9 ms·

It's not worth buying any of these 'Smart' TVs. I don't know whether it is a shoddy developer experience provided by the likes of Samsung / Vizeo etc or if it's

It's not worth buying any of these 'Smart' TVs. I don't know whether it is a shoddy developer experience provided by the likes of Samsung / Vizeo etc or if it's the developers themselves (Hulu I'm looking at you) who do not maintain their apps which are constantly bug filled. I much prefer my old dumb TV that has a Roku plugged into it. Oh yeah, and I know it's not WATCHING ME.

wrsh07 10y ago
If you want a high end tv you don't have much choice. But also, why do you not expect your Roku / apple tv / etc to be watching you?
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  > If you want a high end tv you don't have much choice. Don't connect it to the Internet? Barring the manufacturer sneaking a backup cellular modem in there, seems like it's an easy fix.
  - kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
    They can nag you about retrieving updates.
    - Relys 10y ago
      root it then! Any kid that knows how to point the libstagefright and DirtyCOW MetaSploit modules at the browser can root their "smart" TV...
      - khedoros1 10y ago
        Better option: Buy a different TV that requires less effort to make acceptable, unless there's a huge price incentive to buy the more troublesome TV and "fix" it.
      - Clubber 10y ago
        But you are also supporting the invasive practices by giving the manufacturers your money.
- bduerst 10y ago
  You can still find OLED or 4K off-brand "dumb" TVs, like from Hisense and Selki, but you run the risk of terrible support.
  - pdimitar 10y ago
    PERSONAL OPINION: warranties are hard to enforce de facto. Would you be so kind to provide links to these products? I am interested in a high-quality display without smart features.
    - rhizome 10y ago
      Yeah, I tried to go down that route about 10 years ago when the Internet was younger and dumber and I wound up not being able to find anything. Here's a recent (UK) story about the idea that could provide some vectors, though: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2016/sep/08/can-i-still-buy-a-dumb-tv https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2016/sep/08/c...
  - khedoros1 10y ago
    Don't those often use B-grade panels from other manufacturers? I know Hisense has the reputation for punching above its weight, but I wouldn't expect them to produce "high end" TVs.
    - bduerst 10y ago
      Not for Hisense televisions, but I don't know for Seiki. The former is basically a high quality panel with crappy speakers. Hisense is also now selling under the Sharp brand name.
  - TwoBit 10y ago
    Somebody other than LG sells an OLED TV? Where?
- ghostly_s 10y ago
  Well, if it turns out your <CommodityVideoStreamerA> is spying on you, you can throw it in the trash and get a <CommodityVideoStreamerB> instead. That gets a bit trickier when it's hardwired into your $1000+ display panel's control board.
- 010a 10y ago
  Honestly, I'm 100% more fine with Apple spying on me than pretty much anyone else. I'm less perturbed with the entire concept of spying than I am with who is doing it.
  - splike 10y ago
    I don't agree with this. Why do you feel that way?
- 72deluxe 10y ago
  I have a "smart" LG TV - it's slow and a few years old. I manage to avoid LG's tracking of me by not having the Ethernet cable plugged in... I suppose you could just buy a new smart TV and not inform it of its WiFi details.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    From what I've read, some smart TVs actually require you to connect them to the internet for them to work at all.
    - Fuxy 10y ago
      That's funny in really tragic way. So what happens if your internet goes down or if for instance you are just moving in and you don't have internet for a week or so? Does like everything stop working without internet now? ...sigh
- monochromatic 10y ago
  You do expect the box to keep track of what content it's showing you. You don't expect the tv to keep track of all content, regardless of where it's coming from.
- kodt 10y ago
  You could buy a high end Digital Signage display. Usually these are "dumb" and also have no TV tuner or consumer type settings. But are high quality, designed to be powered on 24 hours a day and have great picture quality. Because of the lack of additional image processing, they often have some of the lowest input lag as well. http://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/digital-signage/ http://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/digital-signage/ Prices are much higher though.
