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"just don't connect it to the internet" is such a typical HN response that completely misses the point. A smart TV with no internet connection is still a smart

"just don't connect it to the internet" is such a typical HN response that completely misses the point. A smart TV with no internet connection is still a smart TV. It still has an entire operating system that needs to load wifi, ethernet, Bluetooth, usb driver stacks. It still has an awful, flashy interface that adds unnecessary steps between changing inputs. It still tries to load god knows what apps every time you turn it on. A dumb TV is a panel, some inputs, and an OSD menu that hasn't changed since 2005. It has exactly two functions: select an input and display that input. It should turn on in seconds, not minutes. Changing inputs should have at most two steps and take no more than two seconds. It should have exactly as much processing power as is required to pipe an hdmi signal to the panel and nothing more. It should be so fundamentally incapable of injecting ads that the very idea is laughable. Hell, I'd even prefer it not have speakers. Disconnecting your smart TV from the internet only means it doesn't spy on you and advertise to you. It doesn't solve any of the other problems making these devices awful.

MrFoof 3y ago
It also doesn't prevent some TVs from finding access points it can connect to, in which it then will entirely on its own. There's quite a few that'll do that.
madeofpalk 3y ago
meh, i think your response is more 'typical HN'. Nether are more correct than the other, but if you're annoyed or distrustful of all the internet connected factors of a TV, just don't connect it to the internet. I think that's a fine non-perfect, pragmatic solution.
- tsujamin 3y ago
  What it doesn’t solve is the friction and bloatware of the tvos. My Sony tv’s Android interface has unbearable input lag using its menus, so I inevitably leave it set to my appletv hdmi input. Could the TV do everything the appletv could? Yep just worse and I can’t get rid of it
  - warning26 3y ago
    That applies regardless of whether or not the tv is “smart” - my current “smart” Roku TV runs great, and I had an old “dumb” Samsung that took forever to do anything. Well-written software is what helps here, not smartness or lack thereof.
    - hot_gril 3y ago
      No, dumbness helps. You want to solve the input delay, you can use an external HDMI switch or get a dumb TV.
- antegamisou 3y ago
  But your response confirmed the parent's part about missing the point which is that Smart TVs' OS is an absolute bloatware dumpster fire. This isn't some silly /r/privacy - tier paranoia about not wanting being tracked by your home devices, though it's a reasonable concern to an extent. It's just about the people who don't care about those shitty overpriced streaming services and just want to watch the news without having to wait 15 damn seconds for the thing to turn on or worse, having to be more than patient to switch channels after turning it on because God knows what is running on the background and the channel hasn't changed in over two minutes in spite of having spammed the remote already.
- autoexec 3y ago
  "Don't connect it to the internet" might work, assuming it doesn't aggressively scan for open connections every chance it gets, but if this becomes common it'll only be a matter of time until you're forced to sign up for an account at initial setup, and the TV starts refusing to function at all without an internet connection (or it's been more than x days without one), and searches for nearby bluetooth devices of the same brand which are connected to send your data through that internet connected device instead. The only way to solve this problem for good is to regulate the industry, but failing that, the least we should do is make it clear we're not interesting in buying their shitty spying products by refusing to hand over our money in the first place. Buying the TVs, connected or not, signals that you support them and what they are doing, and more importantly it makes doing the things they are doing profitable for them. It reinforces the behavior you're trying to stop. That's not just "imperfect" it's counter-productive.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    > The only way to solve this problem for good is to regulate the industry At a place like Hacker News I expect there will be people who have the technical know-how to make a non-smart TV, or even a modular, pick-and-choose, TV, and crowdfund it. At the very least. Lots of industries that aren't tech-adjacent, or are very expensive, need regulation in order to stop particular practices from becoming universal trends, but TVs shouldn't be one of them.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      there's one person in the comments here already who is trying to build dumb TVs, and if they do it, that'll be where I'm buying my next TV, but I fear that even if they are successful eventually they too will turn to spying and ad pushing, because companies will always make more money by doing so and if their own greed doesn't push them to do it, their shareholders will. Sometimes, it will always be more profitable for a company to refuse to provide what consumers want. There is no price they can charge us that will ever beat charging that same price and also selling every scrap of our data they can on top of it. If the skills and materials to construct a quality TV were common or easily obtainable, I'd agree that the smart TV problem would be something we could solve ourselves in our own garages, but I'm not convinced that's the case which means nearly every one of us will be dependent on someone else to build and sell us displays, and as long as that's true we'll be at the mercy of their benevolence and their continuing willingness to reject huge piles of easy money.
- kelnos 3y ago
  Personally I'm more concerned about power consumption. My current TV, when it is off, it is off. It sips a tiny amount of power so it can listen for IR signals from the remote, but that's it. Smart TVs never really turn off. If they did, they would take too long to "boot up" and consumers would be frustrated and angry. They're more like a laptop in a not-too-deep sleep state when they're turned off. Another commenter mentioned their smart TV consumes 10-20W when turned "off". That's just gross. It should consume milliwatts, at most. And yes, I know that there are things in my house that consume far more power. But I actually get something for that power. A smart TV that I will of course never connect to the internet gives me nothing for that waste while in standby mode.
  - throwaway2190 3y ago
    It's hard to understand because a smartphone can wake instantly with a fraction of the idle power draw. Smart TV = dumb TV + smartphone chipset in many cases so, where is it all going? Here's a link to a previous discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32888844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32888844
- hot_gril 3y ago
  The comment isn't about trust, it's just that the smart TVs are slower even when non-networked.
- rolenthedeep 3y ago
  Did you read the comment you replied to? Because it was a direct response to comments exactly like this one.
mattl 3y ago
You can build your own with a monitor and SFTP, etc.
- TheSpiceIsLife 3y ago
  What does SFTP mean in This context? Only thing I can think of is SSH FTP, but not sure how that ties in?
  - mattl 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15605423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15605423 It’s a classic HN reply
    - Hackbraten 3y ago
      Here’s the proto-reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
      - TheSpiceIsLife 3y ago
        Ha! I should have known. I've, in jest also, used the archetype here myself.
nfRfqX5n 3y ago
What TV takes minutes to turn on?
- bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
  My smart tv is set to turn on and switch to the Apple TV when the Apple TV wakes from sleep. The tv turns on in about a second, waits for a few seconds, and then waits five seconds to switch to the Apple TV.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    Same except mine goes black a few times trying to negotiate with the HDMI source. Whole process from turning on my TV to watching something on it takes 1-2 minutes.
- xp84 3y ago
