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The whole notion of owning a TV is becoming ridiculous. The cost of ownership is simply not worth it. Fist, you have the cost of the screen itself. You buy a TV

The whole notion of owning a TV is becoming ridiculous. The cost of ownership is simply not worth it. Fist, you have the cost of the screen itself. You buy a TV, spend lots of money on it, and then it simply spies on you. We've seen this already on Vizio and Samsung TVs already. This is another feather in the cap for this trend. Then there is the cost of cable, which is absurdly expensive. To get all the channels you want, you end up spending a couple of hundred dollars per month. Want to do the cord cutting route? Well that is trending to be even more expensive as each service charges about 10 dollars per month. That doesn't even account for live sports. The TVs themselves seem to be going obsolete every two years. First it was HDTV, then 3DTV, then HDTV 4K. On the tech side it was LED, LCD, ULED, now OLED. Remember when your CRT TV lasted 10+ years? Edit: Also they don't get updates after six months. Apps stop working as people have mentioned. But more importantly, they don't get security updates. So your Smart TV morphs into a Creep TV where hackers have their way with it to do their bidding. Overall, it is easier to just not do the whole TV thing. You will save a ton of money and be much happier at the same time.

sebazzz 9y ago
You forget to mention that after a few years, if not earlier, your TV doesn't get any updates anymore and apps disappear or stop functioning and gets 50% useless (the "smart" part). I cannot speak for the American market but mostly in the Netherlands a TV is essentially used as a big computer display, because most people have a settopbox that has COAX/Ethernet in -> HDMI out.
- petepete 9y ago
  My Samsung TV got an update that added adverts into it UI. There's no option to disable it and Samsung's support team insist that the ads come from apps that I've installed, but they come from preinstalled apps I can't remove or disable. I wrote a guide on blocking it. TL;DR DNS blacklist ads.samsung.com https://gist.github.com/peteryates/b44b70d19ccd52f62d66cdd4bcef1e52 https://gist.github.com/peteryates/b44b70d19ccd52f62d66cdd4b...
  - reificator 9y ago
    The real question is why on earth would installing an application on your TV give it permissions to display ads outside of itself? That's one of those corporate excuses that sounds good in the moment but really just makes the whole situation way worse.
    - petepete 9y ago
      This is exactly the problem. Samsung make the OS, they sell the space, they make the money. They just flatly deny they can do anything about it.
  - phkahler 9y ago
    I was recently looking for a 4K TV to use as a monitor and was reading good things about Samsung when one of the reviews mentioned this advertising stuff in a single sentence somewhere near the bottom. I googled it, but most "reviews" don't mention it. It seems you can't trust the devices or the online reviews any more. Nobody wants to make a product for me, it's all about them.
    - petepete 9y ago
      The problem is, most reviews happen just before or just after launch. My TV was fine for approximately half a year before an update added them without warning or an opportunity to downgrade. I have been banned from Samsung TV's Instagram for warning potential buyers.
tomjen3 9y ago
Don't buy a smart tv, hook a chrome cast to it, don't buy a new one just because there are better ones out there. As for streaming, choose one service and switch to another to binge a new season, then cancel when it is over.
- IshKebab 9y ago
  All TVs are smart now.
  - ddalex 9y ago
    But there is absolutely no reason for you to hook it up to your home wifi. At least, until they are 'cloud'-enabled, and they require an internet connection to verify DRM before it plays ANY content... I shouldn't give them ideas.
    - simcop2387 9y ago
      My current one that I bought back in 2014 (or 13?) won't start up unless it thinks it has a network connection. I've actually setup my router to just block all traffic from it, but let it on the network so it'll actually work as a panel. Otherwise it has an unskippable menu demanding to be given the wifi password (or hooked up over ethernet).
      - phkahler 9y ago
        What brand and model?
        simcop2387 9y ago
        Samsung UN60F6400 60-Inch
      - Avernar 9y ago
        I would have returned that crap back to the store so fast it would make the sales person's head spin.
lathiat 9y ago
I purchased my Samsung 46" 1080p LCD TV in 2007 for $3000 AUD. It's still going strong now. The only single thing I miss from it is a lack of HDMI-CEC support.
- rsynnott 9y ago
  You don’t WANT HDMI-CEC; it almost never works properly.
  - berberous 9y ago
    HDMI-CEC is great and works flawlessly if the equipment you have supports it, at least in my personal experience. On some older equipment, not all of the functions worked though. For example, my old TV could uses CEC for volume and power on but not power off. New TV does it all perfectly.
- flashman 9y ago
  We have a similar plasma model, which we got for free because the owners were upgrading to a new one. I love how it doesn't do anything except display signals; we pair it with a Chromecast for most things. Of course, the electricity cost of a plasma TV adds up over the years...
rsynnott 9y ago
You’re not obligated to upgrade, obviously. An LCD TV still works perfectly fine. You can also still get non-smart TVs, though it has become increasingly difficult. Most people probably don’t want _all_ of the on-demand things. And terrestrial TV is still a thing. And since they went LED-backlit, they last practically forever (the old CFL ones did often eventually die).
codyb 9y ago
I agree with most of your points but a couple of hundred dollars a month sounds like a ton of packages. I think I have hulu live with no ads, HBO, and Netflix for well under a hundred. You could divide the $99 bucks I spent on Amazon Prime by 10 and add that too if you wanted although I can't tell you the last time I used that service. It's still a bunch of money though. The best deal here in NYC is a 50 dollar (or cheaper but the best ones are about 50 I believe) antenna which picks up maybe fifty or sixty channels in a variety of languages (which I think is neat although don't particularly use). That's a one time cost and you get Fox, CBS, ABC, etc, etc. Seems like trying to be on the cutting edge would be a total waste, I don't have a 4K TV or some super huge screen and that's fine by me.

