28 ms·

FWIW, it is still possible to get TVs without this stuff, albeit at a premium. TVs are still made for business usage in areas like conference rooms, wall displa

by xoa 4y ago

FWIW, it is still possible to get TVs without this stuff, albeit at a premium. TVs are still made for business usage in areas like conference rooms, wall displays etc. They're often found under labeling like "commercial digital signage" or "business display" or the like, they seem to often try to avoid using "TV" (if being cynical maybe to make them harder for normal people to discover and confuse them if they do). But they're often nice panels aimed at serious running hours, without this sort of junk (which would give enterprise IT conniptions) and can have very useful feature support like 802.1x authentication which so many devices still lack. Players like NEC will even advertise their use of an RPi compute and wink at lack of spyware [0] for some of their products, but lots of major "smart TV" providers also have a commercial lineup. I think they're well worth considering, particularly for the HN crowd, granted I suppose for people who truly want built-in netflix or the like without connecting something like a Roku or Apple TV maybe it's less optimal. But even they might change their tunes back to the concept of separate boxes and normal panels if they dislike all the ads and data tracking. ---- 0: https://www.sharpnecdisplays.us/products/displays/me501 https://www.sharpnecdisplays.us/products/displays/me501

jokowueu 4y ago
Or just get any smart tv and add a android tv dongle . They don't cost much
- blibble 4y ago
  if you want to remove ads... buy a product (seemingly sold at cost) from google? seems odd
  - workingon 4y ago
    Luckily, Google has options to turn that stuff off. They could be lying about it, but it's better than generic TV brand which gives you no options, is a security nightmare, and is definitely selling every piece of data they gather to anyone who asks.
- anonymousab 4y ago
  The problem is that you cannot turn off much of the smart tv junk, including things like ads. Paired with features such as the tv refusing to work if you don't periodically give it a valid internet connection (for it to send its cached metrics and download new ads, of course), which is slowly but surely becoming more common, and you're only marginally better off than just using the smart tv features.
  - delecti 4y ago
    > tv refusing to work [...] Is that really a thing? I'd never heard of it until this. Is that something that only kicks in if it has been connected at least once?
    - anonymousab 4y ago
      I've seen a few of them. They usually start with nudging for the first few weeks ("hey, you should really plug me in and get an OS update!") before eventually refusing to work at all.
      - andsoitis 4y ago
        You’ve seen a few TVs do this? What’s an example so that I may see it for myself?
- psy-q 4y ago
  Android TV now also comes with forced ads (since rebranding to Google TV). I was pretty upset when the very expensive Android TV gadget I bought (Nvidia Shield TV) specifically to have an external device without ads suddenly had them. They take up the upper third of the home screen.
  - gpspake 4y ago
    What they did to the shield was a tragedy. It was so refreshing to have a device that I could completely customized to remove ads and suggested content. I don't blame Nvidia I think this is more on the Google TV side. I still think the shield is the best TV box on the market. I keep meaning to look into loading a different launcher that will let me go back to the old style.
    - wccrawford 4y ago
      I have no proof, but I have a feeling nVidia is working to fix this problem. They were probably blind-sided and so it's taking a while, but I fully expect them to create their own launcher now to combat this. Their customers were quite upset about it.
  - blibble 4y ago
    if it's Google it's always going to have ads at some point sad
  - commoner 4y ago
    It takes a bit of work, but you can replace the default Android TV launcher with an ad-free launcher, such as the free and open source FLauncher: - Instructions for changing the default launcher on Android TV: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShieldAndroidTV/comments/o96npc/instructions_for_replacing_android_tv_home_with_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ShieldAndroidTV/comments/o96npc/ins... - FLauncher: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.efesser.flauncher https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.efesser.fla... - Source: https://gitlab.com/flauncher/flauncher https://gitlab.com/flauncher/flauncher This should work on any Android TV device.
- thunky 4y ago
  That's what I thought we well, but TFA seems to suggest that some TVs may overlay ads on top of any video source: "Vizio collected a selection of pixels on the screen and matched them to an existing database of content to find out what a user was watching and when" "pop-ups would reportedly appear halfway through the show and be injected into the users' own content, such as home videos"
