Instead of buying a TV, look for a digital signage display. It’s a TV, but with none of the “smart” crap on it.
Alternatively, just don’t hook your device up to the internet.
This is good advice, but I really wish we lived in a world where consumers could bond together and get laws passed that make this type of crap illegal so that buying TV’s (or any type of appliance for that matter) didn’t involve having to do research on weird non-consumer hardware just to have a nice experience.
EDIT: some morons in my replies keep on saying shit about “voting republican” and We Do In OtHeR CoUnTRiEs. I’m not american, I don’t live in america, and I cannot remember the last time I set foot in america. Shut the fuck up, nobody asked you.
In other words, you wish we lived in a democracy instead of a plutocracy. 'Cause that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work. This thread is squarely about the FTC failing to do its goddamn job, because this should not be legal.
We can you idiots just keep voting Republican
First rule of smart TVs: if you really have to buy a smart TV, then never connect it to the internet!
Oops, stepped on another $1200 landmine did you? Should have researched where you put your foot. Everyone knows this neighborhood is littered with landmines. No, there’s nothing we can really do about it except hand out these exhaustive charts and navigation tools. Of course they need to constantly get re-updated and are themselves periodically hijacked by the pro-landmine industry to turn into a second-tier grift. But that just means you have to research who you research for your TV research.
Don’t worry, you’ll get it eventually. God gave us two legs for a reason.
Four legs good, two legs BETTER!
Looked at the CES reveals and aside from some minor improvements, its nothing but overloaded AI crap.
Even on TVs from 10 years ago, the first thing you had to do was turn off the stupid auto frame generation, smoothing, lighting, and other effects so you can actually enjoy your content in original detail and correct FPS.
It took me way too long to figure out what was going on with those settings. One of my relatives tv’s was like this back in the day and at first I thought it was just their “HD” setup which made me completely write off getting anything HD because of the fake look like a soap opera. It wasn’t till I was gifted a blue-ray player that I realized their tv just had horrible “enchancement” shit.
Well yeah, minor improvements really stack up.
A friend is buying a TV or a screen for console gaming anyway and man, the TV’s are actually pretty decent for gaming nowadays. I haven’t checked out any for several years.
I bought a UHD LED tv in like 2016 and what a POS it is compared to these modern models. I mean I haven’t had it for years gave it to my sister but still.
I thought they looked pretty damn nifty. And AI isn’t a curse word when it comes to everything. I get being annoyed at the marketing, I am too, but, like isn’t Nvidia DLSS AI? That’s shit’s actually good.
If that’s real, then it’s full refund or terrorism upon both the vendor and manufacturer.
My current TV has started to die. It’s developing a purple spot that starts to be very distracting. I am not excited about researching a new model that doesn’t pull out this kind a shit on me. I don’t intend to ever connect it to the Internet. My current TV is nothing more than a big display for my NVIDIA shield TV and the next one will be the same.
Sceptre makes a decent dumb tv.
I have one. I like it. 4k. Good enough for me.
I got their 1080p 43" “dumb” model for $150 not too long ago. I wouldn’t choose it for my main living room TV, but it is perfectly fine for what I needed it for and they can’t retroactively make it worse like the Roku tv it replaced.
I think mine was around 300 and is 47”. I don’t watch a lot of tv, it’s mostly there for the kids. The 4k picture looks amazing when I do use it. I do most of my gaming on my Steam Deck and I dock that to a 720p Samsung I’ve had for 18 years now (Was very high end when I got it). It is good enough for me.
I’m about to inherit my daughter’s gaming laptop and I’ll plug that in the bedroom and be happy with it too.
$300 isn’t too bad of a price for a 47" 4K where they aren’t getting extra money from your data and ads. I went for the 1080p model because at the distance we sit at it was impossible to tell the difference based on the 4K Roku TV is replaced.
Check out “commercial” TVs. These are TVs for businesses (e.g. displaying a menu at a restaurant). They typically don’t have the “smart” features. You have to look for them specifically.
The Nvidia shield ships with the exact same OS as many of these smart TVs
It’s still better. It uses stock android base. So normal play store.
Fair enough, but this setup won’t display an ad on top of my game console feed, like shown above. No guarantee a brand new Android TV won’t start doing this after, could even start doing this after a firmware update.
When I bought my Sony TV from Costco, it let me skip all of the agreements and sign-ups and accounts the day that I bought it. Fast forward a few months later after the return window was over, I turned it on one day and I had to agree to all the different things and it started asking me for an account, if I recall.
I will never buy another smart TV ever in my life.
I bought a 70" TV back in 2015 and it worked great until a couple of months ago when the screen suddenly went black. No amount of resetting or messing with it would fix it. Ended up ordering a new main board for around $125. Installed the new board and the TV works again. In fact I’m convinced the picture actually looks better.
During my research I found a lot of information about LED TVs. They basically only have 4 parts. A main board, LED backlight, LCD controller, and T Con board. From what I heard purple screens are often a cause of bad cables or the T-Con board. They are not complex, so if you are comfortable removing the back and messing with ribbon cables, then you can easily replace any part. Just try searching your model number on YouTube.
If you do go this route beware, there are a lot of places that say they have the boards, but they’re really just a repair service. I was able to find a replacement board at shortcircuitsolution.com.
Doesn’t the Shield use Google Android? That box is also spying on you.
Yes it does. A significant portion of the traffic gets caught by pihole. I haven’t taken the time of rooting it so far. But with an alternative launcher, SmartTube and Jellyfin, I have a completely ads free watching experience :)
I just bought this dumb tv. Couldn’t be happier.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CJV6722
It’s not a good tv, but it’s the biggest one I could fit on my desk and it has absolutely no “smart” features.
