I couldn't find a non-smart TV. They are everywhere. If you want the 4k, then you have a smart TV.
The best alternatives were super large monitors (way over the price of a TV, and with no decent sound built in), or corporate display panels (for advertising, signage, etc) whose prices are also way above a TV and include no sound system at all.
The best alternatives were super large monitors (way over the price of a TV, and with no decent sound built in), or corporate display panels (for advertising, signage, etc) whose prices are also way above a TV and include no sound system at all.
I wonder how big the market is for "dumb" TVs priced lower than smart ones --- given that the development costs, if any, for one would be much lower since you're basically just asking an OEM to combine existing parts (panels and electrics), perhaps it could be a startup opportunity to sell "the TV you watch" --- essentially big monitors with speakers and tuners and nothing else. Some things they could advertise:
- absolutely no data collection
- zero boot-up time
- near-instant control response
- no software requiring constant upgrades or maintenance
What you say makes sense, but I wonder if the amount of money they make re-selling our data would allow them to actually undercut the cost required to produce a "dumb" TV. So it's possible it would cost more for a dumb TV because it isn't subsidized by data reselling (I'm purely speculating here. I would guess dumb TVs would drive down the cost of smart TVs as they eat into their profit margins to maintain market share, which is important to the value of their data).
Nevertheless, a dumb TV marketing to me like that evokes an immediate "take my money!" response.
Not only selling data, but selling pre-installed app slots as advertising. Sure they won't be able to convince Netflix or YouTube to pay to have their apps pre-installed on the home-screen, but other wannabe streaming platforms would probably be happy to cough up
I doubt that would be any cheaper. Something like that would already have an ARM processor inside for all the digital housekeeping, the cost to bump specs a bit and make it run an embedded OS and GUI are likely extremely low.
The boot time is something that has irked me forever, and it seems the culprit is the HDMI protocol itself, so that wouldn't be improved either.
They would be more expensive, same as buying a laptop with no bloatware is more expensive than its loaded equivalent. Manufacturers/Labels/distributors get kickbacks from the bloatware companies per install so they can afford to reduce the price of the machine vs a 'clean' system.
Why would a dumb tv cost less than a smart one? Presumably the manufacturers are making money on each sale because of the ad tech. So wouldn't TV's without the tech cost more?
> I couldn't find a non-smart TV. They are everywhere. If you want the 4k, then you have a smart TV.
Or, hmmm... How about simply not buying that 4k if it is "smart".
The only feedback channel you have to the makers about your displeasure over the TV offerings is to simply not buy one.
They listen to nothing else. If the unit sells, they don't care about any other expressed dislikes (it sold, after-all). If the unit does not sell, and none of the units sell, only then do they listen.
But as I said at the outset, too few folks care enough to make a dent in their sales figures. So those of us who do care are left with simply not buying a new TV.
Consumer projectors have built-in sound but you'll still want to hook up surround sound. And if you care about hi-res that much, you'll want it on a nice big screen where you can see the difference. I project onto a 100" screen.
Exactly. A commercial display / signage display is indeed what you need to buy if you want a "dumb" TV.
Not only are they as dumb as dumb gets but they are highly reliable and usually fairly rugged.
Many of them have an expansion card slot which allows you to change the inputs - you could remove your 2x HDMI card and insert an SCART card instead, for instance.
Finally, if you get a video wall model, you'll get near-zero bezel.
They're not that expensive - how could they be if they are being purchased twelve at a time for display walls ? Yes, they are more than $399 + mail-in rebate from Frys.
they do work without internet access. You can also tell your TV to try to access the internet via Ethernet (w/o having it plugged in) and that will usually shut down all the intrusive BS (at-least on Samsung "smart TVs")
That particular model number is apparently exclusive to Shoppers Drug Mart (store-exclusive model numbers are a pretty common problem; in many cases the actual difference from a "standard" model is something trivial like a slightly different remote or bezel). There's an interesting forum thread about the overall product family / platform / whatever [1].
Optimum points are really nice for stuff like this. Just hold onto them until something nice shows up.
It would be very interesting if some details of the FW came out. Not going to reverse engineer my new TV but the service menu gives me the feels of something that is very customizable.
I bought a Vizio P65-C1, excited to have found a modern TV without smart features. Then, a couple months later, an OTA update made it smart. I had to read the fine print to realize that this came with some bullshit "feature" where Vizio auto recognizes whatever I'm watching. I disabled it deep within some totally nonintuitive menu.
You can find non-smart panels or monitors in most common TV sizes, but they aren't TVs because they lack TV tuners. Of course, unless you are doing OTA or no-box cable (is that even a thing anymore?) you aren't going to use a builtin TV tuner anyway.
To a rough approximation, a "smart TV" consists of a computer, laptop-style, connected to the display and speakers.
From various places online, you can buy "scaler" boards that take HDMI/VGA/etc. to whatever interface the panel uses (LVDS is common), i.e. they comprise essentially all the electronics inside a standard non-smart monitor. They are intended for laptop display conversions but can drive much bigger displays too, as long as the interface is the same. That might be an alternative to buying a much more expensive "dumb TV", i.e. buy a smart TV and "dumb it down" yourself!
For example, this particular one is configured for an iPad's display but the sellers usually have other configurations available:
It's not as dangerous as a CRT, but there are some dangers; however it doesn't really matter. They're tightly integrated, you can't just pull out the smart bits and leave behind a tuner.