  Maybe minutes was hyperbole, but my Sony Smart TV (to be fair, it's the circa-2015-ish one relegated to the bedroom today) is unresponsive to silly human concerns like "changing inputs" or "adjusting volume" for a good 30-40 seconds when it turns on. ("Please wait.") To mitigate this, you can pick a certain 4-6 hours of each day (24h isn't allowed) during which it'll make sure to stay "booted" but with the panel off. Or if you don't enable this, you'll enjoy lower power consumption but have to deal with this foolishness every time you turn it on.
- outcoldman 3y ago
  My vizio 75” oled TV takes a minute to turn on. Disconnected from internet. Sometimes annoyingly asks to connect to wifi
- numpad0 3y ago
  None of them, because the Linux computer on TV boots up and goes to sleep immediately upon being plugged in, and is connected to an internal video mixer chip rather than managing the panel directly.
Terretta 3y ago
The problem is when HD video standards evolve (DV, HDR10), or bugs are found, etc., as well as handling things like VRR or lip-sync. Unless you externalize smarts to e.g. HDFury VRRoom (strongly recommend), these panels need some smarts, regardless.
- voltagex_ 3y ago
  $549USD - more expensive than some people's TVs.
  - Terretta 3y ago
    Sort of the point. This tech is necessary somewhere for a lot of uses of TV panels. Make a panel dumb enough, cheap enough, it loses capabilities of displaying Netflix's highest quality or supporting Xbox Series X and PS5 or less a gaming PC.
- theK 3y ago
  The can't follow, why would the panels need smarts if the arguably correct way is to externalize the smartness to enable future evolution?
delecti 3y ago
A smart-but-disconnected TV can meet all of those functional requirements, and your nonfunctional requirements (low processing power) frankly don't matter to most people. My smart-but-disconnected TV turns on just as quickly as my PC monitors can return from sleep (a second or two); changing inputs is just as quick (input button on remote, left/right to select, okay to confirm), and the automatic input selection when a device turns on means I barely even need to endure that tiny hassle; the interface it displays is more than a dumb monitor's OSD, but not by much. You seem to be of the opinion that it's the principle of the thing, mine is avoiding ads and bloated/slow interface. To me, keeping it disconnected avoids all of the problems of it being smart. Those "smart features" are not features to me (or most people here), but neither are they anti-features.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  I also wonder if an older device with lower processing power doesn't draw more power, which is a metric I find it easier to care about.
- harry8 3y ago
  I have a 75" Sony bravia smart tv and it draws 10-20 watts in standby. I have a 70" dell monitor used as a a tv in another room it draws 0 watts in standby.
  - cybertronic 3y ago
    Is the Sony tv disconnected?
  - wholinator2 3y ago
    Maybe my ignorance here but a 70 inch monitor? At what point is it just a dumb tv? Like is monitor a term used to describe its actual engineering and functionality or just how it's used. Also if engineering, is there a substantial price difference?
    - shric 3y ago
      I've never seen a 70 inch monitor either, but usually text looks a lot better on a monitor and of course many monitors offer much higher refresh rates. Ads aren't the only reason why a 42" 4K TV is generally much cheaper than a 32" 4K monitor
mattacular 3y ago
I have a TCL and the factory firmware was out of date and apparently was affecting the picture quality in negative aways. My options were: 1) connect to wifi, update, then disconnect and trust that it's been done or 2) load the update onto a usb stick. I went with #2 but they could just remove that option in the future if they feel it's interfering with their ability to mine data off customers. PS. the update fixed the picture immediately beyond what I was able to achieve by messing with the exposed configs
- me_again 3y ago
  I guess you could change the wifi password after if you're worried the TV is secretly keeping the connection after you disconnect it.
jader201 3y ago
I was actually pleasantly surprised to see the "just don't connect it to the internet" comments, as most of these smart TV threads are usually full of comments complaining about them on principle, even though most of the world doesn't care (connected to the internet or not), and in this case, I think it does solve most of the issues. It's more common for HN to argue against something on principle, even when there's a relatively simple solution/workaround. Not saying there's something inherently wrong with arguing against something on principle, but just saying that it seems more common on HN, and saying that the inverse is "such a typical HN response" is not my experience at all. > It should turn on in seconds, not minutes. I'm assuming this is hyperbole, but if not, I think there are other issues if it's taking minutes for even the smartest, most connected and loaded TV to turn on. Every smart TV I've owned has barely taken seconds to turn on, and I usually don't go out of my way to keep it disconnected from WiFi (unless, for example, I'm trying to avoid an update).
- derefr 3y ago
  I have a smart TV (in fact, the very one recommended in the article), connected to a Sony sound bar, and an Apple TV. I wake the whole assemblage from sleep by prodding the Apple TV remote — and then it takes fully 60 seconds before I can use it, because it seemingly 1. Wakes the TV up in SDR, syncs with the Apple TV; 2. Starts playing audio; 3. Which wakes the soundbar up; 4. Which forces a re-sync as the TV switches to eARC mode; 5. And then the TV notices that the Apple TV is offering to negotiate Dolby Vision, so it does so, and re-syncs again; 6. Which kicks it out of eARC mode, so it needs to re-sync another time to get back into it… And that’s all just if I left it on the Apple TV’s input when putting it to sleep. If I sleep the TV by sleeping a game console when it’s the only thing awake, and then wake it up later with the Apple TV remote, then there at least two more resyncs involved, and also seemingly ten seconds of complete blackness where it’s doing literally nothing. Also, this one’s not the TV’s fault, but YouTube for tVOS gets so confused by these repeated mode-switch re-syncs, that if it’s what would be playing on resume from sleep, then instead the audio will play from the YouTube video, with the first frame of the video frozen on the display and the event loop stalled for another ~60s (I.e. my prompting to go into the task manager to kill the app is ignored, and then 60s later it suddenly happens, but at that point the video resumes so I don’t need to do it any more.) Doesn’t happen with any other app waking from sleep. Oh, and sometimes the TV will just wake to its home menu despite being woken up by the Apple TV remote, and while the system apps will be responsive (once I grab the TV’s remote), it will refuse to open the input switcher, or the device preferences (in order to gracefully reboot it.) when it does this, I have to get up and unplug the damned thing to get it working again.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
How does what you described differ from a monitor? Is it just size?
antegamisou 3y ago
> Disconnecting your smart TV from the internet only means it doesn't spy on you and advertise to you. I'm not even sure that's the case for the ones with WiFi. Software 'kill switches' have become a ridiculous oxymoron.
TacticalCoder 3y ago
> A smart TV with no internet connection And it's soon going to be impossible to dodge it going on the Internet anyway. Manufacturers are hard at work making sure that if any of any neighbor's Internet of Shitty Insecure Things [TM] device participate in the scam, the smart TV shall use your neighbor's device to escape and access the net. I forgot the name of the protocol / "feature", but it's a very real thing. So unless you live in the middle of nowhere, like in a cabin in the woods, it's not going to work for much longer to "no enter the WiFi password" to "just don't connect it to the internet". Just buy a projector made to project reports at corporate meetings or the like. These are still totally dumb and has added bonuses you can get a diagonal bigger than what any TV can offer and it's much closer to the movie theater feeling.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  > And it's soon going to be impossible to dodge it going on the Internet anyway. To the tune of the Sesame Street song: Faraday cage, sweeping the signal away I don't know if transparent Faraday cages are possible, but there's apparently at least one company that will EM shield entire rooms.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    > I don't know if transparent Faraday cages are possible Depending on your budget, you could faraday enclose the whole room / building rather than trying to do an individual device. As related reading from back in the day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)
