And so it goes. One more market slowly circling the drain. The line about TVs no longer being hardware but software is apt. Their focus on selling you ads on a device you own is hostile and an...
And so it goes. One more market slowly circling the drain.
The line about TVs no longer being hardware but software is apt. Their focus on selling you ads on a device you own is hostile and an increasing amount of markets are doing the same. Like micro transactions in games, a separate revenue stream apart from the main product means a larger focus on that revenue stream, resulting in a shittier product for the consumer.
It’s not circling the drain. It’s in it. It was revealed years ago that Vizio was making more money selling their customers’ data than they did selling them TVs.
It’s not circling the drain. It’s in it. It was revealed years ago that Vizio was making more money selling their customers’ data than they did selling them TVs.
Couldn't you just not hook the TV up to the Internet? I have multiple smart TVs because that is what was available, but I don't use any of the smart features of any of them.
Couldn't you just not hook the TV up to the Internet? I have multiple smart TVs because that is what was available, but I don't use any of the smart features of any of them.
That's what I've done too, at least it works with my Samsung Q8 from a couple years ago. I tried blocking the ads from my network, but then the traffic skyrocketed so much from retries that I just...
That's what I've done too, at least it works with my Samsung Q8 from a couple years ago. I tried blocking the ads from my network, but then the traffic skyrocketed so much from retries that I just reset it and never gave it any wireless info (also had to decline multiple TOS pages to be sure).
I feel like this is becoming more and more of a corner case, though. Most people opt to use the equipment provided by their service provider, most/all of which have enabled encryption by default....
I feel like this is becoming more and more of a corner case, though. Most people opt to use the equipment provided by their service provider, most/all of which have enabled encryption by default. Of the people who don't go that route, most who provide their own equipment know to enable encryption. I can pick up about a dozen wifi networks from where I am right now (at home) and not a single one is open.
Comcast has its own public subscriber wifi network baked into all its routers. They run two networks essentially. You have your own private network, and only data from the private network is...
Comcast has its own public subscriber wifi network baked into all its routers. They run two networks essentially. You have your own private network, and only data from the private network is counted against network caps. But, a public network also runs, and this network is a wifi network accessible to all Comcast customers. This Comcast public wifi (accessible only to Comcast subscribers) shares a common login system and credentials across the country.
While this is mainly used by Comcast subscribers as an easily accessible source of free wifi while traveling, Comcast can grant anyone it wants access to that network. There is zero reason Comcast and other companies like it can't sell access to their network to TV or other smart device manufacturers.
And since Comcast (or someone before them?) has established the precedent, who else can get in on the game? In theory your cell phone could do the same. While you're using it for your purposes, in the background its manufacturer is selling hotspot access to the highest bidder. If the TV companies pay Google to transmit user data via their Pixel phones, whose going to stop them? As long as they weren't touching the data on your phone, they wouldn't be violating privacy or hacking laws. Legally speaking, your phone just essentially has two halves, a half for you and a half for the phone manufacturer. You do your thing and the others does whatever its builders desire. And that could be to serve as a bridge for anyone that pays them enough. And this wouldn't have to be secret, they could always just spin it as, "with this feature we can sell phones cheaper."
And you, as a TV owner, wouldn't even have to own such a compromised phone. The TV could be gathering your data for a month. Then one day, a friend/delivery driver/babysitter comes in carrying a compromised phone. Their phone and your TV find each other. In a quick burst, a month's worth of your user data has been uploaded, and a fresh batch of ads downloaded.
Or, of course, if these elaborate means are too much, there's always simply the option of installing a mobile network chip directly in the TV itself. Then blocking it at the network level simply isn't an option. The only ways to keep it from phoning home are to either unplug the entire TV or to be Luis Rossman and manually alter computer circuitry to remove it. Or, I suppose you could just live inside a big Faraday cage.
However, ultimately there really isn't likely to be an elaborate cat-and-mouse game between TV manufacturers and those seeking to block tracking and ads. The vast majority of people are content to just plug the TV in as shipped, connect it to the network, never change any options, and do nothing to block it from phoning home. If Vizio finds that it's able to communicate with 90% of the TVs it ships out, it really isn't worth doing a ton of engineering to chase that last 10%. In fact, chasing that 10% could be counterproductive. If you start building a reputation as an Orwellian company hellbent on spying on people, then more people will work to avoid your tracking. Much better to be calm and discrete about it. Much better for people to think, "eh. I can block the ads and tracking if they ever get too annoying. I've heard it's possible, but it seems like a PITA to set up. I'll just let it ride."
