21 ms·

Smart TVs were created for all kinds of agendas but none were actually for us the consumers. All those agendas require an OS which takes time to boot. Making it

by mrjin 5y ago

Smart TVs were created for all kinds of agendas but none were actually for us the consumers. All those agendas require an OS which takes time to boot. Making it worse, some of those TVs' CPU are crap and thus every operation takes much longer than those dumb ones. Lots of vendors also start to ship new remotes that removed all the essential buttons, especially the video source button, and I have to press 5 or more times than before just to switch to a different source. So we are actually paying more(of course, lots extra hardware cost) for less. But it does not end there. Vendors put lots of Ads in them, some vendors even put boot-up Ads regardless it is connected to internet or not. The worst I guess was mentioned in a couple of day ago some rouge vendor even started to put customized Ads based programs we are watching on air. I guess my replacement for a TV would be a big monitor.

ramraj07 5y ago
If you’re happy with a computer monitor as a tv good for you. I’m spoiled by super large screen 4K Qdot displays. If I really have to choose not to get a smart tv, the simple solution is actually to get a really good projector.
- robgibbons 5y ago
  Even projectors these days are becoming "smart". Though they tend to still be the exception currently, I suspect they will soon be tough to avoid.
  - emerged 5y ago
    Eventually we’re going to have Smart Drywall, so maybe we should enjoy our current relative freedom from ads.
- Kinrany 5y ago
  A friend of mine has a projector and projector screen-colored walls, it's great.
TACD 5y ago
This is exactly what we did. Our ‘television’ was never hooked up to actually receive broadcast signal, we’ve always just used it as a big screen for the media/gaming PC set up in the lounge, and at some point I realised if I’m going to spend my evenings staring at Good Screen I might as well upgrade from this 40” 1080p TV with a dead pixel row. So I looked around and eventually bought a Philips 559M1 55” monitor instead. The price difference compared to an actual TV is a little tough to swallow (~£1,200 vs £?00), but the size, the resolution, and the overall picture / sound quality upgrade is very nice. The HDR leaves a lot to be desired but that’s probably inevitable when getting an LCD panel instead of OLED (which was not considered because of the likelihood of burn-in). Worth it? Eh… maybe. When compared against the available market for “TV-sized monitor” or upgrading from 1080p, absolutely. But if you’re coming over from an equivalent-sized OLED TV, you’ll be paying a hefty amount for a visual downgrade, just to escape the ‘smart’ features.
- everyone 5y ago
  Afaik the difference between whats called a "monitor" and whats called a "TV" nowadays is that.. TV's show a compressed or upscaled image. TV's have much higher latency. And thats why something called a monitor is so much more expensive for the same size display.
  - oynqr 5y ago
    Having a TV work well as a monitor is usually just a few settings away. It was this way ten years ago.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >TV's show a compressed or upscaled image TVs can show a "compressed or upscaled image", but that doesn't mean it can't show uncompressed full resolution images (ie. HDMI input). In that regard they aren't that different from monitors. >TV's have much higher latency. >And thats why something called a monitor is so much more expensive for the same size display. This is more due to their firmware containing image processing logic (to improve image quality), than TVs being intrinsically lower quality than computer monitors.
GuB-42 5y ago
> So we are actually paying more We are actually paying less, because all these sponsors and ads pay the manufacturer, which in turn lowers the purchase price. So if you don't use the smart features, it is actually a good deal, and if you do, well it is still a good deal. The one who pay for your discount are those who pay for the advertised services (ex: Netflix) without buying the TV. Probably the best thing to do is to buy a smart TV you can use dumbly (offline). Big monitors tend to be much more expensive than similarly specced TVs. You may still want it for things like gaming-related features (g-sync, etc...).
- falcolas 5y ago
  If triple A gaming has taught me anything, no, the prices are not lowered in compensation for the additional revenue stream. There’s no upside for them to do so. Even if they sell a third fewer models, the ad revenue way more than makes up for it, and it’s recurring revenue to boot.
  - GuB-42 5y ago
    > If triple A gaming has taught me anything, no, the prices are not lowered in compensation for the additional revenue stream. Inflation-adjusted, on average, AAA games have slowly decreased in retail price over the years. At the same time, they have become much more expensive to produce. Technology have improved, HD graphics, storage and computing power is now cheap, but creative work is as expensive as ever, if not more. And someone has to make all these assets and feature-film level animation that newer hardware supports and that players now expect from AAA games. That increase in production costs compared to a relative decrease in retail prices explain a lot of things regarding the AAA game industry: in-game purchases, a general lack of originality (originality is a gamble, and with $100M+ games, investors want guaranteed returns), few consoles exclusives (producers want the largest market possible), lower pay than in other industries,...
    - falcolas 5y ago
      This argument gets trotted out every time, and it's not only old, it's clearly wrong. Why is it wrong? Because AAA games are absurdly profitable, even before microtransactions are brought into play. AAA publishers and studios are making billions, with a 'B', of dollars of profit. That's not the sign of a struggling market that's weighed down by inflation and rising costs of production. That's a sign of an exceptionally healthy industry. Remember, cost only sets the floor of a product's price. And with a near zero duplication cost, those up-front investments are quickly paid back with no practical upper limit to the sales potential. For example, CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077 cost around $316M (including marketing). It presold, as reported on wikipedia, 8m copies. That means they made their investment back before the game had even released, plus a minimum of $20 profit per each of those 8m pre-orders (remember, $60 is the lowest price paid in a pre-order). And every post-launch sale is pretty much pure profit, thanks to that nearly-free cost of making copies. Now then, CP2077 had issues which probably ate into the company's profits post-launch... but that initial investment, the one you've pointed out? Paid for the day the game released.