  - rsync 10y ago
    "Prices are much higher though." Not that much higher ... maybe double ? Remember, the digital signage displays are often used in arrays of 12 or 18 or 24 displays, so they have to be somewhat cost-competitive - otherwise an airport or hotel lobby or mall couldn't stitch 24 of them together. I always chime in on these discussions to urge folks to buy a digital signage / commercial display (probably from NEC). Not only are they as dumb as dumb gets, but they are also very, very high performance displays.
  - hfsktr 10y ago
    WTF is wrong with that site. I enabled the scripts so that I could use the filters, waited while it refreshed several times, and it just covers the screen with a pop up that just re-opens when you close it. That was one of the worst I've visited. It's probably because of the ad blockers but still a site should be a little functional without all the scripts and ads.
lucisferre 10y ago
Actually the TV's with Roku built into it are great. But again how do you know the Roku isn't watching you? I mean it even has a mic for voice search.
- qq66 10y ago
  Well, at least if you ascertain that the Roku is watching you, you can throw it out and only be out $50 instead of $500+ for the TV.
  - pyre 10y ago
    > TV's with Roku built into it I'm guessing that this doesn't just mean that it comes in the same box as the tv set.
FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
I don't understand the consumer infatuation with "smart", Internet connected devices, especially smart homes. Yes auto lighting and hvac systems are cool, but it introduces so many security vulnerabities that it's not worth it. I dont ever see myself using autonomous, internet connected cars. I cant think of a bigger hacking target for terrorists and mischief makers alike.
- gregmac 10y ago
  > "smart", Internet connected devices, especially smart homes. I have a "smart" home (well, parts of it -- it's expensive to do everything!). It turns on a few select lights when it gets dark out, unless there are already lights on (eg: we're home) in which case it doesn't change anything. It turns lights off late at night in case we forget. It turns the front lights on at 30% between dusk and midnight, and cranks to 100% anytime between dusk and dawn if there's motion or the garage door is open (then gradually puts them back to what they were). Most useful, there's buttons on the kitchen keypad labelled "Dim" "Bright" and "Off" that adjust the lights over the island, sink, table, and under-cabinet and range hood (all separate). Another useful one is the "all off" button by the front door -- there's no corresponding "all on" because (as mentioned above) that happens automatically, and we never walk into a dark house. All of it can be controlled from any PC/tablet/phone, and of course all of it could be done over the internet -- except that I don't have any of the ports open, because I don't see the point. The ability of connected switches to be controlled by other switches/motion/time yet still allow manual operation is very nice, and it's significantly cheaper than a massive re-wiring project. I hate that there's this huge craze that confuses "smart" with "on the internet". It's an entire industry that is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
  - astrange 10y ago
    I have a regular light switch for my Hue lights, but also have some timers set up from my phone that change their colors in the morning/evening. If I'm gone or even if I lose the phone, I really wonder if anyone else will ever figure out how to shut that off. They'll probably just throw the bulbs out.
- 10y ago
ThinkingGuy 10y ago
I feel the same way about smart TVs, but I'm starting to have my doubts about the Roku. A few months ago I was trying out an open source DLNA media player. I tested it playing a single WAV file from my server using the Roku Media Player. A day or two later, we turned on the TV, switched to the Roku, and were greeted with an advertisement for a concert video by the exact band I had listened to. Now, I'm pretty sure the ad was not based on our the past viewing habits of our household - my wife does 99.9% of the Roku streaming, and her music preferences are completely different than mine. Now, I know this is just a single anecdote, and that it could very well have been a coincidence, and that in the grand scheme of thing this is one of the more innocuous uses of tracking, but it was still a somewhat though-provoking experience.
foxylad 10y ago