    - admax88qqq 3y ago
      Of course then you can't use your phone inside your house/living room.
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        They still sell landlines.
eastof 3y ago
As someone who shares your concerns, as well as the privacy concerns, I got a projector a few years back and never looked back. I'm not one to care too much about picture quality and all that so my $300 projector is the perfect device for me: - Turns on pretty quick just has to warm up - Fully dumb, no internet connection or crappy web UI - Giant screen for me to see from anywhere comfortably seated in the room - I just hook up my computer with HDMI for steaming, nice speaker hooked up with 3.5 mm audio
deleted 3y ago
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spacedcowboy 3y ago
My smart TV (not connected to the internet) is just a monitor - it switches on, detects the HDTV signal, and shows it. I'm not aware of any awful flashy interface (I think there is an advert for the manufacturer before it syncs to the HDMI connection - 4 big red letters). That's it. Personally I can live with that. In fact I was considering getting an 8K version of the same to replace the 3 4k monitors I have.
- prepend 3y ago
  My dumb tv (sceptre) syncs to hdmi in a few milliseconds and there’s certainly no time to show anything other than the signal.
  - spacedcowboy 3y ago
    As does mine when it's going from sleep to live. It takes a little longer from cold-start, and you get the manufacturer name, which happens at least once per year. As I said, it's not something I care about.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Which brand, and is it a cheap one? Cause I know some expensive ones aren't sluggish, but I'm not paying for that.
1101010010 3y ago
My "smart" LG TV takes almost an entire minute from when I turn it on to when I can change the brightness settings (because the auto brightness is entirely inaccurate). The whole menu interface is slow, clunky and the remote (which I'd since replaced with a generic universal one) has idiotic buttons for features I don't want and will never use, plus has a microphone. It's a complete train wreck. I also asked LG if I can turn off Wifi/Bluetooth hardware entirely and they said it's categorically not possible, obviously because the data from spying on you is worth more than they make on hardware.
brucethemoose2 3y ago
I agree with what you are saying ideologically, but practically: - Streaming services often work better with native TV apps than external devices, especially in regards to frame consistency and HDR support. - The upscaling/interpolation ASICs in TVs are really good. Until very recently, especially on streaming services, PC and Android upscaling was not good. Hence I dont really want a "dumb" TV/Monitor anymore unless I will never watch any kind of video content on it... mostly because of streaming DRM, which is also awful, but still.
- sealeck 3y ago
  In which case this question is not for you I suppose.
- colinsane 3y ago
  this kind of comment is exactly what GP was speaking against… you’re allowed your preferences, but recognize that they aren’t universal and try not to steamroll over someone else’s divergent preferences.
deleted 3y ago
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yieldcrv 3y ago
It solves the problem presented in this article Which is why people responded that way
KyeRussell 3y ago
You definitely deserve to be called out for dunking on HN stereotypes and then writing the most HN comment ever, I.e. lamenting about things that an even smaller number of people even care about, and conflating it for popular opinion.
- mtrower 3y ago
  Small number of people? You’re right, the average user doesn’t care about all of these details. They just care about the big picture they create, and how that’s terrible.
yieldcrv 3y ago
It solves the problem presented in this article Which is why people responded that way “such a typical HN response” to miss that in order to advance your own separate observation or complaint
rtpg 3y ago
So the screen turning on taking a while on newer TVs is often attributed to smart TVs but apparently the …compression? used for sending TV signals of HDMI has a minimum information requirement meaning that it just takes a while to get a first image (according to what I heard from someone on this site at least)
kalleboo 3y ago
No, the typical HN responses are the "just pay three times as much for a digital signage display because we're all rich Bay Area types here right" and the "Just use a really cheap crappy panel since we're all old curmudgeons who can't tell the difference in image quality anyway, right" ones. "Just don't connect it" is the pragmatic option that normal people do.
- stryker7001 3y ago
  Thank you for your comment of sanity. I have a ‘smart tv’, never connected it to wifi. Turns on within seconds. No bloat.
- fdgddggfddfg 3y ago
  I think we are all forgetting something here... Android smart TVs are just an android phone that is not pocket-able.... If all of us galaxy brains here stop arguing and made a crew to make ROMS for our TVs that remove all the spyware... the world would be a much much MUCH better place!
knodi123 3y ago
so, a monitor
- hot_gril 3y ago
  TVs have decent built-in speakers, a remote, probably more inputs, antenna/cable tuners, and a focus on large sizes, while not being so optimized for low-latency input.
  - knodi123 3y ago
    Sure, but the guy I replied to said > It should have exactly as much processing power as is required to pipe an hdmi signal to the panel and nothing more. [...] I'd even prefer it not have speakers. So I think a monitor is what he wants.
    - mtrower 3y ago
      I mean it needs a tuner to actually qualify as a TV. The bit about latencies and form factor, as well as the pricing for such, is also critical. As is the remote. If he truly doesn’t care about any of those things, then I doubt he’d be here complaining about it. So imo at least some combination of the above is implicit.
    - hot_gril 3y ago
      Ah, lost track of the reply level
chillfox 3y ago
This, so much this... Smart TVs are slow sluggish trash.
j45 3y ago
I prefer to purchase my own smarts for tv too. There are fewer and fewer non smart tvs that have a baseline of quality. It’s reasonably easy to not turn on the smart features at all, and leave it possible for software updates for the photo, or other operational tweaks. As for difficult input changes I haven’t about those in a very long time since a harmony hub or something similar can handle that and anything else needed pretty trivially. Smart TVs also come with apps that make input changes one click.
p5a0u9l 3y ago
Children are complaining, but this is exactly right. Yes, I can work around the device connecting me to the internet. What I’d really prefer though is to exchange whatever cost went into the shit add ons, the Bluetooth, the speakers, the wifi, the usb, and put that into a better display. Done. I’m sure there’s a good business reason why this simple, obvious project is not what’s in the market.
- dreamcompiler 3y ago
  The good business reason is that Bluetooth etc cost essentially nothing compared to the $$$ they make selling your privacy.
  - numpad0 3y ago
    I doubt it's actual nothing, rather I think the added cost in absolute value is used to improve operating margins in ratio. This would also drive internal incentives, and it's rendering the cost to the manufacturer irrelevant so long that the capitals at hand and market demand can absorb it. e.g. $150 TV + $75 chips - $100 rebates = $125 -> negative cost and +10% margin to add chips! And the problem is that we as customers are still charged the full $225, not the essentially nothing.
    - rolenthedeep 3y ago