  - Daedren 4y ago
    Yes, but the moment you plug in an Android dongle, Apple TV or similar, you can just disconnect the TV from the internet, which should solve this.
    - xeromal 4y ago
      You're going to have to put it in a faraday cage when they start including modems into the TV. lol
      - Markoff 4y ago
        Two can play this game if they provide free SIM card they should expect people hacking and freeloading this built in SIM card.
        xeromal 4y ago
        I'm sure 1% of their users will do that. I'm also sure they'll still make money from ads.
        Markoff 4y ago
        I'd tend to think this 1% group overlaps a lot with HN readers skilled to do it.
  - delecti 4y ago
    If the plan is to get a TV (irrespective of it including "smart" features) and then use your own external dongle, then you'd have to be crazy to connect the TV to the internet. I think that must have been an implied instruction in the comment you replied to. I got a very nice "smart" TV, plugged in my own inputs, and entirely ignored that the TV had its own apps. It works just as well as a "dumb" panel would have.
- afavour 4y ago
  If you care about privacy absolutely do not get an Android TV dongle. Get an Apple TV (though yes, they cost more. Maybe find a used one on eBay if you're particularly price sensitive)
  - fmajid 4y ago
    Apple is planning on adding ads to the AppleTV. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-aapl-set-to-expand-advertising-bringing-ads-to-maps-tv-and-books-apps-l6tdqqmg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-...
    - proamdev123 4y ago
      That was a long article to read only to discover ZERO indication that Apple is planning on adding ads to the Apple TV (other than the author’s pure speculation). Thanks for linking the article so I could see that for myself.
  - _chu1 4y ago
    Now let me just open an ADB bridge with my Apple TV and install some third party applications, maybe flash a custom OS, rollback to an older firmware.
    - afavour 4y ago
      That doesn't negate my original point.
      - _chu1 4y ago
        You literally have full control over what happens on an Android device most the time and Apple devices are always in a locked down walled garden where you have absolutely no idea what is going on with your data.
  - gigel82 4y ago
    If you really care about privacy, don't get either. Apple is just as bad (or worse), they just have a really great PR team plugging away while they're building their ad mega-empire in the back.
nesk_ 4y ago
However those TVs are not easy to get and, like you said, they come with an increased price. I couldn't recommend enough to buy an Apple TV (or equivalent) and block all Internet access to your "smart" TV. I did this and everything was instantly better.
- jtbayly 4y ago
  How do you block internet if it will join open networks automatically?
  - dylan604 4y ago
    That process tends to require the use of a screw driver and the willingness to perform a bit of modifications.
  - indeyets 4y ago
    firewall by MAC-address
    - dylan604 4y ago
      If it's a trully open network that say is you neighbor's, then there's no way you can control this filtering. The Amazon Sidewalk or whatever they had planned would be an example of this that might be less obvious than your neighbor just being bad at IT.
  - nesk_ 4y ago
    I just allowed my Samsung TV to connect to the wifi (to access the local network, because the Steam Link client is better on it than it is on the Apple TV) and then, on my router, I blocked all Internet access coming from the mac address of the Samsung TV.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      At some point, these devices will be smarter than you about this. They will recognize a WiFi connection that cannot access the internet, and prefer an open network instead.
SayMyName 4y ago
You can still get cheap ones. And by cheap I mean TLC/Hisense level quality displays. Walmart sells Sceptre's for low prices and have no smart features, best purchase I've made in years. We use a lot of Rokus here and my issue isn't the ads, its that every Roku built-in TV gets REALLY slow after a few updates, so now it's just easier to chuck a $20-30 device instead of having to buy an entire $300+TV. Sure I don't get 120Hz fancyness but at least it's 4k and the picture is good enough for my consoles.
- madelyn 4y ago
  +1 to Sceptre TVs! Recently (past week) bought a 4k Sceptre TV and it was less than $200. 60hz, looks great, the smartest feature it has is a clock you have to set yourself. Just make sure not to buy the android or roku ones!
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    > smartest feature it has is a clock you have to set yourself And, we've come back around to the 80s. <blink>12:00</blink>
