4 ms·
The life time of TVs is simply on a different time scale than most smart thingies you connect to them. It's an appliance like the air conditioner or dishwasher,
by yholio 6y ago
The life time of TVs is simply on a different time scale than most smart thingies you connect to them. It's an appliance like the air conditioner or dishwasher, not a gadget you throw into the bin and replace. The intelligence of your media center should be elsewhere, in a dedicated gadget that you can easily replace and upgrade, connected via a standard, dumb interface like HDMI.
I own a 2012, 60" Sony Bravia and the picture quality is stil superb compared to recent models (except OLED). Its HD and not 4K, but it makes no difference, my eyesight is not getting any better and I might use it for the next 5 to 10 years probably. It's internet capabilities are laughable, pre-smart TV. Picked it up for 100 quid second hand, no doubt some idiot replaced it with a "smart" piece of junk with thinner frame, less durable LEDs, and now, good God, mandatory advertising.
- tzs 6y agoI really wish the whole home theater was way more modular. I'd like separate boxes for video display, video signal switching, audio signal switching, stereo and surround sound decoding, speaker driving, OTA TV tuning, AM radio, FM radio. I want these boxes to all support a common control protocol, with another box or boxes handling controlling the system. My current system with a receiver that is 8 years old and a TV that is around 3 or 4 years old is fine, except for three things: (1) the receiver cannot handle 4K video, (2) the receiver does not work with any voice assistants, and (3) the TV does not work with any voice assistants. With a modular system, I'd just replace the video switching with a 4K switching box, and replace the control box with one that supports a voice assistant (or add another control box...no reason a module system has to have only one such box). With the current approach, I'd have to replace the receiver and the TV for that.
- chadlavi 6y agoI've got a similarly aged pre-smart Samsung, sounds like it'll be with us for a while.
- city41 6y agoI have a 1080p Vizio from about 2013 or so. It's "smart", but doesn't phone home or anything. I use a Roku to get more modern apps for it (I block Roku's phoning home in my pihole). I've considered upgrading to 4K many times. But I take comfort in knowing the TV I have now is not screwing me over. The thought of having to thoroughly research the TVs of today is enough for me to stick with it. Heck, my eyes probably can't see the 4K improvements from across the room anyway.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Grakel 6y agoThere's almost no 4k content anyway. And none on Netflix / Disney / Prime.
- city41 6y agoNetflix originals are mostly (or possibly all?) available in 4k. Or are you saying the 4k streams are not of good enough quality?
- yholio 6y agoWho is providing true 4K streaming? And by that, I mean a stream quality that can improve upon a 1080p stream of the same bitrate, we are talking about 50Mbps at least, Blu ray bitrates, something like 75-100Mbps. Netflix caps at around 16Mbps, it is more of a 4K placebo. Otherwise, there is really no point to go with 4K, you can find lousy encoded content for any resolution. There is a strong trend in underground rips to provide highly compressed 1080 content that looks more blocky than its 720 equivalent of the same total file size.
- city41 6y agoAccording to this, Netflix recommends at least 25mbps for 4k https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306 I honestly don't really know, video encoding is not my thing.
- GordonS 6y agoI have a 2012 Bravia too, albeit a smaller one, something like 42" - the black levels in particular are absolutely amazing.