7 ms·

I keep hoping someone will kickstart a display company that sells just really amazing displays and none of the “smart” garbage. I read that some manufacturers e

I keep hoping someone will kickstart a display company that sells just really amazing displays and none of the “smart” garbage. I read that some manufacturers even serve up ads in their latest smart UIs. That’s infuriating!

asteli 8y ago
Have you looked at Monoprice's stuff? They sell displays using the same panels as some of the nice name brand stuff, and I'd personally be surprised if they packaged the same BS into their house brand displays.
- kbar13 8y ago
  monoprice qa is awful. would not recommend for larger ticket items. they're great for cables and accessories tho
- dpkonofa 8y ago
  Someone else mentioned that to me too but all I see on their site are Vizio TVs and I refuse to buy one of those. I bought a Vizio a few years ago and it was the worst TV I've ever owned. Replaced it with a Sony and never looked back. Where do I get the Monoprice TVs?
- dylan604 8y ago
  Is it the same panels though? I've heard that a lot of these new TV vendors are buying panels that might not have met the QA standards of Samsung, Apple, Sony, etc, but still function. Rather than trashing the unit, it gets sold off to a different company.
noxToken 8y ago
IF you like a smart TV but not the smart features (but have no dumb alternative), then don't connect it to the Internet. Now it's just a dumb TV.
- Spare_account 8y ago
  I guess the smart features don't add a huge amount to the purchase price but it would be nice not to have to pay for a bunch of features I don't need. No TV tuner, no WiFi, no ethernet, no loudspeakers. Just a great quality display with a few HDMIs please.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > guess the smart features don't add a huge amount to the purchase price They reduce it, because having one do-it-all device increases units/SKU and decreases the contribution of fixed costs to the minimum unit cost needed to break even, and competition prevents charging excessive premiums across most commodity models.
  - rangibaby 8y ago
    I think that’s called a computer monitor
    - dylan604 8y ago
      I know why you're getting down voted, but you're not exactly wrong. There used to be TVs and video monitors, and then there were computer monitors. They were all CRTs. The computer monitors were way more expensive than TVs partly due to being progressive scan vs interlaced. Televisions had low resolution and included things like speakers and tuners. Video monitors could be had with much higher resolution for post/broadcast facilities even though they were still interlaced. It wasn't until everything went flat screen where "TVs", computer monitors, video monitors became so interchangeable. However, there's really not many 72" computer monitors to fill up the space in my living room.
      - kbutler 8y ago
        For a while, computer monitors were limited by the HDTV specs, but a computer monitor usually has better specs - often resolution, refresh rate, display lag, connectivity options, etc.
- 8y ago
neuralRiot 8y ago
You can get professional displays, they're just big monitors with HDMI, VGA, RGB inputs, those are also supposedly made to whitstand heavier usage but a bigger price tag.
dwyerm 8y ago
Look into "NEC Commercial Displays". They're intended for use as signage and things, but most of them are full TVs with ATSC tuners, remote controls, speakers, and everything. They generally do not have any smart functionality, but often have serial ports or interfaces for adding your own. They are often slightly more expensive than the more encumbered displays, but not by much. The biggest problem that I've found with them is that they're not available at your local store, so you pretty much have to just buy one sight-unseen and hope it looks good when it arrives. I got the NEC E554 from Amazon, and left a 3-star review for it there.
- rsync 8y ago
  Seconded. I have a NEC P461 as a secondary/movie display in my office. It's the thin bezeled NEC that you see in airports worldwide. Love it. EDIT: as a followup, I should mention that circa 2018 there aren't really any commercial/signage displays that have 4k resolution. There are lots of "4k signage solutions" but they are all groups of quad monitors. It appears there is not yet demand (or sufficient product dev) in 2018 for 4k signage monitors. It sort of makes sense given that a departures/arrivals screen doesn't really need 4k ...
  - chiph 8y ago
