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Disappointed with the TVs at CES 2025
- Newtonip 2y agoNot having an'input' button on a TV remote is really stupid.
- rirze 2y ago“Hey now, how do you expect users to quickly open Netflix or prime or Disney+. Psssh no one uses video inputs now anyway!”
- mattbee 2y agoMy Samsung has one, but it opens a slow, animated, dynamic menu based on HDMI data. So depending on what devices are turned on, the input you want might have moved in the list. When I turn the PS5 off before the TV, the TV forgets the input ever existed. So it goes back to the TV's default channel - which oh, is GB News (the Fox News of the UK). So every time I play I have to watch a bit of bilious TV while I scroll through the input list. Truly a cursed device.
- freedomben 2y agoMy Samsung does that too. The most enraging thing though is they fucked up standard HDMI. Like, I can't even plug in my laptop or steam deck. It will show up fine for about two seconds, and then the TV cycles it off. It seems to be looking for some kind of two-way communication or signal which it never gets. But plugging a laptop HDMI in has worked on EVERY SINGLE TV I'VE HAD FOR MANY YEARS, maybe decades, yet it doesn't work on my new TV. Aggravating.
- FireBeyond 2y agoTry turning off Input Signal Plus. That seems to attempt to do some fancier detection of the HDMI signal that breaks some things.
- freedomben 2y agoThank you, I will definitely give this a try!
- whatevertrevor 2y agoHDMI CEC is truly infuriating. I have turned it off everywhere (TV, receiver, google tv box, PlayStation). I'd much rather power on (or off) three things manually with three different remotes if it works consistently, as opposed to playing the "which device refused to power on/off via HDMI Control this time" game, every single time.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoMy LG is like that too (well, not quite that bad), but holding down a number key is a shortcut to that input. Huge annoyance mitigator once I learned that.
- FireBeyond 2y agoYou should not have to - but if you're talking about Samsung's shitty home hub streaming service, that can be turned off (I think you disable "Autorun Home Hub" or Smart Hub or...). I was sick of getting Fear TV or some garbage poorly streamed to me when all I care about is Apple TV, Roku, or Art mode on my Frame TV.
- BozeWolf 2y agoI blocked all samsung ads in my router for my tv. Still got that samsungtv ehich always started playing. Also got rid of that by putting it behind a childs lock iirc. Now, if for some reason my apple tv does not properly switch on, i do not get that samsungtv channel anymore, but a black screen instead. It is terrible ux. After the samsung galaxy s i swore off samsung, but somehow got tricked by the looks of a frame. Never again. And the tv can be thrown out of the window, but my better half still likes tv.
- zzo38computer 2y agoIt would be better to display the menu immediately and to display according to the physical ports, with a number associated with each one, so that you can push input and then the number and then it switches immediately (even if nothing is connected, e.g. in case you will connect something later). Unfortunately, too many modern computers and other stuff have excessive animations and other stuff, and the numbers on the remote control will not work, because they will not make them to work. (Unfortunately, some TV remote controls (such as the one in the article) do not even have numbers, and even when they do, they often do not work with all of the functions that they should work with.)
- xyse53 2y agoI prefer Roku TVs at this point. No input button but the inputs are listed alongside the other apps on the home screen which works well for me.
- snvzz 2y agoIt should really be an input button per input.
- cududa 2y agoThe only hardware specific complaint this comes down to is one manufacturer swap g the input button for a long press of the home button. I’ve used this TV and remote a lot. It’s not going to be particularly hard to learn that action.
- daheat 2y agoI miss the times where you could really feel the speed of the remote while you browsed through the channels. Feels like emulated, bloated and slow to interact with TVs nowadays..
- physhster 2y agoI know there isn't a market for it, but I'd really like a dumb TV that is snappy with an excellent panel. I don't even need speakers, or multiple inputs...
- tymscar 2y agoI do too. But what you describe there is basically a monitor.
- dogline 2y agoYes. Can I get a 60" monitor for cheap?
- ak217 2y ago60" is too big even for me, but I'd pay good money for a 42" 8K monitor.