The idea of bringing devices into our homes that are phoning home without us explicitly giving permission to do so is terrifying. I'd have way more concern about the implications of this beyond...
The idea of bringing devices into our homes that are phoning home without us explicitly giving permission to do so is terrifying. I'd have way more concern about the implications of this beyond just ads on a TV.
I joked about the Faraday cage house, but there's a future where that actually becomes a selling point on new home construction. If done at the time of construction, it likely wouldn't be that...
I joked about the Faraday cage house, but there's a future where that actually becomes a selling point on new home construction. If done at the time of construction, it likely wouldn't be that much more expensive. Put some grounded mesh in the walls. The doors and windows would be trickier, but it's surely a solved problem technically, if not economically so. You can still have communications and interior wifi, but all signals have to be passed through hardwired connections that penetrate the cage. And you control what traffic goes over those wires.
Or, you know, we could just outlaw this crap and let the people who still insist on building TVs like this spend some of their own time in a nice, highly surveilled facility.
I don't see a world where Faraday-cage desiring customers are more valuable to home builders than customers that want cellular data to work in the house.
but there's a future where that actually becomes a selling point on new home construction
I don't see a world where Faraday-cage desiring customers are more valuable to home builders than customers that want cellular data to work in the house.
You can accommodate both. You would however need a cell phone repeater inside the house. Although, if you do that, you may run into the same problem if it's a repeater the cell phone company provides.
You can accommodate both. You would however need a cell phone repeater inside the house. Although, if you do that, you may run into the same problem if it's a repeater the cell phone company provides.
It wouldn't need to be so power draining. Your phone's battery doesn't melt when connecting to wifi. Such a phone's third party functions would almost always stay in a low power mode, just...
It wouldn't need to be so power draining. Your phone's battery doesn't melt when connecting to wifi. Such a phone's third party functions would almost always stay in a low power mode, just listening for the signals from compatible devices. When it finds one, then it connects and does a relatively small data transfer. A month's worth of user data would take up far less space than a single tiktok video. Few would notice or care. And if your phone did this from the day you bought it, you would never even be aware of the 1-2% battery life reduction.
It doesn't melt when connecting to Wi-Fi because there are power saving techniques that a wifi client can use that a wifi access point cannot. Namely, the phone can go to sleep and only...
It doesn't melt when connecting to Wi-Fi because there are power saving techniques that a wifi client can use that a wifi access point cannot. Namely, the phone can go to sleep and only periodically reconnect to the network to check for things like push notifications and such. It can't do that while acting as a hotspot because it doesn't know when clients want to use the network, so it always needs to listen and send out beacon packets.
If you enable a mobile hotspot on your phone for an hour with a client connected, you'll notice dramatically higher battery usage, even if no data is traversing the link. There's a reason phones turn off the hotspot after it's not used for a little bit.
It would absolutely devastate battery life to have it running 24/7
There are probably clever ways get around this. I can think of three that might work, and others could come up with others. You could have the TV itself serving as the provider of some kind of...
There are probably clever ways get around this. I can think of three that might work, and others could come up with others.
You could have the TV itself serving as the provider of some kind of push notification. The TV, safely plugged into the wall, is constantly sending out a signal saying, "I have data to upload, and I need new ads, anyone willing to forward it for me?" Then the phones just have to periodically listen for it and serve as a relay only when prompted to do so.
You could have it be timed. The phone only activates its access point mode for 15 seconds every hour. The TVs are plugged in and can be constantly listening for a signal. One an hour, for 15 seconds the phone sends out a signal that says, "I'm here and can forward data, anyone want to connect and send it?" The TVs can have a rechargeable battery for their internal clock so they can keep track of the time while being delivered to their customers. When a connection does happen, the TV's internal clock can also be resynchronized to compensate for any drift. This wouldn't allow you to do the case of relaying a signal by the phone in the pocket of a random Amazon delivery driver. But if you have guests that stay more than an hour, then they would be able to serve as a relay.
Only activate the phone's third party mobile hotspot mode while the phone is plugged in and charging. This wouldn't be so useful for the case of a delivery driver dropping off a package or short-term guests. But if anyone stays with you long enough to want to charge their phone, then it would work.
These aren't the precise methods that would be used. But the key is that when you, as a manufacturer, have complete control of the TV or other device that wants to send data home. You can also work with the cell phone manufacturers to make the relay function work however you need it to. You in short control all steps of the process. And all you need to do is to have a way for the devices to find each other and connect for just a few seconds.
