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This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart". TVs should be incredibly dumb. They should be screens for displaying stuff. That's it. Nothing else. No netwo
by Bud 6y ago
This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart".
TVs should be incredibly dumb. They should be screens for displaying stuff. That's it. Nothing else.
No network connection of any kind, no apps, no software beyond that necessary to do basic setup of how that screen works: brightness, input selection, etc.
- stingraycharles 6y agoI own several smart TVs but use none of the smart functionality. They don’t even have internet. TV makers are horrible software developers, for the same reasons that mobile manufacturers were horrible mobile OS developers until Android came along. We have similar solutions for televisions in the form of Apple TV and Chromecast. I honestly feel I’m wasting my money when I’m buying a smart TV these days, but you just narrow your choice so much if you only look for dumb phones, you’re almost forced into buying one.
- 8ytecoder 6y agoBoth LG webOS and Sony Android TV come across as polished. If not for the fact that I hate advertisement and tracking with a vengeance, I'd gladly use them.
- 1stranger 6y agoI'm surprised to say but the latest Samsung interface and remote is quite good. Good enough I feel no need to put an Apple TV on it (which happens to have an awful remote).
- octoberfranklin 6y ago> the latest Samsung interface and remote is quite good ... at spying on you
- criddell 6y agoSmart TVs often cost less than dumb TVs. If you don't connect your TV to the internet then you are being subsidized by all the people that do.
- kstrauser 6y agoAnd frankly that’s all you need to know about the business model. If they’re making money from me using their free service, then I’m the product.
- emn13 6y agoWhile it could be that your usage data is collected and worth that much to them; the far simpler reason is simply both how competitive the "normal" TV market is, and how much you benefit from economies of scale. Even if your usage were worthless, a smart TV would likely be considerably cheaper. Also, don't overestimate the bill of materials for a smart TV. Even a "dumb" TV almost certainly has silicon brain simply for controlling the settings UI and various other functions - that's cheaper than buttons, and remotes need something to talk to, so really, a smart TV simply means "a slightly fancier chip" - but still a chip that's several generations old by smartphone standards. It's not going to be a significant extra investment for the producer.
- criddell 6y agoThe business model is probably a bit of a hydra. They make a little money from the hardware, a little money from services, a little money from ads.
- 1123581321 6y agoYou also need to know the harm or benefit you accrue by paying for services and being shown ads, as well as the benefit to paying a lower cost for the hardware upfront.
- mrtksn 6y agoWe have an LG with WebOS. Quite good actually, the remote is also very good, the browser is good, the apps work well.
- smileysteve 6y agoThe magic pointer ROCKS
- joombaga 6y agoExcept you can't shut the thing off, which means I can't have the remote anywhere near me or I'll bump it and make the pointer pop up.
- egeozcan 6y agoYeah a physical button to turn it on-off would be amazing. Maybe I can sacrifice a remote and see if I can just add a switch to the sensor. Not my worst idea.
- drewg123 6y agoYes, I HATE that. My other big annoyance is when i have a movie paused and set down a drink on the table next to the remote and the remote wakes up due to the vibration and unpauses the movie..
- 542354234235 6y agoI honestly cannot believe that there is no option anywhere in the settings to turn that off. The best you can do is make the pointer smaller so it is slightly less intrusive when it randomly pops up. I’m tempted to just pull out the batteries, since I can turn on the TV with the Roku remote and I already have a separate remote for my sound system volume.
- judge2020 6y agoMy only problem with LG is that it doesn't seem to continuously poll/maintain a connection to SmartThings, so the Google Home-based control will never work and it can take 15-30 seconds before you can control the TV via the official app. Maybe this is because it's hard-wired instead of on wi-fi.
- onlyrealcuzzo 6y agoYou can buy that TV. It still exists. But for now, people are buying smart TVs.
- 0xcde4c3db 6y ago> You can buy that TV. It still exists. It does, but only just. There are still a few models around, but the category of large-format dumb displays has virtually disappeared over the past decade. Commercial displays have almost entirely turned into smart TVs that run business apps instead of consumer apps.
- dageshi 6y agoI imagine if you want a tv like that you can find one. A lot of buyers quite like smart tv's I imagine.
- unreal6 6y agoI agree, now all we need is a television company who’s business model isn’t tied to surveilling its customers through its "smart features." Quite honestly, by just airgapping your "smart" TV, you're effectively receiving a subsidy (as annoying as that may be)
- supertrope 6y agoIt’s probably in the range of $1 to $10. For example Verizon asked for $1 or $2 per phone to preload an app. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/verizon-has-a-plan-to-make-the-android-bloatware-problem-worse/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/verizon-has-a-plan-t... Twitter makes about $4 per set of eyeballs per year.
