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I believe you can still get “dumb” flatscreens, but they’re getting rare, and they cost at least hundreds more than their “smart” brethren. So of course those sell very slowly.
The older I get the more I miss the sheer freedom that was built into our daily lives back when technology was just a notch or two less advanced. Phones that stayed trapped on their wall, not in your pocket, tracking you. TVs that were made of dumb stuff that could still pull free content from the air. You had to be part of a special “Nielson family”, fully set up with a little tracking box and all that, for the TV to tell anybody what you were watching.
People expected you to basically fall off the earth for 8 hours at work, and didn’t expect to contact you for less than a housefire-level emergency, which meant you spent most of the day free, and not just while you were at work. Nobody blinked if you stepped out for the evening to go shopping and could not be contacted for hours. Now people end up in screaming arguments because they didn’t answer that text fast enough. It’s misery.
I had a shock the other day, watching some YouTube short featuring a young woman (an adult, not a minor) complaining humorously about her mother, who always knows where she is, and thus has all sorts of unwanted opinions on her location. Mother always knows because of an app called Life360, which is basically the kind of spying app that an abusive spouse would hide on your phone. But it’s not hidden. You force your children to install it on their phones. It’s a leash. So now this adult woman, who of course cannot quite afford to leave home, because economy, cannot simply delete this spying app from her phone without consequences and arguments, so she has no privacy in her movements, from anyone, never mind the government and such. Never mind what actual minors are now putting up with.
We have officially left the era where the adults pissed and grumbled about them damn kids wanting them damn phones they don’t need, and we are now in the era where some kid has absolutely been beaten with a belt because he tried to leave his phone in the bedroom and slip out of the house in privacy.
Things like Life360 are normalized among children and parents, so other people will now expect to track you and treat a refusal of tracking as a violation of trust, and probably a sign that you are elderly, thus your rights are becoming debatable.
Again, 5 minutes ago this was evil shit that abusive spouses snuck onto people’s phones, suddenly, it’s normal, and people will just expect it.
I guess the ongoing shock is that we expected Big Brother to somehow slap a shackle on our necks that we can’t take off, but this is all worse. This is putting the shackle on your neck, every morning. It doesn’t even lock. You could, theoretically, throw it into the lake at will. Nobody would stop you. But you don’t. All the chains are made of other people. The whips at your back are the opinions of children, and what they think is normal. The surveillance cameras do not loom from posts in the sky, no. They’re in every pocket. They’re much harder to hide from than a security camera ever would be.
I hope I’m just melodramatic, or something.
I’ve still got an old 1080p LG TV.
I got it early in the chord cutting days, and knew that Smart TVs were going to be at shitty option.
Smartest decision I ever ever made.
(which is quite sad really, it’s just a TV).
Great writeup, hope the world moves away from crap like this
“The greatest form of control is when you think you’re free, when you’re being fundamentally manipulated and dictated to. One form of dictatorship is being in a prison cell and you can see the bars and touch them. The other one is sitting in a prison cell but you can’t see the bars and you think you’re free.”
-David Icke
Imagine quoting david Icke unironically lol
A broken clock is right two times a day.
Who knew my anti-consumption / general frugalness would lead to me having a better TV experience than people who buy the high end gadgets
You can buy the high end gadgets, you just can’t connect them to the internet.
Best way to turn a 8k HDR 120fps smart TV into a 8k HDR 120fps dumb TV.
I have a 50" Panasonic plasma from 2008 in my bedroom. I’ve replaced the power board once, in '18, but it plays for 8 hours a night plus any other use.
I have a 60" samsung in my livingroom, it’s been serviced by some geek 3 times since I bought it in '19.
I have a 55" IPS TV with absolutely zero smart functions, and we use it as a dummy monitor, Audio is not even connected, all is hooked up to a Linux computer that serves all the content. Zero bullshit, Zero advertising and we have full control of everything, and it was dirt cheap.
I’ve been seriously considering the same thing. Would love to see about getting a remote setup for a computer.
We use a tiny wireless keyboard with a track pad, it’s bigger than a remote, and we still have remote for Amplifier and to turn on the TV, but it works very well for us. Some phones have IR, so we could have just the keyboard, but we have went back to using the remotes.
Once had a “smart” TV, brought it back where i bought it within a month and took a regular monitor, now a PC does the smart and the TV what is supposed to do, display shit.
Too true. Literally monitors are going to become the next Smart TV for just not doing anything special
The special they do is the same kind of special as special needs kids…
No need to put down some kids to make your point
When I buy things like this, I try to buy hardware that supported by open source projects. Like routers that can run OpenWRT or Android phones that are supported by LineageOS.