I mean, yeah, you could do all of that, all pretty significantly massive changes to how android functions, some requiring significantly massive changes to how wifi as a protocol fundementally...
I mean, yeah, you could do all of that, all pretty significantly massive changes to how android functions, some requiring significantly massive changes to how wifi as a protocol fundementally works... Buuuuut it would be significantly easier and cheaper to just include an LTE modem on the TV if serving ads to airgapped TVs was really that lucrative for you.
Both methods could also be subverted with $0.15 worth of aluminum foil though.
At least with my Comcast provided PoS Motorola router I was able to get into it and turn WiFi off. Plugged my own OpenWRT wireless router into an ethernet jack on the Motorola and done.
At least with my Comcast provided PoS Motorola router I was able to get into it and turn WiFi off. Plugged my own OpenWRT wireless router into an ethernet jack on the Motorola and done.
I feel like it's been years since I've seen an open network in a residential setting. Even when I lived in an apartment about 6 years ago, all the networks were password protected. It's more...
I feel like it's been years since I've seen an open network in a residential setting. Even when I lived in an apartment about 6 years ago, all the networks were password protected.
It's more common out in public spaces, but even those lock internet access behind captive portal that would break this behavior in a TV.
I have never seen anyone produce any evidence of that actually happening, and neither the Samsung nor Sony TVs I've owned have done it. Do you have any sources for that being a risk?
I have never seen anyone produce any evidence of that actually happening, and neither the Samsung nor Sony TVs I've owned have done it. Do you have any sources for that being a risk?
I have 2011 Panasonic plasma TV. I made it "smart" by connecting Raspberry Pi 4 running LibreELEC (Kodi) to it. My next TV needsto have 4 HDMI inouts and if possible standard full size IR remote....
I have 2011 Panasonic plasma TV. I made it "smart" by connecting Raspberry Pi 4 running LibreELEC (Kodi) to it. My next TV needsto have 4 HDMI inouts and if possible standard full size IR remote. I don't need anything more as it will be running from RPi again thus being output monitor for my own (managed) software. I consider this as raised middle finger towards all the anti-consumer shit!
Hello, fellow Panasonic plasma owner. I still use my Panasonic TH-50PX60 from 2006! We have it connected to an Apple TV and definitely need more HDMI outlets with our next TV, but this one has...
Hello, fellow Panasonic plasma owner. I still use my Panasonic TH-50PX60 from 2006! We have it connected to an Apple TV and definitely need more HDMI outlets with our next TV, but this one has served us well for so long. We'll use it until it dies. Took 3 of us just to mount the damn thing on the wall it's so heavy.
My TV has 4 HDMI inputs, I was careful to have that when I was buying the TV. It is 103 or 106cm, so not that heavy as yours. I wouldn't give it away for anything! I just hope there is some kind...
My TV has 4 HDMI inputs, I was careful to have that when I was buying the TV. It is 103 or 106cm, so not that heavy as yours. I wouldn't give it away for anything! I just hope there is some kind of usable and not expensive technoloy out there when it dies on me... Right now, I wouldn't know what TV to buy... This one cost around 600€ bac then and I would like to buy something at least that good and not for much more. Size can be the same or a bit bigger. The thing is that everything on the plasma is so fast! And the TV has great speakers on it's own. If you account for 4 HDMIs and great remote, there isn't that much to choose from nowadays. Also - central pivoting stand (that I actually use to turn the TV)! They cared for customers back then...
Is it a meme, or is it just a succinct phrasing for a specific process? What other term would you use to concisely describe "progressive degradation of services in the name of value extraction due...
Is it a meme, or is it just a succinct phrasing for a specific process? What other term would you use to concisely describe "progressive degradation of services in the name of value extraction due to service in the boost phase of a product being run without a coherent profit model in place?"
I think it’s better to just talk about whether or not a particular service or product has gotten worse, and in what ways. People often have different opinions on this, and it can be difficult to...
I think it’s better to just talk about whether or not a particular service or product has gotten worse, and in what ways. People often have different opinions on this, and it can be difficult to establish, because people use services in different ways and have different experiences. (The recent discussion of which appliances are good is a good example.)
To really do it right requires some rigorous testing, like professional review sites do.
I don’t believe there is any single reason why things get worse, so leaving that assumption aside (that they have something in common) is probably for the best.
Usage on a topic like this would would be too subjective. What part of this is enshittification? Vizio's TV business turning into an ad business? Well that's not really what this topic is about....