      I do Bluetooth hardware for my job. At the scale that TV manufacturers operate at, I would be extremely surprised if Bluetooth cost more than a dollar for them to implement. I operate on the scale of hundreds to thousands of units, and Bluetooth adds less than $5 to each unit. At millions, I assume it's more or less free.
- shawnz 3y ago
  Suppose economics of scale make it cheaper to produce the smart devices than the specwise-equivalent dumb devices, just like how it's cheaper to produce microcontroller-based electronics today than the "simpler" analog electronics which came before. Then what is the argument for the dumb devices?
bradgessler 3y ago
I bought a TV recently and "didn't connect it to the WiFi", but guess what it does? If can't connect to the internet for a certain period of time, it desperately wants to display a "Internet Connection Error" message that puts the entire display into a state where CEC doesn't work, so the whole damn thing is useless.
- bertjk 3y ago
  Which brand / model? Please name and shame.
  - bradgessler 3y ago
    Vizio M65Q6
    - ian-g 3y ago
      > Vizio Well there's your problem (paraphrased from someone who used to work for them)
      - bradgessler 3y ago
        Yeah, it’s sad all the answers to this problem are some form of victim shaming.
- rendall 3y ago
  I am frankly surprised they do not all do this, and predict they all will. There will be no "don't connect it to the internet" nor even "use a pie hole" solutions possible, because the manufacturers will intentionally block them
  - logi2mus 3y ago
    Use monitor and smart TV dongle?
    - 3y ago
mtrower 3y ago
> It should turn on in seconds, not minutes. Dear god, has this become a thing??
cat_plus_plus 3y ago
So that OSD menu, you don't want it to be localizable or accessible with voiceover? No need for customizable picture modes, high quality 1080p to 4K upscaling, wireless surround sound setup, non-line-of sight BLE remote? Since you like to live off the grid, wouldn't it be helpful if ATSC tuner could get over the air program guide and let you record stuff you like to a USB stick? If not, well it's your life, but that's a pretty small market, not likely to have much choice or good price/feature ratio.
- mtrower 3y ago
  Uh… no, none of that, actually. What the hell? In fact, I actually don’t personally know anybody, of any technical level or age group, who uses any of the features you mentioned. So, maybe the market is not as small as you think. > good price/feature ratio When the features aren’t useful to you they don’t increase the price/feature ratio. When the features are anti-features, you could even consider the ratio to be getting worse…
- rolenthedeep 3y ago
  "but what about!" Your question is answered in the comment you replied to
guilamu 3y ago
I don't know, man. I've got a brand new 48 inch LG oled smart TV. Never connected it to internet. I hook-up a shield TV on it. Boot time is 5 seconds and goes directly to the shield TV. I have no idea what the actual tv os looks like. Never had a single issue, it just act as a dumb monitor would.
Abishek_Muthian 3y ago
I have Panasonic FHD LED TV from pre-smart era which I don't intend to change anytime soon for the same reasons you've mentioned and I also maintain a thread[1] on dumb TVs on my problem validation forum hoping that someone would point me to a good dumb TV which is available in my country. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/64-make-tv-dumb-again-privacy-cybersecurity https://needgap.com/problems/64-make-tv-dumb-again-privacy-c...
ElFitz 3y ago
> "just don't connect it to the internet" is such a typical HN response that completely misses the point. A smart TV with no internet connection is still a smart TV. It still has an entire operating system that needs to load wifi, ethernet, Bluetooth, usb driver stacks. It still has an awful, flashy interface that adds unnecessary steps between changing inputs. It still tries to load god knows what apps every time you turn it on. And that’s forgetting that some of those, when not actively connected to any specific wifi network, will just connect, on their own, to any nearby open wifi network. See http://web.archive.org/web/20210828035115/https://forum.developer.samsung.com/t/if-you-choose-to-not-connect-your-samsung-smart-tv-to-wifi-it-will-secretly-connect-to-your-neighbours-passwordless-wifi/7926 http://web.archive.org/web/20210828035115/https://forum.deve...
- ornornor 3y ago
  > Because end user questions disrupt developer discussion this thread will be removed soon. Lol. I’ve worked for Samsung’s TV (and ad business, I’m ashamed to say) and this doesn’t surprise me one bit. The culture was actively user hostile and gave zero fucks about security or quality. All that mattered was how much data we could suck out of the users home. That included automated content recognition so we’d know what you were watching at all time including porn even if it was streamed via your laptop, or reporting all the IDs of all hdmi devices connected to the tv, or scanning your internal network to find out what devices are there to then sell this info to advertisers and have you switch from Nintendo to Xbox for example. Fwiw this was the first and last time I’ve ever worked in adtech, I’ve sworn to never ever enable this industry ever again.
  - bspammer 3y ago
    The automated content recognition thing is surprising, at least to me. That’s so invasive I’d assume it was illegal, but I guess I’m too optimistic about privacy laws.
    - ElFitz 3y ago
      It’s been documented https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/smarter-living/how-to-stop-your-smart-tv-from-tracking-what-you-watch.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/smarter-living/how-to-sto... They also unilaterally decided to add a new "ad" feature to existing TVs https://www.adweek.com/convergent-tv/samsung-ads-debuts-three-new-ad-offerings-boosts-samsung-tv-plus-experience/ https://www.adweek.com/convergent-tv/samsung-ads-debuts-thre...
ornornor 3y ago
On that matter I have nothing but praise to give about my Panasonic OLED display. It is a smart tv in the sense that it has YouTube Netflix etc apps, but it’s working perfectly fine without internet access (it has local network only), works with home assistant, shows no ads ever (even if online), starts up in 5–10 seconds from button press to displaying the picture, has a dedicated remote button for switching inputs, and looks fantastic (OLED with tons of calibration options)
- pkulak 3y ago
  My Sony is about as pleasant. I’ve got it on my iOT network just so HA can see it, and it’s fine with having no internet access.
sgtnoodle 3y ago
It's not the response you're looking for, but I recently got an LG C2 and plugged in a Roku from day 1. It turns on relatively quickly, and Web OS stays out of the way. I do have it connected to wifi, though, so I do get the occasional prompt to update the TV's OS. I was previously using a Sony LCD TV from 2015 or so. I originally bought it as a monitor, but it became the living room TV when we bought a house. While I originally liked the built-in Android TV, it aged poorly. The TV's hardware decoders have silicon bugs that never got patched around. Netflix stopped working after they deployed their new compression a couple years ago. The only way I was able to get it working again was by having a friend at Netflix file an internal ticket. All they did was add the model number to a block list so that it would fall back to the older compression. The LG is a joy. It's been a very satisfying purchase. Honestly, the Roku might as well be the TV's built in OS. My 4 year old can reliably turn it on and launch Disney+ in 3 button presses. Also, I bought it refurbished with warranty on eBay for $1k; the only flaw was a couple stripped out threads for the table stand. I hung it on the wall, so well worth the $400-600 discount. I've plugged in my Steam Deck as well. It's a little bit clunkier due to lack of CEC, but I am using a random Thinkpad USB3 dock I salvaged from a junk bin at work several years ago. I suspect a more modern dock would be flawless.
yencabulator 3y ago
My older-generation-smart TV remote now has booby trap buttons that when pressed lead to apps trying to start for 15-30 seconds before timing out, because the TV is not network connected. They are some of the most prominent buttons on the remote, and e.g. right next to the on/off button. I'd be happier without them.

