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from the Grandpa-what-was-TV-like-before-it-was-enshittified? dept.
OEMs are increasingly focused on using TVs as a way to show customers ads:
People who buy a Fire TV from Amazon are probably looking for a cheap and simple way to get an affordable 4K smart TV. When Amazon announced its first self-branded TVs in September 2021, it touted them as being a "great value." But owners of the devices will soon be paying for some of those savings in the form of more prominently displayed advertisements.
[...] Some of the changes targeting advertisers, like connecting display placement ads with specific in-stream video ads, seem harmless enough. Others could jeopardize the TV-watching experience for owners.
For example, Amazon is preparing to make Alexa with generative AI more useful for finding content on Fire TVs. This could help Alexa, which has struggled alongside other tech giants' voice assistants to generate significant revenue. Amazon gets money every time someone interacts with digital content through Alexa.
However, the company is double-dipping on this idea by also tying ads to generative AI on Fire TVs. When users ask Alexa to help them find media with queries such as "play the show with the guy who plays the lawyer in Breaking Bad," they will see ads that are relevant to the search.
[...] Maines told StreamTV Insider that advertisers had been asking for a way to advertise against Fire TV searches. "It just makes sense to expand our existing sponsor tile offering to show advertisements on the search screen with no extra effort or cost for the advertiser," she said.
[...] Amazon Fire TV users will also start seeing banner ads on the device's home screen for things that have nothing to do with entertainment or media. This ad space was previously reserved for advertising media and entertainment, making the ads feel more relevant, at least. Amazon opening the ad space to more types of advertisers is similar to a move Google TV made early this year.
The company seems to be aware of how dominating these types of advertisements can be. Maines emphasized to StreamTV Insider how the native ads are "right at the top of the Fire TV's home screen" and take "up half the screen."
[...] The banner ads will occupy the first slot in the rotating hero area, which Amazon believes is the first thing Fire TV users see. These users may have purchased a Fire TV primarily for streaming content from ad-free subscriptions, but Maines described how Fire TVs can still manage to force ads on these users.
[...] The changes mirror similar moves from others in the TV maker industry.
Vizio has been shifting its business toward advertising for the past few years. Its Q2 2023 earnings report showed its ad business growing 28 percent compared to the same period in 2022, versus a 15 percent increase for the device business. The device business was still larger that quarter ($252.1 million compared to $142.3 million), but it's clear that the company is eyeing advertising as the way forward.
[...] TV giant LG is also moving that way, CEO William Cho announced in July. In a press release that month, LG said it "intends to transform its TV business portfolio into a 'media and entertainment service provider' by expanding content, services, and advertisement in products."
And then there's Telly—the upcoming TV that has a second screen geared toward showing advertisements, including if the TV is turned off. The screen can also show other content, like sports scores or the weather, but its primary gimmick is that the device is given away for free. The cost, instead, comes from a wealth of mandatory data collection used for selling advertisements and products.
Amazon's Fire TV ad push is reflective of many parts of the TV industry. With TV makers today increasingly focused on selling ads on their devices, we'll continue seeing ads stuffed into TV operating systems, potentially at the cost of UI and hardware improvements. TV sellers, similar to the streaming companies whose apps those TVs serve up, have grown increasingly focused on pleasing advertisers and investors with continuous growth and recurring revenue sources. While those parties may smile, customers are left stomaching more ads on TVs that are collecting more data on them.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2023, @10:34AM (16 children)
Cheap shiny stuff!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @12:13PM (15 children)
Obvious commercial move is... Obvious?
Like when a real estate agent gives you a pen or a calendar, it's going to come with their name and phone number printed on it...
I'll repeat again how I was more than willing to pay $700 for a "dumb monitor" instead of $350 for a similarly sized and spec'ed "smart TV" simply because I value my peace and quiet and don't want to spend the next 10 years fighting with embedded advertising software for a net savings of $0.10 per day.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by janrinok on Monday November 13 2023, @01:12PM (10 children)
I am not aware of it happening yet in Europe but do any TVs that are on sale in the USA absolutely demand an internet connection to function at all?