Usage on a topic like this would would be too subjective. What part of this is enshittification? Vizio's TV business turning into an ad business? Well that's not really what this topic is about. Walmart buying Vizio is enshittification? Maybe within the perspective that it's yet another giant corporation buying another corporation and expanding it's ever growing reach. I also don't know if that fits the typical usage of enshittification, but the term and its perception of what it covers/means is growing so I guess it depends. In this case I wouldn't necessarily consider this to be enshittification of Walmart or Vizio, but rather enshittification of our regulatory environments and markets as a whole. If you view the term as just 'anything getting shittier' then that's so broad as to be relatively pointless.
I thought it was e-shitification for the longest time so I’m part of them problem for sure. But I also feel like the word defines the current generation of technology we are in.
I thought it was e-shitification for the longest time so I’m part of them problem for sure. But I also feel like the word defines the current generation of technology we are in.
If you search for stuff like "commercial display" or "digital signage" instead of TVs then you can still find some high quality displays without any of the shitty consumer smart functionality, but...
If you search for stuff like "commercial display" or "digital signage" instead of TVs then you can still find some high quality displays without any of the shitty consumer smart functionality, but they also usually come at a premium cost.
Best compromise is to just buy a smart TV and never hook it up to the internet--then all you need to worry about is whether it's one that will nag you about it or not. I've got a couple offline Vizios and they essentially function as dumb monitors when they're not connected.
One rude discovery I had about commercial TVs: they may not have all the latest display features of the consumer models. This only really applies if you're interested in high quality console...
One rude discovery I had about commercial TVs: they may not have all the latest display features of the consumer models.
This only really applies if you're interested in high quality console gaming but, as an example, the Sony commercial models cannot do VRR and HDR and 120Hz at the same time, but the equivalent consumer models can. At least, as of a few years ago. But this may still hold true with the latest and greatest display technology in the future.
Not just gaming, digital signage usually lacks features like eARC, so they won't play as nice with your audio system. You also can't really get OLED digital signage, and the ones that support HDR...
This only really applies if you're interested in high quality console gaming
Not just gaming, digital signage usually lacks features like eARC, so they won't play as nice with your audio system. You also can't really get OLED digital signage, and the ones that support HDR are super bad at it.
These displays are designed to run 24/7 showing fast food menus or cable news.
Ah I didn't even think about that. My experience with them is at my office, where we've hooked up some video games to one in a game room. But we're using TV audio there, there's no real sound...
Ah I didn't even think about that. My experience with them is at my office, where we've hooked up some video games to one in a game room. But we're using TV audio there, there's no real sound system. The lack of eARC really limits their use for home theatre and entertainment then.
The good thing about commerical displays is that they are at least in theory made of higher quality (read: less likely to fail) parts. I wonder if TVs these days are actually price-subsidized by...
The good thing about commerical displays is that they are at least in theory made of higher quality (read: less likely to fail) parts. I wonder if TVs these days are actually price-subsidized by the expected revenue that selling our data provides. But given how much companies these days seem to be OK with double-dipping I doubt they do.
Unfortunately I don't think they really exist anymore. All the best tech is going into Smart TVs. The best you can do is buy a good TV and never set up the network functions.
Unfortunately I don't think they really exist anymore. All the best tech is going into Smart TVs. The best you can do is buy a good TV and never set up the network functions.
It astonishes me that there are significant numbers of people clamoring for this, and NONE of the manufacturers are catering to them. There’s a clear market opportunity here.
It astonishes me that there are significant numbers of people clamoring for this, and NONE of the manufacturers are catering to them. There’s a clear market opportunity here.
Significant numbers on Internet forums. But not enough IRL. Most people are happy with smart TVs. They’ll buy them and never say anything about it online. Whereas we’ll complain that they don’t...
Significant numbers on Internet forums. But not enough IRL. Most people are happy with smart TVs. They’ll buy them and never say anything about it online. Whereas we’ll complain that they don’t make them (but then probably go out six months later and buy one because we need a TV and don’t have $5000 for a good 4K projector). It’s a form of selection bias.
I think there's probably a lot of people who actually do want smart TVs, as well. I remember having a long drawn out conversation on Reddit with someone who absolutely could not believe that an...
I think there's probably a lot of people who actually do want smart TVs, as well. I remember having a long drawn out conversation on Reddit with someone who absolutely could not believe that an AppleTV could do everything with the same level of integration that a SmartTV could do, even when I pointed out every single example they gave me was something I could do with it.
But still… there’s no shortage of high-end AV equipment marketed toward audiophiles and home theater folks. Surely there’s significant overlap between those people and those of us who want...