Agreed. We have a dumb Sony 40" LCD that is over ten years old. It's not 4K but our eyes aren't good enough to see the difference, and over the years we've used a range of front ends - currently a Raspberry Pi running Kodi (with the HiFiberry sound card - awesome!). This has been very economic, and environmentally friendly, and I can't see why we can't continue for several more years with the same screen.
- PacketPaul 10y ago
  If you were using the Exodus plugin for Kodi, you were a part of a botnet. Make sure you upgrade to 3.0.5. Who knows what the other apps are doing?
  - deadbunny 10y ago
    Don't run sketchy plugins then?
gregmac 10y ago
I like to frame it this way: The oldest TV in my house is a 10+ years old 46" 'dumb' TV. It used to have a SageTV box connected, then a Roku, and now currently has a Chromecast. I could plug the Chromecast into a brand new TV, and other than the case design, they'd be indistinguishable. Know what was state-of-the-art in embedded CPUs 10 years ago? The original iPhone. It had a 400 MHz single-core processor with 128MB RAM. Do you think app developers that have quad- and octo-core CPUs and literally 8 or 16 times the memory are going to optimize for the old platform, or build and maintain several versions of their applications? Personally I'd rather spend of $35 ~ $200 every few years, instead of $800 ~ $2000, to have an up-to-date system.
rasz_pl 10y ago
The difference between smart 1080p tv and dumb one is $15 LCD controller from ebay.
malz 10y ago
The Wirecutter's top TV pick is a non-smart one, ironically a Vizio. "In a departure from the trend toward smarter and smarter sets, the Vizio P-Series lacks built-in smart-TV features. It’s basically a dumb TV, not just lacking apps but also dispensing with a tuner." http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-tv/ http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-tv/
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  If it doesn't have a tuner, doesn't that just make it a monitor with speakers? If you're using a STB, that hardly matters, but I'd think a cord-cutter would like the option to plug an antenna in the back and watch OTA stations without needing extra hardware.
ad_tech_ninja 10y ago
Roku is collecting and sharing information on what you're watching with Nielsen and other analytics providers. I believe they are requiring it of all their developers. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/press-room/2015/nielsen-and-roku-form-industry-first-strategic-agreement-to-advance-ott-measurement.html http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/press-room/2015/nielsen-and-rok... if the FTC had any sense - they should require disclosure at point of purchase.
alkonaut 10y ago
The smart features mostly suck, but the idea of using two remotes (or a nonstandard programmable remote) is pretty unattractive. I jump through a lot of hoops to be able to plug my tv antenna cable into my tv rather than a set top box of some kind, so it would defeat the point to have a set top box for the smart features. I suppose if the streaming services I use were all compatible with e.g. ChromeCast I could use that, but until they are I'm pretty happy with the ui of the SmartTV. Most importantly, the kids can use Netflix without having their own smartphones. I'm going to check the settings really carefully on the TV to see if I can at least maximize privzcy, but I wish there was something better such as a firewall setting I could use. Is there a guide for various manufacturers/models floating around somewhere?
- CoolGuySteve 10y ago
  Many TVs allow hdmi pass through of the TV remote to a device if it's supported. For example my Samsung remote can control my FireTV via HDMI. In the past, Sony has picked confusing button mappings for the PS3 such that only Sony remotes worked well with it, but I haven't had a Sony device since then.
- deadbunny 10y ago
  On the remote issue, HDMI CRC is fairly well supported these days. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control
falcor84 10y ago
Couldn't you equivalently just not connect the smart tv to the internet?
dghughes 10y ago
Yes I wish I had known (well I sort of did) that a smart TV would be so bad just the laggy apps, opt-in after each firmware upgrade. And each upgrade seems to make the apps run slower and slower. I got my dad a Roku but he didn't want it so I took it thinking I would return it but for Netflix and YouTube it's far faster than the same Samsung apps. My plan to build a Pi 3 media box was set aside for now. But yes wow such crap and mind games in these smart TVs when all I want is to see my video signal!

