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"Smart" TVs. Somehow they have replaced normal televisions despite being barely usable, laggy, DRM infested garbage.
Curious what your preferred streaming box is, considering changing my Android TV so that it launches to HDMI, disconnect from internet, use a streaming box that isn't as slow and has a hardwired connection instead.
They are surveilance- and ad delivery platorms. The user experience is as bad as the consumer can tolerate. They work as intended.
I don't buy it, they would be better at whatever nefarious crap if they didn't take a full second to navigate between menu options, or had a UI designed by someone competent. Even people who have subscriptions to the services the TV is a gateway to have a hard time figuring out how to use them. These things aren't even good at exploitation, they are decaying technology.
If every smart TV you buy is the same, then you have no viable choices, and as such they're doing the bare minimum of what's expected for the bare minimum of cost.
You can choose not to have a TV. I only know about the current state of smart TVs because of sometimes being around the ones other people have, I would never buy one myself, there's no need. Any media you want to see can be viewed in other ways.
Do you have a 55" OLED laptop screen to watch movies and play games on?
I mean, all power to you, but I really like having a nice sized TV.
That's fair. I think if I wanted a larger screen I'd look into big monitors and some kind of expansion of my homelab setup to display things to it, but I can see why people might want a dedicated device with less setup required, even one where the setup is still pretty confusing.
I looked up some statistics and it seems, depressingly, that consumers are in fact buying more televisions and it's projected to increase, so I guess I have to concede the point that what they are doing is successful despite all reason.
You're not kidding. It's pretty difficult to not buy them.
It's a $250 smart TV vs a $2000 non-infested TV.
Nothing is smart if you dont connect it to the internet.
That my strategy when I have to buy one of those dumb TVs. Just leave it ignorant of the internet
Man, I haven't really faced this yet. My flat screen is a really old Panasonic plasma and it is"barely" smart. It came with a few apps on it. I ignore them and use it as a dumb monitor, running everything through my receiver instead. When it dies, I don't know what I'll do.
You can disconnect them from the WiFi and block their ability to connect and then use a third party device for any apps you want.
I recently bought a TV on behalf of a friend( because it was cheaper at Costco) and when we got it to his house and connected it, it asked him to give up his privacy like 11 times. If he said no, would it still have worked?
Mine had the ability to turn of WiFi in settings. I provided it no real information, didn’t create and account, and didn’t use their app or interface.
It was a Samsung. YMMV with other brands.
They're more expensive, but check out commercial displays. They're basically just big "dumb" TVs for businesses to display menus and whatnot, usually with a single HDMI and no sound, but those limitations can easily be bypassed with a stereo receiver.
The concept confuses and infuriates me. I'm just going to stick a game console or Blu-ray player on it, but you can't buy a TV these days that doesn't have a bloated "smart" interface. The solution, for me at least, is a computer monitor. I don't need or want a very large screen, and a monitor does exactly one thing, and that's show me what I've plugged into it.
A projector is also a good alternative
Only if you use it as a smart tv - I just never signed the user agreements, and now have a big TV with OLED. I switch to the source I want - off I go. Television can still just be television!
you can buy business-grade stuff without all the spyware shit, it's just much more expensive