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  I bought a Sceptre last year and one of the hilarious things about it was it had the "lite" Roku interface, just your input selections with no smart features. Those TV's are fantastic for the price assuming they don't fail (and even then it could be argued that it's still a good deal).
- jbverschoor 4y ago
  The cheap ones also have a blazing fast non-android menu. This was my last samsung
- Arrath 4y ago
  > gets REALLY slow after a few updates The curse of smart TVs, I swear. My TV pops an error and says it's still powering on if I try to change inputs right after turning it on. Yet, if it is turned on by a device, like I begin casting to my chromecast, or turn on my xbox, it'll go to that input immediately no problem.
tablespoon 4y ago
> FWIW, it is still possible to get TVs without this stuff, albeit at a premium. TVs are still made for business usage in areas like conference rooms, wall displays etc. Do they have tuners? I've heard many of those are missing them.
- 9991 4y ago
  - mmmpop 4y ago
    The media has the best interests of emotionally-healthy people in mind. Just turn on some TV and relax.
    - _chu1 4y ago
      [flagged]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > Do you want the propaganda piped directly into your living room? If I didn't, why would I have a TV at all? /s But you did a poor job of derailing a thread into one about you and your opinions that are only tenuously related to the topic. You should have mentioned how you "don't even own a TV" and how your choices are so much better than the sheeple's choices.
    - 9991 4y ago
      It’s like you know me.
- cheschire 4y ago
  If this is a major concern for you, I think you'll be happy to hear that tuners are ridiculously cheap, with built in recording capabilities for under $30. I suspect if you're in the market for one of these pricier TVs and willing to pay the premium then the extra cost for an external tuner unit will be not be a major factor. For cleanliness you can attach it to the rear of the TV and use short cables.
_fat_santa 4y ago
I'm considering getting a 70" version whenever I get a house. While I've been renting I always just get the biggest and cheapest TV from the local electronics store. Besides not having the usual crap, I would imagine these use higher quality component since the TV's might be on 24/7. Even that 50" at just over 1k doesn't seem that bad, that's usually what you would pay for a high end 50" anyways.
LeifCarrotson 4y ago
OMG it has a carrier board for an RPi Compute Module built in: https://i.imgur.com/D3p8bCA.png https://i.imgur.com/D3p8bCA.png That's amazing!
- jamesbfb 4y ago
  Jeff Geerling talks about this very TV in one of his videos a while back: https://youtu.be/-epPf7D8oMk https://youtu.be/-epPf7D8oMk If my partner wasn’t so hell bent in decor when choosing a TV, I would have loved one of these!
  - OJFord 4y ago
    Funnily enough that's actually featured in the images/video carousel in GGP's NEC link. Was surprised to see his 'YouTube thumbnail face' there!
  - jononomo 4y ago
    that's a fascinating review of that TV
- jandrese 4y ago
  Wasn't the RPi hardware originally developed for a STB before being sold separately? Seems like it should be well suited for the task.
nsgi 4y ago
Which brands of smart TV show ads? I live in the UK and I've had three different brands of smart TV (Philips, Samsung and Toshiba) and my experience with all of them has been pretty good. Netflix, YouTube, etc. have worked pretty well and I haven't seen any ads that weren't linked to the apps themselves. Perhaps they're tracking me in ways I don't know about, though?
- doublerabbit 4y ago
  I bought my mother a Sony TV which displays an iPlayer notification on every tv show on any BBC channel. "Press Green to see the show from the beginning on iPlayer" You can't turn it off and will only go away if you remove iPlayer. While it's not an advert, it's still annoying spyware.
- BozeWolf 4y ago
  Samsung frame. Hardware: It has physical netflix, prime, somethingelse buttons which immediately switch to that app without asking if you want to close the current app. Frustrating when you accidentally sit on your remote. So i modified my remote, put tape underneath the buttons to disable them. Software: In menu ads, sometimes, for some crap thing like tennistv. I have no idea how to disable it. The fucking frame store is inbetween apps and starting point of the menu. Alyways need to do 4 (or 5, depending on ad) times to the right before being able to run the app you want. It started playing samsung tv. After a week. I hate tv. Took me a day to get annoyed enough and then spend an hour to disable the shouting XL Americans. So, typical Samsung. Software ux just sucks. Luckily a tv is mostly turned off* and that is why I bought it; hardware looks great when it’s off. *off: it always switches to the frame mode. It is a laughable gimmick. Ever seen a painting giving light? You cannot disable it (i assumed it was possible). Long-hold power off to turn the tv off. Else frame mode. Sucks. We need to save energy here in Europe. @Samsung: please fix it. I thought i would not use thr smart functions, but I use it a lot. Tune-in radio and spotify work great. Also a lot of youtube and national tv app are pretty good. Airplay works fine too. Recommend it? No. Happy with it… just enough to not return it.