Here in France I can just attach the outdoor antenna and I have 40+ digital channels for free, and more if I wish to subscribe to them, but they are all OTA. I can access Freesat using a small satellite dish (~70cm across and ~40cm from top to bottom) without needing any internet connection and that alongside the French satellite offerings gives me hundreds more free channels. I do NOT connect any devices to the internet unless I want to. Additionally, if I cannot install a firewall on a device it is NOT being connected ever.
If I wanted to watch Netflix or Amazon that would go through my router which is secured reasonably well.
Watching TV costs me nothing except the cost of the electricity.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday November 13 2023, @01:29PM (3 children)
I bought my TV second-hand from a Finnish seller. Why? Because Finland is a large country full of emptiness and TV is still mostly distributed over the air there. Also, there are vast swathes of forested areas in Lapland that the internet hasn't reached yet, and people live there too. As a result, selling TVs that refuse to work without an internet connection would create a scandal there.
Buying my TV from a northern Finn ensured that it would work without any sort of connection to the internet. I'm happy to pay for the obscene shipping cost to escape the obscene smart TV insult.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Monday November 13 2023, @01:40PM (2 children)
Why do you need a smart TV at all? I am happy with a projector hooked up to a NUC-form factor linux box. If not for the projector, I would go for a large monitor.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Monday November 13 2023, @02:36PM
There are only a few reasons to go with a projector vs a TV/Monitor. Screen to $ size (Though, that can swing wildly in both directions.) and portability are the biggest two I can think of. Generally you're going to be paying a lot more for a huge TV and generally it's much easier to do an outside movie night with a projector. Also, the latency on a (usually cheaper) projector can be big enough to notice, if you're gaming on it.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @07:37PM
dumb TV / monitor on a NUC (and formerly a net-top) running Ubuntu + Kodi and others has been my setup since about 2008.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @01:46PM (4 children)
Last time I did OTA TV in the US was the late 1990s... and of course almost all programming sent OTA is advertising supported. I think it is still possible, but we switched to exclusively Netflix DVDs (plus internet) in early 2002, then of course migrated to streaming in the mid-late 2000s.
You can get a smart TV and feed it from a computer without connecting the TV to the internet - we do this with our BluRay players now - but, they're always a little cheesed off at us for not having that connection, you have to navigate through the menus every time it powers on, etc. I'm sure I could "beat" the smart TV with minimal effort, but I don't want to make that effort - and I fear that, like Kindle tablets, they're going to continue to ramp up how hard you have to fight to use your smart TV without viewing their advertising.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Monday November 13 2023, @03:12PM (1 child)
"I think it is still possible, but we switched to exclusively Netflix DVDs (plus internet) in early 2002, then of course migrated to streaming in the mid-late 2000s."
I switched/migrated to usenet and the wonderful people there who upload just about any program broadcast without any commercials in them. I for one am tired of the nearly half of the show being taken by commercials these days. Used to be an hour program was over fifty minutes now you are lucky if it is thirty-five and that does not count the two minute intro and two for closing credits. Plus years later they are still available to get solving the where can I watch it problem now it is no longer shown anywhere too.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @04:05PM
Occasionally (much less than half the time, actually) when we're staying in a hotel / AirBnB / whatever they will have Cable and we will turn it on for a little while... quickly determine that it is even worse than we remember, then shut it off again.
Once in a while I will get sucked in by an old movie they are showing, and the first half of the movie is a decent viewing experience, with very brief advertising breaks every 30 minutes or even longer - good time to go to the fridge or the bathroom, if you are playing the captive audience watching on "their schedule" - although most places these days now have digital recorders where you can pause the show anyway - within limits of their arbitrary rules - but what you can't do is fast forward the ads, and toward the end of the movie they'll literally be playing 5 minutes of advertisement, then throw in 3 minutes of the movie you were watching, then 5 more minutes of advertising for the last 20-30 minutes of the movie, which seems to stretch for hours... I always end up switching it off instead of seeing the end of what I started.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday November 13 2023, @06:03PM
In the 1990s TV was analog. Big difference, I now get more channels over the air at a higher resolution than cable for free. Connected to the internet there are hundreds of more free channels.
