It's surprising to me that you can't find a single medium or high-ish end TV without smart features, but at the same time chromecast/firetv/apple tv units and sticks also seem to be selling very well.
Is everyone just putting up with the shitty built-in smart interface, but then switching inputs to their separate unit of choice?
I really wish the whole home theater system was way more modular. I want:
1. A TV that just displays video from an HDMI input.
2. An A/V amplifier that just receives an HDMI A/V signal from a single input, passes the video from that to to the TV, and does Dolby/DTS/whatever decoding of the audio, amplifies the result, and sends it to my speakers.
3. An HDMI switch that I can plug assorted A/V source into (FireTV, Roku, OTA TV tuner, Blu-ray player, Cable box, etc) into, which I'll connect to the A/V receiver.
(Actually, what I really want is for the switch to split the A/V signal into separate audio and video on two different HDMI ports. Video goes to the TV, audio the A/V amplifier--except now it is just an A amplifier. But I think there may be licensing restrictions on that kind of splitting that make it so you can only split at the step that converts to analog for the speakers).
All of the HDMI connections should support Ethernet over HDMI.
None of these should have WiFi built-in. They networking should be via Ethernet. If I want WiFi, I'll add a WiFi access point to the home theater LAN.
I'm not sure how Ethernet over HDMI interacts with HDMI switches. If you have, say, a 4 input, 1 output HDMI switch, does that switch all signals, so that you only have Ethernet between the one selected input and the output, or are the Ethernet lines treated specially and connected like a hub, so that all devices on both sides of the switch can communicated over Ethernet, regardless of which input is currently selected for A/V?
If the later, then the home theater LAN can use the HDMI ports. If the former, then all the devices need an Ethernet port.
Most projectors are like this. Mine is a JVC, plugged via HDMI into an AVR that does the input handling. I feed that with a DirecTV Genie, AppleTV, Bluray player etc.
About a third of the population, myself included, can't really watch 3d movies on flat screens (hardwired focus to crossing in the brain). Having all the marketing try very hard to shove into my face a feature that literally gives me a headache was a nuisance.
Not saying your experience isn't valid, but it's actually the too-tight glasses for my big head that give me headaches for 3D movies, not the actual 3D feature.
Don't care enough about 3D to buy my own 3D glasses though, so solution (don't watch 3D movies) is the same.
Business-wise, they need to have the "smarts" built-in to subsidies the price so they can compete. Even if you don't use the built-in apps, it's still collecting interesting enough data to sell. Most people don't know how to block specific devices from accessing the internet, and worse, some of those devices won't work at all if they can't.
> Is everyone just putting up with the shitty built-in smart interface, but then switching inputs to their separate unit of choice?
I frequently use hdmi but I still use the my tvs smart functions as it has dedicated amazon and netflix buttons and other buttons to control those apps. Works 99% of the time perfectly and than I'm not at risk of hdmi cable connections to my laptop so i use it all the time. Oh, and mine was a pretty good deal at the time (65 inch with 4k and smart functions for $1,000 3.5 years ago). What is so shitty about the smart tv functions you use?
You can, they're just not marketed to consumers. Search electronics retailers like B&H, Newegg, etc for "commercial displays" or "digital signage" and you'll see a lot of familiar looking units that don't have all the consumer garbage built in. They tend to be more expensive but not prohibitively so.
Is everyone just putting up with the shitty built-in smart interface, but then switching inputs to their separate unit of choice?