Just don’t connect smart TVs to the internet. That’s all you have to (not) do
Too much of a gamble. What if someone already did once and it uses the cached ads? What if they have some preloaded?
Better financially support products that never have ads and that way demonstrate demand.
My TCL TV flashes a little ring light constantly if it doesn’t have an internet connection. The best part is the LED is part of the IR receiver, so if you cover it up your remote stops working. I’ve dimmed it as much as possible through the hidden service menus, but the option to remove it was apparently removed in a firmware update at some point.
Jesus fucking christ. This is by design; they knew what they were doing.
Rtings needs a category/filter for design and “smart” features that cause issue.
Many smart TVs have firmware that interfere with your ability to switch sources using the remote for your cable service provider, or causes it to default to a specific source menu or app, or auto-switch between sources when it thinks it’s “detecting” them, even if you were actually using the other one.
And older people don’t know how to navigate the new user interfaces that come pre-installed on these smart TVs, especially if they have several connected devices on different ports. Have you had to walk a customer over the phone through using the Video Input button on their cable service remote, only to discover the TV software doesn’t allow 3rd party remotes to access the video input menu; because only the TV remote they lost is able to access that menu?
Or had to look up an article on a customer’s brand of smart TV, and walk them through disabling specific tv settings buried in their menu that prevent the TV from properly detecting and switching between sources, or having to mess with the TV closed captions, because they’re somehow interfering with the closed captions settings on their cable box.
I have. SmartTV software is occasionally a nightmare to negotiate with when trying to get it to work with a customer’s STB or their wifi, or what have you.
From what I have heard, this is not true for all brands. Some won’t work without being connected. Shouldn’t be legal, but here we are.
Yes. I’ve heard some brands will search for nearby devices of the same brands that are already connected to the internet so that even if YOU didn’t connect the TV to WiFi, it still calls home/gets ads.
I think I saw a review of the Amazon fire TV and they literally lock controls and tell you some basic af features are locked behind an Amazon account registration or login
I have an Amazon fire TV.
It is not connected to anything, and everything works fine. I just hooked up my shield to it and use that, but basic tv functions (settings and whatnot) work just fine without being logged in.
Everything should work without being logged in. Being logged into your TV shouldn’t even be a thing.
That’s fair, just pointing out in my case that I don’t/didn’t need to login to anything and have full functionality of my TV.
The only logins I would need to do would be for streaming service apps, IF I was actually using the TV OS to watch stuff. Otherwise everything works fine.
I needed a second t.v for the basement and i decided to just not buy one.
I had an old mini projector I repurposed and there a nice tv upstairs/phones for anything else.
Cant wait till “minimal” stuff becomes the trend.
So smart TVs are now smartass TVs?
Always have been.
Anybody else have a weird level of fixation on the baseball player and the game character being in the same pose? Like, “maybe it’s watching” kind of fixation?
I’d like to be exactly this high, please
Nothing to research. They’re all the same bad or will get bad in the foreseeable future. Only thing that matters is the screen technology and the specs of your external media center.
My LG has none of this. Any advertising/ai can be disabled as can the network itself.
Wasn’t there news lately that LG wants to display ads in pause?
Sure they want to but they let you disable all of this in the settings. Also a TV with no internet likely will be an unable to serve adds.
“likely” lol as bad as the adpocalypse has been, at least things aren’t pre-loaded with bog-standard ads for offline delivery
Yet
That’s what i say; use the TV as dumb display or deal with enshitification now or later.
Btw, i have an LG too but i always understood them letting you disable stuff them just anticipating GDPR lawsuits. But seems it’s the same in US? Maybe they really want you not having a bad experience.
Pretty sure it’s a business decision. The risk of showing ADs and getting a bad reputation
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You mean it doesn’t have any of this yet :)
I say this as someone with two LG TVs. Sure you can just not connect them to the internet, but a lot of people rely on the “Smart” part of the TV to view all their content.
I have a TLC that does none of this, too.
Still, Dark Souls the best.
Gaming on a TV? Wouldn’t like that low refresh rate personally
144Hz TVs are a thing and common. I’m using a 65" 144Hz 4K OLED right now.
Modern TVs are excellent gaming monitors, and they’re much cheaper than an equivalent PC monitor. Especially LG OLEDs, since they are built with gaming in mind. Input lag is a thing of the past.
What’s the burn in like on the oled? I have an LG oled as my TV but haven’t dared buy one as a monitor as oled used to be so bad for burn in
Here’s what my LG C1 panel looks like after three years of heavy use (8+ hrs/day), used exclusively as a monitor. Primary tasks include gaming, watching YouTube in a window, and full-screen music production and video editing. (Edit: What you’re seeing on the right side of the screen is glare, cause the TV is right next to a window.)
I’ve disabled the burn-in protection in the service menu (TPC & GSR) because they dim the screen too much and make text difficult to read. I left the remaining features in the user menu enabled, because they’re not as dramatic, so I don’t even notice that they’re on (logo dimming and pixel shifting). The only other preventive measures I take are autohiding the taskbar and setting the wallpaper to randomly cycle every 30 minutes, but I probably don’t even need to do that. I consider burn-in a non issue.
Thanks that’s really helpful, I have to view large technical drawings and been wanting to replace my multi monitor setup with an oled for media too but was concerned having static images on it for hours at a time.
I think I’ll give it a go.
My gaming PC uses an LG C2 OLED. 120Hz, 4K, HDR, FreeSync. At the time, gaming monitors with competitive specs were all sold out anyway or way more money.
That said, I don’t connect any TV to Wi-Fi directly, hate all that “smart” crap. The smart TV apps usually all suck compared to just casting from other devices to a compatible cast device. For example I just cast from my phone to Chromecast as my primary method of controlling my TV and consuming media on it.