maximus-decimus 5y ago
LLT did a review for a Samsung smart monitor the other day. It's coming. Nobody is safe.
IgorPartola 5y ago
I honestly don’t know what you are talking about. My TCL Roku TV is great and I will be buying another soon. It does everything I want and none of the things I don’t. It’s easy to use for me and for my kids. Roku also has all the major streaming services that I want. And I haven’t seen a commercial in 10 years. What am I missing?
- mchristen 5y ago
  I also own a TCL Roku TV and the interface is easily twice as slow as my Roku Ultra. Right on the home screen is a giant ad(unless you have network adblocking). Over the years Roku and Google have been fighting about Youtube/Youtube TV on Roku, just like Disney/ESPN fought the cable companies. I also own a Toshiba built FireTV that suffers from those same problems but far worse. Way more ads, much slower interface, and the hilarious part is a hidden power off button in the menus(it's fun trying to turn the TV off without the proper remote).
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    Granted I have never owned a Roku Ultra but the UI is plenty fast for me. And yes I pay for NextDNS so I don’t see giant ads. I think about it so little that I forget to mention it.
    - mchristen 5y ago
      my Roku Ultra is very fast. It's the TCL Roku TV that is very slow.
  - navjack27 5y ago
    Don't use the interface? Use it as a dumb monitor right? I'll go as far as to say that you can't complain about a slow interface of a cheap smart TV if you went out to buy it with the purpose of using it just as a monitor which is what you really should be doing. The smart isn't a value add except for being able to use a remote app on your phone especially if you're a HN frequenter. You gotta have computers lying around that can replace all the "smart".
samtheDamned 5y ago
> So we are actually paying more(of course, lots extra hardware cost) for less I thought they subsidized some of the cost with ad money
- SantalBlush 5y ago
  It's good to keep in mind that just because a company puts ads in our faces, that does not necessarily imply they are doing it to offset costs. This is true for websites as well as smart TVs.
jokowueu 5y ago
I don't know how but Samsung tvs take like 5 seconds to immediately turn on if u unplug them and replug it from the wall
gonehome 5y ago
> “So we are actually paying more” I suspect this is false and the ads and tracking enabled by smart TVs are instrumental in getting the price down. Price sensitivity on TVs I suspect is one of the main drivers of this. Still, I think there’s a real niche for someone to make a tv focused on the HN market. Call the company “dumb electronics”. db even has a pleasing symmetry to it for a logo imo. Focus on speed to boot and switch inputs, optionally sell it as a package with an Apple TV, make it premium and OLED. Basically the tv apple would build if they decided too. The current best option in the tv market is the LG OLED, but it’s smart and still leaves a lot to be desired.
- kube-system 5y ago
  > I suspect this is false and the ads and tracking enabled by smart TVs are instrumental in getting the price down. They plainly are. They are a gigantic revenue stream for TV manufacturers. There’s a reason that TV prices cratered at the exact same time that they all became “smart” https://www.engadget.com/vizio-q1-earnings-inscape-013937337.html https://www.engadget.com/vizio-q1-earnings-inscape-013937337...
amelius 5y ago
> I guess my replacement for a TV would be a big monitor. Ah, the dumb monitor. Buy them while you still can!
zhte415 5y ago
Consider a projector.
mellavora 5y ago
I wonder how this will play into the hedonic adjustment to inflation?
Gigachad 5y ago
It sounds like you are out of touch with the average consumer. They absolutely love smart TVs and would consider a TV without apps and streaming to be broken. In fact, even the ideal HN approved setup is just a smart TV where the online bit is a removable stick on the back. The average consumer just doesn’t care about being able to swap it out.
- lucideer 5y ago
  > It sounds like you are out of touch with the average consumer. They absolutely love smart TVs and would consider a TV without apps and streaming to be broken. The gp never said anything about what consumers want, it's talking about the motives behind development direction. Features are not added because consumers ask for them: demand comes later.
- pydry 5y ago
  The average consumer is no more a fan of privacy invading TVs than they are fans of ads which they watch a lot of nor the shopping channel which they always end up subscribing to. You're mistaking TV producers' desire to capture more of the market pie and invade our privacy with actual consumer demand.
- version_five 5y ago
  I think many people just buy the biggest, cheapest thing they can. "Smart" is one of those scams that works because it doesn't enter into the calculus for most when making a product choice, so they get to slip it in. There was an article about the same thing recently with smart builder appliances in new homes. My point is, I don't think many love them, I think they don't notice until it's too late and then they don't think about it too hard and just figure that's how the tv works. (And I don't think what characterizes a smart tv is just the option of apps and streaming. This could be fine if done in an actual consumer friendly way. It's the other crap an upstream comment mentions)
  - mrjin 5y ago
    Yep, most people have no idea the implications of Smart TV. I knew it but I had no many choices and actually I got totally disgusted by the practices of those vendors. It really has not much to do with demand but rather than getting more money from the consumers other than selling the TV hardware alone.
raverbashing 5y ago
You're not getting any TV "signal" without a modern OS. Not even ATSC
forgotpwd16 5y ago
>we are actually paying more(of course, lots extra hardware cost) for less Pretty sure 10 years ago I couldn't buy a 55-inch 4K 120Hz TV for $300. So depends on what you mean "less" as hardware-wise it's certainly the opposite.