    Looks like NEC has added some very recently, like the C651Q-AVT2, which is a 65" 4K display with an ATSC tuner. https://www.necdisplay.com/p/displays/c651q-avt2 https://www.necdisplay.com/p/displays/c651q-avt2
- edraferi 8y ago
  Do any of the TV review sites test these? That would be very helpful since you can't showroom them.
namibj 8y ago
Look at the less sturdy versions of digital signage devices. Iiyama is one of these manufacturers that in my experience doesn't sell bullshit, but results always wary and I don't buy a new screen that often, nor does (close) family/friends where one'd notice badly behaving devices. I haven't yet found large OLED screens with none of the smart BS though, so if that's what you want, good luck.
m_mueller 8y ago
Here's how I solved this for now: I've kept around my 10yo dumb 32'' TV from Samsung for casual viewing, like showing a video to our kid (we hardly every use it otherwise). For something serious I made a beamer cart that I can roll everywhere, with a PS4, a Nintendo Switch, and a place to put a laptop. Beamers can mostly still be had without any connectivity. A decent 1080p one from BenQ costs you around 600-700 bucks and that's plenty enough for me to have full bluray quality movie experiences. For sound I just bought an Avantree AptX low latency bluetooth receiver, and I plan on extending this with an HDMI audio splitter and low latency transmitter with optical input to get full stereo quality on a nice pair of speakers. Screw surround, screw 4K, keep your 3D crap, I'm getting too old for this.
- stef25 8y ago
  A 700USD beamer to protect your privacy? Surely you can just broadcast your computer on to the tv? Get a receiver with HDMI passthrough so the sound comes out your hifi speakers and the video signal gets sent on to the TV. No need for bluetooth, splitters, optical input
  - m_mueller 8y ago
    it's not just to protect my privacy, it's just generally how I've come to think about consuming media in my house. * a beamer gives you a viewing angle as wide as you'd want to have in a cinema (wider than this is uncomfortable). * therefore immersion in movies and games is about the strongest you can have for non-VR content in your home. * cinema is (a) rarely showing what I want anymore and (b) incovenient now that we've got a small kid, so this solves that as well. * a beamer on a cart is mobile - sometimes I just roll it to the end of our bed, lie down and play Zelda or whatever for half an hour to relax a bit. * beamers are mostly still dumb, so there's not much to break that I cannot fix and not much to annoy me, like "go online to get the full experience (and our ads)" and all that crap. * when we're done the beamer can be rolled out of sight, so you don't have a giant black hole in the middle of your living room, constantly telling you you should probably do something with it to make it worthwhile. * setting up the beamer is a bit of an act, and that's good, so we do it about once every week and have enough activities in our life other than passive media viewing. with the cart it's still quick enough to not be very inconvenient, I can just plug in one power cable and push a couple of buttons and it's done.
Tor3 8y ago
Unfortunately most TVs are "smart" TVs (the dumbest idea ever, seen from a tech's point of view - you're stuck with whatever is in the TV, unlike if you just connect your Pi (or even Chromecast) etc. through HDMI). But non-"smart" TVs are still out there, fortunately. I found a very nice Philips DVB-T "dumb" TV. And it was quite a bit cheaper than the equivalent sized Samsung "smart" TV. It does everything I need (and the guide is broadcasted over DVB-T, so no net is needed for that. A Pi connected to HDMI makes it smart, but my way.)
brusch64 8y ago
When I bought my smart TV I've decided to not connect it to my WLAN and didn't plug in the Ethernet. So it isn't able to send information or install anything. Everything I watch on it is through my home theater PC. If I ever wanted to update it I would connect it with Ethernet and then remove the ethernet cable after the update.
manyxcxi 8y ago
I’ve been complaining about this for a few years as well. When I went to buy a new TV last year my options were so horrifically limited that I gave up, bought a highly regarded model and have purposefully never connected it to any networks. It’s getting worse, we couldn’t even find a new fridge with the options we wanted that wasn’t ‘smart’. I wound up taking apart my LG fridge to disable the WiFi module after we bought it. Not connecting it to the WiFi wasn’t enough, the damn thing broadcasts it’s own wireless network and I got sick and tired of seeing it. Shocker, there was no way to turn it off.