wrsh07 10y ago

If you want a high end tv you don't have much choice. But also, why do you not expect your Roku / apple tv / etc to be watching you?

ceejayoz 10y ago
> If you want a high end tv you don't have much choice. Don't connect it to the Internet? Barring the manufacturer sneaking a backup cellular modem in there, seems like it's an easy fix.
- kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
  They can nag you about retrieving updates.
  - Relys 10y ago
    root it then! Any kid that knows how to point the libstagefright and DirtyCOW MetaSploit modules at the browser can root their "smart" TV...
    - khedoros1 10y ago
      Better option: Buy a different TV that requires less effort to make acceptable, unless there's a huge price incentive to buy the more troublesome TV and "fix" it.
    - Clubber 10y ago
      But you are also supporting the invasive practices by giving the manufacturers your money.
bduerst 10y ago
You can still find OLED or 4K off-brand "dumb" TVs, like from Hisense and Selki, but you run the risk of terrible support.
- pdimitar 10y ago
  PERSONAL OPINION: warranties are hard to enforce de facto. Would you be so kind to provide links to these products? I am interested in a high-quality display without smart features.
  - rhizome 10y ago
    Yeah, I tried to go down that route about 10 years ago when the Internet was younger and dumber and I wound up not being able to find anything. Here's a recent (UK) story about the idea that could provide some vectors, though: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2016/sep/08/can-i-still-buy-a-dumb-tv https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2016/sep/08/c...
- khedoros1 10y ago
  Don't those often use B-grade panels from other manufacturers? I know Hisense has the reputation for punching above its weight, but I wouldn't expect them to produce "high end" TVs.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    Not for Hisense televisions, but I don't know for Seiki. The former is basically a high quality panel with crappy speakers. Hisense is also now selling under the Sharp brand name.
- TwoBit 10y ago
  Somebody other than LG sells an OLED TV? Where?
ghostly_s 10y ago
Well, if it turns out your <CommodityVideoStreamerA> is spying on you, you can throw it in the trash and get a <CommodityVideoStreamerB> instead. That gets a bit trickier when it's hardwired into your $1000+ display panel's control board.
010a 10y ago
Honestly, I'm 100% more fine with Apple spying on me than pretty much anyone else. I'm less perturbed with the entire concept of spying than I am with who is doing it.
- splike 10y ago
  I don't agree with this. Why do you feel that way?
72deluxe 10y ago
I have a "smart" LG TV - it's slow and a few years old. I manage to avoid LG's tracking of me by not having the Ethernet cable plugged in... I suppose you could just buy a new smart TV and not inform it of its WiFi details.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  From what I've read, some smart TVs actually require you to connect them to the internet for them to work at all.
  - Fuxy 10y ago
    That's funny in really tragic way. So what happens if your internet goes down or if for instance you are just moving in and you don't have internet for a week or so? Does like everything stop working without internet now? ...sigh
monochromatic 10y ago
You do expect the box to keep track of what content it's showing you. You don't expect the tv to keep track of all content, regardless of where it's coming from.
kodt 10y ago
You could buy a high end Digital Signage display. Usually these are "dumb" and also have no TV tuner or consumer type settings. But are high quality, designed to be powered on 24 hours a day and have great picture quality. Because of the lack of additional image processing, they often have some of the lowest input lag as well. http://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/digital-signage/ http://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/digital-signage/ Prices are much higher though.
- rsync 10y ago
  "Prices are much higher though." Not that much higher ... maybe double ? Remember, the digital signage displays are often used in arrays of 12 or 18 or 24 displays, so they have to be somewhat cost-competitive - otherwise an airport or hotel lobby or mall couldn't stitch 24 of them together. I always chime in on these discussions to urge folks to buy a digital signage / commercial display (probably from NEC). Not only are they as dumb as dumb gets, but they are also very, very high performance displays.
- hfsktr 10y ago
  WTF is wrong with that site. I enabled the scripts so that I could use the filters, waited while it refreshed several times, and it just covers the screen with a pop up that just re-opens when you close it. That was one of the worst I've visited. It's probably because of the ad blockers but still a site should be a little functional without all the scripts and ads.

lucisferre 10y ago

Actually the TV's with Roku built into it are great. But again how do you know the Roku isn't watching you? I mean it even has a mic for voice search.

qq66 10y ago
Well, at least if you ascertain that the Roku is watching you, you can throw it out and only be out $50 instead of $500+ for the TV.
- pyre 10y ago
  > TV's with Roku built into it I'm guessing that this doesn't just mean that it comes in the same box as the tv set.

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago

I don't understand the consumer infatuation with "smart", Internet connected devices, especially smart homes. Yes auto lighting and hvac systems are cool, but it introduces so many security vulnerabities that it's not worth it. I dont ever see myself using autonomous, internet connected cars. I cant think of a bigger hacking target for terrorists and mischief makers alike.

gregmac 10y ago
> "smart", Internet connected devices, especially smart homes. I have a "smart" home (well, parts of it -- it's expensive to do everything!). It turns on a few select lights when it gets dark out, unless there are already lights on (eg: we're home) in which case it doesn't change anything. It turns lights off late at night in case we forget. It turns the front lights on at 30% between dusk and midnight, and cranks to 100% anytime between dusk and dawn if there's motion or the garage door is open (then gradually puts them back to what they were). Most useful, there's buttons on the kitchen keypad labelled "Dim" "Bright" and "Off" that adjust the lights over the island, sink, table, and under-cabinet and range hood (all separate). Another useful one is the "all off" button by the front door -- there's no corresponding "all on" because (as mentioned above) that happens automatically, and we never walk into a dark house. All of it can be controlled from any PC/tablet/phone, and of course all of it could be done over the internet -- except that I don't have any of the ports open, because I don't see the point. The ability of connected switches to be controlled by other switches/motion/time yet still allow manual operation is very nice, and it's significantly cheaper than a massive re-wiring project. I hate that there's this huge craze that confuses "smart" with "on the internet". It's an entire industry that is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
- astrange 10y ago
  I have a regular light switch for my Hue lights, but also have some timers set up from my phone that change their colors in the morning/evening. If I'm gone or even if I lose the phone, I really wonder if anyone else will ever figure out how to shut that off. They'll probably just throw the bulbs out.
10y ago

