7 ms·
Modern smart TVs are so disappointing that I just prefer watching films on my 27" IPS computer monitor - no bloatware and every video just looks right. Not to
by imhoguy 3y ago
Modern smart TVs are so disappointing that I just prefer watching films on my 27" IPS computer monitor - no bloatware and every video just looks right.
Not to mention that after 6 years the TV becomes useless junk killed by bulky modern app updates. I think there is a market for something like "Framework TV".
- imp0cat 3y agoWell, an OLED will be pretty much dead after six years anyways. Also, you cat reset an old, slow TV, put it in "dumb" mode, then add something like a Vero V or another box.
- jeffbee 3y ago> Well, an OLED will be pretty much dead after six years anyways. How much TV are you people watching such that this statement becomes even remotely accurate? My 2017 LG OLED display says it has 6400 power-on hours and it looks as good as new.
- sb057 3y agoThe average American watches five hours of television every day, or just shy of 11,000 hours over six years. https://www.marketingcharts.com/television/tv-audiences-and-consumption-229018 https://www.marketingcharts.com/television/tv-audiences-and-...
- sgt 3y agoLots of people leave their television sets on for almost the entire day, even when not watching. Never understood that.
- eikenberry 3y agoGives a feeling of having other people around and staves off loneliness.
- magicalhippo 3y agoSO does that. She'll put the show on pause, go do shopping, come back and resume. All while leaving the TV on. I've tried to get her to change oh so many times, all in vain... No rational explanation either. Just... that's how she rolls I guess.
- mvanbaak 3y agoenable energy savings and turn off the tv after 2 hours. problem solved! Most tv's show a popup when they are about to shut off because of power savings, and with a button on the remote you can reset the timer.
- c0pium 3y agoThis is extremely passive aggressive, tell me you’re single without telling me you’re single. People’s preferences being different than yours is not a technical problem to be worked around.
- mvanbaak 3y agoI’m not the one complaining here. My wife turns off everything before she leaves the place. Even if its just a quick walk with the dog :)
- arp242 3y agoI had a girlfriend who would flush the toilet before using it. She said "it's cleaner this way". I tried to get her to stop, but it was a futile effort.
- imp0cat 3y agoBefore and after, I'd hope. :)
- cschneid 3y agoThat doesn't kill LG OLEDs thought, that results in a nearly black screensaver (just a small slow "firework" effect). Wastes a touch more energy than turning the tv into sleep mode (since nothing actually turns off anymore), but hard to believe that would shorten life much.
- jeffbee 3y agoThat explains a few things. Still, the objective tests from RTINGS seem to suggest that it's the LCD sets that look all fucked up after a few years, while almost all the OLED ones look perfect. And they OLED sets aren't showing a downtrend in overall brightness over time. https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/longevity-results-after-10-months https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/longevity-results-after-10-m...
- electrondood 3y agoThat's insane to me. I can't stand watching TV. I feel my life being sucked away.
- Flameancer 3y agoThat actuality sounds pretty standard. That would be from 5pm-10pm. Evening news, game shows, then like two 1 hour long shows and it’s already been five hours.
- Hikikomori 3y agoTry sitting down.
- eru 3y agoMany people leave the TV running in the background while they do other things, like eat dinner. For the lifespan of the screen, it doesn't matter if anyone actually directs their eyes at it.
- eropple 3y agoYeah, that's a wild claim to me too. My 2018 LG C8 has about 5800 hours on it and it is indistinguishable from new. (Though I've never run it at max brightness because it would be blinding.)
- sokoloff 3y agoConfusingly, the contrast control has a higher effect on image brightness (in the ordinary English language use) than the brightness control does.
- mattgreenrocks 3y ago> Well, an OLED will be pretty much dead after six years anyways. Why is that?
- imp0cat 3y agoThey get dimmer as they age and might also develop "burn-in".
- squeaky-clean 3y agoThis really isn't an issue these days if you research your screen. Rtings.com has a good series on their website and YouTube testing OLED burn-in, and there are many TVs where this is not an issue. Also check out Wulff Den on youtube and his videos testing the OLED Nintendo Switch. He does get some bad burn in after a year, but that's also because it's on a still image at max brightness and never turns off. I don't mean a year of standard usage. I mean 8,765 hours of it displaying the same image.