But still… there’s no shortage of high-end AV equipment marketed toward audiophiles and home theater folks. Surely there’s significant overlap between those people and those of us who want well-built, full-featured, privacy-respecting dumb TVs. We would pay a premium for it, if anything that satisfied those criteria were available.
On the high end, I suspect that need is filled by projectors. And in most cases, TV manufacturers probably found the data/ad revenue outweighs any potential premium for dumb TVs.
On the high end, I suspect that need is filled by projectors. And in most cases, TV manufacturers probably found the data/ad revenue outweighs any potential premium for dumb TVs.
But unless you're willing/able to have a theatre room where you control the light completely, a projector will be way more expensive than a TV, especially once you're talking about 4k media, no? I...
But unless you're willing/able to have a theatre room where you control the light completely, a projector will be way more expensive than a TV, especially once you're talking about 4k media, no? I don't know, I just got a 55 inch TV a couple years ago and it still blows my mind how huge it is. I'd need to be a lot richer to have a bigger lounge if I wanted a bigger unit. I bought a 27 inch monitor in 2011 and it was the bee's knees, to be honest. I also rented a very small flat, so it all worked!
Key phrase: high end. For the home theater nerds who want a good experience (and have the money), a 4K HDR projector is price-competitive to a >90” TV. When you factor in the other AV equipment,...
Key phrase: high end. For the home theater nerds who want a good experience (and have the money), a 4K HDR projector is price-competitive to a >90” TV. When you factor in the other AV equipment, blackout curtains, seating, etc, springing for a projector isn’t as big a deal; especially when they likely already have a dedicated room.
It astonishes me that the idea of buying a cheap smart TV and not connecting it to the internet isn't the obvious choice for people wanting a dumb TV. Why spend hundreds more on a computer monitor...
It astonishes me that the idea of buying a cheap smart TV and not connecting it to the internet isn't the obvious choice for people wanting a dumb TV. Why spend hundreds more on a computer monitor or a commercial display when you can just get the smart TV and lobotomize it?
I can't speak for everyone, but I know that I would rather have a true "dumb TV" in part to ensure that no other software is running to ruin the experience. Even disconnected from any network...
I can't speak for everyone, but I know that I would rather have a true "dumb TV" in part to ensure that no other software is running to ruin the experience. Even disconnected from any network access my TV runs a crappy laggy fireTV OS that I just don't want or need.
I have a standard antenna plugged into my TV so I can watch the normal channels in my country, but I think the last time I watched live TV was maybe when the Olympics were on, I'm not sure. I just...
I have a standard antenna plugged into my TV so I can watch the normal channels in my country, but I think the last time I watched live TV was maybe when the Olympics were on, I'm not sure. I just have a raspberry pi running Kodi plugged in to the HDMI port. The TV gets switched on when the signal begins (HDMI CEC), and I watch media from my own library. It's great. Every few years the media player device gets replaced (I'm on a raspberry pi 4 now, I started with a Raspberry Pi 1 in ~2011) so I never get too deep into the laggy experience of TV OSs (visiting in the in-laws' place is torture, as sharing a youtube video to the TV takes about 5 minutes and the TV will just show a grey screen in the meantime - it's an old Sony Bravia that was slow the day it was delivered).
I agree with you, I wish I could buy a dumb TV, and know that every euro I spent on it had gone to making those basic components good, rather than a bunch of components/software that I actively don't want peeling money off that budget, but it is what it is. Just strip it down to a monitor, and manage the input yourself, it's the best way
It's not that people don't find it to be the obvious thing to do, it's that the basic assumption would of course be that there are non-smart TVs out there since that's the case for everything...
It's not that people don't find it to be the obvious thing to do, it's that the basic assumption would of course be that there are non-smart TVs out there since that's the case for everything else. Is there any other household appliance where it is impossible to get a "dumb" version of it anymore?
Yeah, any TV. I can foresee a future in which most TVs have to be connected to the internet for "security updates" or something, but for now the solution is to simply buy a cheap smart TV and...
Yeah, any TV. I can foresee a future in which most TVs have to be connected to the internet for "security updates" or something, but for now the solution is to simply buy a cheap smart TV and never let it connect to the internet. My TCL works just fine for me, cost like $250 for a 55" display, and the only 1s and 0s it gets are from the HDMI cord and the remote.
If you don't need your TV screen to be huge, you can use a computer monitor instead. We are planning to replace our old dumb TV soon, and we will be going with a very large 4k monitor. It will...
