I ran my old 2004 Samsung television into the ground: the EL backlight was so worn out that the picture had large dark holes in it, and the TV would take 20 minutes to warm up and display something.
And today it wouldn’t start at all anymore. It’s deader than a dead dodo. But hey, 20 years for a modern TV ain’t bad. I’m pretty pleased with that.
So I went to the supermarket to find the cheapest set I could find. I asked the salesman if they had a cheap, but most importantly NON-SMART TV - thinking non-smart TVs are probably the cheapest of them all, if they still existed at all.
The man said “We have this dumb 43” TV here, but it’s the last one, and then we won’t get anymore dumb TVs for 3 months."
I looked at the price and it was - gasp - $20 MORE than the cheapest Android-encumbered smart TV of the same size.
I asked the man how come and he said “Well, dumb TVs are hard to get and they sell almost immediately. So they’re worth more than the smart ones.”
Wow. So people actually WANT dumb TVs and are willing to pay a premium for em. It means attitudes towards the value of privacy are changing and that’s great!
Was the TV you got from Sceptre? I got one recently as a dumb TV and it was quite cheap. No complaints thus far, but also managed my expectations in display and speaker quality from a $150 TV.
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That’s a nice thought. Thank you for sharing
I asked the man how come and he said “Well, dumb TVs are hard to get and they sell almost immediately. So they’re worth more than the smart ones.”
He’s wrong. They’re cheaper because the manufacturer makes money off selling advertisements.
Until they realise they don’t need to make it cheaper because people will buy it anyway because they love all the bells and whistles.
I suspect the vast majority of people are buying dumb TVs because android TV sucks, not for privacy reasons. I’m willing to bet most go home and plug their Chromecast or FireTV stick right in.
So as long as android TV sucks, its good news for us.
I dunno that’s entirely accurate - we have a Sony Bravia android TV (working on moving away from default OS but that’s another story) that is perfectly usable with Stremio and Jellyfin and doesn’t have massive invasive ads. One of my parents has a dumb TV with a Chromecast and it’s nothing but a PITA to use by comparison.
Not all android TVs are bad, but I think a lot of the cheap ones are pretty bad. Mine is horribly laggy, and will occasionally refuse to turn on unless I powercycle it.
Which Chromecast do your parents have? The ones pre-Google TV are pretty brainless to use, but I hate the new google TV ones as well.
My Sony Bravia had an update that made it horribly laggy. After screwing around a bit I found out that closing apps made it run faster. Somehow they broke the suspension system with the update and it keeps running out of RAM is what I’m assuming happened.
Mines always been bad, but I use a Chromecast all the time anyway, so it doesn’t matter. I’d be livid if I had bought it, but it was free :shrug:
Smart TVs are subsidized by selling your data.
“subsidized” – TVs sold perfectly well before they were flooded with ads. Ads and selling user data just mean more money for CEOs. Always more, MORE, MOOORE PROFIT!
Yes because 3k I paid for the large oled needed to be subsidized 🤡
If they can make money off you, they will.
I’ve always wanted to ask a billionaire how much was enough, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t understand the question. Enough? What’s that?
That’s why I deny the parasite engagement and profit, every chance I get 🐸
We got a class war on our hands, normies are just oblivious
Dumb TVs aren’t subsidized by ads
Neither are all but the cheapest smart TVs.
It’s called double and triple dipping. Every single company that can get away with double, triple, quadruple dipping can and does.
Buying the initial product + Subscription + selling your data + dropping support to force you to buy a new product is quite commonplace. The old mantra of “if you are not paying, you are the product” doesn’t apply anymore because most companies do both.
Well normies accept abuse, why would my daddy capital NOT extract that extra profit.
Look up “commercial displays” - that’ll get you what you’re looking for!
It’s exactly what I got: it has the telltale PCMCIA connector on the side and a store mode in the menu.
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Simple solution: buy a smart TV and never connect it to the internet.
Many smart TVs still give you popups telling you to connect to the internet or they simply refuse work without connection. There’s not a very good way to tell if any smart TV you get will do this ahead of time without looking over reviews, and even then many people just connect their TVs anyway so it might not show up there either.
I’d prefer to just have a display that works as a display from the start and not have to worry about it.
Ask the sales rep if it works without internet, and if they’re wrong, demand a refund.
if u dont connect to the internet, wont it be dumb?
Often it will yell at you every day and be very intrusive, not actually disconnect from the internet and force join any old WiFi connections/any non-password protected ones, or simply refuse to work unless you connect them (I think some people were saying newer Samsung TVs do that)
When your teevee behaves like Harvey Weinstein…
My neighbor has a smart TV and it keeps bitching and moaning when it’s not connected to the internet.
I got a Sharp Android smart tv last year when my 2006 Samsung died and it works great without internet access. Cheapest one there was.
Now I’m picturing the TV sounding like Marge Simpson’s sisters.
If you are not able to find a dumb TV, I recommend Google based TVs (GTVs). Unlike some Roku based TVs, GTVs will boot and work just fine even if you never configure their network access. If you do opt to enable network access on a GTV, you can set up static IP addresses on them, including PiHole as DNS.
My wife likes the convenience of a smart TV in her office so I DMZ’d it so that it has no access to our home network and it goes through a dedicated PiHole on a Pi Zero. Neither the Roku or LG TVs we had allowed for this, so I sold the RokuTV and I connected the LG to a thin client with a Bluetooth remote.
PS: Hisense makes a great 4K TV that goes to shit the moment you connect it to the network because of inadequate computing power, low memory, and bad code (memory leaks). If you don’t connect it to a network and use it as a dumb TV, it is great display for very little money.
are you sure the wife’s tv doesn’t try 8.8.8.8 or another public DNS server, or perhaps DoH after failing to resolve domains through the pihole?
There are tutorials on how to block secondary DNS servers when using Pihole. (The one I followed is in German but you can probably use your translator of choice.)
Yeah. It’s locked down at the firewall level.
What store was this? And what was the brand of the TV?
It’s a store in Sweden where I reside 6 months per year, and the brand is Finlux.
Finlux used to be a Finnish company and their old tv’s sold well back in the day here in Finland. It’s been Turkish since 2006. I had their recording digibox about 10 years ago. It often didn’t even start and it didn’t have on off button in the back. lol but to be fair many electronics doesnt have them anymore. Finlux brand name isn’t strong anymore here and many youth probably doesnt even recognize it. But I hope you have better experience with your Finlux than I did.
Must be a good store if you stay there half the year
lol
Hit up thrift stores they always have a pile in decent shape. Just test them at an outlet
This won’t work if you use actual, classic TV. But I researched for a fair while and found none of the dumb TVs are cheaper than low end smart TVs. Not by a long shot. So I got a giant computer screen instead. I just connect my switch or my laptop.
Just an FYI that the Smart cancer has already began infecting computer monitors. It won’t be long until there are no more dumb monitors.
Samsung and LG make smart computer monitors. There are probably many others.
Well that just made my day a little worse