  - m463 4y ago
    > So i modified my remote, put tape underneath the buttons to disable them. This is genius - I will do this for the footshoot buttons in my remotes!
drcongo 4y ago
I ended up buying a Philips 55" gaming monitor instead of a TV. Seems to be the only way to get a high quality panel and proper HDR without spyware, most of the commercial displays I looked at didn't support HDR properly or had terrible panels.
ajross 4y ago
If you want a TV-priced display for use as a dumb monitor, just buy a TV and don't give it a wifi password. My main desktop monitor is a 43" Roku/TCL thing that is still running the factory firmware. Works great.
- mlichvar 4y ago
  One issue with TV displays I didn't see mentioned here is glossiness. TVs are mostly glossy and monitors are usually matte. I strongly prefer the latter.
yborg 4y ago
That NEC isn't a TV though, i.e. it has no tuner.
- andrew_ 4y ago
  I wonder if something like this https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-tv-hat/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-tv-hat/ could be used with the RPi capability
- jonhohle 4y ago
  It would be interesting to know how many people use the tuner in their TV rather than cable, streaming, or the one in their DVR. Our TiVo use was supplanted by DIRECTV streaming in the past few years, but I don’t think I’ve used the built in tuner in about 15 years. Is there any regulatory reason to include tuners in displays?
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
Yeah, but I don't want a dumb TV. Or the side-effort of some moribund commercial line that will also cost a ton more. You know what else kind of had this problem? Well, not the spyware as much, but just the crap software embedded: routers. OpenWRT appeared. It appears most smart tvs are already running linux, but probably in the way that android phones are already running linux. With android and smart tvs, the corps got a major foothold into managed computing platforms that they can control to do whatever spying was necessary. Firefox on the phone, ubuntu phone, etc, they couldn't break into Android, and nothing has broken into smart tvs. But man if there was an OpenWRT I could replace my roku TVs with, I'd probably do it in a heartbeat. It's not just that, my relatives have an old LG smart TV that long ago stopped adding apps. If there was an open linux alternative, it probably would be getting updates and AppleTV and Disney Plus would be options on it. Cursory searches have basically returned "man it would be hard, you'd need to know the board pretty well", yet ... aren't there armies of linux hackers that love hacking stuff like this? Seems like Smart TVs are a big, ubiquitous consumer item with privacy concerns that the linux hardware hacking community has treated with apathy. Which seems strange. Maybe all the hackers think "eh, plug a raspberry pi into a free HDMI port" or "eh, build a media pc". This is corporate big brother in your grandma's living room spying. This is freedom on the line, it's strange that the linux-as-hacking-freedom and the linux anticorporate crowd haven't jumped on this.
jcpham2 4y ago
FWIW we just upgraded to a 98" NEC "commercial display" C981Q and couldn't be happier with it. I looked into the Raspi compute module but we just have a PC and some Crestron gear running it all, Shure ceiling tile mic and a vladdio cam. It was $8500 + 1500 freight IIRC
jollyllama 4y ago
I worked at a place where they conference room TV's were showing ads for games, netflix. Everybody else looked at it as normal but my TV at home doesn't show ads, so it seemed ridiculously unprofessional to me. Just like when Windows shows ads in the start menu, etc. I don't see how people get used to it.
NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
From what I've learned the key to search for is "hospitality display". First result from brave search: https://www.samsung.com/levant/business/smart-hospitality-displays/all-smart-hospitality-displays/ https://www.samsung.com/levant/business/smart-hospitality-di...
- humanwhosits 4y ago
  'smart' is in the title which is a bit concerning
adsfgdsafdasf 4y ago
its much easier to just buy any smart tv and not connect it to the internet
- julianlam 4y ago
  Until your TV decides to connect to your neighbour's open wifi AP
dehrmann 4y ago
I looked at an LG one, 65EP5G. It's around 10x the cost of other 65" LG OLED displays. I get that it might be higher quality, but not 10x higher, and I know there's some revenue from ads, but not $10k.
_nalply 4y ago
For the technically minded, not neccessary. Just buy a large computer monitor and connect it with a tiny computer. It's a hassle but the system is really yours, especially if you choose carefully what to install.

