5 ms·

I used to like Visio as they were a pretty straightforward company selling TVs at better prices than Samsung and Sony. They were simple and cheap and disrupted

I used to like Visio as they were a pretty straightforward company selling TVs at better prices than Samsung and Sony. They were simple and cheap and disrupted established players. This is ridiculous and is so anti-user. I hope a new upstart company comes along to just sell simple TVs.

judge2020 5y ago
Reduced prices are always either paid for with cheaper components or backend revenue.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  or less profit
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    TVs are already a low single digit profit margin business. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/VZIO/vizio-holding/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/VZIO/vizio-holding...
    - scq 5y ago
      That depends on the market positioning. High end LG and Samsung TVs have a healthy margin. In the first half of 2018, LG Electronics' operating profit margin on their TV segment was 12.4% due to strong OLED sales[0]. 0: http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=24794 http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=2...
      - tyrfing 5y ago
        3.3% for LG last quarter, that 2018 number is better than anything they've seen in the last 2 years. Samsung is losing money manufacturing panels, but their reports are a mess. For comparison, Apple is at 31%, Walmart is at 4.5%.
        stjohnswarts 5y ago
        Wow, that's really surprising. I figured people were doing more TV and streaming during the boredom of the covidapocalypse
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Profit margin is not necessarily a function of how much utility your product provides.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    Less profit per unit, you may sell more units than others and make more overall profit.
  - tnel77 5y ago
    I think that’s illegal.
    - judge2020 5y ago
      Not sure why this is downvoted. publicly traded companies are legally required to go for maximum profit for their shareholders. Without some Announcement like “we’re going to be making privacy friendly TVs, but customers will be paying more to make up for the lost ad revenue”, it would be pretty bad mismanagement for a company to not show ads somewhere in their consumer TVs when every one of their competitors is doing just that.
      - colejohnson66 5y ago
        It’s downvoted because it’s wrong; It’s a myth. There is no “legal fiduciary duty” to maximize profits. There is a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, but only in the sense of not wanting to be voted off the board and possibly sued if you mislead them. If the whole board agrees on your plan to bank the company on a possible suicide move, you’re fine.
      - mikeyouse 5y ago
        No they really aren’t, this is a common but silly misconception. Managers have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders but there’s a huge amount of latitude in what that means with the only real bright line rules being things like “don’t improperly enrich yourself with company assets”. If managers want to sell tvs without ads, they absolutely can. If the board (which represents the shareholders) disagrees with that decision, they can fire the managers, but there’s no “law” requiring them to chase profits. That really lets normal greedy bullshit off the hook too easily - laws don’t cause anti consumer behavior, garden variety assholes do because it makes them more money.
      - unmole 5y ago
        > Not sure why this is downvoted. publicly traded companies are legally required to go for maximum profit for their shareholders. This stupid meme needs to die. The management of companies has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of shareholders. That does not imply any legal requirement to maximize profit.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Or lower profit margins; they aren't fixed in stone.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  I was impressed with the thinking about value-per-dollar that went into a Vizio TV that we got from a friend. For instance instead of having six HDMI ports you don't need (or wouldn't need if they didn't burn out so quickly) like you'd have on a Sony or a Samsung there are just two HDMI ports. I appreciate thin TVs that mount on the wall but the Vizio is a bit thicker and has room for a quality set of speakers that, in my opinion, outperform a Denon soundbar we have kicking around the house. My take is that from one end to another end somebody thought carefully about what features to put in that would make the TV valuable to users.