It’s amazing that sometimes free projects that are made for people are better than commercial one.
Sometimes
Everytime I am forced to use a proprietary piece of software, my head starts spinning, knowing the suffering I’ll have to bear
My solution: Buy a very large monitor.
Then connect some streaming box to it you can easily replace if/when it gets shitty, instead of having to replace the whole TV.
You can also just buy a big tv and use it as a monitor streaming from a box or pc. It is considerably cheaper.
Great idea! I know exactly what to buy next + better color accuracy than TV which mostly comes with over saturated color labeled as cinematic mode!
Monitors are significantly more expensive than TVs and have features that TVs don’t require.
That’s true, but I considered it an investment for longer term instead of buying a cheaper midrange TV. With the exception of lacking HDMI 2.1, my 55" monitor has all the modern features, with the bonus of having dual input modes and a displayport.
It’s basically what “dumb” TV’s used to be, minus the antenna, but that’s fine as a cord cutter.
That seems like a very expensive alternative to not giving a smart TV your Wi-Fi password.
That’s the idea but being honest there aren’t many nice streaming box. Like there is Roku and the Xiaomi one? What else? Fire TV? Chromecast I do not count because you need to cast to it.
I mean I guess you can setup a PC somehow but…
Using a PC is definitely the easiest.
The Nvidia Shield is amazing.
Oh yeah that’s another one.
I would love to if they sold 65" monitors lol
Be careful with commercial displays. Some are just designed to show static ads or pictures, which means they have a very slow response time or low resolution.
For those prices I’d rather have an OLED with ads.
Ok. That was always an option.
WebOS?? holy crap… I had a Palm Pre back in the day, and loved it… even wrote a few WebOS tweaks. That’s so cool that it’s still around.
This is the greatest thing ever, but I guess my fucking LGTV running 5.9 was patched sometime in the last year so it doesn’t work. Page loads, tries to root, and throws a 403 error. Fuck.
anything like this for Tizen? (Samsung TVs)
This is the future that Stallman warned us about. They mocked him and said it didn’t matter. It’s not going to get better until everyone stops buying TVs with spyware built in.
Vote with your wallets or quit bitching. Self hosted is an option these days. But that means not being lazy. And people are really lazy.
Vote with your wallet
When are we going to finally accept that this is nothing but a delusion? How many failed boycotts over and over will it take?
I agree with the sentiment, but really more than a boycott where you’re purposefully not buying something to hurt it, it’s more like people opting out of something that’s just bad. It does take a while of being put through the mud for most people to realize and more importantly take action, but eventually it happens. If you’re following video game stuff, look at what happened with Baldur’s Gate in contrast with Overwatch 2. We need some more time (unfortunately) and one daring competitor to offer the catalyst product.
Vote with your wallets or quit bitching.
I never bought one but I can’t do anything about people who have AirBnB’s who buy them or hotels that install them in every room.
There are ways around that as well. Call ahead and ask what kind of TVs they have. Tell them why you are concerned and you might just get the hotel to worry about this as well if enough people start bothering them. If you don’t have a choice unplug the TV and bring your own laptop.
I can’t call ahead if someone else made the reservation though.
Yes, there are many situations where you will not have control of what room you stay in. Are you going to list them all one by one? JFC
If you don’t have a choice unplug the TV and bring your own laptop.
If your solution is for everyone, everywhere to agree to do something, you’re going to need a plan B.
You sound triggered.
My 2013 Highest End Samsung was pretty much E-Waste three years later. 80% of the Apps broken, no new Apps for new services.
UTTER BULLSHIT.
I plugged in a FireTV 4k which was on Sale for €25. Perfectly supported since many years. TONS of software, channels and so on. Best buy ever.
When I had to buy a new TV for my bed room I bought a “dump” monitor and plugged a FireTV in.
I buy TVs with Android TV built in because the freedom is great. I love I can install APKs, and generally they have every app that Android has. Whereas Roku doesn’t even have an official Twitch app.
Despite that, my fucking GOD they’re slow. Both my $2000 and $650 Android TVs are such a fucking lag fest. Even trying to pause a YouTube video is such shit.
They both run Android TV 9, despite Android TV 12 being out, and 14 in beta.
My CCwGTV is a lot better, but I only use that on my non smart TV because I hate juggling remotes.
Still wont stop buying Android TVs, though. Roku is so empty, those TVs with their own built in OS have even less apps. My sisters $5500 OLED TV only has Plex, no Emby. Which is insane. I think her TVs app store has a total of like 20 apps?
