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It’s been my belief for a while now that there’s a market for premium dumb TVs. They would: - Use high end best binned panels (lowest possible image retention

It’s been my belief for a while now that there’s a market for premium dumb TVs. They would: - Use high end best binned panels (lowest possible image retention for OLED, etc) - Traditional LCD models would have very high standards for backlight consistency - Do little to no image processing - Be designed around being hooked up to external media boxes - Have a nice modern OSD text - Allow you to use your phone as a remote via Bluetooth (and control other media center components via IR cables and HDMI commands) - Not have any means of internet connection or any other smart functionality whatsoever Effectively, they’d be to TVs as studio monitor headphones are to audio. Enthusiasts would jump all over something like this despite inflated prices, I have no doubt.

josteink 9y ago
> Effectively, they’d be to TVs as studio monitor headphones are to audio. Enthusiasts would jump all over something like this despite inflated prices, I have no doubt. Have several studio monitors. Can confirm.
gnode 9y ago
This exists, for the most part, but is prohibitively expensive. Sony's Trimaster EL OLED range for instance. Why it is so expensive, (compared to consumer OLED TVs) I don't know.
clairity 9y ago
the reason the premium consumer market doesn't sell dumb TVs is that it would wring all of the profits out of selling TVs. consumer electronics companies want to be seen as "adding value" on top of the display. if they don't, then manufacturers can just go direct to consumer, cutting them out of the value chain and redirecting profits to the manufacturers (and some to consumers in the form of lower prices). if they priced dumb TVs higher than their smart TVs, it would signal the negative value of the "smarts" in the TV, so they don't want to do that. so none of the electronics manufacturers really want to sell dumb TVs to the mass market, since it would be akin to committing corporate suicide (in that particular product category). of course one way around this is to brand a technical feature (as with sony's trinitron back in the day) and make that carry the value premium in the dumb TV, which would be how you'd approach the enthusiast segment you mention.
tominated 9y ago
Visio had a line of TVs that we're almost this - they had no TV tuner, minimum UI, a tiny simple remote and just a Chromecast built in. After I had mine for a year it got an automatic update giving it a horrible smart TV UI and they forced you to order a new remote. It's such a shame because it was pretty much perfect for me before this happened, and now they've lost me as a future customer.

josteink 9y ago

> Effectively, they’d be to TVs as studio monitor headphones are to audio. Enthusiasts would jump all over something like this despite inflated prices, I have no doubt. Have several studio monitors. Can confirm.

gnode 9y ago

This exists, for the most part, but is prohibitively expensive. Sony's Trimaster EL OLED range for instance. Why it is so expensive, (compared to consumer OLED TVs) I don't know.

clairity 9y ago

the reason the premium consumer market doesn't sell dumb TVs is that it would wring all of the profits out of selling TVs. consumer electronics companies want to be seen as "adding value" on top of the display. if they don't, then manufacturers can just go direct to consumer, cutting them out of the value chain and redirecting profits to the manufacturers (and some to consumers in the form of lower prices). if they priced dumb TVs higher than their smart TVs, it would signal the negative value of the "smarts" in the TV, so they don't want to do that. so none of the electronics manufacturers really want to sell dumb TVs to the mass market, since it would be akin to committing corporate suicide (in that particular product category). of course one way around this is to brand a technical feature (as with sony's trinitron back in the day) and make that carry the value premium in the dumb TV, which would be how you'd approach the enthusiast segment you mention.

tominated 9y ago

Visio had a line of TVs that we're almost this - they had no TV tuner, minimum UI, a tiny simple remote and just a Chromecast built in. After I had mine for a year it got an automatic update giving it a horrible smart TV UI and they forced you to order a new remote. It's such a shame because it was pretty much perfect for me before this happened, and now they've lost me as a future customer.