- baobun 2y agoHow about Postium? If you're willing to pay good money there are actually bunch of options even for individuals. https://www.postium.com/8k-series https://www.postium.com/8k-series https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1768977-REG/postium_korea_obm_u428k_42_hdr_8k_monitor.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1768977-REG/postium_k...
- frankchn 2y agoI don't think these are 8K monitors. They support 8K input via 4x 12G SDI, but they contain 4K panels at 3840 x 2160.
- ak217 2y agoOK that's fair since I said "good money" but $10K is a bit out of reach. I was thinking more in the $2K range. My best option today is a MacBook Pro Max with a quad 4K setup, which is relatively affordable but unwieldy and requires at least two Thunderbolt cables (or a desktop setup).
- calmbonsai 2y agoThis "senior technology reporter" doesn't understand the GOMS fundamentals of a television remote.
- morkalork 2y agoI don't understand your comment, is it like a three seashells joke?
- zamadatix 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOMS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOMS The comment is taking a swipe that the disappointment here is the reporter's lack of grasp of why the remote control is designed the way it is when they complain about it. The downvotes are likely that the comment was made in a relatively low effort/attack-ish way rather than discussing why they think that.
- botanical76 2y agoThe Wikipedia page is incredibly abstract. Could someone please explain how a GOMS model justifies removing a dedicated "switch input" button from a television remote?
- calmbonsai 2y agoThanks for that. I should've offered more explanation in my, regrettably, "snipe-ish" earlier post. It was wrong not to do so. I was, and still am, frustrated that someone whose bio indicates a decade of consumer tech review experience doesn't understand modern OEM TV remote design isn't about being GOMS-efficient. Honestly, "TV" remote GOMS usability probably peaked with the TiVO. Modern OEM remotes attempt to derive slivers of software revenue from these commodity and retail loss-leading hardware products by explicitly injecting less-efficient workflows into common use cases. This analysis was done (poorly) at the beginning of the article, but the the writer doesn't connect the obvious dots wrt to removal of the "Input" button.
- not2b 2y agoIs GOMS even the appropriate model for a consumer product? From the Wikipedia page: GOMS only applies to skilled users. It does not work for beginners or intermediates for errors may occur which can alter the data. Also the model doesn't apply to learning the system or a user using the system after a longer time of not using it. Another big disadvantage is the lack of account for errors, even skilled users make errors but GOMS does not account for errors. Mental workload is not addressed in the model, making this an unpredictable variable. The same applies to fatigue. GOMS only addresses the usability of a task on a system, it does not address its functionality.
- pornel 2y agoIt's not the first pointless downgrade of the LG remote: they've already removed the pause button. Now pausing and unpausing is done with the general-purpose click-wheel, is up to each app to implement, and is dependent on the UI state. If a wrong element is focused (which is not hard to do, because the button is a scroll wheel surrounded by directional buttons), you may end up toggling subtitles or some other option when trying to pause or unpause. It used to be a hardware button that always worked, was trivial to find by feel, easy to activate, and worked instantly. Now it's "wait, I need to pause! Oops, I moved the scroll wheel button by a notch when pressing it, so it's a mouse cursor now! I fast-forwarded to the second half of the movie and the audio is in French."
- sieabahlpark 2y ago[dead]
- mattbee 2y agoJust like cars, I do not put it past TV manufacturers to sell a dedicated touch-screen TV remote before the decade is out. Imagine: * an unpredictably modal interface * chugging, tasteless animations * software updates every few weeks * terrible battery life * a constant glow out of the corner of your eye * easily broken But you can sell ads on it. You know it makes awful sense.
- Xlythe 2y agoOh, hey, I was working on that back in 2014 for one of the big TV manufacturers. The project was ultimately cancelled. It was nice for things like switching HDMI inputs; you could dynamically update the name and icon, making it more intuitive for someone who had never used the TV before and didn't know what was plugged into which port. You could also adjust settings more easily without everyone have to watch together with you on the big screen as you dug to find the obscure setting to tweak. But your complaints were equally valid, and were a concern at the time. I would have liked to see it ship, if just to see if customers liked it. A traditional remote still worked too. But oh well.