- jasonfarnon 3y agoScreensavers became necessary again?
- girvo 3y agoFor OLED computer monitors: yep!
- eru 3y agoThey were never necessary to begin with: automatically turning the screens off (or at least to 'black') is never worse.
- imp0cat 3y agoNot just that. OLED TVs nowadays have a screensaver that kicks in when it detects stationary image for more than a few minutes. They also shift the image around by a few pixels to prevent logos and tickers from permanently marking the screen. And when turned off, they also try to level the brightness of individual pixels by displaying different patterns - again to combat "burn-in".
- Night_Thastus 3y agoThis depends a LOT on both how, and how much the display in question is used. You can make an OLED visibly burn in within a couple months if you max the brightness, cover it in static content and then leave it running constantly. Or it can last a decade if used lightly, on lower brightness, with good burn-in compensation software, with few to no static images.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ptmcc 3y agoA decade is still a really short lifespan for a TV
- andersa 3y ago...it is? I buy a new TV every two to three years as notably better tech comes out.
- Night_Thastus 3y agoI definitely think notably better is fairly subjective here. I have a 4K OLED from 2018. Since then, I think the only notable improvement in the models from the same manufacturer is maybe enhanced-ARC? That is a neat feature, but not sufficient imo. Maybe a 120Hz refresh rate, but very little content even uses 60, let along 120 - at least in the cinema and TV space.
- andybak 3y agoWe probably have different definitions of "notably better"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jiggawatts 3y agoIs it though? 2004 is the first year I remember watching a HD widescreen TV show (Lost). There were a handful of test clips and the like earlier, but they were a rare thing. E.g.: there's a HD video taken of the aftermath of 9/11 because the operator was just learning to use this (at the time) brand new technology. That lasted about a decade, and then 4K become a thing around the 2013-2014 timeframe. I got a Sony 4K TV in late 2013 and a Dell 4K monitor in 2014. However, both of those were standard dynamic range, albeit with a fairly "wide" colour gamut. I got my first OLED HDR display in 2021, and an OLED HDR TV in 2022. In other words, every "generation" of television technologies has lasted about a decade before being superseded by something significantly newer and better. Display technology still has some ways to go. No current consumer panel reproduces 100% of the Rec.2020 colour gamut. Similarly, there are no consumer panels that can reproduce the full HDR10 or Dolby Vision brightness range of up to 10,000 nits. There are 8K displays that are close to that target spec, but they're either one-off experimental models or more expensive than a luxury car. A decade from now, around 2033 mark, I full expect something like VR technology to have replaced TVs for many people. Apple's new headset (available next year!) will set a new quality bar that no traditional TV can ever hope to match, such as an extremely wide field of view, stereo, and very bright HDR in combination. Sure, they're expensive now, but after a decade of further development? They'll be amazing and cheap.
- stevenwoo 3y agoAnecdotally, My cheap old TCL dumb LED tv light burned out after about six years which is about average from what I’m seeing online but maybe I can fix it. But I did use it as suggested with a mi box.
- whydoyoucare 3y agoConvert the Smart to DumbTV by offloading all apps to your favorite streaming device (for example, Apple TV or Nvidia Shield). If it helps, don't ever enable internet connectivity to the Smart TV.
- lintimes 3y agoWorse yet, now high end monitors (Samsung Odyssey G9 OLED) are offered with poorly implemented smart TV hub features.
- petsfed 3y agoThe only thing that works well on their smart TV hub features is the ability to block signal from my current-gen Chromecast. Coordinated asshole design.
- peruvian 3y agoIt's not that hard to get around this. I kept my TV offline and plugged in an Apple TV immediately.
- hedora 3y agoSome TVs constantly display nag screens or blink the power LED at you if you keep them offline. I can't decide if it's better to check for such things before purchase, or just return it as defective if I end up getting a model that does this.
