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It’s Still Stupidly, Ridiculously Difficult To Buy A ‘Dumb’ TV

posted by janrinok on Sunday April 17 2022, @02:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-connect-them-to-anything dept.

owl writes:

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/14/its-still-stupidly-ridiculously-difficult-to-buy-a-dumb-tv/

Historically, "smart" TVs aren't always particularly smart. They've routinely been shown to have lax security and privacy standards. They also routinely feature embedded OS systems that don't age well, aren't always well designed, don't perform particularly well over time, are slathered with ads, and are usually worse than most third-party game streaming devices or video game consoles.

Yet when if you go shopping for "dumb" televisions — as in just a high quality display with a bunch of HDMI ports and not much else, you're usually going to be out of luck. There are options, but guides on this front will usually shovel you toward computer monitors (too pricey at large sizes), or business-class displays (ditto).

[...] Of course it's challenging because TV manufacturers now make more money collecting and monetizing your personal data than they do selling the actual hardware. Last year Vizio noted it made $38.4 million in one quarter just from tracking and monetizing consumer viewing and usage data. It made $48.2 million on hardware (which also includes soundbars, and other products) in that same period.

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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 17 2022, @07:17PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday April 17 2022, @07:17PM (#1237744) Journal

    And get the shop owner to set it up, while you watch, so all you have to do is get it home and plug it in.

    If you have to set it up (other than the automated search for channels, which is trivial to do yourself, and possibly changing the channel settings to your liking), it probably wasn't a dumb TV.

    I will also bring in my intranet wireless router so he can set up the TV to search that out, log onto it, then I will Chromecast my phone through it, just to make sure the whole shebang will work completely sans internet. And make sure he will take it back should it have a time bomb in it.

    Well, my TV doesn't connect to wireless, nor wired. As I wrote, it's a dumb TV. All I can plug in is the antenna cable and some HDMI sources (and it also has a SCART input for old devices). Oh, and the power cord, of course. And the only thing it receives without an external antenna is the remote control signal.

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