- teruakohatu 2y ago> Google is also working toward having people pay a subscription fee to use Gemini on their TVs, PCWorld reported. > “For us, our biggest goal is to create enough value that yes, you would be willing to pay for [Gemini],” Google TV VP and GM Shalini Govil-Pai told the publication. > The executive pointed to future capabilities for the Gemini-driven Google Assistant on TVs, including asking it to “suggest a movie like Jurassic Park but suitable for young children” or to show “Bollywood movies that are similar to Mission: Impossible.” You don't even need LLMs for a recommendation system. Just matrix factorisation is enough for a very good recommendation system. A local transformer model is enough for the Text to Speech part. Surely is the product (Google Play TV & Movies, Youtube Premium) is selling you video content, recommending content to spend your money on is just marketing not a user facing subscription service. Imagine Spotify wanting to charge you on top of your subscription to get music recommendations.
- greenchair 2y agoScary. Sometimes I wonder how many insane ideas were collected by product owners from posts on this website that start with "imagine x".
- baobun 2y agoTangential but I've learned to skip any comment starting with the word "imagine". Ironically they tend to be the least imaginative and insightful and usually only serve to aggravate and polarize.
- lowercased 2y agoA real world use case I'd want is "what was that movie with the guy who looks like Pacino where they drove around in Paris for a while?" Or "play the scene where the muppets are floating around in a hot air balloon". And just have the information ... pop up. Like... real search about concrete specific stuff I just can't quite find on my own.
- rasz 2y agoLLMs are really bad at this. I tried finding long lost comic book using everything available on the market and got either basic bitch replies listing biggest authors and suggesting its in one of their works or plain hallucinations.
- airstrike 2y ago> “For us, our biggest goal is to create enough value that yes, you would be willing to pay for [Gemini],” Google TV VP and GM Shalini Govil-Pai told the publication. > The executive pointed to future capabilities for the Gemini-driven Google Assistant on TVs, including asking it to “suggest a movie like Jurassic Park but suitable for young children” or to show “Bollywood movies that are similar to Mission: Impossible.” That seems so incredibly useless it reads like parody. No, I will not be willing to pay for Gemini for that. I can’t imagine ever asking questions like those in my life... and even if one day I were drunk, high, and concussed enough to ask, I wouldn’t need to ask my TV—I could just go to claude.ai on my phone instead because I already pay for it.
- conover 2y agoHonestly, do these people hear themselves? I guess the product echo chamber is too loud to hear the needs of actual customers (or what they don’t need).
- blibble 2y agothe culture of toxic positivity at work I'm afraid
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoThe Abilene Paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox
- jlokier 2y agoAt last, thanks! A name for that strange time I was in a room of ~15 people chaired by me, who unanimously decided that PHP should be used for the website, made by volunteers. Yet when I asked individuals afterwards, none of them had wanted PHP, and only one or two ever used PHP. They chose it because they incorrectly thought that's what most people wanted, and they preferred to go along with their perception of group view so readily that nobody revealed their own tech preferences, despite a long discussion. It wasn't a compromise, because that would start with people knowing each others' preferences, then compromising. It was more like a bad default based on incorrect beliefs about each other. The strangest part, for me, was realising that this happened despite meeting for a good hour discussing alternative options, with several professional webdevs in the group. The groupthink effect is powerful! The effect of the group decision was not what people in the group had hoped for. Instead of producing an attractive common interest, it resulted in few volunteers, because everyone picked a tech choice they were not interested in working with themselves, assuming it would be of more interest to others.
- jonahhorowitz 2y agoHonestly, my TV is connected to my AppleTV, and that is connected to the internet. I don't use any of the "smart" functionality of the TV. I don't even use the remote for anything.
- stalfosknight 2y agoThis is the way.
- brewdad 2y agoSame. The only time my TV leaves HDMI3 is when I want to watch a Kraken game (local OTA subchannel that isn't on YoutubeTV) or Formula E (US broadcast rights are on Roku Channel which isn't available on AppleTV devices). I do have a Blu-Ray player on HDMI2 but I haven't used it in about a year.
- dunham 2y agoWe switch ours to OTA once a year for the thanksgiving parade, and use AppleTV the rest of the time.