by mrjin 5y ago

ramraj07 5y ago

If you’re happy with a computer monitor as a tv good for you. I’m spoiled by super large screen 4K Qdot displays. If I really have to choose not to get a smart tv, the simple solution is actually to get a really good projector.

robgibbons 5y ago
Even projectors these days are becoming "smart". Though they tend to still be the exception currently, I suspect they will soon be tough to avoid.
- emerged 5y ago
  Eventually we’re going to have Smart Drywall, so maybe we should enjoy our current relative freedom from ads.
Kinrany 5y ago
A friend of mine has a projector and projector screen-colored walls, it's great.

TACD 5y ago

This is exactly what we did. Our ‘television’ was never hooked up to actually receive broadcast signal, we’ve always just used it as a big screen for the media/gaming PC set up in the lounge, and at some point I realised if I’m going to spend my evenings staring at Good Screen I might as well upgrade from this 40” 1080p TV with a dead pixel row. So I looked around and eventually bought a Philips 559M1 55” monitor instead. The price difference compared to an actual TV is a little tough to swallow (~£1,200 vs £?00), but the size, the resolution, and the overall picture / sound quality upgrade is very nice. The HDR leaves a lot to be desired but that’s probably inevitable when getting an LCD panel instead of OLED (which was not considered because of the likelihood of burn-in). Worth it? Eh… maybe. When compared against the available market for “TV-sized monitor” or upgrading from 1080p, absolutely. But if you’re coming over from an equivalent-sized OLED TV, you’ll be paying a hefty amount for a visual downgrade, just to escape the ‘smart’ features.