I have my TV as a monitor, but it's also plugged into the network jack. Why? Channel guide and the ability to stream PBS, Pluto's 200+ channels, and more a hell of a lot easier than either of the two computers plugged into it (one Windows, one Linux).
AFAIK Amazon is the only one who feeds you ads from their TVs. Windows feeds ads to my TV, but Linux doesn't, nor does the TV itself. Amazon is just evil, I plan to give my Kindle and Ring doorbell away and replace them with items from someone less evil.
A Black, Hispanic, or Muslim voting for Trump is like a Jew voting for Hitler
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday November 14 2023, @12:09AM
I only use OTA TV via a nice small CRT TV and a digital converter box. Yea, it has advertising, but the few times I actually watch something, I can still change the channel, mute the audio, and/or get up to do something else when the commercials come on. Sometimes they do fuck around with the timing of the commercials, but given the quality of TV shows, I can't possibly care if I wind up missing a few minutes.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mcgrew on Monday November 13 2023, @05:54PM
do any TVs that are on sale in the USA absolutely demand an internet connection to function at all?
Not that I know of, but if you don't conmnect it to the internet you lose a lot of features, like a channel guide or the ability to stream streaming services, may of which, like Pluto or Tubi or PBS are completely free. Pluto is like free cable, over 200 extra channels.
A Black, Hispanic, or Muslim voting for Trump is like a Jew voting for Hitler
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday November 13 2023, @05:50PM (3 children)
AFAIK Amazon is the only one, besides Microsoft, that adds advertising to something you paid full price for. Sony doesn't (they do different evil things), nor does Roku. I doubt many, if any but the evil Amazon, do.
A Black, Hispanic, or Muslim voting for Trump is like a Jew voting for Hitler
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 13 2023, @06:06PM (2 children)
I have a Sony BluRay player that's itching for me to install updated apps on it, but I won't give it my WiFi password, so it just pouts when I put in a BluRay disc while it tries to phone in for an updated code, but eventually it relents and plays it anyway. Mostly we watch DVDs, so it's just flashing us with a screen full of their default "app partners" any time we first power it on, or after we eject a disc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday November 18 2023, @02:53PM (1 child)
Yes, "other evil things" like removing a feature from a device you bought, paid for, and OWN. Removing OtherOS from the PlayStation, and the ability to stream an android device to a TV for example. It should be a felony and someone should have gone to prison after OtherOS. It's like buying a car and having the dealer come to your house to steal your wheels and tires.
A Black, Hispanic, or Muslim voting for Trump is like a Jew voting for Hitler
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 18 2023, @06:36PM
I was using OtherOS on our PS3 as many hours a week as we used it for games, maybe more, when Sony pulled the plug on Other OS.
We moved the other OS functions to an Ubuntu NetTop which worked much better, but you are right, they stole that functionality right out of our living room and millions of others
PS4? Or 5? Not in our home.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday November 13 2023, @01:08PM
When the product is free (or too cheap in this case) the product is you.
Enjoy your corporate brainwashing bait and switch.
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Monday November 13 2023, @01:51PM (6 children)
At the risk of stating the obvious, you get what you pay for.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday November 13 2023, @02:16PM (2 children)
This is the same reason why the entire world is rapidly slipping into a dystopian corporate surveillance nightmare: people are perfectly happy to accept just about any abuse to save a buck and they keep coming back for more.
It's a race to the bottom and it's driven by people who don't understand that the things they want have a price and and keep being utter cheapskates.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday November 13 2023, @02:57PM
I mean, no one would have paid for YouTube when it was started. Now, YouTube wants about $15 a month for it and a good number of people pay that.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday November 13 2023, @02:59PM
You'll find that there are two groups of people. The larger one with idiots buying the cheapest crap and putting up with privacy erosion and a far smaller one that tries to not cause too much of a scene who know how to kick that crap out and get a fairly cheap TV that way.