- radicality 3y agoI also use an AppleTV with my Samsung TV. I did give the tv WiFi credentials so that sometimes if needed it can reach the internet (eg firwmare download), but I set up firewall rules to block all traffic for the tv in steady state.
- stavros 3y agoTrust me, you don't want your TV to download firmware. My Sony TV started freezing every so often after downloading some random update. Since then, it's gone off wifi and only the Chromecast is allowed to connect.
- myself248 3y agoAbsolutely return as defective. Make it sting a little. If it doesn't say on the box "requires constant internet to function" in big bold letters, it should.
- eru 3y agoWhat about saying in big bold letters 'requires constant electricity to function'? That would be a ridiculous requirement, because people expect that TVs need electricity. But the producer can argue that people these days also expect TVs to need the internet, can't they?
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y agoSome Webos LG TVs, like mine, can be rooted. I can now do wonderful things like install an ad-blocking version of youtube(still works in spite of recent changes). And SSH into my tv and mess around with the Linux system if I want to.
- IshKebab 3y agoBut can you make the UI not super laggy? I recently acquired a very old Sony TV it reminded me how lag-free TV interfaces are supposed to work. But nooooo LG is like "we're going to make great TVs but the UI is a poorly written web page running on a 386, enjoy!"
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y agoNot really, but you can improve it a little by disabling automatic firmware updates. So it at least doesn't get worse.
- aetherspawn 3y agoLG webOS in my opinion is the least bad out of all the smart TV operating systems, and so far (we have a few of these at home & at work) I don't really feel the need to root them as they are ad-free and working fine even after several years of auto updates. This lack of enshittification has urged me lately to buy and prefer LG products over Samsung et al.
- OJFord 3y agoI agree, I'd rather use something else, even if only for philosophical reasons, but I couldn't find anything that didn't sacrifice something - or at least that could promise it didn't. No separate box seems to do all of 4K, Atmos, Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HLG without some weird restriction like 'except the Netflix app'. Even worse if you wanted DV IQ I assume, but I think my TV doesn't support it anyway. And honestly I think I prefer WebOS to Fire sticks' UI for example. Stock Android TV isn't great either. If I was into playing Xbox/PS games I imagine that would make a better 'hub', since it's presumably (I have no idea) more organised around your own content/games at least rather than random adverts and features you don't want. Also probably more money being spent on designing it.
- acchow 3y agoIt doesn’t become useless junk. You can still use it as a display without any of the smart features. Connect to a Roku or Apple TV (which also automatically turn on when the TV turns on) for smart features.
- tentacleuno 3y agoI've honestly never used the smart features of my TV. It's an old 4K LG (Netcast era), so it's been in service for 6+ years. The "smart" stuff always sucked: riddled with privacy policies, generally quite slow, and could honestly be replicated way better with a media stick / NUC. A NUC is generally the way to go for smart TV functionality in general, IMO: you get way longer support, and it's much easier to diagnose problems as compared to some locked-down, proprietary, do-it-ourselves OS.
- nolan879 3y agoThere are some business/enterprise displays offer a "framework" approach by using a RPI CM4 to control everything. Unfortunately, that is out of reach for most consumers lacking a corporate sales account.
- Flameancer 3y agoThat also makes me wonder how much TVs are being subsidized with ads and sponsored content. Those businesses displays cost significantly more than a regular consumer TV.
- c0pium 3y agoThis gets most of the way there, with buying a monitor instead of a TV. You just need to take the next step and get a pg42uq. OLED, super accurate color, great response time, and unfortunately the answer to the question what would modern TVs cost without the app/telemetry subsidies.
- imhoguy 3y agoIt was always surprising me than digital signage screens without all that TV crap were many times more expensive than just consumer equipment.
- didntknowya 3y agoyeh it's a shame my TVs work so fast when I first bought it but becomes noticeably laggy with each update
- satvikpendem 3y agoFunny, I use an LG OLED 48" TV as my monitor. It's really the cheapest option for a 4k 120hz OLED, although I'd prefer 240hz as GPUs are getting more powerful.
- nunez 3y agoDoubt it. Most people only care that their TV is huge and cheap. Visual quality is a distant afterthought.