everyone 5y ago
Afaik the difference between whats called a "monitor" and whats called a "TV" nowadays is that.. TV's show a compressed or upscaled image. TV's have much higher latency. And thats why something called a monitor is so much more expensive for the same size display.
- oynqr 5y ago
  Having a TV work well as a monitor is usually just a few settings away. It was this way ten years ago.
- gruez 5y ago
  >TV's show a compressed or upscaled image TVs can show a "compressed or upscaled image", but that doesn't mean it can't show uncompressed full resolution images (ie. HDMI input). In that regard they aren't that different from monitors. >TV's have much higher latency. >And thats why something called a monitor is so much more expensive for the same size display. This is more due to their firmware containing image processing logic (to improve image quality), than TVs being intrinsically lower quality than computer monitors.

GuB-42 5y ago

> So we are actually paying more We are actually paying less, because all these sponsors and ads pay the manufacturer, which in turn lowers the purchase price. So if you don't use the smart features, it is actually a good deal, and if you do, well it is still a good deal. The one who pay for your discount are those who pay for the advertised services (ex: Netflix) without buying the TV. Probably the best thing to do is to buy a smart TV you can use dumbly (offline). Big monitors tend to be much more expensive than similarly specced TVs. You may still want it for things like gaming-related features (g-sync, etc...).

falcolas 5y ago
If triple A gaming has taught me anything, no, the prices are not lowered in compensation for the additional revenue stream. There’s no upside for them to do so. Even if they sell a third fewer models, the ad revenue way more than makes up for it, and it’s recurring revenue to boot.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  > If triple A gaming has taught me anything, no, the prices are not lowered in compensation for the additional revenue stream. Inflation-adjusted, on average, AAA games have slowly decreased in retail price over the years. At the same time, they have become much more expensive to produce. Technology have improved, HD graphics, storage and computing power is now cheap, but creative work is as expensive as ever, if not more. And someone has to make all these assets and feature-film level animation that newer hardware supports and that players now expect from AAA games. That increase in production costs compared to a relative decrease in retail prices explain a lot of things regarding the AAA game industry: in-game purchases, a general lack of originality (originality is a gamble, and with $100M+ games, investors want guaranteed returns), few consoles exclusives (producers want the largest market possible), lower pay than in other industries,...
  - falcolas 5y ago
    This argument gets trotted out every time, and it's not only old, it's clearly wrong. Why is it wrong? Because AAA games are absurdly profitable, even before microtransactions are brought into play. AAA publishers and studios are making billions, with a 'B', of dollars of profit. That's not the sign of a struggling market that's weighed down by inflation and rising costs of production. That's a sign of an exceptionally healthy industry. Remember, cost only sets the floor of a product's price. And with a near zero duplication cost, those up-front investments are quickly paid back with no practical upper limit to the sales potential. For example, CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077 cost around $316M (including marketing). It presold, as reported on wikipedia, 8m copies. That means they made their investment back before the game had even released, plus a minimum of $20 profit per each of those 8m pre-orders (remember, $60 is the lowest price paid in a pre-order). And every post-launch sale is pretty much pure profit, thanks to that nearly-free cost of making copies. Now then, CP2077 had issues which probably ate into the company's profits post-launch... but that initial investment, the one you've pointed out? Paid for the day the game released.

maximus-decimus 5y ago

LLT did a review for a Samsung smart monitor the other day. It's coming. Nobody is safe.

IgorPartola 5y ago

I honestly don’t know what you are talking about. My TCL Roku TV is great and I will be buying another soon. It does everything I want and none of the things I don’t. It’s easy to use for me and for my kids. Roku also has all the major streaming services that I want. And I haven’t seen a commercial in 10 years. What am I missing?

mchristen 5y ago
I also own a TCL Roku TV and the interface is easily twice as slow as my Roku Ultra. Right on the home screen is a giant ad(unless you have network adblocking). Over the years Roku and Google have been fighting about Youtube/Youtube TV on Roku, just like Disney/ESPN fought the cable companies. I also own a Toshiba built FireTV that suffers from those same problems but far worse. Way more ads, much slower interface, and the hilarious part is a hidden power off button in the menus(it's fun trying to turn the TV off without the proper remote).
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  Granted I have never owned a Roku Ultra but the UI is plenty fast for me. And yes I pay for NextDNS so I don’t see giant ads. I think about it so little that I forget to mention it.
  - mchristen 5y ago
    my Roku Ultra is very fast. It's the TCL Roku TV that is very slow.
- navjack27 5y ago
  Don't use the interface? Use it as a dumb monitor right? I'll go as far as to say that you can't complain about a slow interface of a cheap smart TV if you went out to buy it with the purpose of using it just as a monitor which is what you really should be doing. The smart isn't a value add except for being able to use a remote app on your phone especially if you're a HN frequenter. You gotta have computers lying around that can replace all the "smart".