by xoa 4y ago

jokowueu 4y ago

Or just get any smart tv and add a android tv dongle . They don't cost much

blibble 4y ago
if you want to remove ads... buy a product (seemingly sold at cost) from google? seems odd
- workingon 4y ago
  Luckily, Google has options to turn that stuff off. They could be lying about it, but it's better than generic TV brand which gives you no options, is a security nightmare, and is definitely selling every piece of data they gather to anyone who asks.
anonymousab 4y ago
The problem is that you cannot turn off much of the smart tv junk, including things like ads. Paired with features such as the tv refusing to work if you don't periodically give it a valid internet connection (for it to send its cached metrics and download new ads, of course), which is slowly but surely becoming more common, and you're only marginally better off than just using the smart tv features.
- delecti 4y ago
  > tv refusing to work [...] Is that really a thing? I'd never heard of it until this. Is that something that only kicks in if it has been connected at least once?
  - anonymousab 4y ago
    I've seen a few of them. They usually start with nudging for the first few weeks ("hey, you should really plug me in and get an OS update!") before eventually refusing to work at all.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      You’ve seen a few TVs do this? What’s an example so that I may see it for myself?
psy-q 4y ago
Android TV now also comes with forced ads (since rebranding to Google TV). I was pretty upset when the very expensive Android TV gadget I bought (Nvidia Shield TV) specifically to have an external device without ads suddenly had them. They take up the upper third of the home screen.
- gpspake 4y ago
  What they did to the shield was a tragedy. It was so refreshing to have a device that I could completely customized to remove ads and suggested content. I don't blame Nvidia I think this is more on the Google TV side. I still think the shield is the best TV box on the market. I keep meaning to look into loading a different launcher that will let me go back to the old style.
  - wccrawford 4y ago
    I have no proof, but I have a feeling nVidia is working to fix this problem. They were probably blind-sided and so it's taking a while, but I fully expect them to create their own launcher now to combat this. Their customers were quite upset about it.
- blibble 4y ago
  if it's Google it's always going to have ads at some point sad
- commoner 4y ago
  It takes a bit of work, but you can replace the default Android TV launcher with an ad-free launcher, such as the free and open source FLauncher: - Instructions for changing the default launcher on Android TV: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShieldAndroidTV/comments/o96npc/instructions_for_replacing_android_tv_home_with_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ShieldAndroidTV/comments/o96npc/ins... - FLauncher: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.efesser.flauncher https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.efesser.fla... - Source: https://gitlab.com/flauncher/flauncher https://gitlab.com/flauncher/flauncher This should work on any Android TV device.
thunky 4y ago
That's what I thought we well, but TFA seems to suggest that some TVs may overlay ads on top of any video source: "Vizio collected a selection of pixels on the screen and matched them to an existing database of content to find out what a user was watching and when" "pop-ups would reportedly appear halfway through the show and be injected into the users' own content, such as home videos"
- Daedren 4y ago
  Yes, but the moment you plug in an Android dongle, Apple TV or similar, you can just disconnect the TV from the internet, which should solve this.
  - xeromal 4y ago
    You're going to have to put it in a faraday cage when they start including modems into the TV. lol
    - Markoff 4y ago
      Two can play this game if they provide free SIM card they should expect people hacking and freeloading this built in SIM card.
      - xeromal 4y ago
        I'm sure 1% of their users will do that. I'm also sure they'll still make money from ads.
        Markoff 4y ago
        I'd tend to think this 1% group overlaps a lot with HN readers skilled to do it.
- delecti 4y ago
  If the plan is to get a TV (irrespective of it including "smart" features) and then use your own external dongle, then you'd have to be crazy to connect the TV to the internet. I think that must have been an implied instruction in the comment you replied to. I got a very nice "smart" TV, plugged in my own inputs, and entirely ignored that the TV had its own apps. It works just as well as a "dumb" panel would have.
afavour 4y ago
If you care about privacy absolutely do not get an Android TV dongle. Get an Apple TV (though yes, they cost more. Maybe find a used one on eBay if you're particularly price sensitive)
- fmajid 4y ago
  Apple is planning on adding ads to the AppleTV. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-aapl-set-to-expand-advertising-bringing-ads-to-maps-tv-and-books-apps-l6tdqqmg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-...
  - proamdev123 4y ago
    That was a long article to read only to discover ZERO indication that Apple is planning on adding ads to the Apple TV (other than the author’s pure speculation). Thanks for linking the article so I could see that for myself.
- _chu1 4y ago
  Now let me just open an ADB bridge with my Apple TV and install some third party applications, maybe flash a custom OS, rollback to an older firmware.
  - afavour 4y ago
    That doesn't negate my original point.
    - _chu1 4y ago
      You literally have full control over what happens on an Android device most the time and Apple devices are always in a locked down walled garden where you have absolutely no idea what is going on with your data.
- gigel82 4y ago
  If you really care about privacy, don't get either. Apple is just as bad (or worse), they just have a really great PR team plugging away while they're building their ad mega-empire in the back.

