Did your Roku TV decide to strong arm you into giving up your rights or lose your FULLY FUNCTIONING WORKING TV? Because mine did.

It doesn’t matter if you only use it as a dumb panel for an Apple TV, Fire stick, or just to play your gaming console. You either agree or get bent.

  • Technus@lemmy.zip
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    10 months ago

    Worst part is, now you can’t find a dumb TV anymore. The closest thing out there are “commercial signage displays” which are just dumb TVs with limited inputs and usually without remotes, but 25-50% more expensive because “commercial” (and because they won’t be able to continue making money by showing you ads and selling your data) and a lot of retailers won’t let you order one without a business account, or force you to order in bulk.

    And every Neanderthal I complain to is like “but smart TVs have so many more features,” like, bro, I can make any TV the smartest fucking TV in the world by plugging it into the desktop PC I’m gonna keep right next to it anyway. All the “smart” bullshit just gets in the way. I’ve yet to encounter a smart TV UI that didn’t require a dozen button presses to change inputs and spend two seconds or more re-drawing the UI with EVERY INPUT because they put the cheapest processors they can find in these pieces of shit.

    • mean_bean279@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Commercial displays cost more because backlight testing and ratings double or triple. You’re paying more for longer uptime since your display is likely to run 12+ hours a day straight and not for 1-2 hours a day with an occasional 8+ hour usage. You’re also paying actual cost, but a lot of it really has to do with testing and materials that are built to survive consistent and frequent usage, plus centralized management. Lots of people assume it’s the same shit, but it’s completely different and it shows when you buy a consumer off the shelf display and put it in production.

    • Seasoned_Greetings@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      I’ve heard that if you want a dumb TV, you buy a smart TV with input priority on the hdmi and never connect to the internet.

      How accurate is that?

      I wouldn’t know, as I’ve been blessed with a couple of dumb tvs from the golden age of dumb tvs for the last 10 years.

      • moody@lemmings.world
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        10 months ago

        Some smart TVs need to be connected before they’ll even start.

        The key thing is to make sure you look into that stuff before you buy.

        My TV is from the before days, and when it dies I’m not sure what the plan will be. Possibly a large monitor at 3x the price.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          The key thing is to make sure you look into that stuff before you buy.

          Or better yet, buy it and then return it as defective, ideally repeatedly and gathering a whole bunch of other people to do the same en masse, until companies start losing so much money on this shit that they’re forced to be less shitty.

            • Spiralvortexisalie@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              Found the youngster or missed a sarcasm tag. I remember a time when my 50 inch was considered leading class for weighing “only” 60 lbs, my tvs before that one all weighed over 100 lbs (CRTs). I literally unironically can throw most tvs upto 65 inches just over my shoulder, and if the boxes weren’t so awkwardly big I could carry a few at a time. TVs may be a lot things but not heavy, most 43 inch tvs are under 20 lbs now.

        • natebluehooves@pawb.social
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          10 months ago

          My hisense google tv connected to an open wifi network and updated without being told to. The update broke CEC and hdmi arc. I cannot adequately express my rage at this moment.

    • Fisch@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      What I don’t get about smart TVs is why you can’t use it with your phone. That’s one of Kodi’s best features. You can just type using your phone keyboard. Typing with a TV remote is a fucking NIGHTMARE.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      Can’t you plug in your computer into an HDMI port and simply not use the “smart” features?

        • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          That sucks. I guess I gotta keep my TV running as long a possible then. It’s a smart TV, but I can change ports without the smart features. In fact the smart TV part of it is basically like another port, but I have set to use HDM1 as the default when starting up and I never have to look at the smart interface. TV is over 5 years old now, the smart interface probably runs like shit by now.

      • Tja@programming.dev
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        10 months ago

        Yes, you absolutely can. Or you can use pihole to block ads/updates. Or you can use a raspberry pi with kodi. Or a streaming stick. Or you can use it normally.

        Just make sure you buy from a store with a return policy that let’s you test the TV for your use case. Which in the EU is any online retailer, for 14 days.

        • Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          10 months ago

          There are tvs that wait a month before giving you a big manually dismissed popup about not being connected to the internet.

    • Tja@programming.dev
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      10 months ago

      So anybody who doesn’t have A FUCKING DESKTOP PC near their TV is a Neanderthal?

      I have a smart TV from 2019 and it runs perfectly fine, it’s snappy and convenient. Switching inputs requires 2 button presses (3 if you don’t want to wait 3 seconds to auto-switch to the selected one) or I can automate it with home assistant for a “movie watching” scene for instance, for 0 button presses.

      Plus you seem to completely misunderstand what digital signage TV are.