Smart TVs are all well and good, but when ad-focused update lobotomized my new-ish Android TV, we hit a problem.
Sceptre makes a good dumb TV. I use one personally and other than taking a few extra seconds to boot up, it’s fantastic. No WiFi info to load, no pop ups, just a big dumb pane of LEDs and ports to use them.
💯 I bought a Sceptre as a smaller living room TV, which became our main TV, and it’s great. A smart TV is just a good TV with a crap computer built into it. I’d rather just have the good TV.
It’s a VA panel tho 🙁
VA has gotten really good over the years and I‘d prefer it over a similarly priced IPS, if neither has local dimming or quantum dots or something like that. VA has so much better contrast. Of course, it’s nothing against OLED, QLED, microLED, etc but it’s also in a very different price class.
We need more dumb tv’s in the higher price class.
In my experience, most smart tvs work perfectly fine without being intrusive, if you simply never connect them to the internet.
“Smart TVs are all well and good”
no they aren’t, so far they are a disaster.
I was only using Roku for a long time. It has ads but they’re not particularly intrusive and I honestly don’t notice them half the time. I recently got a new Amazon Fire TV for free through my jobs reward program and that thing is just a big ad delivery machine lol. The OS is so slow it’s like it was almost an afterthought when someone realized they actually needed a way to show all these freaking ads… Its so slow and buggy it drives me nuts! I’m seriously considering just plugging a Roku box in the back and just using the TV like a monitor
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The only downside is that they aren’t giving away Apple TVs for free at my job lol I guess I got what I paid for 🤷♂️
You are the product. I wouldn’t be surprised if your company got paid to give them out. They almost certainly got them for free at least. If they didn’t, they’re fools.
They’re free to you because Amazon is getting paid for the ads you see. You’re also working for Amazon, now.
Absolutely. 4 or 5 years ago I got myself the current firetv stick 4K because my tv had an absolutely terrible smart tv platform (slow, almost no recognizable apps). After a month or so, I sold it to a friend, bought an AppleTV and never looked back.
I am not an Apple guy but AppleTV is the best “out of the box” streaming device on the market and it’s not even close. Really the only thing I have against it is that Apple changed IP control to require HomeKit.
For us nerds, an HTPC is hard to beat…but for everyone else, I recommend an AppleTV.
Don’t connect it to the internet and just use peripheral devices
I recently bought a TCL google tv and first thing I did was install smarttube and a different launcher.
That being said the first question in the setup proces was if I wanted the “smart” functions on or just have a basic experience and only use HDMI and cable tv.
But the ads on the home screen with Google tv are really annoying. They are front and centered. I want my apps and inputs where the ad’s are.
I feel like I’ve managed to really get out ahead with my latest TV purchase - I managed to buy a really nice large dumb TV for like $200, used. I then connected a Chromecast running Android TV, which I have modded extensively to get around “the bad parts”. Quite nice!
I never regretted the 200€ I paid for an appleTV 4K. No ads, no nonsense, just a smooth and pleasant smart tv experience. Even got almost all the features I was missing compared to android tv through updates over the 4½ years I’ve had it (like vpn support). Whichever brand I‘ll be getting, when I eventually upgrade my tv, I‘ll never connect it to the internet and just continue using my AppleTV.
Whats the benefit of an Apple TV if you don’t connect it to the internet?
I think he’s saying he doesn’t connect the smart TV to the internet. He plugs in his apple TV (and that is connected to the Internet) and has all of the ‘smart’ technology.
Ah, same then, but I just use an old Chromecast instead.
Install a better launcher, done.
As has always been the Android way.
Can you recommend a launcher for a smart tv?
I use Projectivy, on my Google ChromeCast:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.projengmenu&hl=en
I used Flauncher and button mapper to program my home button to open Flauncher. Worked well for me.
Same for me, now if I could only find a way to have it boot directly to f launcher, but so far I still have to see the home screen occasionally with all of its ad infested malware BS
Yeah, booting directly into the Google TV launcher instead of Flauncher is annoying, but I’m so used to it now, I instinctively press the home button on boot up these days so I barely ever see it.
You can try launcher manager and then the android tv version.
Or you can use the adb commands your self. You don’t need root just developer mode.
Change the launcher
Other than that, my requirements were pretty simple: no fancy hardware for gaming or video upscaling, and I don’t watch enough TV to justify expensive OLED, so a 4K LCD with some HDR capabilities would suit.
Dude bought a 4k TV while trying to get as little upscaling as possible and is upset it’s laggy?
Most media is still 1080, and a 4k TV is going to upscale it…
Buying one without paying attention to upscaling ability, means you’re going to get a TV with low processing power, and all the menus will be laggy for the same reason.
He could have saved a lot of money buying a 1080 tv, got the same picture, and have more responsive TV because it’s not always struggle to upscale to 4k
But he didn’t know what he was doing and now he wants to blame everyone but himself.
But if anyone wants to make a smart TV dumb again, just plug a source into it and use that and it’s the exact same as a dumb tv.
Most new movies are in 4k and I’d say half of all new shows are in 4k. What are you talking about?