- ssalazar 5y ago
  Even higher end brands like Samsung are pulling stuff like this. Market forces demand constant growth, and in a saturated market this means some business unit manager will keep adding more invasive advertising as long as people keep buying the TVs.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    I've had good luck with TVs from Sony, which would probably be considered higher end based on price bracket. They ship with near-stock Android TV, don't make a fuss about not being connected to the internet, and allow firmware updates via thumb drive. Have had a couple now that I use with an Apple TV, which is a pairing that works very well.
    - pabs3 5y ago
      I wonder if Sony are releasing the Linux source code they run Android on and I wonder if their firmware updates are signed. If they do release source and updates are signed, you could probably install a regular Linux distro with Kodi.
      - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
        Kodi has an Android build, too.
        pabs3 5y ago
        Probably, but that won't stop the vendor from adding ads to the Android TV OS.
    - rmccue 5y ago
      Likewise, but the problem now with the built-in software is that Android TV is getting increasingly user-hostile as well. The major UI update they made which added an uneditable promotional section to the top of the home screen eg.
- paxys 5y ago
  These cheaper components are perfectly fine for a lot of people's needs. For example many companies buy display panels that failed to meet quality controls at Samsung or LG and package and sell them under their own brands at very steep discounts. Far from being unusable, they usually have minor quality differences like a worse bezel/stand, 5 allowable dead pixels instead of 3, or slightly more backlight bleed. If you can live with that, they are pretty great options to consider. Adding nonsense like advertising and sale of personal data completely kills that upside though.
- prepend 5y ago
  Originally Vizio was buying the same components but selling for less because they didn’t have the brand name. The quality/price ratio was great when I bought my first 40 inch Vizio like 10-15 years ago.
Gualdrapo 5y ago
If at least there was a company selling 'modular' TVs. Want a better processor? Here, switch this component and you're good to go, no need to buy a whole new TV. Want more HDMI inputs? Here are the modules you'll need. Want a LCD screen instead of an OLED one? We got you covered. Things like this new ad "trend" makes you think the "smart" in "smart TV" was just a reference to their marketing ploy.
- userbinator 5y ago
  You can buy bare panels and universal scaler boards from various sellers online. That's probably the closest you can get.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  I think Toshiba tried to do this with replaceable processor modules. It really has limited consumer value and only lets them simplify production for different markets and upgrades with module swaps. All at the expense of more packaging costs to have extra connectors and housings or access panels.
civilized 5y ago
> I hope a new upstart company comes along to just sell simple TVs. This but for everything. Everything is so full of bullshit no one asked for these days. Refrigerators. Ovens. Cars. Microwaves. TVs. Computers. You name it, it's full of garbage that both took a lot of effort to put there AND makes the product worse. It's like capitalism has contracted herpes.
- julianlam 5y ago
  Bullshit is correct, and the other side of it is that for every extra shiny feature, cost needs to be cut to maintain profit margin, so something else gets shittier. My fridge has a digital display, always on, so I can calibrate the temperature of the fridge and freezer. This replaced a simpler and more reliable analog knob in older fridges. They cut corners by building the freezer shelves out of as little plastic as possible. Bits of plastic chip off over time, and the drawer itself is held together with tiny plastic clips that invariably break.