MrFoof 3y ago

It also doesn't prevent some TVs from finding access points it can connect to, in which it then will entirely on its own. There's quite a few that'll do that.

madeofpalk 3y ago

meh, i think your response is more 'typical HN'. Nether are more correct than the other, but if you're annoyed or distrustful of all the internet connected factors of a TV, just don't connect it to the internet. I think that's a fine non-perfect, pragmatic solution.

tsujamin 3y ago
What it doesn’t solve is the friction and bloatware of the tvos. My Sony tv’s Android interface has unbearable input lag using its menus, so I inevitably leave it set to my appletv hdmi input. Could the TV do everything the appletv could? Yep just worse and I can’t get rid of it
- warning26 3y ago
  That applies regardless of whether or not the tv is “smart” - my current “smart” Roku TV runs great, and I had an old “dumb” Samsung that took forever to do anything. Well-written software is what helps here, not smartness or lack thereof.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    No, dumbness helps. You want to solve the input delay, you can use an external HDMI switch or get a dumb TV.
antegamisou 3y ago
But your response confirmed the parent's part about missing the point which is that Smart TVs' OS is an absolute bloatware dumpster fire. This isn't some silly /r/privacy - tier paranoia about not wanting being tracked by your home devices, though it's a reasonable concern to an extent. It's just about the people who don't care about those shitty overpriced streaming services and just want to watch the news without having to wait 15 damn seconds for the thing to turn on or worse, having to be more than patient to switch channels after turning it on because God knows what is running on the background and the channel hasn't changed in over two minutes in spite of having spammed the remote already.
autoexec 3y ago
"Don't connect it to the internet" might work, assuming it doesn't aggressively scan for open connections every chance it gets, but if this becomes common it'll only be a matter of time until you're forced to sign up for an account at initial setup, and the TV starts refusing to function at all without an internet connection (or it's been more than x days without one), and searches for nearby bluetooth devices of the same brand which are connected to send your data through that internet connected device instead. The only way to solve this problem for good is to regulate the industry, but failing that, the least we should do is make it clear we're not interesting in buying their shitty spying products by refusing to hand over our money in the first place. Buying the TVs, connected or not, signals that you support them and what they are doing, and more importantly it makes doing the things they are doing profitable for them. It reinforces the behavior you're trying to stop. That's not just "imperfect" it's counter-productive.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  > The only way to solve this problem for good is to regulate the industry At a place like Hacker News I expect there will be people who have the technical know-how to make a non-smart TV, or even a modular, pick-and-choose, TV, and crowdfund it. At the very least. Lots of industries that aren't tech-adjacent, or are very expensive, need regulation in order to stop particular practices from becoming universal trends, but TVs shouldn't be one of them.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    there's one person in the comments here already who is trying to build dumb TVs, and if they do it, that'll be where I'm buying my next TV, but I fear that even if they are successful eventually they too will turn to spying and ad pushing, because companies will always make more money by doing so and if their own greed doesn't push them to do it, their shareholders will. Sometimes, it will always be more profitable for a company to refuse to provide what consumers want. There is no price they can charge us that will ever beat charging that same price and also selling every scrap of our data they can on top of it. If the skills and materials to construct a quality TV were common or easily obtainable, I'd agree that the smart TV problem would be something we could solve ourselves in our own garages, but I'm not convinced that's the case which means nearly every one of us will be dependent on someone else to build and sell us displays, and as long as that's true we'll be at the mercy of their benevolence and their continuing willingness to reject huge piles of easy money.
kelnos 3y ago
Personally I'm more concerned about power consumption. My current TV, when it is off, it is off. It sips a tiny amount of power so it can listen for IR signals from the remote, but that's it. Smart TVs never really turn off. If they did, they would take too long to "boot up" and consumers would be frustrated and angry. They're more like a laptop in a not-too-deep sleep state when they're turned off. Another commenter mentioned their smart TV consumes 10-20W when turned "off". That's just gross. It should consume milliwatts, at most. And yes, I know that there are things in my house that consume far more power. But I actually get something for that power. A smart TV that I will of course never connect to the internet gives me nothing for that waste while in standby mode.
- throwaway2190 3y ago
  It's hard to understand because a smartphone can wake instantly with a fraction of the idle power draw. Smart TV = dumb TV + smartphone chipset in many cases so, where is it all going? Here's a link to a previous discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32888844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32888844
hot_gril 3y ago
The comment isn't about trust, it's just that the smart TVs are slower even when non-networked.
rolenthedeep 3y ago
Did you read the comment you replied to? Because it was a direct response to comments exactly like this one.

mattl 3y ago

You can build your own with a monitor and SFTP, etc.

TheSpiceIsLife 3y ago
What does SFTP mean in This context? Only thing I can think of is SSH FTP, but not sure how that ties in?
- mattl 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15605423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15605423 It’s a classic HN reply
  - Hackbraten 3y ago
    Here’s the proto-reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
    - TheSpiceIsLife 3y ago
      Ha! I should have known. I've, in jest also, used the archetype here myself.

nfRfqX5n 3y ago

What TV takes minutes to turn on?

bobbylarrybobby 3y ago
My smart tv is set to turn on and switch to the Apple TV when the Apple TV wakes from sleep. The tv turns on in about a second, waits for a few seconds, and then waits five seconds to switch to the Apple TV.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Same except mine goes black a few times trying to negotiate with the HDMI source. Whole process from turning on my TV to watching something on it takes 1-2 minutes.
xp84 3y ago
Maybe minutes was hyperbole, but my Sony Smart TV (to be fair, it's the circa-2015-ish one relegated to the bedroom today) is unresponsive to silly human concerns like "changing inputs" or "adjusting volume" for a good 30-40 seconds when it turns on. ("Please wait.") To mitigate this, you can pick a certain 4-6 hours of each day (24h isn't allowed) during which it'll make sure to stay "booted" but with the panel off. Or if you don't enable this, you'll enjoy lower power consumption but have to deal with this foolishness every time you turn it on.
outcoldman 3y ago
My vizio 75” oled TV takes a minute to turn on. Disconnected from internet. Sometimes annoyingly asks to connect to wifi
numpad0 3y ago
None of them, because the Linux computer on TV boots up and goes to sleep immediately upon being plugged in, and is connected to an internal video mixer chip rather than managing the panel directly.