asteli 8y ago

Have you looked at Monoprice's stuff? They sell displays using the same panels as some of the nice name brand stuff, and I'd personally be surprised if they packaged the same BS into their house brand displays.

kbar13 8y ago
monoprice qa is awful. would not recommend for larger ticket items. they're great for cables and accessories tho
dpkonofa 8y ago
Someone else mentioned that to me too but all I see on their site are Vizio TVs and I refuse to buy one of those. I bought a Vizio a few years ago and it was the worst TV I've ever owned. Replaced it with a Sony and never looked back. Where do I get the Monoprice TVs?
dylan604 8y ago
Is it the same panels though? I've heard that a lot of these new TV vendors are buying panels that might not have met the QA standards of Samsung, Apple, Sony, etc, but still function. Rather than trashing the unit, it gets sold off to a different company.

noxToken 8y ago

IF you like a smart TV but not the smart features (but have no dumb alternative), then don't connect it to the Internet. Now it's just a dumb TV.

Spare_account 8y ago
I guess the smart features don't add a huge amount to the purchase price but it would be nice not to have to pay for a bunch of features I don't need. No TV tuner, no WiFi, no ethernet, no loudspeakers. Just a great quality display with a few HDMIs please.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > guess the smart features don't add a huge amount to the purchase price They reduce it, because having one do-it-all device increases units/SKU and decreases the contribution of fixed costs to the minimum unit cost needed to break even, and competition prevents charging excessive premiums across most commodity models.
- rangibaby 8y ago
  I think that’s called a computer monitor
  - dylan604 8y ago
    I know why you're getting down voted, but you're not exactly wrong. There used to be TVs and video monitors, and then there were computer monitors. They were all CRTs. The computer monitors were way more expensive than TVs partly due to being progressive scan vs interlaced. Televisions had low resolution and included things like speakers and tuners. Video monitors could be had with much higher resolution for post/broadcast facilities even though they were still interlaced. It wasn't until everything went flat screen where "TVs", computer monitors, video monitors became so interchangeable. However, there's really not many 72" computer monitors to fill up the space in my living room.
    - kbutler 8y ago
      For a while, computer monitors were limited by the HDTV specs, but a computer monitor usually has better specs - often resolution, refresh rate, display lag, connectivity options, etc.
8y ago

neuralRiot 8y ago

You can get professional displays, they're just big monitors with HDMI, VGA, RGB inputs, those are also supposedly made to whitstand heavier usage but a bigger price tag.

dwyerm 8y ago

Look into "NEC Commercial Displays". They're intended for use as signage and things, but most of them are full TVs with ATSC tuners, remote controls, speakers, and everything. They generally do not have any smart functionality, but often have serial ports or interfaces for adding your own. They are often slightly more expensive than the more encumbered displays, but not by much. The biggest problem that I've found with them is that they're not available at your local store, so you pretty much have to just buy one sight-unseen and hope it looks good when it arrives. I got the NEC E554 from Amazon, and left a 3-star review for it there.

rsync 8y ago
Seconded. I have a NEC P461 as a secondary/movie display in my office. It's the thin bezeled NEC that you see in airports worldwide. Love it. EDIT: as a followup, I should mention that circa 2018 there aren't really any commercial/signage displays that have 4k resolution. There are lots of "4k signage solutions" but they are all groups of quad monitors. It appears there is not yet demand (or sufficient product dev) in 2018 for 4k signage monitors. It sort of makes sense given that a departures/arrivals screen doesn't really need 4k ...
- chiph 8y ago
  Looks like NEC has added some very recently, like the C651Q-AVT2, which is a 65" 4K display with an ATSC tuner. https://www.necdisplay.com/p/displays/c651q-avt2 https://www.necdisplay.com/p/displays/c651q-avt2
edraferi 8y ago
Do any of the TV review sites test these? That would be very helpful since you can't showroom them.

