like that, I want a TV that is simple, just press a button and it powers up on the specified channel.
Next year they will switch off DVB to migrate to DVB-T2, and of course I must buy her a new TV (using a decoder it's not an option, too complex having to manage two remotes controls), and it seems that nobody produces dumb TVs anymore...
Yea a monitor is not a bad idea but they don't come in very large sizes or are way overpriced. Also if you'd want a decent speaker build in, monitors are not always the best
Some (Sony) pop up random nag screens in the middle of the movie or show you're watching. Even if that show is being streamed on a different smart device or you are watching OTA TV where internet is completely unnecessary.
Some brands/models can't even be setup without an internet connection and setting up accounts (and sometimes credit card information). Eventually, they'll probably have their own independent 5g connection.
I can't remember the brand. I think it was one of the cheaper Roku tvs produced by a Chinese company I saw when I was looking for a replacement for my parents (reminds me of the issues with Onyx Boox devices).
At this point, I just assume everything is spying.
(Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to harvest your data, I guess.)
Our TV started to complain that the Wifi module was unplugged (which apparently is on the main board). Problem: This happened regularly with a dialog box. 'Solution': Put a Wifi dongle in the USB port.
I think the worst thing about projectors is their noise. I heard lasers are a bit better here, but I only saw a model that was as noisy as the others, while the image wasn't that much or even at all better. That was in the quality segment that use DLP for image modulation. Did this improve in recent years?
Hmm, can't say I've been bothered by noise on any projector. Primarily because the audio system or headphones drown it out. Cooling design hasn't changed much from what I've seen but newer projectors are quieter.
Keeping an insulated box at a constant temperature with refrigeration has been something that was reliably possible over a century ago, so it puzzles me what the electronics/computers in a fridge would be necessary for, besides decreasing reliability and planned obolescence.
My late 30s Frigidaire has no electronics at all...
That's 'cool' (pun intended), they'll be hacked while still in the cardboard shipping container. Tizen is about as leaky as it gets.
Anyway, GP asked if there were fridges running Android, yes there are. Even if they are not being sold by Samsung in the present, it is a safe assumption that not all of these have died in the line of duty.