- orev 2y agoSwitching inputs is by far the thing that causes the most anxiety for a regular person (based on observational evidence). I really believe that it makes or breaks whole lines of service. IMO, streaming won in part because once people (i.e. grandma) changed the input to the streaming device, they couldn’t figure out how to get back to the cable box, or at least didn’t want to risk “breaking anything” when trying to do it when their resident tech person wasn’t around. Getting rid of the input button is either really bad (making this process even more fraught), or is a sign that the whole idea is just going away. Input switching should be incorporated into the home screens instead of being a separate menu/function. Hopefully this is the direction LG is going.
- jjmarr 2y agoI really believe every software engineer should set aside some time and just watch a normal person interact with technology. Don't interrupt, just watch their process. It's mind-boggling how many inefficient workflows people are using because they aren't confident enough.
- kibibu 2y agoOn some TVs, plugging in a USB stick pops up a notice like "would you like to view the contents?" If you don't choose "yes" in time and the toast disappears, the alternative is to navigate a few menu items deep through an ad-filled home screen (maybe 10 clicks worth). It's easier to just physically unplug-replug.
- jmholla 2y agoI actually had a TV where that window was the only way to switch to the USB drive. What a pain that must've been for developers to test (though maybe they just dropped in some USB library and called it a day).
- pesus 2y agoTotally agree. Learning how to explain technology as a teenager to my grandparents and assist them with it in a way they can understand gave me a much more holistic view towards tech. I honestly believe it's helped me quite a bit in my career as a software engineer because I can communicate effectively with my non-technical coworkers and serve as a bridge between them and the devs.
- nalekberov 2y agoFirst thing I did when I set up my TV was making sure I won't have to touch any of its 'smart' features by connecting to Apple TV. My Pi-Hole was constantly crying about tremendous amount of requests coming from webOS. LG IMO is the best (W)OLED TV in the market, but their software as all other TVs' software is crap.
- beepbooptheory 2y agoFeel extremely lucky I picked up a brand new Best Buy brand Insignia brand tv recently that was the only product available at my store when you filtered for NOT-smart TV on the website. I also saw this the other day and it blew me away. It is the perfect product, it feels like it comes from an alternate universe where things aren't universally shitty. Why can't we have more things like this? https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-am-fm-radio-portable-cd-boombox-with-bluetooth-silver-black/6348060.p?skuId=6348060 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-am-fm-radio-portable-c...
- oniony 2y agoSeems like you have have not bought a TV at all...
- Hackbraten 2y agoYour link leads to an Insignia brand boom box.
- Kim_Bruning 2y agoIn his 1948 novel '1984', George Orwell imagined 'telescreens' - devices that enabled two-way surveillance while broadcasting content. In the story, 'The Party' had to mandate their installation, because of course no one would install such an Orwellian device voluntarily! Today, we voluntarily install smart TVs, always-listening assistants, and IoT cameras in our homes. Unlike telescreens, which were limited by human monitoring capacity, modern devices can automatically process, store, and analyze surveillance data at scale [1]. The dystopian technology wasn't just recreated - it was improved upon, then marketed as a convenience. (See also: Torment Nexus) [1] At the very least the theoretical capability is already there.
- toofy 2y agoi’ll never understand people who put surveillance cameras _in_ their houses. like everything there are of course exceptions, but a normal ass everyday person… i can’t imagine living with this kind of paranoia.
- mlrtime 2y agoBecause they aren't connected to the "cloud", they are completely isolated. Ever hear of a baby cam, definitely useful! It's not paranoia, it's convenience.
- gambiting 2y agoObviously, but people are also perfectly happy having a cloud connected camera directly in their living room so they can watch the dog or whatever when they aren't home. That's mad to me.
- poincaredisk 2y agoDo you have a dog? One of my pets died because he locked himself in a bad position, and nobody was home for a few hours to help him. And we like to travel, so we're often away from home for days (someone comes over once daily to feed the animals in that case). It's not that different from having a baby cam.
- drweevil 2y agoI absolutely despise this trend. I don't want a "smart" TV, and I don't want a new car. They are objectively awful products. I am not your revenue stream.