- unreal6 6y agoThis article summarizes an interview The Verge’s Nilay Patel had with Vizios Bill Baxter [1]. Their televisions are being sold at or close to at cost, and their business model is tied to tracking and selling offerings on their smart TV platform. Roku has a similar model. I believe that in this case, the total monetization value of using the smart tv services has to be higher than that. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/smart-tv-data-collection-advertising-2019-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/smart-tv-data-collection-adv...
- onion2k 6y agoThat would essentially force people to buy two devices - one for receiving content to display and a second to display it. All your solution does is shift the problem on to the receiving device. It wouldn't fix anything, and at the same time it'd increase the cost and complexity for the user (by a very small amount admittedly).
- nitrogen 6y agoDecoupling allows competition and places control in the hands of the user.
- bootlooped 6y agoDidn't the user already exercise their control by choosing to buy a smart TV? And I don't think many people would say there is a lack of competition between TV manufacturers.
- nitrogen 6y agoAs is constantly brought up in these threads, there is often no dumb TV option available with higher end panels, and all of the TV vendors are incentivized to be equally evil.
- bootlooped 6y agoI just don't think it's an issue for the majority of consumers. If you went up to random people on the street and ask whether they would rather have a smart TV or non-smart TV, I think mostly you would get dumbfounded looks of "of course I want the one with more features built-in".
- nitrogen 6y agoBecause that's a manipulative question. The true question is "Would you rather have a TV that spies on you, runs slow, stops working after a few years, and sends pictures of everything you watch to some other country, or a TV that does none of those things and lasts 10+ years?"
- cpuguy83 6y agoThe one exception... it is really convenient to be able to use my phone to control the tv, even if it is only to change inputs. And that's how they get you.
- nitrogen 6y agoThere's no reason any phone shouldn't be able to control any TV, except that IR ports are no longer popular on handheld devices. Back in the 90s there were wristwatches that could control any TV.
- rovr138 6y agoBluetooth is a good alternative in this case.
- iso947 6y agoIR watches were always hilarious at school. I suspect in pubs too.
- Spooky23 6y agoEvery few years, some auditor would always flip out about IR data transfer. It would always get escalated because none of the frontline IT people had heard of it. I’d always chuckle thinking of the boogeyman bad actor employee who decided to exfiltrate customer data to a circa 1999 palm pilot at 9600 baud via IR instead of the dozens of easier methods available.
- jimmaswell 6y agoI use streaming apps on the TV all the time. I don't see any real justification for this luddite mindset. If you don't like data collection that makes the TV cheaper that's a separate issue.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 1123581321 6y agoWhy do you say it’s not difficult? You know people want TVs to have convenient apps and integrations on them. Convincing people to get that functionality from an additional device that they have to set up sounds very difficult. Do you mean to say you have a simple opinion?
- boardwaalk 6y agoYou could get a smart TV and just not connect it to the internet. If you were really paranoid, you could disconnect/snip the wifi antenna. At least my TV still allow firmware updates via USB, so you may not lose that. Not that it'd matter much if you weren't using any smart features, but they do still provide things like improving compatibility with devices (recently HDMI 2.1). I have a bigger issue with VR headsets. They go a step farther in that you have to use their platform. There's no equivalent of "just use HDMI" in some cases.
- coin 6y ago> just not connect it to the internet Wait until they have TVs that connect to cellular which doesn't need your consent
- octoberfranklin 6y ago5G! 5G! 5G! 5G! 5G! 5G! Yeah I am so tired of hearing about 5G. Because that's exactly what it will be.
- mikeyouse 6y agoNo need to disconnect anything - all these TVs have manually Configurable IP Addresses, just set it and the gateway to 1.1.1.1 or something and it’ll never be able to talk to another device.
- Buttons840 6y agoAnd if you're really really paranoid, remember that HDMI cables can carry network connections. Though I believe that capability is rarely used.
- kstrauser 6y agoYou’re exactly right. Furthermore, an external box is easy to replace when it breaks or becomes obsolete. What are you going to do when the embedded OS in your sly TV is no longer supported? No thanks. My TV is a monitor, only. It has never been, nor will ever be, connected to my home network after I first brought it home and updated its firmware to whatever was current at the time.
- greedo 6y agoI bought a Sony bluray player for the bedroom; it had Netflix etc on it, and seemed like it would be a good compromise between it and adding a disc player and AppleTV. About six months ago, the Netflix app stopped working. No updates available, just useless.
- judge2020 6y agoSpeaking of Netflix, some users had been left out in 480p land when the DRM module was likely broken and used to rip high quality streams, so Google adjusted the certification level to Level 3 (software-based decryption). https://old.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/jq9wdb/netflix_capped_at_166mbps480p/gbqw0sa/ https://old.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/jq9wdb/netflix_cap...