We used to publish how to remove that junk, but the makers didn't like that and kept working against our fixes, so by not putting too much stress behind it, we can keep our patched and secured systems at a low, low price...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Monday November 13 2023, @06:13PM (2 children)
Nonsense, a lie told by salesmen. You very often DON'T get what you pay for, and just as often a lower priced item will be superior than the expensive one. But you usually pay for what you get.
Three examples: Microsoft is a shitty, buggy, expensive OS. Linux Mint is head and shoulders better and FREE.
In 2006 my brother in law had a Lexus, I had a far less expensive Chrysler Concorde. Don was amazed and said my car was better than his. I agreed, I'd ridden in his car.
Canned vegetables: Green Giant is twice the cost of generic canned corn, but they ruin the corn by adding high fructose corn syrup, making it taste like it fermented! Nasty, expensive shit.
A Black, Hispanic, or Muslim voting for Trump is like a Jew voting for Hitler
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Monday November 13 2023, @10:15PM (1 child)
Your opinion represents those who live to find a "deal" above all else. You honestly believe your way is intellectually superior to those who "overpay". As it relates to software, I can sort of see your point. When it comes to food, I feel genuinely sorry that you will never once experience the magic a 3 star Michelin restaurant has to offer.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday November 18 2023, @03:03PM
You can't buy what you can't afford. But hat restaurant is an example of my point, I took my daughter to one downtown here on her birthday because it was Sunday and her favorite, D'Arcy's Pint, was closed on Sundays then. You could tell it was a "nice" restaurant because the menus didn't display prices. The portions were very small although artfully placed and the price was exorbitant. Any other restaurant in town charged a third as much for portions twice as big and ten times as tasty.
Like I said, you usually pay for whet you get but "you get what you pay for" is usually a lie.
A Black, Hispanic, or Muslim voting for Trump is like a Jew voting for Hitler
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday November 13 2023, @03:26PM (5 children)
Cable: Started as an ad-free service, then got ads.
PBS: Started as an ad-free publicly owned broadcaster, then got ads barely disguised as sponsorship announcements.
HBO and other "premium" channels: Started as paid ad-free services, then got ads.
Netflix and other streaming services: Started as paid ad-free services, then got ads.
It does not matter how much the organization swore up and down it would never dream of adding advertising, or how much the people behind the effort originally actually believed it: Sooner or later, somebody will come along and say "You know how much money we're leaving on the table by not having advertising? Let's fix that."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 13 2023, @05:35PM (1 child)
Not disagreeing with any of that, but would suggest adding in product placement deals, some of which is ridiculously prominent.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday November 14 2023, @03:36AM
Product placement deals are indeed a form of advertising, so yes, the rule still applies.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday November 13 2023, @07:42PM (1 child)
FTFY
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 3, Funny) by kazzie on Tuesday November 14 2023, @06:18AM
Any hacker's news site can become a victim of advertising: all it takes is a roll of the Dice.
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Monday November 13 2023, @10:53PM
Truth. When HBO first became available on the Ocean City, MD cable provider in '75 or '76, it was $7.95/mon and entirely ad free.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday November 13 2023, @05:43PM (1 child)
The problem is TV is for old people, and the people selling TVs and TV programming don't like that at all.
Some solutions: Try to make it appeal to younger people. Try to pander to small subcultures like going super-woke or attempts at pandering to superfans of various genres. Try to milk what ya got for as much as you can get while there are still some viewers left. They're trying all those strategies but its not working and the younger people are the less time they spend watching TV, and the people shoveling that stuff want the same (or preferably even larger) budget next year, so they'll scramble and try ever more outrageous stuff to keep the dollars flowing in.
I don't know if there is a solution. I remember Star Trek having a commentary on pro sports and TV viewing having died out in the distant future and it feeling pretty unlikely when the boomers were still middle-aged and hyperconsuming pro sports and TV and residential real estate and all that boomer-stuff. Now that we're approaching the post-boomer era, and post-pro-sports era, and post-TV era, I think the Trek writers had a point. Some cultural touchstones like sitting on a couch watching advertising supported TV are VERY boomer-generation and as those people and their culture go away, so will their cultural touchstones, and businesses always act like insane jerks on the downslope, so expect lots more of this until the last TV channel shuts off its transmitter and the last TV is shut off for the last time.