Terretta 3y ago

The problem is when HD video standards evolve (DV, HDR10), or bugs are found, etc., as well as handling things like VRR or lip-sync. Unless you externalize smarts to e.g. HDFury VRRoom (strongly recommend), these panels need some smarts, regardless.

voltagex_ 3y ago
$549USD - more expensive than some people's TVs.
- Terretta 3y ago
  Sort of the point. This tech is necessary somewhere for a lot of uses of TV panels. Make a panel dumb enough, cheap enough, it loses capabilities of displaying Netflix's highest quality or supporting Xbox Series X and PS5 or less a gaming PC.
theK 3y ago
The can't follow, why would the panels need smarts if the arguably correct way is to externalize the smartness to enable future evolution?

delecti 3y ago

A smart-but-disconnected TV can meet all of those functional requirements, and your nonfunctional requirements (low processing power) frankly don't matter to most people. My smart-but-disconnected TV turns on just as quickly as my PC monitors can return from sleep (a second or two); changing inputs is just as quick (input button on remote, left/right to select, okay to confirm), and the automatic input selection when a device turns on means I barely even need to endure that tiny hassle; the interface it displays is more than a dumb monitor's OSD, but not by much. You seem to be of the opinion that it's the principle of the thing, mine is avoiding ads and bloated/slow interface. To me, keeping it disconnected avoids all of the problems of it being smart. Those "smart features" are not features to me (or most people here), but neither are they anti-features.

emodendroket 3y ago
I also wonder if an older device with lower processing power doesn't draw more power, which is a metric I find it easier to care about.
harry8 3y ago
I have a 75" Sony bravia smart tv and it draws 10-20 watts in standby. I have a 70" dell monitor used as a a tv in another room it draws 0 watts in standby.
- cybertronic 3y ago
  Is the Sony tv disconnected?
- wholinator2 3y ago
  Maybe my ignorance here but a 70 inch monitor? At what point is it just a dumb tv? Like is monitor a term used to describe its actual engineering and functionality or just how it's used. Also if engineering, is there a substantial price difference?
  - shric 3y ago
    I've never seen a 70 inch monitor either, but usually text looks a lot better on a monitor and of course many monitors offer much higher refresh rates. Ads aren't the only reason why a 42" 4K TV is generally much cheaper than a 32" 4K monitor

mattacular 3y ago

I have a TCL and the factory firmware was out of date and apparently was affecting the picture quality in negative aways. My options were: 1) connect to wifi, update, then disconnect and trust that it's been done or 2) load the update onto a usb stick. I went with #2 but they could just remove that option in the future if they feel it's interfering with their ability to mine data off customers. PS. the update fixed the picture immediately beyond what I was able to achieve by messing with the exposed configs

me_again 3y ago
I guess you could change the wifi password after if you're worried the TV is secretly keeping the connection after you disconnect it.

jader201 3y ago

I was actually pleasantly surprised to see the "just don't connect it to the internet" comments, as most of these smart TV threads are usually full of comments complaining about them on principle, even though most of the world doesn't care (connected to the internet or not), and in this case, I think it does solve most of the issues. It's more common for HN to argue against something on principle, even when there's a relatively simple solution/workaround. Not saying there's something inherently wrong with arguing against something on principle, but just saying that it seems more common on HN, and saying that the inverse is "such a typical HN response" is not my experience at all. > It should turn on in seconds, not minutes. I'm assuming this is hyperbole, but if not, I think there are other issues if it's taking minutes for even the smartest, most connected and loaded TV to turn on. Every smart TV I've owned has barely taken seconds to turn on, and I usually don't go out of my way to keep it disconnected from WiFi (unless, for example, I'm trying to avoid an update).

derefr 3y ago
I have a smart TV (in fact, the very one recommended in the article), connected to a Sony sound bar, and an Apple TV. I wake the whole assemblage from sleep by prodding the Apple TV remote — and then it takes fully 60 seconds before I can use it, because it seemingly 1. Wakes the TV up in SDR, syncs with the Apple TV; 2. Starts playing audio; 3. Which wakes the soundbar up; 4. Which forces a re-sync as the TV switches to eARC mode; 5. And then the TV notices that the Apple TV is offering to negotiate Dolby Vision, so it does so, and re-syncs again; 6. Which kicks it out of eARC mode, so it needs to re-sync another time to get back into it… And that’s all just if I left it on the Apple TV’s input when putting it to sleep. If I sleep the TV by sleeping a game console when it’s the only thing awake, and then wake it up later with the Apple TV remote, then there at least two more resyncs involved, and also seemingly ten seconds of complete blackness where it’s doing literally nothing. Also, this one’s not the TV’s fault, but YouTube for tVOS gets so confused by these repeated mode-switch re-syncs, that if it’s what would be playing on resume from sleep, then instead the audio will play from the YouTube video, with the first frame of the video frozen on the display and the event loop stalled for another ~60s (I.e. my prompting to go into the task manager to kill the app is ignored, and then 60s later it suddenly happens, but at that point the video resumes so I don’t need to do it any more.) Doesn’t happen with any other app waking from sleep. Oh, and sometimes the TV will just wake to its home menu despite being woken up by the Apple TV remote, and while the system apps will be responsive (once I grab the TV’s remote), it will refuse to open the input switcher, or the device preferences (in order to gracefully reboot it.) when it does this, I have to get up and unplug the damned thing to get it working again.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago

How does what you described differ from a monitor? Is it just size?

antegamisou 3y ago

> Disconnecting your smart TV from the internet only means it doesn't spy on you and advertise to you. I'm not even sure that's the case for the ones with WiFi. Software 'kill switches' have become a ridiculous oxymoron.

TacticalCoder 3y ago

> A smart TV with no internet connection And it's soon going to be impossible to dodge it going on the Internet anyway. Manufacturers are hard at work making sure that if any of any neighbor's Internet of Shitty Insecure Things [TM] device participate in the scam, the smart TV shall use your neighbor's device to escape and access the net. I forgot the name of the protocol / "feature", but it's a very real thing. So unless you live in the middle of nowhere, like in a cabin in the woods, it's not going to work for much longer to "no enter the WiFi password" to "just don't connect it to the internet". Just buy a projector made to project reports at corporate meetings or the like. These are still totally dumb and has added bonuses you can get a diagonal bigger than what any TV can offer and it's much closer to the movie theater feeling.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
> And it's soon going to be impossible to dodge it going on the Internet anyway. To the tune of the Sesame Street song: Faraday cage, sweeping the signal away I don't know if transparent Faraday cages are possible, but there's apparently at least one company that will EM shield entire rooms.
- justinclift 3y ago
  > I don't know if transparent Faraday cages are possible Depending on your budget, you could faraday enclose the whole room / building rather than trying to do an individual device. As related reading from back in the day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)
  - admax88qqq 3y ago
    Of course then you can't use your phone inside your house/living room.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      They still sell landlines.

