I 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...
I think there is a market for it. There's no way that most people actually enjoy the slowness and bloat of modern TVs. The only potential snag (and it's a big one to be fair) is that modern consumers are extremely price sensitive, to the point that it's literally the only thing a lot of people care about. So as long as the shitty bloatware TV is cheaper than the actually good TV, they'll sell more of the shitty bloatware TV. But the market for an actual good TV is still there if only some company will actually bother to serve it.
I don't think people are as price sensitive as is commonly believed. I think consumers broadly don't have reliable signals except for price, so they prioritize what they know. Look at companies where brand is also a reliable indicator of product quality (in popular perception) like Apple or Louis Vuitton. When there's other signals, consumers are frequently willing to prioritize them over price.
Yeah, for many categories of products there's basically two reasonable approaches to buying something: put lots of effort into research, or just buy the cheapest one. Many people are willing to pay more for a better product, but that requires being able to identify the better product.
TV as a whole seems to be basically deprioritized versus one's smartphone and/or gaming PC. In a year or so when I get my own place, I'm not so sure I'll care about having a TV, at least not right away, and if I do, price will be the main factor.
It doesn't help that TVs have pretty much all plateaued at excellent picture quality. The main perceptible difference is the size. So, when I go to my local department store and see 3 72" TVs, by different vendors, and can't really tell any difference in picture quality, why wouldn't I pick the cheapest?
Price sensitivity - I find it funny that there is seemingly an immense amount of resources going into things that enable tracking for advertising purposes, but consumers as a whole are getting poorer and poorer. At some point it calls into question whether it's really about selling ads.,
I've had excellent experiences with a few different Roku TVs. I think my old dedicated Roku was a tiny bit faster in some menus but in the end it's been the same experience. I do acknowledge the privacy implications of Roku and the fact they inject some ads on the home screen but it's probably been the smoothest streaming platform thing I've used.
I had a recent model Vizio. That was absolutely terrible. Eventually the power supply killed itself and I haven't bothered replacing it. Over a decade ago I was a fan of Vizio, that one purchase forever soured me on the brand. I'll never buy and never recommend them again.
I don't think people are that price sensitive, or big expensive TVs wouldn't exist.
The problem with selling "software isn't annoying!" is that it's very hard to quantify. You can give hard numbers for screen size, resolution, brightness, contrast, etc. It's more difficult for software annoyance, and there isn't really any language to talk about it. And TV makers have no real incentive to highlight how crap their software is.
Last I knew they support firmware update via thumb drive too (mine does) so if there’s some critical fix you need you’re not locked out if you don’t want to hook it up to the internet.
It seems that many don't realize at least Samsung and LG both have an option (albeit buried deep in the menu structure) to turn off the smart TV functionality. One of the first things I did on my new set. It now powers up set to a single input and my AppleTV takes it from there.
I have a 65" 4k LG Panel that has literally never been connected to the internet and never will be. It does not have nags nor does it automatically attempt to connect itself to the internet.
It works fine connected to an AppleTV 4k and and appleTV is the only smart TV software I'll use. It's smooth as butter, has no ads, and integrates with the rest of my devices with minimal setup.
I have basically the same setup. I like it, and agree its probably one of the best setups, but to be fair its still a user hostile battle field.
Apple has their dark pattern approach to promote the Apple TV+ service. Netflix refuses to participate in the global search. Apple constantly injecting ads about their content into other content.
When you say local files, do you mean files on a usb stick or hard drive plugged directly into the device?
I use Infuse on my Apple TV to access my videos on the network. It can pick up media from a samba share (or probably any other network share). There's more info on their site: https://firecore.com/infuse
It can also serve as a front end for a Plex server if you run that. While this isn't "local files", it works well and serves a similar purpose. Note: there is a very fair, cheap monthly/yearly/lifetime subscription required for any advanced features but it's free to try. I pay $12.99 for the yearly subscription and I'm incredibly satisfied. If this reads like an ad, it's not, I'm just really happy with it.
The one I'd really like (and I've mentioned this before here on hn) is a Framework-like TV where you could easily swap memory, processor, drive, ports... even its panel.
Like, I don't want to plug a chromecast into my "old" tv to "upgrade" it and having to live with a second remote control and more batteries, plugging another device to the electricity outlet and being able to use it only with wifi while the ethernet port of the TV is now rendered useless - I'd really like to be able to upgrade its internals without having to go broke while buying a new one.
It’s funny, if you open a TV set it’s already super modular like computers were before we had standardized parts, ports, and form factors. It’s got the power supply which makes the 24V for the display, 12/5/3.3V for the other electronics, an I/O interface board, the MCU and its peripherals, the sound driver, and the IR receiver/Button control.
They do this so a manufacturer can use the same parts among different products or simply install an upgraded one to unlock more features.
If it were standardized, this would be fairly easy given that they all pretty much work the same but then they would have write actually good software and UI for people to elect to use their specific product.
Is there a reason that the industry settled on 24V for most large displays? I would like to learn more. Are they trying to keep wire gauge small by having fewer amps to deliver watts?