ThinkingGuy 10y ago

I feel the same way about smart TVs, but I'm starting to have my doubts about the Roku. A few months ago I was trying out an open source DLNA media player. I tested it playing a single WAV file from my server using the Roku Media Player. A day or two later, we turned on the TV, switched to the Roku, and were greeted with an advertisement for a concert video by the exact band I had listened to. Now, I'm pretty sure the ad was not based on our the past viewing habits of our household - my wife does 99.9% of the Roku streaming, and her music preferences are completely different than mine. Now, I know this is just a single anecdote, and that it could very well have been a coincidence, and that in the grand scheme of thing this is one of the more innocuous uses of tracking, but it was still a somewhat though-provoking experience.

foxylad 10y ago

Agreed. We have a dumb Sony 40" LCD that is over ten years old. It's not 4K but our eyes aren't good enough to see the difference, and over the years we've used a range of front ends - currently a Raspberry Pi running Kodi (with the HiFiberry sound card - awesome!). This has been very economic, and environmentally friendly, and I can't see why we can't continue for several more years with the same screen.

PacketPaul 10y ago
If you were using the Exodus plugin for Kodi, you were a part of a botnet. Make sure you upgrade to 3.0.5. Who knows what the other apps are doing?
- deadbunny 10y ago
  Don't run sketchy plugins then?

gregmac 10y ago

I like to frame it this way: The oldest TV in my house is a 10+ years old 46" 'dumb' TV. It used to have a SageTV box connected, then a Roku, and now currently has a Chromecast. I could plug the Chromecast into a brand new TV, and other than the case design, they'd be indistinguishable. Know what was state-of-the-art in embedded CPUs 10 years ago? The original iPhone. It had a 400 MHz single-core processor with 128MB RAM. Do you think app developers that have quad- and octo-core CPUs and literally 8 or 16 times the memory are going to optimize for the old platform, or build and maintain several versions of their applications? Personally I'd rather spend of $35 ~ $200 every few years, instead of $800 ~ $2000, to have an up-to-date system.

rasz_pl 10y ago

The difference between smart 1080p tv and dumb one is $15 LCD controller from ebay.

malz 10y ago

The Wirecutter's top TV pick is a non-smart one, ironically a Vizio. "In a departure from the trend toward smarter and smarter sets, the Vizio P-Series lacks built-in smart-TV features. It’s basically a dumb TV, not just lacking apps but also dispensing with a tuner." http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-tv/ http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-tv/

logfromblammo 10y ago
If it doesn't have a tuner, doesn't that just make it a monitor with speakers? If you're using a STB, that hardly matters, but I'd think a cord-cutter would like the option to plug an antenna in the back and watch OTA stations without needing extra hardware.

ad_tech_ninja 10y ago

Roku is collecting and sharing information on what you're watching with Nielsen and other analytics providers. I believe they are requiring it of all their developers. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/press-room/2015/nielsen-and-roku-form-industry-first-strategic-agreement-to-advance-ott-measurement.html http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/press-room/2015/nielsen-and-rok... if the FTC had any sense - they should require disclosure at point of purchase.

alkonaut 10y ago

The smart features mostly suck, but the idea of using two remotes (or a nonstandard programmable remote) is pretty unattractive. I jump through a lot of hoops to be able to plug my tv antenna cable into my tv rather than a set top box of some kind, so it would defeat the point to have a set top box for the smart features. I suppose if the streaming services I use were all compatible with e.g. ChromeCast I could use that, but until they are I'm pretty happy with the ui of the SmartTV. Most importantly, the kids can use Netflix without having their own smartphones. I'm going to check the settings really carefully on the TV to see if I can at least maximize privzcy, but I wish there was something better such as a firewall setting I could use. Is there a guide for various manufacturers/models floating around somewhere?

CoolGuySteve 10y ago
Many TVs allow hdmi pass through of the TV remote to a device if it's supported. For example my Samsung remote can control my FireTV via HDMI. In the past, Sony has picked confusing button mappings for the PS3 such that only Sony remotes worked well with it, but I haven't had a Sony device since then.
deadbunny 10y ago
On the remote issue, HDMI CRC is fairly well supported these days. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control

falcor84 10y ago

Couldn't you equivalently just not connect the smart tv to the internet?

dghughes 10y ago

Yes I wish I had known (well I sort of did) that a smart TV would be so bad just the laggy apps, opt-in after each firmware upgrade. And each upgrade seems to make the apps run slower and slower. I got my dad a Roku but he didn't want it so I took it thinking I would return it but for Netflix and YouTube it's far faster than the same Samsung apps. My plan to build a Pi 3 media box was set aside for now. But yes wow such crap and mind games in these smart TVs when all I want is to see my video signal!