nesk_ 4y ago

However those TVs are not easy to get and, like you said, they come with an increased price. I couldn't recommend enough to buy an Apple TV (or equivalent) and block all Internet access to your "smart" TV. I did this and everything was instantly better.

jtbayly 4y ago
How do you block internet if it will join open networks automatically?
- dylan604 4y ago
  That process tends to require the use of a screw driver and the willingness to perform a bit of modifications.
- indeyets 4y ago
  firewall by MAC-address
  - dylan604 4y ago
    If it's a trully open network that say is you neighbor's, then there's no way you can control this filtering. The Amazon Sidewalk or whatever they had planned would be an example of this that might be less obvious than your neighbor just being bad at IT.
- nesk_ 4y ago
  I just allowed my Samsung TV to connect to the wifi (to access the local network, because the Steam Link client is better on it than it is on the Apple TV) and then, on my router, I blocked all Internet access coming from the mac address of the Samsung TV.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    At some point, these devices will be smarter than you about this. They will recognize a WiFi connection that cannot access the internet, and prefer an open network instead.

SayMyName 4y ago

You can still get cheap ones. And by cheap I mean TLC/Hisense level quality displays. Walmart sells Sceptre's for low prices and have no smart features, best purchase I've made in years. We use a lot of Rokus here and my issue isn't the ads, its that every Roku built-in TV gets REALLY slow after a few updates, so now it's just easier to chuck a $20-30 device instead of having to buy an entire $300+TV. Sure I don't get 120Hz fancyness but at least it's 4k and the picture is good enough for my consoles.

madelyn 4y ago
+1 to Sceptre TVs! Recently (past week) bought a 4k Sceptre TV and it was less than $200. 60hz, looks great, the smartest feature it has is a clock you have to set yourself. Just make sure not to buy the android or roku ones!
- ethbr0 4y ago
  > smartest feature it has is a clock you have to set yourself And, we've come back around to the 80s. <blink>12:00</blink>
_fat_santa 4y ago
I bought a Sceptre last year and one of the hilarious things about it was it had the "lite" Roku interface, just your input selections with no smart features. Those TV's are fantastic for the price assuming they don't fail (and even then it could be argued that it's still a good deal).
jbverschoor 4y ago
The cheap ones also have a blazing fast non-android menu. This was my last samsung
Arrath 4y ago
> gets REALLY slow after a few updates The curse of smart TVs, I swear. My TV pops an error and says it's still powering on if I try to change inputs right after turning it on. Yet, if it is turned on by a device, like I begin casting to my chromecast, or turn on my xbox, it'll go to that input immediately no problem.

tablespoon 4y ago

> FWIW, it is still possible to get TVs without this stuff, albeit at a premium. TVs are still made for business usage in areas like conference rooms, wall displays etc. Do they have tuners? I've heard many of those are missing them.