- zzo38computer 2y agoThe remote control is terrible. In addition to lacking a pause button and input select button, it also lacks: play, stop, rewind/fast-forward, previous/next track, mute (I may be wrong but I do not see it in the picture), and numbers. If I was designing it, I would get rid of the buttons for Netflix, Disney, etc, and also get rid of the scroll wheel, in order to make room for that other stuff. (However, I also think that such video services, etc should be separately and not a part of the display itself, so that all of these functions can be disabled if you are not using it and not take up any more power, or any conditional branches in the software either.) I also think to make up a "Movie Decimal" system, like the Dewey Decimal system of classification of books, that can be used for classifying movies and TV shows that you can then easily and quickly enter them on the remote control. When you activate the Movie Decimal mode then it will display what each digit means and you can enter all of them quickly (without having to wait for the next menu), or one at a time in which case the menu will display the subclassifications from that point in case you do not know what the numbers mean, that you can learn. (Also, I remember operating a Telus set top box once, that the control has a play/pause button, but it was the remote control that kept track of the play/pause state, which meant that sometimes you have to push it twice in order for it to work. It would have been better to put separate buttons for play and for pause.)
- kibibu 2y ago> mute (I may be wrong but I do not see it in the picture If it's anything like the Samsung remotes (to which it bears a passing similarity), the volume toggles are 3-way controls, with up-down-press modalities. Press = mute/unmute. It's surprising though for sure; there's no real signifier that you can do this.
- worik 2y agoIt is weird how fabulous new technology is wrapped in pointless, AI and not AI, filth It has happened to cars (no, I do not want to supply Ford with all my driving data) It has been a long standing anti-feature of phones Thank Dog (and of course RMS and Linus) for free operating systems otherwise it would be my computer
- marcus_holmes 2y agoWe gave up on TV completely. We bought a projector and painted a wall white, plugged it into a spare old laptop, and watch everything through that. Works great. Bonus: the projector plays on the wall behind our main gaming desk, while the laptop sits between our gaming monitors. So if the wife is watching a show, she can turn her chair to the projector wall and watch the big screen, while I can fiddle around on my desktop and see the laptop screen version of it, too.
- gruez 2y agoWhy? Projectors generally have worse picture quality (ie. brightness and contrast). Smart TVs might be privacy nightmares, but thankfully they can still be avoided by plugging in hdmi/displayport directly. The only real advantage is that you can get a bigger screen for a given cost.
- vel0city 2y agoBrightness and contrast isn't too bad when you're in a dark nerd cave. Definitely no comparison to an active display in a well lit room though.
- marcus_holmes 2y agoI don't find any difference in how much I enjoy a movie/show from the picture quality, down to a certain limit. The projector is above that limit.
- xkr 2y agoProjector allows you not to have a giant black rectangle in the living room
- prmoustache 2y agoWorse picture quality but much better immersion. I am also using a video projector and the fact the picture is taking one entire wall makes a difference regardless of the actual resolution. Picture quality doesn't matter a lot when you are watching a movie from the preHD/4K era anyway. It is even better as you are less subject to aliasing. I wouldn't trade immersion for resolution. Also one doesn't feel a lack of picture quality when not used to it. I don't own a 4K screen. So I don't miss 4K quality and watch movies with the utmost quality I know. Ignorance can be bliss. Added bonus is you don't have a huge black rectangle in your living room when it is turned off, only a tiny device (that can easily be hidden). Having said that I heard there are pretty decent laser 4K video projector these days with HDR support.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- CGamesPlay 2y agoI feel like there's some modern version of the Henry Ford quote, "if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Users say they want all of these features in an integrated package; who would say no to a new feature? But the end result is a jumbled mess and the sacrifices made along the way weren't considered. Henry Ford said customer feedback was bad because people actually wanted a transformative product. I feel like the modern version might be that customer feedback is bad because people actually don't want a transformative product, despite surveys all saying "yes" to everything.