  - axiolite 5y ago
    > This replaced a simpler and more reliable analog knob in older fridges. The mechanical thermostats in refrigerators are inaccurate and failure prone (after a number of years). A digital thermostat increases life/reliability of the unit, even if it (very slightly) increases power consumption.
    - delusional 5y ago
      And a seven segment display can last decades. If they used an LCD i'd imagine the reliability gains are largely offset by the LCD.
Meandering 5y ago
I'd pay a premium for a TV that doesn't have surveillance technology baked in.
- NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
  Just search for "hospitality" displays. They're not Smart TVs, but then Smart TVs aren't Smart TVs, they're shitty computers that spy on you.
  - wyager 5y ago
    Most of these don't have good display characteristics, as far as I can tell. I wanted 4k120 444 10bit w/a decent contrast ratio and couldn't find any hotel TVs approaching that, but plenty of consumer """smart""" stuff. I ended up getting a flagship sony TV, which looks pretty good... when it's not busy crashing or glitching out due to its embarrassingly terrible software. Of course I don't give it Internet access; that seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
    - esperent 5y ago
      I'm getting very disappointed in Sony stuff recently. Amazing hardware company, damn awful software company. My mx4 headphones are amazing, the app is pure pain and there's no way to adjust settings without the app. Oh, and it's mobile only so there's no way to adjust settings from my laptop at all.
      - InCityDreams 5y ago
        "Recently", would be ~10 years. There was a time when the particular customers I work with consistently had Sony at the top of their lists (especially tvs). Nowadays?...any cheap crap will do.
bushbaba 5y ago
I suspect China will swoop in with brands that offer 'dumb' appliances that just work. Quickly moving up-market to the high end, and eventually displacing all these brands.
- userbinator 5y ago
  ...until the lure of $$$ draws them into this too.
- shakna 5y ago
  China was the first to offer Smart TVs that would connect to open WiFi hotspots to upload data without consent (Skyworth & Gozen).
dminor 5y ago
Sceptre already has plenty of dumb TVs. They carry them at Walmart.
- axiolite 5y ago
  I liked my old Sceptre TV, but after 8+ years it recently stopped powering on. The identically-sized replacement has sound quality that is absolutely horrid... and by that I mean my cell phone sounds better! Okay, a sound bar might be a reasonable investment but... my new Sceptre TV doesn't do HDMI-ARC, which means a soundbar is a big ongoing hassle, for the life of the TV. I still give Sceptre credit that they have VGA inputs, and handle DVI converted to HDMI properly (separate audio input), which it seems all other manufacturers just shrug off and don't care to support, even if their know-nothing support reps may tell you otherwise.
dotBen 5y ago
The Visio business model was always to sell units at a cheaper price (ie lower initial margin) than competitors then monetize the user post-sale via data and adverts. If you bought a Visio television and didn't realize this, you didn't do your research. It's a legitimate offering in the market for those who don't want to spend much. I purchased a Visio TV for my bedroom, where I only use Plex and therefore expected very little interaction with their ad platform (I was right).
- wyager 5y ago
  We had a Vizio TV before TVs were ever connected to the Internet (maybe 2005). That can't possibly have been their business model at that point.
KingMachiavelli 5y ago
Not sure if the 2022 models have changed but I have the flagship 20/21 Vizio and it works 100% fine with no internet connection. I haven't ever accepted the EULA so even with a network connection it displays no ads or obnoxious bloatware. It's dumb but the best option ATM is to buy the best TV for the money and just use it with an Nvidia Shield. When TVs start locking down basic functions behind EULAs and/or use built-in cellular connections then we'll have a huge issue.