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Monday November 13 2023, @10:35PM
"Some cultural touchstones like sitting on a couch watching advertising supported TV are VERY boomer-generation"
Maybe it flies over younger "elightened" heads that, while boomers watch mostly streaming TV through apps now, the ad supported TV they watch is recorded, so the all the ads can be skipped. Who knew? 😉
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday November 13 2023, @05:46PM (2 children)
from the Grandpa-what-was-TV-like-before-it-was-enshittified? dept.
TV was UNshittified. When I was a kid, St Louis had only three analog TV stations; digital didn't exist. Most shows were black and white. There were ghosts every time an airplane passed by, snow whenever somebody used a can opener.
Color started, by the time we got a color TV in the late 1960s most shows were color.
Then there was cable a decade or two later (although it bagan in the 1950s). For ten bucks a month the snow, ghosts, and static in the sound were gone and there were half a dozen extra channels with no censorship or commercials, and great channels like History and Discovery, which did in fact later become shittified, changing from science and history to stupid reality shows, and the cable channels started censoring and showing commercials even when the content was playing, and cable got insanely expensive.
But then TV went digital. No more snow or ghosts over the air, no more big bills just to watch TV. It was again free. Cable is now obsolete but most have yet to notice that.
As to your Fire TV, that's what one gets for buying an Amazon branded thing from Amazon, I learned my lesson with the Ring doorbell and Kindle e-reader. Amazon is a great store, I fucking HATE Walmart, but Amazon's products produce only suckiness. And I was stupid (had the flu and my brain wasn't working properly) when I bough a Sony TV and they "other OSed" it, "upgrading" it to only use mirroring if you have a Sony phone, after I owned it for three years!
TV itself has been unshittified. Lots of TVs have been shittified by their manufacturers.
A Black, Hispanic, or Muslim voting for Trump is like a Jew voting for Hitler
(Score: 2) by jb on Tuesday November 14 2023, @07:34AM (1 child)
No, with digital TV what you get is even worse: if your reception isn't perfect, the signal isn't usable at all.
The artefacts you describe are part of the graceful degradation inherent in all analogue transmission (which, if you don't happen to live close enough to the broadcast antenna, is infinitely preferable to the all-or-nothing of digital transmission).
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday November 18 2023, @03:21PM
True, often channel 17 is unwatchable now, with snow and ghosts you could usually tell what was going on with analog, but who needs it when 4 analog channels were replaced by 20 digital channels? 17 is unwatchable, watch something else.
A Black, Hispanic, or Muslim voting for Trump is like a Jew voting for Hitler
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Monday November 13 2023, @06:03PM (3 children)
How much money are we talking about?
I went to Amazon and searched for "large monitor". Acer 1080p HDMI 32 inch $160. LG, similar specs, $170. Sceptre 30 inch $210. Now we enter 4K territory, Dell 32 inch 4K Displayport input $250. It seems "thirty inch 1080 monitor" will run a bit under $200 right now, and its hard to buy much larger, although there is a class of 4K monitors that size "around $250+"
Lets take a look at shitty smart TVs, since they refuse to sell normal TVs anymore, lets compare apples to Apples (LOL) and look for 32 inch smart TVs. Vizio with Alexa built in $163, be careful because there are 720 and 1080 models around the same prices. TCL with Roku built in, $150. Samsung LED backlit "smart" $230. Vizio with Chromecast $130. Hisense with "Google Smart TV" $140.
I would say the revenue from monitoring non-monitor TVs in the 1080 resolution and 32 inch size class can't be much more than $10 to $20 and can be as low as, apparently, roughly $0 in some comparisons. However I'd say on average a smart TV costs maybe $10 less than an equivalent dumb monitor.
It seems on Amazon its borderline impossible to purchase a dumb monitor larger than 32 inches and borderline impossible to purchase a (smart) TV smaller than 32 inches. This seems to be the strategy to force TV addicts to voluntarily become monitored by advertisers. However, the amount of money changing hands for the spying is not much, retail its about the cost of a lunch and with the usual retail markups etc the amount of money the mfgr gets for selling out their customers looks like the cost of a chezburger or so, surprisingly little.