If you don't need your TV screen to be huge, you can use a computer monitor instead. We are planning to replace our old dumb TV soon, and we will be going with a very large 4k monitor. It will cost more, but the screen quality will be higher and it won't have any smart features (other than whatever we add ourselves through a separate device), which means it will not become outdated as quickly and we should save money in the long run.
Pixel density matters. TVs have them spaced out more for distant viewing and you can absolutely tell the difference between a tv and a monitor at the distance you usually sit from a tv. So keep...
Pixel density matters. TVs have them spaced out more for distant viewing and you can absolutely tell the difference between a tv and a monitor at the distance you usually sit from a tv. So keep that in mind when you take that route.
I don't think this is the best route. There are more compromises to monitors as a TV than vice versa. The display technology in TVs is much further along than monitors, especially in these days of...
I don't think this is the best route. There are more compromises to monitors as a TV than vice versa. The display technology in TVs is much further along than monitors, especially in these days of OLED and MicroLED screens. Monitors still don't really go past HDR 400 specs since they're meant for up-close viewing, and they're often made of last generation's screen tech.
I've been keeping an eye on the monitor scene and one that matches many of the display technology features my years old Sony TV are only finally coming out this year, after what seems like a breakthrough in OLED and MicroLED manufacturing. And yet they still won't be able to match the HDR capabilities.
The monitor may not be as quickly outdated as the smart TV due to the lack of software but the display technology will be outdated more quickly.
Dumb TVs are generally kinda crap for a home theater. They cost a ton of money, since they are sold primarily to businesses, and they lack features you actually want in a home theater because they...
Dumb TVs are generally kinda crap for a home theater. They cost a ton of money, since they are sold primarily to businesses, and they lack features you actually want in a home theater because they are meant to be used as digital signage. I don't even think there are any OLED options yet, because they wouldn't be very good for digital signage...
Just buy a good TV and don't connect it to the internet. Voila, instant dumb TV. To find a good one, I recommend RTINGS and HDTVtest. Don't trust what your eyes see on the shelf at Best Buy, because those TVs are not calibrated properly and the brightly lit showroom floor probably isn't a match for your at-home viewing environment.
Walmart and Vizio sounds like a match made in heaven. Both are brands I avoid like the plague, so having them bundled together will make staying away from them even easier.
Walmart and Vizio sounds like a match made in heaven. Both are brands I avoid like the plague, so having them bundled together will make staying away from them even easier.
The great joy of "buying" something "smart". I could actually see the utility in having a basic general purpose compute hw in appliances(remote control, smart home) on conditions that it easily...
The great joy of "buying" something "smart". I could actually see the utility in having a basic general purpose compute hw in appliances(remote control, smart home) on conditions that it easily upgradeable and runs open source sw.
Sadly "smart" means cheapest possible hw running closed source sw that does its worst to extend the monetization beyond the purchase. Somehow it became completely normal to buy something that then runs adversarial software requiring workarounds to disable the worst if it is even possible at all.
Even more sadly for some classes of products there is not really any option to buy something "dumb"(aka does what it needs to) or the options are massively limited such as TVs or phones and not so slowly it creeps even into fridges, washing machines, doorbells or anything it possibly can.
Ads anywhere are possibly the most expensive possible thing for the end user but the costs are obfuscated and indirect so most people just go along with it and it presents ongoing revenue stream instead of simply selling a thing for reasonable price.
It is not always possible to opt out of these trends but it is entirely possible to minimize the usage of clearly harmful things, most people simply do not bother.
In relation to "smart" TVs the general advice is not connecting them to internet which entirely misses the point. It means going out of ones way to get the bare minimum advertised functionality using workarounds that will get deleted as soon as practicable.
I don't think looking at it as an average cost per user works that well when judging people's motivations. It's possible to use services in ways that aren't profitable for the vendor. For example,...
I don't think looking at it as an average cost per user works that well when judging people's motivations. It's possible to use services in ways that aren't profitable for the vendor. For example, always paying your credit card bill in full. Also, for video games, there are sometimes "whales" who end up paying for the rest of us.
The cost of advertising seems like that. It varies greatly depending on who you are and what you buy. Some are better at ignoring them than others, and many ads are just irrelevant.
There is a game to it and how well you play it varies.
I mean individually it could be possible to come out ahead compared to paying for it but then the incidental costs that are unavoidable also need to be considered. Data mining, ads in public...
I mean individually it could be possible to come out ahead compared to paying for it but then the incidental costs that are unavoidable also need to be considered. Data mining, ads in public spaces, the cost of blocking/avoiding/wading through/ ads, degradation of ownership of physical goods, degradation of control of sw, pollution of internet spaces by automated content farms, masked advertising on public forums, removal of features/products due to disproportionate influence of ads.
