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Out of curiosity, do you happen to know the differences for the Costco Sony TVs? It may have changed recently but last I knew Sony TVs had few if any ties to S
by jwells89 3y ago
Out of curiosity, do you happen to know the differences for the Costco Sony TVs?
It may have changed recently but last I knew Sony TVs had few if any ties to Sony services, come loaded with basically unchanged Google TV, and are perfectly happy to be used as fully offline "dumb" TVs. If that holds true for current Sony TVs it's hard to imagine what would be different in Costco versions.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoCurrently, I'm not convinced there is a difference. There used to be, in that some Sony TVs would require an out-of-the-box firmware update in order to enable all features, but the Costco models didn't. But I don't think that's true with the current generation.
- spywaregorilla 3y agoI feel like people get hung up on silly things. What does "enable all features" mean? Does it mean using the smart tv features? I feel like that's pretty reasonable. I say as someone who just bought a sony tv, declined all features, and just use an hdmi input from an actual computer. Very pleasant experience. Can't say I've ever seen a TV that doesn't actually allow you to do this.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoIt wasn't smart TV features, no. From memory, it was things like variable refresh rate support, for games consoles.
- saratogacx 3y agoI had a Vizio that only let you change inputs and volume, everything else only worked through a phone app that worked over the internet. This included things like picture/sound settings and input labels. I hated that t.v. And was glad it died prematurely.
- spywaregorilla 3y agoSeems dubious. Got a model to look up?
- Rebelgecko 3y agoSome companies just do that so they don't have to price match competitors
- reaperducer 3y agoOut of curiosity, do you happen to know the differences for the Costco Sony TVs? On a related note, the LG TV I bought at Fry's Electronics was a Fry's-only model. Investigating it, I found out it was actually a Brazilian model with the built-in DVR disabled for the American market. I thought about trying to hack it to enable the DVR, but realized it would have to connect to the internet to retrieve program information, and there's no way I'm going to let my TV connect to the internet. (And before a bunch of HN smarty pantses tell me it will just latch onto a neighbor's wifi, that's not possible in my building, as we're all on the same building-wide VLAN, and you have to register a new device's MAC address in the portal to allow it in. I'm also too high up to pick up any street-level wifi.)
- ipaddr 3y agoPlanes, open wifi drones, someone setups open hotspot from their mobile.
- reaperducer 3y agoPlanes Are you under the impression that airplane wifi reaches the ground, or that apartment buildings are 20,000 feet tall? Even if that was true, planes move at hundreds of miles per hour, so clearly you're not posing a serious argument.
- dghlsakjg 3y agoAre you under the impression that all aircraft travel at 20,000+ ft, and travel at hundreds of miles per hour?
- reaperducer 3y agoName a commercial aircraft with wifi that flies under 155MPH. Go ahead. I'll wait.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
- walrus01 3y agoJust don't ever give your tv the wifi password. I have a thousand times more confidence at microsoft will keep the xbox operating system up to date and reasonably secure (yes, it has ads on the homescreen) than I do that any smart tv vendor will still support their crap OS in 5, 7, 10 years from now. Use an xbox or a PS5 to drive the TV and run the apps on that.
- jwells89 3y agoI use an Apple TV 4K, but yeah, same idea. I was mainly just wondering if Costco models had significant differences in terms of non-smart features.
- aceazzameen 3y agoMy TV and the few IoT devices I own are all on their own wifi network under their own subnet. I don't care what happens on that network. Maybe routers should come with similar automatic features to sequester unsecure IoT devices from everyday users' networks.
- JoshTriplett 3y agoThe issue isn't (primarily) your TV abusing the local network. The issue is your TV sending all your viewing habits back to the manufacturer to sell them, including by doing video recognition on videos being played through HDMI inputs.
- aceazzameen 3y agoI think I was mostly referring to keeping things secure with updates, or lack thereof with TVs. Pihole does a good job of keeping ads and nonsense off my Sony TV. Netflix, HBO, Amazon, etc already know my viewing habits and probably sell it to each other for all I know.
- navjack27 3y agoThat is so much compute work. How could they do that realistically on a TV? I plug my computer into the HDMI and now they are looking at everything I do?
- Marsymars 3y agoI don’t think there’s any difference currently. I have a one-generation old Sony TV that I bought from Costco in Canada, and it’s the same model as is sold in Canada outside of Costco.