Twitch updated in January with a shitty UI that lags. I just disabled updates and installed an older version of the app via APK. That’s the benefit of Android TV.
EDIT: also can we please get some people on the Android TV custom ROM scene? It’s weird to me that NO TVs have any sort of custom ROM or rooting. You’d think they would?
Custom roms usually require a base like AOSP (Android Open Source Project) to build on but android TV is fully closed-source, so unless someone has the will to start a Linux distro for smart tvs then chances of that happening are quite low :(
I think it’s better to buy separate tv box/stick with pore power and ability to run custom os Like, I’ve got Xiaomi tv stick 4k and it runs times better than TV’s android tv
I guess there are way too many models of TVs which makes it complicated to gather a bigger community that have an interest in rooting these. on the other hand a lot of them are basically just some kind of android phone.
The custom Rom scene is probably limited by the cheap mediatek and other processors that don’t have working kernel sources. Which means no builds from source like lineageOS.
This is why I have a dumb TV hooked up to a Linus htpc
Does Linus know that you use his PC??
No. I have fiberoptics running from his PC in Canada to here where we use furlongs to measure distance to use it for may htpc. In all seriousness typo while on mobile lol
Image Transcription:
Comment by user timb @burgerdrome@aus.social reading:
“I love my smart TV. I love the way it takes a long time to boot up because it’s trying to refresh the advertisements on the home screen. I delight in the way it randomly restarts because it’s downloaded an update without asking me, each of which makes the TV slower and slower with every subsequent install. I adore the way it buries the apps that I want to use, and that I use without fail every single time, below the apps that it’s being paid to promote and which I have never touched in my life and would never use without the cold metal of a glock pressed hard against my sweating temple. I am infinitely thrilled by the way the interface lags constantly, due to the need to have one thousand unnecessary animations rendered on hardware ripped wholesale from a ten year old phone. I feel myself borne aloft on wings of pure joy when I am notified that my data will be collected and analysed to determine my usage patterns. Even now I am writing this from a field of beautiful flowers and soft luscious grass as I lie and look up happily at the bright blue sky, smiling happily to know that this is the future of technology.”
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]
Back in my day you owned the hardware you bought and were allowed to install a custom operating system.
This is a political argument.
Are people not allowed to make that argument or what is the issue here?
Okay.
Conservatives have stripped this country of its hard earned labor equality as recent as 1972. And heavily enforced in 1982, when some dumbshit Movie reality star was elected as president by the mouthbreathing Dumbfuck Party of Law And Order.
Meh, I’m too bored of this to even continue
That made me chuckle because I did feel that boredom in my bones. I wish the US could magically get over the bullshit that has come from electing entertainers as presidents overnight.
I was simply stating a fact. I don’t have a winning dog in this round.
I have one of the first gen smart TVs from Samsung and it’s absolute cheeks now. Changing the volume, no joke, can take multiple minutes to register from the remote. When I click the volume up button, you can see the red light on the ir sensor of the TV flash, registering that it got the signal, but for it to actually change the volume, that can take multiple minutes to do. Just buy a regular tv and get an nvida shield or something similar.
Point me to where I can find a non-smart tv and I’ll jump right in that lol
Just buy any TV and never network it. I know Sony allows you to use it without ever connecting to a network.
Then connect anything you want such as an old laptop or set top box.
Pull out your wallet. Smart TV costs are subsidized by the ad revenue generated. Be prepared to pay twice as much for the same panel with “features” removed.
In the US, scepter makes a dumb TV. I just bought a 46" from walmart for like $200. Audio isn’t great so I had to get some good speakers.
Pretty happy with my 2016 shield! But I would recommend changing the launcher since the default was also showing ads. Changing the launcher can be done by enabling adb over ethernet/WiFi and installing it from your pc. Nothing too hard, but maybe not for everyone.
That sounds like a fantastic idea, where do you get a “regular tv” if you don’t mind my asking?
I’m pretty sure Sceptre makes non-smart TVs still for a few hundred bucks. I’m sure the picture quality won’t be the best of the best but it won’t be a smart TV. I’ve used their high refresh rate monitors on my PC for years and they still work great.
The most egregious action I’ve seen was from a Vizio smart TV I bought several years ago. It shipped with a simple remote control, and a tablet with a control app preinstalled. One day I turned the TV on and was notified that in order to use the updated UI I would need to reach out to support to order (and pay for!) a new remote that had additional buttons.