samtheDamned 5y ago

> So we are actually paying more(of course, lots extra hardware cost) for less I thought they subsidized some of the cost with ad money

SantalBlush 5y ago
It's good to keep in mind that just because a company puts ads in our faces, that does not necessarily imply they are doing it to offset costs. This is true for websites as well as smart TVs.

jokowueu 5y ago

I don't know how but Samsung tvs take like 5 seconds to immediately turn on if u unplug them and replug it from the wall

gonehome 5y ago

> “So we are actually paying more” I suspect this is false and the ads and tracking enabled by smart TVs are instrumental in getting the price down. Price sensitivity on TVs I suspect is one of the main drivers of this. Still, I think there’s a real niche for someone to make a tv focused on the HN market. Call the company “dumb electronics”. db even has a pleasing symmetry to it for a logo imo. Focus on speed to boot and switch inputs, optionally sell it as a package with an Apple TV, make it premium and OLED. Basically the tv apple would build if they decided too. The current best option in the tv market is the LG OLED, but it’s smart and still leaves a lot to be desired.

kube-system 5y ago
> I suspect this is false and the ads and tracking enabled by smart TVs are instrumental in getting the price down. They plainly are. They are a gigantic revenue stream for TV manufacturers. There’s a reason that TV prices cratered at the exact same time that they all became “smart” https://www.engadget.com/vizio-q1-earnings-inscape-013937337.html https://www.engadget.com/vizio-q1-earnings-inscape-013937337...

amelius 5y ago

> I guess my replacement for a TV would be a big monitor. Ah, the dumb monitor. Buy them while you still can!

zhte415 5y ago

Consider a projector.

mellavora 5y ago

I wonder how this will play into the hedonic adjustment to inflation?

Gigachad 5y ago

It sounds like you are out of touch with the average consumer. They absolutely love smart TVs and would consider a TV without apps and streaming to be broken. In fact, even the ideal HN approved setup is just a smart TV where the online bit is a removable stick on the back. The average consumer just doesn’t care about being able to swap it out.

lucideer 5y ago
> It sounds like you are out of touch with the average consumer. They absolutely love smart TVs and would consider a TV without apps and streaming to be broken. The gp never said anything about what consumers want, it's talking about the motives behind development direction. Features are not added because consumers ask for them: demand comes later.
pydry 5y ago
The average consumer is no more a fan of privacy invading TVs than they are fans of ads which they watch a lot of nor the shopping channel which they always end up subscribing to. You're mistaking TV producers' desire to capture more of the market pie and invade our privacy with actual consumer demand.
version_five 5y ago
I think many people just buy the biggest, cheapest thing they can. "Smart" is one of those scams that works because it doesn't enter into the calculus for most when making a product choice, so they get to slip it in. There was an article about the same thing recently with smart builder appliances in new homes. My point is, I don't think many love them, I think they don't notice until it's too late and then they don't think about it too hard and just figure that's how the tv works. (And I don't think what characterizes a smart tv is just the option of apps and streaming. This could be fine if done in an actual consumer friendly way. It's the other crap an upstream comment mentions)
- mrjin 5y ago
  Yep, most people have no idea the implications of Smart TV. I knew it but I had no many choices and actually I got totally disgusted by the practices of those vendors. It really has not much to do with demand but rather than getting more money from the consumers other than selling the TV hardware alone.

raverbashing 5y ago

You're not getting any TV "signal" without a modern OS. Not even ATSC

forgotpwd16 5y ago

>we are actually paying more(of course, lots extra hardware cost) for less Pretty sure 10 years ago I couldn't buy a 55-inch 4K 120Hz TV for $300. So depends on what you mean "less" as hardware-wise it's certainly the opposite.