Personally I would rather just pay for it and know what I am paying instead of having to deal somehow with a thousand annoyances. I bet the goods/services would not actually be more expensive overall to spending ability due to the ads having to be paid by someone.
It’s not going to fix systemic problems, but I think it’s important to remember that there is a lot you can do yourself to fix your home environment. Blurring the distinction seems unnecessarily...
It’s not going to fix systemic problems, but I think it’s important to remember that there is a lot you can do yourself to fix your home environment. Blurring the distinction seems unnecessarily disempowering and pessimistic.
Sure, maybe some of our workarounds will stop working, but maybe we will find other workarounds.
Also, sometimes we can work together on the workarounds. There was a time when Linux didn’t exist. The open source movement was built on repurposing commercial hardware.
I'm not sure I follow what you're saying here. To me if I want a dumb TV, and a smart TV that stays offline essentially functions as a dumb TV, then I got what I wanted. I guess you could consider...
In relation to "smart" TVs the general advice is not connecting them to internet which entirely misses the point. It means going out of ones way to get the bare minimum advertised functionality using workarounds that will get deleted as soon as practicable.
I'm not sure I follow what you're saying here. To me if I want a dumb TV, and a smart TV that stays offline essentially functions as a dumb TV, then I got what I wanted. I guess you could consider that a "workaround" but it actually involves doing less work than if I did connect it. I probably also got the TV at a lower price than I would have if it were a true dumb TV, because the manufacturer can sell it at a lower price thanks to the additional money they're earning off less savvy people who do suffer through their ads.
Do you have any evidence of that actually happening, though? I've seen this repeated over and over again on the internet but nobody has ever actually seen it happen, and the Sony and Samsung TVs...
Do you have any evidence of that actually happening, though? I've seen this repeated over and over again on the internet but nobody has ever actually seen it happen, and the Sony and Samsung TVs I've owned (and run 100% offline) haven't done it.
Surely if it's a programmed behavior someone would be able to catch it.
It happened in my home. Of course, it's always possible that someone connected the television to the wifi and then forgot/lied about it, or that data over HDMI is more supported than I thought,...
It happened in my home. Of course, it's always possible that someone connected the television to the wifi and then forgot/lied about it, or that data over HDMI is more supported than I thought, but my experience is one of never having entered network credentials to a Samsung smart TV, and a year later it getting a software update, somehow, and suddenly being able to load Samsung's streaming service. I promptly reset its network settings, which claimed to have no entries...except for the whole "clearly accessing the internet" wrinkle.
I didn't exactly document this, so it's just another voice from "the internet", but that's what happened. I mostly treated it as a rumor myself until a few weeks ago.
This seems like it'd be more likely caused by an LTE chip in the TV that Samsung can remotely send commands to the TV through than accessing hidden open wireless networks.
This seems like it'd be more likely caused by an LTE chip in the TV that Samsung can remotely send commands to the TV through than accessing hidden open wireless networks.
Is it more likely for them to pay extra to install an LTE antenna, licensing and all, as well as for service for some-to-every television, just for their software updates and streaming service,...
Is it more likely for them to pay extra to install an LTE antenna, licensing and all, as well as for service for some-to-every television, just for their software updates and streaming service, but without advertising that feature, than to write a script that scans the wifi bands automatically?
I wouldn't really put it past them, but I don't see why it's more likely.
I'd say it's more likely an LTE antenna because they are fairly cheap to add in at scale and they're small enough to go in phones, so definitely small enough to slap into a TV. Kinda like how...
I'd say it's more likely an LTE antenna because they are fairly cheap to add in at scale and they're small enough to go in phones, so definitely small enough to slap into a TV. Kinda like how Bluetooth is also pretty cheap and easy to add to things when you're already manufacturing at scale. Making a B2B deal with an existing telecom with good coverage to whitelist those same antennas for connectivity also doesn't seem that difficult to pull off if we're talking Samsung-level resources. Your comment sounded like the TV was incredibly out of date, so just having a script that turns this LTE chip on after a year (or some other long time frame) of no updates and then turns it off after again, really wouldn't be that hard to do.
I worked for a WISP and to configure radios in the field before they were on our actual network, they had LTE chips on them with a script that ran on boot that would pass their MAC address up to our config service that would hand down every value it needed to configure itself and get an IP on our network.
Something that scans for open Wi-Fi networks and is just praying for an open network that doesn't have a captive portal is so much more error-prone and edge-case prone.