Generally most modern TVs are gonna have a power supply, a main logic board, a display driver board and maybe another control board for stuff like backlights or sound. The logic board is basically gonna be an embedded mini computer running a full embedded OS that orchestrates the UI/smart features, decoding the inputs and generating the control signals for the panel driver. This will all be highly integrated on a single board, probably with almost all of the functionality in one or two main chips. Point being, you can't just yank out the smart stuff and still have a functioning TV. It'd be a bit like trying to remove a feature from a computer motherboard.
The ideal way to go about it would be to write your own firmware for the chips, but that's a practical impossibility because almost always there's no data publicly available on the chips or the other parts like the panel. You might also be able to get something working if the actual panel uses a standard interface, but it'll be a ton of work.
There aren't that many teardowns of televisions online that I can find, but this article has some to give you an idea.
You may be able to check that by reviewing FCC documentation online similar to how people sleuth out new phones, though I've never looked at what precisely is required in terms of filing.
Amazon used to provide free networking for its readers... I think that it is very cheap to transfer text/"meta-data"... It might even be sponsored by the government...
This.
I use a "Smart TV" but never ever configure any Internet connectivity to it.
An old Mac mini serves as a media server connected to TV via HDMI. Everything works like a charm with a wireless keyboard and mouse.
The problem I've run into: the buggy software that's 3-6-9 months+ out of date by the time you get it out of box. Offline sofware update is not always an option. Maybe update once and then disconnect? As someone mentioned, only until they have autoconnect built in through partnership with mobile providers
Disregarding the fucking awful campaign against them because some 3rd party developers make piracy-focused add-ons, as someone who never owned a smart TV, Kodi seems pretty feature-compatible.
Look into LibreELEC, I use that and buy android tv boxes. You can dual boot, LibreELEC from an SD and android from NAND. It's stable enough that I've began to just flash nand and run soley LibreELEC, but you'll be limited from the wide availability of android support for most major content providers apps
the ones from the vendors are all closed source. Best bet is to buy a good TV and use another device to run software that makes it "smart" - ie. AOSP / Kodi
The only thing to gain from "smart tvs" are apps that can be controlled w/ the TV remote, if you're privacy coincious, you should know by now that it will take a bit of effort to secure your data.
Not much of a solution since it will never happen. The best TV's are "smart", and people like nice things, myself included. You're much better of simply never connecting them to the internet. They get the same message and you don't limit yourself to a small set of poor options.
And if you never connect you're device the message they get is "the consumer wanted our TV, but not our software." What's hard to understand about that?
Nothing hard to understand about your logic. It is the underlying assumption that is flawed.
The makers are not tracking that statistic (number of units sold that were not connected to the internet). They don't care if you connect it to the internet or not. Anything that happens after the initial sale (beyond returns and warranty repairs) is simply irrelevant to them, because there is zero income stream (unless they are charging an 'upgrade fee' later for something).
They care only about that initial sale. The only feedback channel they listen to is "units sold".
But too many people are addicted to the upgrade cycle and as a result not enough will simply turn away and say "no thanks, I'll stick with my dumb TV" (or go hunt down those few dumb TV's that still exist, so the sales numbers shift to dumb TV's).
> The makers are not tracking that statistic (number of units sold that were not connected to the internet). They don't care if you connect it to the internet or not.
That is absolutely wrong. They are making money off of the data; of course they care! That's the whole point!
How is the current situation possible? Shouldn't some company be able to buy the same panel, put minimal electronics and casing around it and sell it cheaper?
What if... Work with me here... The "Smart" TV company is paid by malicious hackers to include malware that snoops on its customers.
That would allow them to lower the price of the TV to below the cost of the dumb TV. Mind you, they might have to call the malware "apps" and call the hackers "partners."
Ok, snark aside, what if the makers of Smart TVs call them "platforms," and they get a subsidy for bundling apps, and maybe even a revenue stream from people who sign up for things like Netflix through the TV?
Again, they will be able to make a cheaper TV if there's more money in apps than margin on hardware.
This is analogous to the situation with phones. For most companies, there's more money in the telecommunications service than in the hardware margin, so most phones are subsidized by the service providers.
So-called television is going there: It's just a platform for advertising, tracking, and services that generate revenue on subscription. This is going to relentlessly drive hardware margins deep into the negative, which makes it impossible to sell a "dumb" display for a reasonable price.
I fully expect that it won't be long before leaving a smart TV unconnected to the internet won't be an option: They won't work unless they can phone home.
Samsung's partners don't want you hooking a 4K TV up to an AppleTV and routing around their platform in favour of Apple's app store, not if you bought that TV at a discount thanks to their subsidies.
Right on. It's the same way a windows computer is often cheaper than the same computer without an OS. The seller doesn't get paid by McAfee, Microsoft Office, Norton, and so on for bundling their crapware and has to make up for that by charging more. All that crapware probably covers the license cost of Windows and then some.
You can bet Sony didn't put this app on the TV because they wanted to give consumers an improved experience for free out of the goodness of their hearts.
If most people prefer the TV with 'more features' then they'll take it. The savings of using a dumb TV are probably not a lot, I'd ballpark it at $50.
How many consumers are going to think "$50 dollars more to get netflix straigt on my TV? Great!".
Besides, that $50 advantage could well be lost in the smaller scale costs.
Preferably, no one would ever purchase a smart TV. When smart TV sales go to zero, the makers would get the message.
Sadly, too many folks don't know, or if they do know, they don't care.