- canofbars 6y agoI have this issue today. Got a 5 year old samsung TV that was the top of the line at the time and its still more than good enough as a panel but the built in OS has been updated a few times and now its so slow its painful to simply change the channel by pressing the numbers and turning up the volume.
- idiot900 6y agoYou're in luck. Buy a commercial TV, or a hospitality TV. For example: https://www.lg.com/us/business/commercial-tvs/lg-65ut640s0ua https://www.lg.com/us/business/commercial-tvs/lg-65ut640s0ua Other TV manufacturers make similar products.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoThanks for that, I have a standing need gap for 'Make TV dumb again' [1]. [1]https://needgap.com/problems/64-make-tv-dumb-again-privacy-cybersecurity https://needgap.com/problems/64-make-tv-dumb-again-privacy-c...
- jlgaddis 6y agoHN'ers: don't bother clicking, it's just some self-promoting bullshit. X-Spam-Flag: YES -- @Abishek_Muthian: Thanks for your multiple contributions (four, just from your HN profile!) to the NXDOMAIN blacklists! (On a somewhat related note, I just cannot understand how you're not a gazillionaire from FindDate -- such a unique, novel concept! -- but perhaps the pivot to "startup coaching" will work out. Fake it 'till ya make it, amirite!?)
- jeanofthedead 6y agoI was able to do this with my TCL/Roku TV a few months back. My curiosity got the best of me with the announcement of their latest OS, so I upgraded to see what the new features were like. Now I am stuck in the ecosystem, as the downgrade feature is completely disabled (even from a USB stick, with no internet connection, after a factory reset). Luckily, I use a Pihole as my DNS on my router, but still. Super annoying.
- Abishek_Muthian 6y agoThat's a valid point, dumb TVs need to be kept dumb by not updating/upgrading the OS although this results in conundrum of not patching existing vulnerabilities in favour of not introducing new vulnerabilities? Vulnerabilities of dumb TVs could still be exploited by plugging in USB devices/SD card or even STB like Roku.
- jeffbee 6y agoCounterpoint: smart TVs are great. My LG has replaced almost every other thing that used to be in my media room. It is my streaming music box (I can target it for casting from my favorite iOS app, and I can use the interface on it for browsing my home network storage if I want). It has Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, Hulu, Disney, Vudu, Google TV, and every other damn thing on it. It has voice search, so I just say the name of the show I want to watch and it finds and displays which apps have that in their catalog. It also has a web browser so I can just watch anything I want. I can start a video on YouTube on my phone and later transfer it to the TV (I can do this from either device). I can cast any tab from Chrome to my TV. I say these TVs are just the right amount of smart. Maybe there are worse ones (I imagine, having once owned a Sony Playstation, that the software on a Sony TV is atrocious) but LG WebOS is brilliant.
- mszcz 6y agoSeconded on the LG WebOS. Hated smart/dumb TVs (Toshiba, Samsung, Sony) until I stumbled onto LG's WebOS. Speedy, works as expected, has most of the streaming apps. I thought the MagicRemote mouse thingy is going to be a gimmick but it's suprisingly nice to use. Oh, and the checkboxes to disable some of the spying are buried on an industry-standard level of assholeiness, so that's good.
- kgwxd 6y agoAt some point, most of those things are going to stop working but the screen will still be perfectly fine. What are you going to do with it then?
- 1stranger 6y ago> This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart". As it turns out other people have different priorities than you do. The world not conforming to your personal preferences does not make it wrong.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- RedComet 6y agoBut how would they track everything you watch on it then? Can't have you throwing a Heat (1995) DVD without it being recorded in a database, can we? Sure, your smartphone probably pics up the audio, but it may just report that you're listening to Moby.
- dehrmann 6y agoThere's something nice about having a single device you can chromecast to, play Netflix on, etc. I mostly just wish there were open-source firmwares for TVs.
- smileysteve 6y agoDisagree. My 75 yo parents still have a dumb tv. They have different remotes for cable, sound, blue ray player ( some smart apps), fire tv, and apple tv. Their life is not easier because of this, they don't watch what they want when they want because it takes minutes to get to a different source. I know what I'm getting them for Christmas
- throwaway09223 6y agoThe right way to fix this is one single smart device, which is the only device connected to the dumb TV. The best of these types don't have a remote. They're controlled by a phone. If the intelligence is built into the TV then it cannot be updated or replaced -- so either there will again be multiple devices, or the TV will need to be replaced on a frequent basis. A smart TV makes the problem you describe even worse
- icedchai 6y agoMy smart TV's built in apps (Netflix, mainly) are incredibly unstable. About 5 years back I started to use a Firestick instead. The TV is best as just a TV.