- andrewmcwatters 2y agoI've come to dislike this quote over the years. For the overwhelming amount of product categories, people really do just want faster, cheaper, etc. There is no moving from horse to car to flying machine, because there's no energy efficient way to do it, and no feasible path to infrastructure to support it. There is a way to make a better TV. Henry Ford never said this anyway.[1][2] 1: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/37637/did-henry-ford-say-if-i-had-asked-people-what-they-wanted-they-would-have-said https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/37637/did-henry... 2: https://hbr.org/2011/08/henry-ford-never-said-the-fast https://hbr.org/2011/08/henry-ford-never-said-the-fast
- syndicatedjelly 2y agoYou're reading the worst possible interpretation of that quote, and applying it to all situations. Of course it's not valid for some mundane field - Ford delivered a whole new form of movement to the masses. It would be like if mass space-travel suddenly became available and cheap for us all. The original quote talks about transformative development, not iterative development.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Dalewyn 2y agoSay what you will about Steve Jobs, but he was an unparalleled salesman because he was seemingly capable of forereading what people really wanted. Nobody said they wanted an iPod or iPhone or iPad or a Macbook Air before, but when Jobs sold it to the people they went completely bonkers lining up for the goods.
- recursive 2y agoI turn my TV on and off with a button on the TV. I never use the remote for any purpose, except turning off all the picture "enhancing" garbage.
- userbinator 2y agoThat "AI remote" sounds like something that'd be satire 20 years ago. It's "intelligent" in that it controls you, not the other way around. As for TVs with cameras and mics, the Soviet Russia jokes just write themselves.
- beala 2y agoHere's an AI feature I actually want: I want a language model to watch the show with me, and when I inevitably get distracted and miss something, I want to be able to ask the TV to explain what is going on. Since the TV is watching with me, it can answer my questions without spoilers.
- Fuzzwah 2y agoSimilarly, when watching sports on a delay (hello Aussie F1 fans) I want an LLM that won't spoil the result of the game I'm watching if I ask questions about the teams / players etc while I watch.
- open-paren 2y agoAmazon has this feature built into their prime video app
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoImagine Neil Postman living to see a generation for whom television is too demanding.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- walterbell 2y ago> But a lot of this week's TV announcements underscore an alarming TV-as-a-platform trend where TV sets are sold as a way to infiltrate people's homes so that apps, AI, and ads can be pushed onto viewers. Even high-end TVs are moving in this direction and amplifying features with questionable usefulness, effectiveness, and privacy considerations. They will lose to Apple's 2025 launch of per-room "control panels" with >1M apps, AI, E2EE video conferencing and zero ads.
- msie 2y agoMy dad's old Telus set-top box way worked better than his new Telus box for one reason. It stayed on the same channel even when you turned it off. It didn't show a screen of apps if you left it alone for too long or turned it off and on.
- voidfunc 2y agoFuture is i'm only buying TVs I can drop into dumb-mode and plug an AppleTV into... hate all these different TV OSes so much
- charlie0 2y agoThe Samsung recipe AI totally reminds me of the silicon valley jian yang hot dog app episode. Lol
- dehrmann 2y agoThis question gets asked all the time, but what's a good setup if I want a real remote and no bloatware? Sometimes people recommend digital signage TVs (does LG make any?) And what's a good device to use for steaming apps? In a fantasy world, there'd be something like OpenWrt for TV firmware, but I doubt it exists.
- alex_young 2y agoWhy connect it to the network or use the ui? Just get an AppleTV / Roku / Chromecast / Shield and use that. The spyware on your tv is optional.
- ggm 2y agoI don't want Gemini on my TV. I don't want an LLM on my TV. I would like android, or as close as possible with an ability to manage 3rd party app installation by myself please.
- devmor 2y agoI purchased a Samsung TV in 2019. It was my first really big TV (75” compared to my previous 39”) and I was excited to have a “home theater experience”. Unfortunately what I got was garbage. Every 4-5 weeks from the day I bought it I have to reset the system to prevent it from becoming so slow that it lags while changing the volume. If I ever connect it to the internet to use its “smart” features, it puts ads into the menu. At this point I have all of it’s functionality other than display delegated to other devices and I pray I never have to change the input source, because that could take over a minute of screwing around and possibly turning it off and on. I paid $2000 for this experience. If and when it eventually dies I will go out of my way to purchase a dumb “display” meant for commercial use, because every TV I have evaluated since, from every manufacturer, has similar issues. It’s ridiculous.