namibj 8y ago

Look at the less sturdy versions of digital signage devices. Iiyama is one of these manufacturers that in my experience doesn't sell bullshit, but results always wary and I don't buy a new screen that often, nor does (close) family/friends where one'd notice badly behaving devices. I haven't yet found large OLED screens with none of the smart BS though, so if that's what you want, good luck.

m_mueller 8y ago

Here's how I solved this for now: I've kept around my 10yo dumb 32'' TV from Samsung for casual viewing, like showing a video to our kid (we hardly every use it otherwise). For something serious I made a beamer cart that I can roll everywhere, with a PS4, a Nintendo Switch, and a place to put a laptop. Beamers can mostly still be had without any connectivity. A decent 1080p one from BenQ costs you around 600-700 bucks and that's plenty enough for me to have full bluray quality movie experiences. For sound I just bought an Avantree AptX low latency bluetooth receiver, and I plan on extending this with an HDMI audio splitter and low latency transmitter with optical input to get full stereo quality on a nice pair of speakers. Screw surround, screw 4K, keep your 3D crap, I'm getting too old for this.

stef25 8y ago
A 700USD beamer to protect your privacy? Surely you can just broadcast your computer on to the tv? Get a receiver with HDMI passthrough so the sound comes out your hifi speakers and the video signal gets sent on to the TV. No need for bluetooth, splitters, optical input
- m_mueller 8y ago
  it's not just to protect my privacy, it's just generally how I've come to think about consuming media in my house. * a beamer gives you a viewing angle as wide as you'd want to have in a cinema (wider than this is uncomfortable). * therefore immersion in movies and games is about the strongest you can have for non-VR content in your home. * cinema is (a) rarely showing what I want anymore and (b) incovenient now that we've got a small kid, so this solves that as well. * a beamer on a cart is mobile - sometimes I just roll it to the end of our bed, lie down and play Zelda or whatever for half an hour to relax a bit. * beamers are mostly still dumb, so there's not much to break that I cannot fix and not much to annoy me, like "go online to get the full experience (and our ads)" and all that crap. * when we're done the beamer can be rolled out of sight, so you don't have a giant black hole in the middle of your living room, constantly telling you you should probably do something with it to make it worthwhile. * setting up the beamer is a bit of an act, and that's good, so we do it about once every week and have enough activities in our life other than passive media viewing. with the cart it's still quick enough to not be very inconvenient, I can just plug in one power cable and push a couple of buttons and it's done.

Tor3 8y ago

Unfortunately most TVs are "smart" TVs (the dumbest idea ever, seen from a tech's point of view - you're stuck with whatever is in the TV, unlike if you just connect your Pi (or even Chromecast) etc. through HDMI). But non-"smart" TVs are still out there, fortunately. I found a very nice Philips DVB-T "dumb" TV. And it was quite a bit cheaper than the equivalent sized Samsung "smart" TV. It does everything I need (and the guide is broadcasted over DVB-T, so no net is needed for that. A Pi connected to HDMI makes it smart, but my way.)

brusch64 8y ago

When I bought my smart TV I've decided to not connect it to my WLAN and didn't plug in the Ethernet. So it isn't able to send information or install anything. Everything I watch on it is through my home theater PC. If I ever wanted to update it I would connect it with Ethernet and then remove the ethernet cable after the update.

manyxcxi 8y ago

I’ve been complaining about this for a few years as well. When I went to buy a new TV last year my options were so horrifically limited that I gave up, bought a highly regarded model and have purposefully never connected it to any networks. It’s getting worse, we couldn’t even find a new fridge with the options we wanted that wasn’t ‘smart’. I wound up taking apart my LG fridge to disable the WiFi module after we bought it. Not connecting it to the WiFi wasn’t enough, the damn thing broadcasts it’s own wireless network and I got sick and tired of seeing it. Shocker, there was no way to turn it off.