judge2020 5y ago

Reduced prices are always either paid for with cheaper components or backend revenue.

LegitShady 5y ago
or less profit
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  TVs are already a low single digit profit margin business. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/VZIO/vizio-holding/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/VZIO/vizio-holding...
  - scq 5y ago
    That depends on the market positioning. High end LG and Samsung TVs have a healthy margin. In the first half of 2018, LG Electronics' operating profit margin on their TV segment was 12.4% due to strong OLED sales[0]. 0: http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=24794 http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=2...
    - tyrfing 5y ago
      3.3% for LG last quarter, that 2018 number is better than anything they've seen in the last 2 years. Samsung is losing money manufacturing panels, but their reports are a mess. For comparison, Apple is at 31%, Walmart is at 4.5%.
      - stjohnswarts 5y ago
        Wow, that's really surprising. I figured people were doing more TV and streaming during the boredom of the covidapocalypse
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Profit margin is not necessarily a function of how much utility your product provides.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  Less profit per unit, you may sell more units than others and make more overall profit.
- tnel77 5y ago
  I think that’s illegal.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Not sure why this is downvoted. publicly traded companies are legally required to go for maximum profit for their shareholders. Without some Announcement like “we’re going to be making privacy friendly TVs, but customers will be paying more to make up for the lost ad revenue”, it would be pretty bad mismanagement for a company to not show ads somewhere in their consumer TVs when every one of their competitors is doing just that.
    - colejohnson66 5y ago
      It’s downvoted because it’s wrong; It’s a myth. There is no “legal fiduciary duty” to maximize profits. There is a fiduciary duty to the shareholders, but only in the sense of not wanting to be voted off the board and possibly sued if you mislead them. If the whole board agrees on your plan to bank the company on a possible suicide move, you’re fine.
    - mikeyouse 5y ago
      No they really aren’t, this is a common but silly misconception. Managers have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders but there’s a huge amount of latitude in what that means with the only real bright line rules being things like “don’t improperly enrich yourself with company assets”. If managers want to sell tvs without ads, they absolutely can. If the board (which represents the shareholders) disagrees with that decision, they can fire the managers, but there’s no “law” requiring them to chase profits. That really lets normal greedy bullshit off the hook too easily - laws don’t cause anti consumer behavior, garden variety assholes do because it makes them more money.
    - unmole 5y ago
      > Not sure why this is downvoted. publicly traded companies are legally required to go for maximum profit for their shareholders. This stupid meme needs to die. The management of companies has a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of shareholders. That does not imply any legal requirement to maximize profit.
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
Or lower profit margins; they aren't fixed in stone.
PaulHoule 5y ago
I was impressed with the thinking about value-per-dollar that went into a Vizio TV that we got from a friend. For instance instead of having six HDMI ports you don't need (or wouldn't need if they didn't burn out so quickly) like you'd have on a Sony or a Samsung there are just two HDMI ports. I appreciate thin TVs that mount on the wall but the Vizio is a bit thicker and has room for a quality set of speakers that, in my opinion, outperform a Denon soundbar we have kicking around the house. My take is that from one end to another end somebody thought carefully about what features to put in that would make the TV valuable to users.
ssalazar 5y ago
Even higher end brands like Samsung are pulling stuff like this. Market forces demand constant growth, and in a saturated market this means some business unit manager will keep adding more invasive advertising as long as people keep buying the TVs.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  I've had good luck with TVs from Sony, which would probably be considered higher end based on price bracket. They ship with near-stock Android TV, don't make a fuss about not being connected to the internet, and allow firmware updates via thumb drive. Have had a couple now that I use with an Apple TV, which is a pairing that works very well.
  - pabs3 5y ago
    I wonder if Sony are releasing the Linux source code they run Android on and I wonder if their firmware updates are signed. If they do release source and updates are signed, you could probably install a regular Linux distro with Kodi.
    - aaaaaaaaata 5y ago
      Kodi has an Android build, too.
      - pabs3 5y ago
        Probably, but that won't stop the vendor from adding ads to the Android TV OS.
  - rmccue 5y ago
    Likewise, but the problem now with the built-in software is that Android TV is getting increasingly user-hostile as well. The major UI update they made which added an uneditable promotional section to the top of the home screen eg.
paxys 5y ago
These cheaper components are perfectly fine for a lot of people's needs. For example many companies buy display panels that failed to meet quality controls at Samsung or LG and package and sell them under their own brands at very steep discounts. Far from being unusable, they usually have minor quality differences like a worse bezel/stand, 5 allowable dead pixels instead of 3, or slightly more backlight bleed. If you can live with that, they are pretty great options to consider. Adding nonsense like advertising and sale of personal data completely kills that upside though.
prepend 5y ago
Originally Vizio was buying the same components but selling for less because they didn’t have the brand name. The quality/price ratio was great when I bought my first 40 inch Vizio like 10-15 years ago.

Gualdrapo 5y ago

If at least there was a company selling 'modular' TVs. Want a better processor? Here, switch this component and you're good to go, no need to buy a whole new TV. Want more HDMI inputs? Here are the modules you'll need. Want a LCD screen instead of an OLED one? We got you covered. Things like this new ad "trend" makes you think the "smart" in "smart TV" was just a reference to their marketing ploy.

userbinator 5y ago
You can buy bare panels and universal scaler boards from various sellers online. That's probably the closest you can get.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
I think Toshiba tried to do this with replaceable processor modules. It really has limited consumer value and only lets them simplify production for different markets and upgrades with module swaps. All at the expense of more packaging costs to have extra connectors and housings or access panels.

civilized 5y ago

> I hope a new upstart company comes along to just sell simple TVs. This but for everything. Everything is so full of bullshit no one asked for these days. Refrigerators. Ovens. Cars. Microwaves. TVs. Computers. You name it, it's full of garbage that both took a lot of effort to put there AND makes the product worse. It's like capitalism has contracted herpes.