Following this, an idea I’ve had for years without any ability to act on is a smart TV replacement board that’s sold alongside adapter boards for various popular models of TV that handle differences in power, display connection, etc, making dis-enshittifying one’s smart TV as easy as upgrading the GPU on a computer tower.
You could have 2 tiers of board: Essentials, which is cheap and only has as much hardware and software as is strictly necessary to produce a pre-smart-TV experience, and Deluxe which would be pricier and built around a recent flagship SoC (e.g. Snapdragon 8 Gen 1/2/3) with an unlocked bootloader and preloaded with Android TV.
There was (still is?) a standard of pluggable computer interface into commercial displays. Like you'd get a TV with one or more bays where you'd populate with essentially a small computing blade with whatever capabilities you needed. Different inputs, chaining displays together, running signage apps, etc.
I think this would be helpful, although it will need to be fully documented, and should also include FOSS (although this is probably less important than having comprehensive documentation about all of the parts, since the software can be written by someone else if the documentation is available).
I use a TV as a monitor. When looking for a monitor at the time I noticed TVs are much cheaper. When I compared the specs, I couldn't find any disernable difference.
1. Is this still true that TVs are considerably cheaper than monitors?
2. Is there a difference, or one I should care about between the two?
Monitors have better colour accuracy, higher refresh rates, have features like Gsync/freesync, way faster response times, more and better ports like displayport 2.1 and usb c, lower input lag.
OK 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).
I don't get the hate for smart TVs. I don't have strong feelings either way. I activate my Apple TV and my Sony TV automatically turns on, switched to the correct input. Same for my Nintendo Switch. The only time I ever interact with the TV's UI is when I accidentally sit on the remote and mash the buttons. The TV isn't even connected to my WiFi, so I don't worry about it spying on me or getting hacked.
First, most/all new Smart TVs are doing automated content recognition, collecting and sharing details about what you watch with the manufacturer, which they sell and/or use to show you ads. My understanding is that most new Smart TVs are showing you ads regardless. I'm opposed to this on principle.
Second, at least the Smart TVs I've personally used (a couple of Vizio sets, a late-00s FHD Samsung, a mid-10s 4k LG) all have really slow and unpleasant UIs. The Vizio in particular was glacial, and I couldn't understand why the set owner even bought it (they were only streaming through built-in apps). I'm guessing newer and higher-end sets are fast, but I haven't used one myself.
And finally, I don't want an integrated device like this anyway, I would prefer to pair a really nice panel with a separate smart device (roku, apple tv, linux, whatever) so I can upgrade those independently. If I am buying a Smart TV with no intention of using the smarts, I feel like I'm either paying too much, or not getting as nice a panel as I otherwise could.
I quite like the Sony Bravia UI.
I did intend to just use a connected Raspberry Pi 4B running LibreElec to play my own content, but I ended up using the Kodi app from the Google Play store, which was superior at the time (h264 and h265 hardware decoding, plus working HDR. The Pi4 firmware was lagging behind). I have used my Pihole for DNS to stop calls to tracking services like Samba. A fairly recent firmware update meant I could attach a cheap gigabit Ethernet adapter to the USB3.0 port, so happy camper here.
Sony let's you either opt-out of content recognition (yeah, it's hidden in the menu) or you can disable the smart features altogether and just use it as a dumb tv.
Just don't connect it to the network and that solves most of the problems. Really the only one left is slow and unpleasant UI and most of that evaporates when all you're ever doing is swapping inputs. At this point the ads and other crap are subsidizing the panels.
When I think of smart TVs it's less about the kind of quality -of-life improvements you're describing and more about pushing users towards the in-TV apps and software to more effectively capture and sell usage data.
Though I do have a funny interaction with the former kind of "smart features" with my (otherwise wonderful) LG C1 and PS5 where if I start the PS5 first it takes too long to trigger the TV to turn on and gets confused and puts the PS5 back to sleep as soon as the TV wakes up and switches to the input. But honestly I think I get more amusement than frustration watching the two smart devices outsmart each other constantly.
My Apple TV always steals the input focus back from the Switch constantly. There is a specific order of turning things on that must be adhered in order to not accidentally disturb the Apple TV and awake it from it's slumber.
And there's key combinations on both Apple TV and Roku (rot in hell) that will occasionally trigger the LG WebOS UI to take over requiring fetching the LG remote from the bowels of the console to deactivate it.
God forbid someone slam a door while you're watching TV and it triggers the gyroscopic TV remote to wake up and put a hot pink mouse cursor on screen.
I do want speakers (although also the possibility to connect external speakers) and multiple inputs, though, as well as controls for picture settings such as overscan, aspect ratio, YIQ->RGB->RGB matrix, backlight control, etc. But I don't want all of the other "smart TV" stuff, and I don't want excessive software to get it to work, slow software, etc.
My 8 year old Samsung Serif TV is running as good as new, it does have Wi-Fi and an app store but I've never had to use it, my Apple TV controls it over HDMI ARC and I never see any interface other than that. No ads, tho I'd be wary of performing a firmware update.
If it has wireless transmission (by Wi-Fi or others, whether or not that feature is activated) then that is something that I would not want it to have.