eastof 3y ago

As someone who shares your concerns, as well as the privacy concerns, I got a projector a few years back and never looked back. I'm not one to care too much about picture quality and all that so my $300 projector is the perfect device for me: - Turns on pretty quick just has to warm up - Fully dumb, no internet connection or crappy web UI - Giant screen for me to see from anywhere comfortably seated in the room - I just hook up my computer with HDMI for steaming, nice speaker hooked up with 3.5 mm audio

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

spacedcowboy 3y ago

My smart TV (not connected to the internet) is just a monitor - it switches on, detects the HDTV signal, and shows it. I'm not aware of any awful flashy interface (I think there is an advert for the manufacturer before it syncs to the HDMI connection - 4 big red letters). That's it. Personally I can live with that. In fact I was considering getting an 8K version of the same to replace the 3 4k monitors I have.

prepend 3y ago
My dumb tv (sceptre) syncs to hdmi in a few milliseconds and there’s certainly no time to show anything other than the signal.
- spacedcowboy 3y ago
  As does mine when it's going from sleep to live. It takes a little longer from cold-start, and you get the manufacturer name, which happens at least once per year. As I said, it's not something I care about.
hot_gril 3y ago
Which brand, and is it a cheap one? Cause I know some expensive ones aren't sluggish, but I'm not paying for that.

1101010010 3y ago

My "smart" LG TV takes almost an entire minute from when I turn it on to when I can change the brightness settings (because the auto brightness is entirely inaccurate). The whole menu interface is slow, clunky and the remote (which I'd since replaced with a generic universal one) has idiotic buttons for features I don't want and will never use, plus has a microphone. It's a complete train wreck. I also asked LG if I can turn off Wifi/Bluetooth hardware entirely and they said it's categorically not possible, obviously because the data from spying on you is worth more than they make on hardware.

brucethemoose2 3y ago

I agree with what you are saying ideologically, but practically: - Streaming services often work better with native TV apps than external devices, especially in regards to frame consistency and HDR support. - The upscaling/interpolation ASICs in TVs are really good. Until very recently, especially on streaming services, PC and Android upscaling was not good. Hence I dont really want a "dumb" TV/Monitor anymore unless I will never watch any kind of video content on it... mostly because of streaming DRM, which is also awful, but still.

sealeck 3y ago
In which case this question is not for you I suppose.
colinsane 3y ago
this kind of comment is exactly what GP was speaking against… you’re allowed your preferences, but recognize that they aren’t universal and try not to steamroll over someone else’s divergent preferences.

deleted 3y ago

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yieldcrv 3y ago

It solves the problem presented in this article Which is why people responded that way

KyeRussell 3y ago

You definitely deserve to be called out for dunking on HN stereotypes and then writing the most HN comment ever, I.e. lamenting about things that an even smaller number of people even care about, and conflating it for popular opinion.

mtrower 3y ago
Small number of people? You’re right, the average user doesn’t care about all of these details. They just care about the big picture they create, and how that’s terrible.

yieldcrv 3y ago

It solves the problem presented in this article Which is why people responded that way “such a typical HN response” to miss that in order to advance your own separate observation or complaint

rtpg 3y ago

So the screen turning on taking a while on newer TVs is often attributed to smart TVs but apparently the …compression? used for sending TV signals of HDMI has a minimum information requirement meaning that it just takes a while to get a first image (according to what I heard from someone on this site at least)

kalleboo 3y ago

No, the typical HN responses are the "just pay three times as much for a digital signage display because we're all rich Bay Area types here right" and the "Just use a really cheap crappy panel since we're all old curmudgeons who can't tell the difference in image quality anyway, right" ones. "Just don't connect it" is the pragmatic option that normal people do.

stryker7001 3y ago
Thank you for your comment of sanity. I have a ‘smart tv’, never connected it to wifi. Turns on within seconds. No bloat.
fdgddggfddfg 3y ago
I think we are all forgetting something here... Android smart TVs are just an android phone that is not pocket-able.... If all of us galaxy brains here stop arguing and made a crew to make ROMS for our TVs that remove all the spyware... the world would be a much much MUCH better place!

knodi123 3y ago

so, a monitor

hot_gril 3y ago
TVs have decent built-in speakers, a remote, probably more inputs, antenna/cable tuners, and a focus on large sizes, while not being so optimized for low-latency input.
- knodi123 3y ago
  Sure, but the guy I replied to said > It should have exactly as much processing power as is required to pipe an hdmi signal to the panel and nothing more. [...] I'd even prefer it not have speakers. So I think a monitor is what he wants.
  - mtrower 3y ago
    I mean it needs a tuner to actually qualify as a TV. The bit about latencies and form factor, as well as the pricing for such, is also critical. As is the remote. If he truly doesn’t care about any of those things, then I doubt he’d be here complaining about it. So imo at least some combination of the above is implicit.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    Ah, lost track of the reply level

chillfox 3y ago

This, so much this... Smart TVs are slow sluggish trash.

j45 3y ago

I prefer to purchase my own smarts for tv too. There are fewer and fewer non smart tvs that have a baseline of quality. It’s reasonably easy to not turn on the smart features at all, and leave it possible for software updates for the photo, or other operational tweaks. As for difficult input changes I haven’t about those in a very long time since a harmony hub or something similar can handle that and anything else needed pretty trivially. Smart TVs also come with apps that make input changes one click.

p5a0u9l 3y ago

Children are complaining, but this is exactly right. Yes, I can work around the device connecting me to the internet. What I’d really prefer though is to exchange whatever cost went into the shit add ons, the Bluetooth, the speakers, the wifi, the usb, and put that into a better display. Done. I’m sure there’s a good business reason why this simple, obvious project is not what’s in the market.

dreamcompiler 3y ago
The good business reason is that Bluetooth etc cost essentially nothing compared to the $$$ they make selling your privacy.
- numpad0 3y ago
  I doubt it's actual nothing, rather I think the added cost in absolute value is used to improve operating margins in ratio. This would also drive internal incentives, and it's rendering the cost to the manufacturer irrelevant so long that the capitals at hand and market demand can absorb it. e.g. $150 TV + $75 chips - $100 rebates = $125 -> negative cost and +10% margin to add chips! And the problem is that we as customers are still charged the full $225, not the essentially nothing.
  - rolenthedeep 3y ago
    I do Bluetooth hardware for my job. At the scale that TV manufacturers operate at, I would be extremely surprised if Bluetooth cost more than a dollar for them to implement. I operate on the scale of hundreds to thousands of units, and Bluetooth adds less than $5 to each unit. At millions, I assume it's more or less free.
shawnz 3y ago
Suppose economics of scale make it cheaper to produce the smart devices than the specwise-equivalent dumb devices, just like how it's cheaper to produce microcontroller-based electronics today than the "simpler" analog electronics which came before. Then what is the argument for the dumb devices?