- maxehmookau 2y agoI want a dumb TV. A TV that I can plug my Apply TV in to and watch TV. I don't want it to be smart, I don't want Roku built in, I don't want it to know what I watch and sell me ads. It's really hard to find this. > Large language models on TVs Stop it. Please.
- zh3 2y agoI've noticed various TV's/TV networks dropping pause/rewind etc and even making the off switch hard to access; it feels as if they want more control for them (and less for the consumer). Especially given the financial clout of the advertising business, anything that allows users to pause and fast-forward through ad breaks would be in their crosshairs. It reminds me of loopback recording on soundcards disappearing; if I'm not mistaken that was directly due to industry pressure.
- FMecha 2y agoJamie Kellner (when at Turner Broadcasting) was quoted that skipping commercials with PVRs (this was in 2002) is a form of theft (in sense of piracy).
- IshKebab 2y ago> But the more immediately frustrating part is that the new remote doesn’t have a dedicated button for switching input modes, as previous remotes from LG and countless other remotes do. LG remotes don't even have play/pause/forward/back buttons! It's insane! To pause your video it's literally a random number of button presses - could be 1, 2 or even 3 depending on the app. Absolute UX madness.
- sid57 2y agoIt's not the first pointless downgrade of the LG remote: they've already removed the pause button. Now pausing and unpausing is done with the general-purpose click-wheel, is up to each app to implement, and is dependent on the UI state. If a wrong element is focused (which is not hard to do, because the button is a scroll wheel surrounded by directional buttons), you may end up toggling subtitles or some other option when trying to pause or unpause. It used to be a hardware button that always worked, was trivial to find by feel, easy to activate, and worked instantly. Now it's "wait, I need to pause! Oops, I moved the scroll wheel button by a notch when pressing it, so it's a mouse cursor now! I fast-forwarded to the second half of the movie and the audio is in French."
- thrill 2y ago"Google is also working toward having people pay a subscription fee to use Gemini on their TVs, PCWorld reported." Soon enough, you'll pay a subscription fee to not use the TVs' invasive "features".
- PaulHoule 2y agoThis article cemented my decision to not buy a new TV and spend the money on a top-of-the-line M4 Mac Mini instead to replace the failing Alienware laptop my wife uses to access the internet. I've owned a number of Samsungs which do their job (you might buy a Samsung with 2 HDMI ports and they still work 10 years later, a Sony comes with 7 because 4 will be burn out) I've seen progressively get worse over time. I went to Best Buy and didn't see the usual open box deals you'd expect 2 weeks after Christmas and how everything was marketed with anti-features such as "Google TV" (which I want about as much as "Jack-the-ripper TV") sent me home. (Now I did see a Sony Bravia for $180 at the reuse center the other day and I'm kicking myself for not getting it... But that's what it's going to be)
- ksec 2y agoBut this year's TV at CES 2025 is also the the most exciting in terms of hardware! RGB Mini-LED TV 116" Commercial Consumer TV. 163" MicroLED TV Samsung Seamless MircoLED TV 4000nits QD-OLED with no MLA and New Blue OLED Compound. QUAD / RGB Tandem OLED We learned Image Processing Improvement and controller and how we are limited by processing power. First over 95% BT 2020 Colour in Consumer TV. Arguably better 99.999% of off display screen tech out there regardless of consumer or pro level. Laser TV RGB LED Ultra Short Throw Laser Projector That is so much better than previous iteration. Panasonic is back in US although that is not exactly news. But there presence and future roadmap in US gives confidence to the market. Just the MicroLED is coming in price and size, the Mini-LED is moving up in size and lower price per inch, OLED is slowly moving up to 83" while improving performance and cost model in the below 75". All while greatly increasing image quality. And we learned there is SO much more to come in the next few years. Just when I thought the tech has gotten so good in the last 2-3 years we may have to slow down and with the law of diminishing returns. No we are not slowing down, we are even accelerating. While may be disappointed with the software in TV 2025, the hardware is insanely great! I didn't even mentioned Sony B10, the potential Z series replacement!
- rcarmo 2y agoLG keeps missing the obvious: I want in my next TV is a couple more HDMI ports and dumber software. Also, I wonder when the EU is going to wake up to the fact that TV manufacturers à have been baking in major privacy violating features into their software for the past decade.