3 ms·
I absolutely adore my totally dumb $650 48" JVC 4K LED TV. NFI on input lag stats but I game (offline) and it looks beautiful and my SO games (online) and doesn
by magnetowasright 6y ago
I absolutely adore my totally dumb $650 48" JVC 4K LED TV. NFI on input lag stats but I game (offline) and it looks beautiful and my SO games (online) and doesn't have issues outside Australian fraudband speeds. It's got pretty much the same operating system as the ~15 year old cheapo TV (22" 1080i) it replaced. It just works. It's perfect for our usage and I hope it will last as long as the 1080i TV did.
I'm trying desperately to convince some family members who have an expensive LG 'smart' TV to buy something dumb - they don't use the smart 'features' and I am sick of getting calls that they need help re-flashing the firmware because it got stuck booting for the hundredth time or android/the TV app froze again. When the stupid thing 'works' it takes several minutes to boot and the TV app regularly just ...closes. When you try to set the time and date, it saves it wrong or just unsets it so you it can't show you the TV guide which is just atrocious! It can't even have feature parity with the first digital signal pre-'smart' TV TVs. It's almost unusable and it's ~3 years old, which is just unacceptable for a TV from an industry leading manufacturer that cost several thousand dollars. I hope this is not a typical experience.
"Just don't connect it to the internet" does not a dumb TV make. It doesn't negate the atrocious software on the stupid things, or the resulting (imo) shortened lifetime. It also doesn't necessarily stop it from finding a network. "Use a pi-hole", "blacklist it in your router", or "remove the TV's network card" sucks as well; consumers shouldn't have to go to such lengths to circumvent such atrocious anti-consumer practices in the first place, even if they do know how to. It took me a few months to track down a totally dumb 4K TV with a big screen. Most manufacturers just don't make them any more. Why would they? It's so much more profitable for them not to, even if there is a demand. I'd love to know how much of a demand for totally dumb TVs there is.
/rant
- emmelaich 6y agoAnother vote for JVC. My 58" was half the price of so-called smart TVs and looks great.
- alecthomas 6y agoThis one? https://jvctv.com.au/product/58-4k-uhd-led-tv/ https://jvctv.com.au/product/58-4k-uhd-led-tv/ No mention of "Android" or "Smart", but it does do DVR of some sort, so it's not 100% clear.
- emmelaich 6y agoThat's similar, but mine doesn't quite do 4k. It can record to usb but I haven't tried it. It's not Android* - just some lesser, and less intrusive feature. * at least there is no evidence of Android.
- emmelaich 6y agoPS, mine was a display unit, during a shop shutdown sale. So it cost me around $400 instead of $800 or so. And $800 is way less than similar but 'smart' TVs.