bradgessler 3y ago

I bought a TV recently and "didn't connect it to the WiFi", but guess what it does? If can't connect to the internet for a certain period of time, it desperately wants to display a "Internet Connection Error" message that puts the entire display into a state where CEC doesn't work, so the whole damn thing is useless.

bertjk 3y ago
Which brand / model? Please name and shame.
- bradgessler 3y ago
  Vizio M65Q6
  - ian-g 3y ago
    > Vizio Well there's your problem (paraphrased from someone who used to work for them)
    - bradgessler 3y ago
      Yeah, it’s sad all the answers to this problem are some form of victim shaming.
rendall 3y ago
I am frankly surprised they do not all do this, and predict they all will. There will be no "don't connect it to the internet" nor even "use a pie hole" solutions possible, because the manufacturers will intentionally block them
- logi2mus 3y ago
  Use monitor and smart TV dongle?
  - 3y ago

mtrower 3y ago

> It should turn on in seconds, not minutes. Dear god, has this become a thing??

cat_plus_plus 3y ago

So that OSD menu, you don't want it to be localizable or accessible with voiceover? No need for customizable picture modes, high quality 1080p to 4K upscaling, wireless surround sound setup, non-line-of sight BLE remote? Since you like to live off the grid, wouldn't it be helpful if ATSC tuner could get over the air program guide and let you record stuff you like to a USB stick? If not, well it's your life, but that's a pretty small market, not likely to have much choice or good price/feature ratio.

mtrower 3y ago
Uh… no, none of that, actually. What the hell? In fact, I actually don’t personally know anybody, of any technical level or age group, who uses any of the features you mentioned. So, maybe the market is not as small as you think. > good price/feature ratio When the features aren’t useful to you they don’t increase the price/feature ratio. When the features are anti-features, you could even consider the ratio to be getting worse…
rolenthedeep 3y ago
"but what about!" Your question is answered in the comment you replied to

guilamu 3y ago

I don't know, man. I've got a brand new 48 inch LG oled smart TV. Never connected it to internet. I hook-up a shield TV on it. Boot time is 5 seconds and goes directly to the shield TV. I have no idea what the actual tv os looks like. Never had a single issue, it just act as a dumb monitor would.

Abishek_Muthian 3y ago

I have Panasonic FHD LED TV from pre-smart era which I don't intend to change anytime soon for the same reasons you've mentioned and I also maintain a thread[1] on dumb TVs on my problem validation forum hoping that someone would point me to a good dumb TV which is available in my country. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/64-make-tv-dumb-again-privacy-cybersecurity https://needgap.com/problems/64-make-tv-dumb-again-privacy-c...

ElFitz 3y ago

> "just don't connect it to the internet" is such a typical HN response that completely misses the point. A smart TV with no internet connection is still a smart TV. It still has an entire operating system that needs to load wifi, ethernet, Bluetooth, usb driver stacks. It still has an awful, flashy interface that adds unnecessary steps between changing inputs. It still tries to load god knows what apps every time you turn it on. And that’s forgetting that some of those, when not actively connected to any specific wifi network, will just connect, on their own, to any nearby open wifi network. See http://web.archive.org/web/20210828035115/https://forum.developer.samsung.com/t/if-you-choose-to-not-connect-your-samsung-smart-tv-to-wifi-it-will-secretly-connect-to-your-neighbours-passwordless-wifi/7926 http://web.archive.org/web/20210828035115/https://forum.deve...

ornornor 3y ago
> Because end user questions disrupt developer discussion this thread will be removed soon. Lol. I’ve worked for Samsung’s TV (and ad business, I’m ashamed to say) and this doesn’t surprise me one bit. The culture was actively user hostile and gave zero fucks about security or quality. All that mattered was how much data we could suck out of the users home. That included automated content recognition so we’d know what you were watching at all time including porn even if it was streamed via your laptop, or reporting all the IDs of all hdmi devices connected to the tv, or scanning your internal network to find out what devices are there to then sell this info to advertisers and have you switch from Nintendo to Xbox for example. Fwiw this was the first and last time I’ve ever worked in adtech, I’ve sworn to never ever enable this industry ever again.
- bspammer 3y ago
  The automated content recognition thing is surprising, at least to me. That’s so invasive I’d assume it was illegal, but I guess I’m too optimistic about privacy laws.
  - ElFitz 3y ago
    It’s been documented https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/smarter-living/how-to-stop-your-smart-tv-from-tracking-what-you-watch.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/smarter-living/how-to-sto... They also unilaterally decided to add a new "ad" feature to existing TVs https://www.adweek.com/convergent-tv/samsung-ads-debuts-three-new-ad-offerings-boosts-samsung-tv-plus-experience/ https://www.adweek.com/convergent-tv/samsung-ads-debuts-thre...

ornornor 3y ago

On that matter I have nothing but praise to give about my Panasonic OLED display. It is a smart tv in the sense that it has YouTube Netflix etc apps, but it’s working perfectly fine without internet access (it has local network only), works with home assistant, shows no ads ever (even if online), starts up in 5–10 seconds from button press to displaying the picture, has a dedicated remote button for switching inputs, and looks fantastic (OLED with tons of calibration options)

pkulak 3y ago
My Sony is about as pleasant. I’ve got it on my iOT network just so HA can see it, and it’s fine with having no internet access.

sgtnoodle 3y ago

It's not the response you're looking for, but I recently got an LG C2 and plugged in a Roku from day 1. It turns on relatively quickly, and Web OS stays out of the way. I do have it connected to wifi, though, so I do get the occasional prompt to update the TV's OS. I was previously using a Sony LCD TV from 2015 or so. I originally bought it as a monitor, but it became the living room TV when we bought a house. While I originally liked the built-in Android TV, it aged poorly. The TV's hardware decoders have silicon bugs that never got patched around. Netflix stopped working after they deployed their new compression a couple years ago. The only way I was able to get it working again was by having a friend at Netflix file an internal ticket. All they did was add the model number to a block list so that it would fall back to the older compression. The LG is a joy. It's been a very satisfying purchase. Honestly, the Roku might as well be the TV's built in OS. My 4 year old can reliably turn it on and launch Disney+ in 3 button presses. Also, I bought it refurbished with warranty on eBay for $1k; the only flaw was a couple stripped out threads for the table stand. I hung it on the wall, so well worth the $400-600 discount. I've plugged in my Steam Deck as well. It's a little bit clunkier due to lack of CEC, but I am using a random Thinkpad USB3 dock I salvaged from a junk bin at work several years ago. I suspect a more modern dock would be flawless.

yencabulator 3y ago

My older-generation-smart TV remote now has booby trap buttons that when pressed lead to apps trying to start for 15-30 seconds before timing out, because the TV is not network connected. They are some of the most prominent buttons on the remote, and e.g. right next to the on/off button. I'd be happier without them.