You can't watch a new TV without being spied upon in 2023 unless its on a screen smaller than mid-30 inches, so it seems, which is interesting.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday November 13 2023, @10:26PM
My reasoning for thinking they may be safe is, admittedly, not solid. I just think there's a line most manufacturers don't wanna cross where they piss off execs at other companies. I'll put it this way- On multiple occasions at different businesses I've seen conference room TVs suddenly have IT people thrown at them over the high frame rate interpolation feature that 0 people on the planet requested. I can't even imagine what'd happen if someone was about to put up a powerpoint presentation but first we gotta sit through a Geico ad.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday November 14 2023, @02:37PM (1 child)
Sans-smart TVs can be found, they just tend to be of the cheap variety. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Philips-32-Class-HD-720p-LED-TV-32PFL3453-F7/2587374896 [walmart.com] Where they skimped on all of the parts to try and squeeze out the lowest cost device possible. Then you have the likes of LG who is charging an obscene price for a 720p TV that happens to not have Smart functionality built-in. https://www.walmart.com/ip/LG-32-Class-HDR-LED-LCD-TV-32LT570H9UA/868809041 [walmart.com] (Then again, maybe it's Walmart's screwy marketplace?) Especially considering that stupid LG is definitively worse than this ViewSonic (Monitor) that's about $85 cheaper. https://www.walmart.com/ip/ViewSonic-VX3211-4K-MHD-32-Inch-4K-UHD-Monitor-with-99-sRGB-Color-Coverage-HDR10-FreeSync-HDMI-and-DisplayPort/213295702 [walmart.com]
Typically, I've just used whatever LCD TV as my computer monitor. TVs are usually much cheaper, I assume due to shear quantity of TVs sold vs Monitors. I've never been one to nitpick over a monitor, but my eyesight has always been bad. So, I may literally not be seeing the difference between 720p/1080p/4k. At a certain point even I can tell, but at 32" size, 720p is good. Bigger than 32" as my monitor seems a bit overkill, though.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday November 14 2023, @03:00PM
The first TV I bought was a CRT, I am so glad that era of display technology is gone. (I would guess for around $100-$200. I have no idea how much I paid for it at this point.) (50 lb 20" TV, yeah buddy) The next TV I bought was a 32" 720p LCD Sceptre, when they were an unknown brand over a decade ago for about $600. (That one finally bit the dust, probably a capacitor on the MB died or something. It was still being used when I bought my next one.) The 3rd TV I ever bought was a name brand Sony Bravia 720p 32" TV, that thing is still my main computer monitor. Why change it, if it still works? The Sony cost about $650, but Target gave me a $50 discount, if I signed up for a credit card. I promptly paid the $600 off at the customer service counter and never used the thing. Thanks for the $50 Target. (Probably 10+ years ago now.) Since then, there was the price fixing fiasco between TV manufacturers and as a result, the cost (to the consumer) of LCD TVs plummeted. When my Sceptre died we bought a (I believe LG) for cheap that was something like a 40" or so TV (I forget exact size), for something like $200, probably getting close to 7 years ago. A few years ago we bought whatever cheap TV at about $120, 32" (maybe 1080p, I forget). At the about $100 for a decent 32" TV, what's not to like? You want to spend $600 you can get a nice large TV with better specs, but you don't have to spend that much just to get an okay experience. You need a 100"+ size screen? You're talking about low volume TVs (Most people are happy with 32" to 60" screens.) or Projectors. Projectors just tend to be more expensive than TVs and low volume TVs don't benefit much from economy of scale. The big issue with Projectors is that you end up with burned screens really easily, if you leave them on too long. At least on the cheap end of the scale. We had a cheap 480p projector that wife abused and the screen got burned pretty quickly. I did buy a different cheap projector ($100 or so for 720p), which still works fine, but we just don't use it as much anymore.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Touché) by Gaaark on Monday November 13 2023, @09:22PM
their Firesticks are GARBAGE compared to Roku, so I would not be buying their tv.
Better off with playing your own media with such as plex on a roku than a smart tv.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---