sebazzz 9y ago

You forget to mention that after a few years, if not earlier, your TV doesn't get any updates anymore and apps disappear or stop functioning and gets 50% useless (the "smart" part). I cannot speak for the American market but mostly in the Netherlands a TV is essentially used as a big computer display, because most people have a settopbox that has COAX/Ethernet in -> HDMI out.

petepete 9y ago
My Samsung TV got an update that added adverts into it UI. There's no option to disable it and Samsung's support team insist that the ads come from apps that I've installed, but they come from preinstalled apps I can't remove or disable. I wrote a guide on blocking it. TL;DR DNS blacklist ads.samsung.com https://gist.github.com/peteryates/b44b70d19ccd52f62d66cdd4bcef1e52 https://gist.github.com/peteryates/b44b70d19ccd52f62d66cdd4b...
- reificator 9y ago
  The real question is why on earth would installing an application on your TV give it permissions to display ads outside of itself? That's one of those corporate excuses that sounds good in the moment but really just makes the whole situation way worse.
  - petepete 9y ago
    This is exactly the problem. Samsung make the OS, they sell the space, they make the money. They just flatly deny they can do anything about it.
- phkahler 9y ago
  I was recently looking for a 4K TV to use as a monitor and was reading good things about Samsung when one of the reviews mentioned this advertising stuff in a single sentence somewhere near the bottom. I googled it, but most "reviews" don't mention it. It seems you can't trust the devices or the online reviews any more. Nobody wants to make a product for me, it's all about them.
  - petepete 9y ago
    The problem is, most reviews happen just before or just after launch. My TV was fine for approximately half a year before an update added them without warning or an opportunity to downgrade. I have been banned from Samsung TV's Instagram for warning potential buyers.

tomjen3 9y ago

Don't buy a smart tv, hook a chrome cast to it, don't buy a new one just because there are better ones out there. As for streaming, choose one service and switch to another to binge a new season, then cancel when it is over.

IshKebab 9y ago
All TVs are smart now.
- ddalex 9y ago
  But there is absolutely no reason for you to hook it up to your home wifi. At least, until they are 'cloud'-enabled, and they require an internet connection to verify DRM before it plays ANY content... I shouldn't give them ideas.
  - simcop2387 9y ago
    My current one that I bought back in 2014 (or 13?) won't start up unless it thinks it has a network connection. I've actually setup my router to just block all traffic from it, but let it on the network so it'll actually work as a panel. Otherwise it has an unskippable menu demanding to be given the wifi password (or hooked up over ethernet).
    - phkahler 9y ago
      What brand and model?
      - simcop2387 9y ago
        Samsung UN60F6400 60-Inch
    - Avernar 9y ago
      I would have returned that crap back to the store so fast it would make the sales person's head spin.

lathiat 9y ago

I purchased my Samsung 46" 1080p LCD TV in 2007 for $3000 AUD. It's still going strong now. The only single thing I miss from it is a lack of HDMI-CEC support.

rsynnott 9y ago
You don’t WANT HDMI-CEC; it almost never works properly.
- berberous 9y ago
  HDMI-CEC is great and works flawlessly if the equipment you have supports it, at least in my personal experience. On some older equipment, not all of the functions worked though. For example, my old TV could uses CEC for volume and power on but not power off. New TV does it all perfectly.
flashman 9y ago
We have a similar plasma model, which we got for free because the owners were upgrading to a new one. I love how it doesn't do anything except display signals; we pair it with a Chromecast for most things. Of course, the electricity cost of a plasma TV adds up over the years...

rsynnott 9y ago

You’re not obligated to upgrade, obviously. An LCD TV still works perfectly fine. You can also still get non-smart TVs, though it has become increasingly difficult. Most people probably don’t want _all_ of the on-demand things. And terrestrial TV is still a thing. And since they went LED-backlit, they last practically forever (the old CFL ones did often eventually die).

codyb 9y ago

I agree with most of your points but a couple of hundred dollars a month sounds like a ton of packages. I think I have hulu live with no ads, HBO, and Netflix for well under a hundred. You could divide the $99 bucks I spent on Amazon Prime by 10 and add that too if you wanted although I can't tell you the last time I used that service. It's still a bunch of money though. The best deal here in NYC is a 50 dollar (or cheaper but the best ones are about 50 I believe) antenna which picks up maybe fifty or sixty channels in a variety of languages (which I think is neat although don't particularly use). That's a one time cost and you get Fox, CBS, ABC, etc, etc. Seems like trying to be on the cutting edge would be a total waste, I don't have a 4K TV or some super huge screen and that's fine by me.