3 ms·

You're probably better off the buy the screen you like and pair it with a low cost NUC to sidestep the privacy invasion of the "smart" part of that TV.

deadmutex 6y ago
"better off" implies that this is a better recommendation than the article. However, it seems exactly the same.
- wmf 6y ago
  IMO when avoiding the "smarts" of a smart TV you end up fighting their menu system so I'd say it's worse.
- sunstone 6y ago
  Not at all, in this case "better off" means don't worry about whether a given TV has smart features or not. Buy the screen/TV you like and bypass the "smart" stuff. For example if I was in the market my choice would be one of the high end LG TVs. They all have a smart component but I would bypass that and still get the gorgeous screen.
013a 6y ago
Modern high end TVs, such as those from Samsung, intercept all video coming from every HDMI port and use content recognition on it for ad targeting. Granted: never put it online, and never use the smart stuff bundled with it, and you should be fine (assuming there's no critical software updates it needs to function, which has also happened). But its still disgusting behavior.
pessimizer 6y ago
What we really need is a turnkey FOSS smart tv suite of software distributed as a NUC OS. I'd prefer for the NUC to handle the tuner part, too, and let the tv simply be a screen with speakers. Or even a screen with speakers, a few extra ports that are routed back into the NUC, an embedded antenna, maybe a microphone and a webcam... there's still a lot of cool things you could do as a manufacturer of televisions even if you gave up on the modern businesses of rent-seeking and surveillance. TV manufacturers actually make things, things people want and don't feel they can do without. They don't have to rely on the financial scams and deception that make up the rest of the economy to stay in business. There's already a DRM standard for browsers. We don't need TVs to have proprietary bullshit preinstalled on them to have Netflix.
maerF0x0 6y ago
NUC = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Unit_of_Computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Unit_of_Computing Like a raspberry pi?

deadmutex 6y ago

"better off" implies that this is a better recommendation than the article. However, it seems exactly the same.

wmf 6y ago
IMO when avoiding the "smarts" of a smart TV you end up fighting their menu system so I'd say it's worse.
sunstone 6y ago
Not at all, in this case "better off" means don't worry about whether a given TV has smart features or not. Buy the screen/TV you like and bypass the "smart" stuff. For example if I was in the market my choice would be one of the high end LG TVs. They all have a smart component but I would bypass that and still get the gorgeous screen.

013a 6y ago

Modern high end TVs, such as those from Samsung, intercept all video coming from every HDMI port and use content recognition on it for ad targeting. Granted: never put it online, and never use the smart stuff bundled with it, and you should be fine (assuming there's no critical software updates it needs to function, which has also happened). But its still disgusting behavior.

pessimizer 6y ago

What we really need is a turnkey FOSS smart tv suite of software distributed as a NUC OS. I'd prefer for the NUC to handle the tuner part, too, and let the tv simply be a screen with speakers. Or even a screen with speakers, a few extra ports that are routed back into the NUC, an embedded antenna, maybe a microphone and a webcam... there's still a lot of cool things you could do as a manufacturer of televisions even if you gave up on the modern businesses of rent-seeking and surveillance. TV manufacturers actually make things, things people want and don't feel they can do without. They don't have to rely on the financial scams and deception that make up the rest of the economy to stay in business. There's already a DRM standard for browsers. We don't need TVs to have proprietary bullshit preinstalled on them to have Netflix.

maerF0x0 6y ago

NUC = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Unit_of_Computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Unit_of_Computing Like a raspberry pi?