- thebean11 6y agoCompletely disagree on the lack of remote. Hitting a button on a remote is better UI than needing to unlock a phone and hope that it's actually connected to the streaming device (not always the case). I think the new Chromecast is an admission from Google that the average person still wants a remote.
- throwaway09223 6y agoPerhaps I should say that the best of this type offer the option of using a phone. I personally prefer a phone but I also understand the preference of a remote. With a separate smart device these types of preferences can be accommodated over time, unlike with a one size fits all smart TV.
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- gcatalfamo 6y agoI used to think like you then I realized is not that non smart TVs are better, but that no one is making smart TV non shitty. Underpowered hardware running a non-optimized version of android...or worse. If things weren’t done so badly, a unique interface would definitely be the way to go.
- kgwxd 6y agoScreens can and should last well over 10 years. No matter what hardware or software is put in there, it's going to stop being maintained after a period of time much shorter than that. At that point the convenience of built in smarts, if there even is any, becomes a major inconvenience and you either have to work around it or make a giant piece of e-waste.
- shirakawasuna 6y agoYou can purchase a monitor. This follows the philosophy of buying separate dumb devices that only do one thing. A dumb TV is just a monitor + speakers + a TV tuner, after all.
- GuB-42 6y agoA TV is not a monitor. it probably has an antenna connector, and because TV signals are digital nowadays, it has to decode the radio signal and support a variety of compression algorithms. Most TVs also have all sorts of image processing algorithms. At least a scaler, but most have other, sometimes questionable features. Plus overlays, recording, picture-in-picture, or whatever the manufacturer thinks will improve sales... TVs are already "smart" to begin with. You can just thing of internet connectivity as the antenna connector of modern times. Thankfully, I don't know of any TV that requires internet access yet. AFAIK, they all can be used as dumb monitors. If you really want a dumb monitor, you can either buy a PC monitor or a commercial one, like those used in shops to display ads and stuff like that. Some are even as dumb as a monitor can be (like the one I am using right now), with only a single input, a single resolution, no OSD, and only an on-off switch and two buttons to control brightness (which is just a dimmer for the backlight). But dumb monitor tend do be more expensive. First, they tend to be of higher quality, and second, "smart" features are often a profit for the manufacturer. For example, if your TV supports Netflix, Netflix most likely paid for it, and the amount is most likely more than what it cost the manufacturer to implement that feature. It results in a lower purchase price for the end user, the idea being that whatever partner will make up in subscriptions.
- dvdgsng 6y agohttps://www.swedx.se https://www.swedx.se has dump monitors for regular TV prices.
- userbinator 6y agoFor those who don't mind a bit of DIY, there is always the option of dumbing one yourself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24877363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24877363
- gxqoz 6y agoI think I read somewhere that it will soon be more cost effective to build in cellular chips into "smart" devices like this to circumvent people who don't connect them to the internet.
- canofbars 6y agoThis is the main use case of 5g iirc. Enabling millions more devices to connect to the network. What an absolute nightmare we are about to enter. "Just don't connect it to the network" is no longer a valid answer.
- octoberfranklin 6y agoI will start building 5G jammers. The FCC can eat a bag of dicks. Apparently even 5G-NR has an equivalent of the wifi "unauthenticated deauth" intended for emergency quench of uncooperative devices. The cellphone location data abuses revealed over the last three years have led to a remarkable increase in the number of GPS jammers out there. Gaussian-noise blurred, the good ones that can't be notch-filtered.
- canofbars 6y agoI think the real answer is that the EU will come up with some "Right to disconnect" which mandates that all devices request user consent to connect and retain as much functionality as physically possible while in offline mode. The technical battle is basically lost on IoT once they can embed modems.
- undersuit 6y agoMy TV has an internal ethernet switch and two ethernet ports so you can daisy chain them. Too smart?
- 1-6 6y agoReally it comes down to exposure surface. Just looking around my home, I sit with 100's if not 1000's of devices from various companies and their internet implementation. I have no idea what's going on 'under-the-hood' on all of these and rely on trust. If I were smarter, I would have bought from a smaller group of trusted names like Apple and Microsoft and let them deal with my updates.
- globular-toast 6y agoWhat annoys me most about "smart" TVs is they are complete crap. I tried to use a friend's TV that cost several thousands. It had an "air mouse" remote. But the thing was more laggy than the first time I tried a full GNOME desktop on my Pentium 2 back in the day. Barely usable. I have a Raspberry Pi 2 that's been running for years now hooked up to a projector that wipes the floor with that piece of junk. But he's now stuck with that interface for years.
- DavideNL 6y agoTrue, but unfortunately not a solution because it's not future-proof. Nobody will be using dumb tv's in 50+ years; What we really need, are proper laws to control/limit/stop all the tracking.