Comment by circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org on New TV

I am hanging on to my 1080p Samsung for dear life. It is about 12 years old, but the picture quality is still fantastic with LED backlighting and it has – get this – no smart “features”.

I just want a big monitor. just display the pixels and I’ll be happy

Someone a while back on a thread not dissimilar from this one suggested looking into commercial display screens. A kind of BYO solution to the smart TV problems.

The nice thing about Samsungs is that basically all their remotes work with all their TVs, so I just found one without the smart button so I can’t tell that mine is smart, and I obviously never connected it to internet. I think it’s a lot cheaper than trying to get a commercial dumb TV too.

Weren’t Samsung TVs the one that would connect to neighbors TVs and stuff and find other ways to connect to the Internet?

Thought that was Hisense… Could be both actually.

Wouldn’t that only work if your neighbors tv was plugged into Ethernet so that the wifi chip can be free to start a hotspot? I can’t find any info about that so I’m not sure.

Interesting – didn’t know that

I’m curious about the need for non-smart TVs… Are you using it exclusively with a game console or is there some sort of other device you use with it?

I still have a smart TV so I don’t need to have a non smart tv. But I refuse to use smart features for several reasons:

The built in software is often laggy, ugly, and hard to navigate (mine is from like 2016 so all 3 of these are huge issues for my specific TV but my parents just bought a 2024 model oled and I find their gyro / touchpad / pointer remote to be excruciating to use)
I hate the idea of getting used to the Samsung apps / os and then feeling like I need to stick with Samsung
They never seem to support the software very long - my TV pre-dates Samsung’s current tv OS and no longer receives updates, so the Plex app available for it doesn’t even connect - so I couldn’t use it even if I wanted to

I mostly watch stuff downloaded to my Plex, so a PC running Plex htpc / desktop or any android box (Nvidia shield is pretty good) with the Plex or jellyfin app is all I need. I also like that I can easily watch YouTube through a browser with ad block and sponsorblock (I think smarttube does that for Android boxes like the shield)

I also game on the PC so I guess you could consider it a game console for the purposes of categorizing the use case.

Smart TVs are literally designed to spy on you, so that’s pretty shit. The software is shit, there are ads in thousand dollar TVs. It doesn’t need its own Netflix app that lags to fuck, or a YouTube app that is far worse than just using a computer.

A media center for watching TV (currently an Nvidia Shield with Kodi) and various games consoles are literally all I’ve used a TV for in the past 20 years.

I can’t believe people are out here raw dogging their TV’s operating system. To me it’s as strange as buying just a monitor for your desktop PC and wondering why your $80 computer injects ads everywhere and sells every scrap of data you give it. I haven’t owned a full sized TV in over a decade, and before that my dad always used an Apple TV and before that a dish network DVR so I always assumed it was the norm to buy some external input device, because I literally have not lived any other way.

Not who you asked but I hook up mine to a PC meant for streaming, there’s no need for it to be smart with either browser or applications that stream the content. Unless I’m missing something.

It’s not a need as much as a preference to not want every device need a connection if you have other means to handle the tasks. Also less bandwidth used since they don’t send back random data to headquarters, not that I imagine it’s a lot.

On top of what everyone else said: they’ll inevitably stop being supported before long and it’s always easier to plug something new in the HDMI.

I feel the exact same way about my 42" 1080 Sony Bravia. It’s heavy as fuck, so I had to hang it on the burliest monitor arm I could find, but it was built like a tank and the picture quality is still great. Bonus - since it’s not a flat panel, the built-in speakers are more than decent.

I don’t know about new ones, but you’re right older Bravias are built like tanks. I got a 40" LED that’s, uh, more than 15 years old now. Survived 5 rental moves, covered in nothing but cling wrap and chucked at the back of me car.

I have no idea what to do when it eventually breaks…

I still got mine too, 32" bought in 2012 with my PS3 then. That thing is indestructible, survived 4 years in the army and 3 moves.

My Samsung is a 40". I definitely wish it was bigger but not enough to jump into the smart TV soup.

My 1080p plasma is still going strong. Sure there’s burn in but it’s had it since I got it and it’s a real big dumb tv. Dreading moving the monstrosity across the country, but it was the perfect price and I don’t want to drop a ton of money on a new tv during a time of uncertainty.

I will say my oled steam deck has made me want a better tv, but I can wait for it.

I have been surprised at how good some of the early LED backlighting can look versus OLED. My understanding is that the backlight in dark areas on my Samsung can be shut off independently area by area, so while the black point isn’t as dark as an OLED, it is way darker than on a lot of other displays I have seen. So it’s a good example of good enough for me.

What does it matter? Unless you’re going back to cable you’ll have to get a “smart” something or other and the “smart” ones always let you pass through the signal anyway so you might as well not deal with all the wires.

…all what wires? Back to cable? Not sure what you are referring to. I have a single HDMI cable plugged in to a dumb TV from a computer I control. All content comes in through that (with the benefit of things like ad blocking).

Smart TVs have features designed in part to collect data on you and facilitate things like serving you ads. Why would I want that as opposed to a TV without such “features”?

It wouldn’t be an issue if the industry still offered dumb TVs, but by and large, they don’t (for good reason – they can profit off of the collected data).

You can just not connect it to the internet

Generally yes, but as that gains popularity, the industry will look elsewhere to get their connection.

The world is bathed in cellular data networks and WiFi. I’d suggest that we aren’t that far off from TVs that are connected without your knowledge.

And even if you find that tinfoil-hattish, the key point is: having the hardware in your house to begin with is a security risk. Why must I buy a TV with a camera in it when I literally have no personal use case for a camera in my TV?

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