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So one of my three year old kids smashed my 65" LED flatscreen with a die-cast model of the Atlantis shuttle. I was fine with this and was not planning on buying a replacement in any haste but my wife keeps complaining. Would prefer at least 65"+ and absolutely not a smart tv. What suggestions do you have, companies to avoid, etc. Help me SN, you are probably my only hope of not just buying another spysung.
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I think my career is ruined!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by KilroySmith on Saturday January 20 2018, @05:49PM (8 children)
It's hard to not get a Smart TV these days, but that's not a big deal - just don't plug it into your network (or give it your WiFi password). I haven't seen one come with an LTE SIM yet...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Saturday January 20 2018, @07:21PM (7 children)
I seem to recall reading of at least a few smart TVs that required an internet connection (or maybe just wifi?) for the remote control to work. That sort of detail would be good to know when comparing models.
Similarly - if you're switching between several sources regularly, it's nice to know whether there's a convenient source-cycling button on the TV, or if you're going to need to find your remote and navigate a "smart" source-selection screen every time. I encountered such an issue helping someone with their new Samsung recently. It's a sad day when even basic volume, etc. controls aren't quick at hand.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:10PM (6 children)
What you REALLY want is a TV that has direct source selection commands. That makes it so much easier to use with universal / programmable remotes with activity selections.
Then you press 'watch TV' on the remote, it turns the TV on sets it to HDMI1, etc. When you press 'play Nintento' it turns the TV on, sets it to HDMI2 etc.
What you DO NOT want is a TV that only has 'toggle power', and 'cycle source' commands. Because then instead of sending the On command and the HDMI1 command, the remote has to keep track of power state, so that it knows whether to send the toggle or not, and it has to keep track of which source its on so it knows how many times to send cycle source. (The WORST are TVs who only have a cycle source, and only cycle active sources, so the number of sources depends what else is plugged or turned on.)
In the former case, if a command gets missed (e.g. the remote was blocked or whatever), or if someone doesn't use the remote to turn something on or off it doesn't matter -- you just press the command and it rights itself.
In the latter case, where the remote has to keep track of state, now the 'state in the remote' and 'reality' are out of sync and you have to mess around to put them back in sync, which is beyond annoying.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:19PM (3 children)
Do TV's (and remotes) that stupidly designed actually exist?
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:39PM (1 child)
Unfortunately, yes. My TV remote only has a power toggle button, and it has an input button that brings up an onscreen display and then you use the arrow keys to select source, and click ok to make a selection. That's the only way to use the remote that it comes with.
Fortunately, in addition to the commands "power toggle", "input select", "up", "down", and "ok"; my TV *also* has direct commands for on, for off, and for each input, which I can use with my universal remote.
But yeah, I've worked with a few TVs where the direct commands were lacking and all you could do was 'script' source changes using the input/arrow/ok buttons, and have the remote remember states.
I owned one TV that inexplicably had direct commands for SOME of the inputs but not all of them -- so to get to the component source I had my remote programmed to direct set hdmi3 (which was adjacent to component1), and then cycle source once. So at least that didn't require remembering state, but it was still idiotic.
The logitech harmony remotes support remembering state, and scripting source changes to support those kind of devices and it even has a wizard to use when things get out of sync to get back into sync.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @08:15PM
My TV actually has a hybrid approach. It has a direct command to change to a different type of source (antenna, hdmi, composite, etc) and then cycle commands to switch between those. Changing input type always goes to the first one, so I can do composite, hdmi, cycle, cycle and it will always end up on hdmi #3. My TV is a decade old now but I bet many TVs still use a similar system. Mine is a Vizio.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday January 21 2018, @04:44PM
Worse, in that there's also very SLOOOOOOOOW user interfaces. My solution was to leave the TV on HDMI1 permanently and I have a nice pushbutton physical UI switchbox. And the kids are trained fairly well to push the buttons. Its not as bad as you might think in that for one butt-sitting event I usually only use one HDMI source per butt-sitting. Its not like I'm getting up to change old fashioned legacy channels.
Another thing to think about is I run an optical audio output from the TV to the surround sound/subwoofer system. So I'm already in multiple device remote control hell.
I'd say the biggest difference between similar young and old people is old people are used to much lower latency that kids tolerate these days, and kids are used to much higher bandwidth than older people are used to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 21 2018, @08:25AM
you do recognize the "first world problem" inanity of this? the obvious answer may take some time to train, but you already have a voice-activated (and fear-motivated...) remote control. just train him/her. And the cool thing is it will be fully customizable too, including "fetch me a beer" mode for during the super bowl.
Just be careful rhough. You will not want to rage quit with (or on) this remote control system...
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday January 22 2018, @03:43PM
That's nice for automation, but probably overkill for physical buttons. I almost never use a remote, my TV's primary function is a computer monitor within arm's reach, and even watching "TV" is either via PC using a wireless mouse as "remote", or via chromecast, which seizes control of the TV anyway. Otherwise I'm playing console games, in which case I pretty much have to go stand by the TV to put in the right disc, so pushing a source select button is no extra effort. Sound is all on pass-through a separate speaker system, so the TV volume doesn't do anything useful. And I've never had the thing connected to cable or an antenna. Basically, power and source select are the only buttons that ever get used.
I'm all for including nice features for those who want to automate/integrate - and given the fact that it's all software with zero marginal cost, there's very little reason not to do it right. If Samsung put one $100k developer on it for a year, the resulting improvements would cost them less than one penny per set within the first year.
But it's also important not to leave out basic physical buttons on the TV, so you can still use it when the remote is lost, dead, etc.