9991 4y ago
- mmmpop 4y ago
  The media has the best interests of emotionally-healthy people in mind. Just turn on some TV and relax.
  - _chu1 4y ago
    [flagged]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > Do you want the propaganda piped directly into your living room? If I didn't, why would I have a TV at all? /s But you did a poor job of derailing a thread into one about you and your opinions that are only tenuously related to the topic. You should have mentioned how you "don't even own a TV" and how your choices are so much better than the sheeple's choices.
  - 9991 4y ago
    It’s like you know me.
cheschire 4y ago
If this is a major concern for you, I think you'll be happy to hear that tuners are ridiculously cheap, with built in recording capabilities for under $30. I suspect if you're in the market for one of these pricier TVs and willing to pay the premium then the extra cost for an external tuner unit will be not be a major factor. For cleanliness you can attach it to the rear of the TV and use short cables.

_fat_santa 4y ago

I'm considering getting a 70" version whenever I get a house. While I've been renting I always just get the biggest and cheapest TV from the local electronics store. Besides not having the usual crap, I would imagine these use higher quality component since the TV's might be on 24/7. Even that 50" at just over 1k doesn't seem that bad, that's usually what you would pay for a high end 50" anyways.

LeifCarrotson 4y ago

OMG it has a carrier board for an RPi Compute Module built in: https://i.imgur.com/D3p8bCA.png https://i.imgur.com/D3p8bCA.png That's amazing!

jamesbfb 4y ago
Jeff Geerling talks about this very TV in one of his videos a while back: https://youtu.be/-epPf7D8oMk https://youtu.be/-epPf7D8oMk If my partner wasn’t so hell bent in decor when choosing a TV, I would have loved one of these!
- OJFord 4y ago
  Funnily enough that's actually featured in the images/video carousel in GGP's NEC link. Was surprised to see his 'YouTube thumbnail face' there!
- jononomo 4y ago
  that's a fascinating review of that TV
jandrese 4y ago
Wasn't the RPi hardware originally developed for a STB before being sold separately? Seems like it should be well suited for the task.

nsgi 4y ago

Which brands of smart TV show ads? I live in the UK and I've had three different brands of smart TV (Philips, Samsung and Toshiba) and my experience with all of them has been pretty good. Netflix, YouTube, etc. have worked pretty well and I haven't seen any ads that weren't linked to the apps themselves. Perhaps they're tracking me in ways I don't know about, though?

doublerabbit 4y ago
I bought my mother a Sony TV which displays an iPlayer notification on every tv show on any BBC channel. "Press Green to see the show from the beginning on iPlayer" You can't turn it off and will only go away if you remove iPlayer. While it's not an advert, it's still annoying spyware.
BozeWolf 4y ago
Samsung frame. Hardware: It has physical netflix, prime, somethingelse buttons which immediately switch to that app without asking if you want to close the current app. Frustrating when you accidentally sit on your remote. So i modified my remote, put tape underneath the buttons to disable them. Software: In menu ads, sometimes, for some crap thing like tennistv. I have no idea how to disable it. The fucking frame store is inbetween apps and starting point of the menu. Alyways need to do 4 (or 5, depending on ad) times to the right before being able to run the app you want. It started playing samsung tv. After a week. I hate tv. Took me a day to get annoyed enough and then spend an hour to disable the shouting XL Americans. So, typical Samsung. Software ux just sucks. Luckily a tv is mostly turned off* and that is why I bought it; hardware looks great when it’s off. *off: it always switches to the frame mode. It is a laughable gimmick. Ever seen a painting giving light? You cannot disable it (i assumed it was possible). Long-hold power off to turn the tv off. Else frame mode. Sucks. We need to save energy here in Europe. @Samsung: please fix it. I thought i would not use thr smart functions, but I use it a lot. Tune-in radio and spotify work great. Also a lot of youtube and national tv app are pretty good. Airplay works fine too. Recommend it? No. Happy with it… just enough to not return it.
- m463 4y ago
  > So i modified my remote, put tape underneath the buttons to disable them. This is genius - I will do this for the footshoot buttons in my remotes!