julianlam 5y ago
Bullshit is correct, and the other side of it is that for every extra shiny feature, cost needs to be cut to maintain profit margin, so something else gets shittier. My fridge has a digital display, always on, so I can calibrate the temperature of the fridge and freezer. This replaced a simpler and more reliable analog knob in older fridges. They cut corners by building the freezer shelves out of as little plastic as possible. Bits of plastic chip off over time, and the drawer itself is held together with tiny plastic clips that invariably break.
- axiolite 5y ago
  > This replaced a simpler and more reliable analog knob in older fridges. The mechanical thermostats in refrigerators are inaccurate and failure prone (after a number of years). A digital thermostat increases life/reliability of the unit, even if it (very slightly) increases power consumption.
  - delusional 5y ago
    And a seven segment display can last decades. If they used an LCD i'd imagine the reliability gains are largely offset by the LCD.

Meandering 5y ago

I'd pay a premium for a TV that doesn't have surveillance technology baked in.

NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
Just search for "hospitality" displays. They're not Smart TVs, but then Smart TVs aren't Smart TVs, they're shitty computers that spy on you.
- wyager 5y ago
  Most of these don't have good display characteristics, as far as I can tell. I wanted 4k120 444 10bit w/a decent contrast ratio and couldn't find any hotel TVs approaching that, but plenty of consumer """smart""" stuff. I ended up getting a flagship sony TV, which looks pretty good... when it's not busy crashing or glitching out due to its embarrassingly terrible software. Of course I don't give it Internet access; that seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
  - esperent 5y ago
    I'm getting very disappointed in Sony stuff recently. Amazing hardware company, damn awful software company. My mx4 headphones are amazing, the app is pure pain and there's no way to adjust settings without the app. Oh, and it's mobile only so there's no way to adjust settings from my laptop at all.
    - InCityDreams 5y ago
      "Recently", would be ~10 years. There was a time when the particular customers I work with consistently had Sony at the top of their lists (especially tvs). Nowadays?...any cheap crap will do.

bushbaba 5y ago

I suspect China will swoop in with brands that offer 'dumb' appliances that just work. Quickly moving up-market to the high end, and eventually displacing all these brands.

userbinator 5y ago
...until the lure of $$$ draws them into this too.
shakna 5y ago
China was the first to offer Smart TVs that would connect to open WiFi hotspots to upload data without consent (Skyworth & Gozen).

dminor 5y ago

Sceptre already has plenty of dumb TVs. They carry them at Walmart.

axiolite 5y ago
I liked my old Sceptre TV, but after 8+ years it recently stopped powering on. The identically-sized replacement has sound quality that is absolutely horrid... and by that I mean my cell phone sounds better! Okay, a sound bar might be a reasonable investment but... my new Sceptre TV doesn't do HDMI-ARC, which means a soundbar is a big ongoing hassle, for the life of the TV. I still give Sceptre credit that they have VGA inputs, and handle DVI converted to HDMI properly (separate audio input), which it seems all other manufacturers just shrug off and don't care to support, even if their know-nothing support reps may tell you otherwise.

dotBen 5y ago

The Visio business model was always to sell units at a cheaper price (ie lower initial margin) than competitors then monetize the user post-sale via data and adverts. If you bought a Visio television and didn't realize this, you didn't do your research. It's a legitimate offering in the market for those who don't want to spend much. I purchased a Visio TV for my bedroom, where I only use Plex and therefore expected very little interaction with their ad platform (I was right).

wyager 5y ago
We had a Vizio TV before TVs were ever connected to the Internet (maybe 2005). That can't possibly have been their business model at that point.

KingMachiavelli 5y ago

Not sure if the 2022 models have changed but I have the flagship 20/21 Vizio and it works 100% fine with no internet connection. I haven't ever accepted the EULA so even with a network connection it displays no ads or obnoxious bloatware. It's dumb but the best option ATM is to buy the best TV for the money and just use it with an Nvidia Shield. When TVs start locking down basic functions behind EULAs and/or use built-in cellular connections then we'll have a huge issue.