drcongo 4y ago

I ended up buying a Philips 55" gaming monitor instead of a TV. Seems to be the only way to get a high quality panel and proper HDR without spyware, most of the commercial displays I looked at didn't support HDR properly or had terrible panels.

ajross 4y ago

If you want a TV-priced display for use as a dumb monitor, just buy a TV and don't give it a wifi password. My main desktop monitor is a 43" Roku/TCL thing that is still running the factory firmware. Works great.

mlichvar 4y ago
One issue with TV displays I didn't see mentioned here is glossiness. TVs are mostly glossy and monitors are usually matte. I strongly prefer the latter.

yborg 4y ago

That NEC isn't a TV though, i.e. it has no tuner.

andrew_ 4y ago
I wonder if something like this https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-tv-hat/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-tv-hat/ could be used with the RPi capability
jonhohle 4y ago
It would be interesting to know how many people use the tuner in their TV rather than cable, streaming, or the one in their DVR. Our TiVo use was supplanted by DIRECTV streaming in the past few years, but I don’t think I’ve used the built in tuner in about 15 years. Is there any regulatory reason to include tuners in displays?

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

Yeah, but I don't want a dumb TV. Or the side-effort of some moribund commercial line that will also cost a ton more. You know what else kind of had this problem? Well, not the spyware as much, but just the crap software embedded: routers. OpenWRT appeared. It appears most smart tvs are already running linux, but probably in the way that android phones are already running linux. With android and smart tvs, the corps got a major foothold into managed computing platforms that they can control to do whatever spying was necessary. Firefox on the phone, ubuntu phone, etc, they couldn't break into Android, and nothing has broken into smart tvs. But man if there was an OpenWRT I could replace my roku TVs with, I'd probably do it in a heartbeat. It's not just that, my relatives have an old LG smart TV that long ago stopped adding apps. If there was an open linux alternative, it probably would be getting updates and AppleTV and Disney Plus would be options on it. Cursory searches have basically returned "man it would be hard, you'd need to know the board pretty well", yet ... aren't there armies of linux hackers that love hacking stuff like this? Seems like Smart TVs are a big, ubiquitous consumer item with privacy concerns that the linux hardware hacking community has treated with apathy. Which seems strange. Maybe all the hackers think "eh, plug a raspberry pi into a free HDMI port" or "eh, build a media pc". This is corporate big brother in your grandma's living room spying. This is freedom on the line, it's strange that the linux-as-hacking-freedom and the linux anticorporate crowd haven't jumped on this.

jcpham2 4y ago

FWIW we just upgraded to a 98" NEC "commercial display" C981Q and couldn't be happier with it. I looked into the Raspi compute module but we just have a PC and some Crestron gear running it all, Shure ceiling tile mic and a vladdio cam. It was $8500 + 1500 freight IIRC

jollyllama 4y ago

I worked at a place where they conference room TV's were showing ads for games, netflix. Everybody else looked at it as normal but my TV at home doesn't show ads, so it seemed ridiculously unprofessional to me. Just like when Windows shows ads in the start menu, etc. I don't see how people get used to it.

NaturalPhallacy 4y ago

From what I've learned the key to search for is "hospitality display". First result from brave search: https://www.samsung.com/levant/business/smart-hospitality-displays/all-smart-hospitality-displays/ https://www.samsung.com/levant/business/smart-hospitality-di...

humanwhosits 4y ago
'smart' is in the title which is a bit concerning

adsfgdsafdasf 4y ago

its much easier to just buy any smart tv and not connect it to the internet

julianlam 4y ago
Until your TV decides to connect to your neighbour's open wifi AP

dehrmann 4y ago

I looked at an LG one, 65EP5G. It's around 10x the cost of other 65" LG OLED displays. I get that it might be higher quality, but not 10x higher, and I know there's some revenue from ads, but not $10k.

_nalply 4y ago

For the technically minded, not neccessary. Just buy a large computer monitor and connect it with a tiny computer. It's a hassle but the system is really yours, especially if you choose carefully what to install.