Fair enough. The aspect that confuses me about that explanation is the Samsung TV Plus streaming over what seems like would be a network meant primarily for updates. I mean, this is in the context...
Fair enough. The aspect that confuses me about that explanation is the Samsung TV Plus streaming over what seems like would be a network meant primarily for updates.
Something that scans for open Wi-Fi networks and is just praying for an open network that doesn't have a captive portal is so much more error-prone and edge-case prone.
I mean, this is in the context of home appliance use, right? In the service of keeping an offline device up to date (supposedly)? These edge cases are very low-cost, from Samsung's perspective. I suppose there's always the chance of someone building a honeypot based on some vulnerability, but that's a local approach, so it wouldn't remotely scale, and I don't know what a rogue individual with unlimited access to a smart TV whose software is not being used would do with that. Listen in?
I guess I don't see why Samsung would be so invested in updating these unnetworked devices as to install LTE radios surreptitiously. For what benefit? The pure pleasure of security?
Does such a thing exist already!? Part of me wants to say that no TV manufacturer would be that brazen, but I suppose something like that (or maybe embedded sim cards) is probably inevitable.
Does such a thing exist already!? Part of me wants to say that no TV manufacturer would be that brazen, but I suppose something like that (or maybe embedded sim cards) is probably inevitable.
It would be trivially easy to find out (host an unsecured wifi network somewhere where it's the only network and set up a TV next to it) and enough people repeat this idea online that it's...
Does such a thing exist already!?
It would be trivially easy to find out (host an unsecured wifi network somewhere where it's the only network and set up a TV next to it) and enough people repeat this idea online that it's unfathomable to me that it wouldn't have already been discovered.
I kind of wish that appliances were smart in a dumb way. Maybe have a socket that provides +5V and an i2c connection, and then you can plug in whatever module you want that will connect to...
I kind of wish that appliances were smart in a dumb way. Maybe have a socket that provides +5V and an i2c connection, and then you can plug in whatever module you want that will connect to whatever kind of network works and provides smart functionality. That way when things change for whatever reason you can just replace or reprogram the module instead of having to throw out the whole appliance to maintain functionality.
Does anyone think there's a point at which ad saturation hits critical mass? It seems to me that there must be, and with the focus moving more and more to a demographic that is actively struggling...
Does anyone think there's a point at which ad saturation hits critical mass? It seems to me that there must be, and with the focus moving more and more to a demographic that is actively struggling financially.... Won't this revenue stream dry up eventually? Maybe I'm missing something, but it feels like it's almost becoming advertising-for-advertising's sake. Is user data really so useful in the abstract that it's no longer necessary to be squeezing us for every last penny?
It's pretty clear that enormous amounts of ad money must be wasted. (Consider that Bloomberg's expensive political campaign didn't get him elected.) But it's not all wasted, and hope springs...
It's pretty clear that enormous amounts of ad money must be wasted. (Consider that Bloomberg's expensive political campaign didn't get him elected.) But it's not all wasted, and hope springs eternal.
Walmart seems to think it's worth it, but their previous acquisitions haven't always done well.
And so it goes. One more market slowly circling the drain.
The line about TVs no longer being hardware but software is apt. Their focus on selling you ads on a device you own is hostile and an increasing amount of markets are doing the same. Like micro transactions in games, a separate revenue stream apart from the main product means a larger focus on that revenue stream, resulting in a shittier product for the consumer.
It’s not circling the drain. It’s in it. It was revealed years ago that Vizio was making more money selling their customers’ data than they did selling them TVs.
I meant the television market as a whole but even so you're right. Ads are already staple in any smart tv.
Couldn't you just not hook the TV up to the Internet? I have multiple smart TVs because that is what was available, but I don't use any of the smart features of any of them.
That's what I've done too, at least it works with my Samsung Q8 from a couple years ago. I tried blocking the ads from my network, but then the traffic skyrocketed so much from retries that I just reset it and never gave it any wireless info (also had to decline multiple TOS pages to be sure).
They'll continually search for any open wifi network. If your neighbor happens to not secure their network, your TV will latch onto them to call home.
Has there been any proof of this not being an urban legend?
I feel like this is becoming more and more of a corner case, though. Most people opt to use the equipment provided by their service provider, most/all of which have enabled encryption by default. Of the people who don't go that route, most who provide their own equipment know to enable encryption. I can pick up about a dozen wifi networks from where I am right now (at home) and not a single one is open.
Comcast has its own public subscriber wifi network baked into all its routers. They run two networks essentially. You have your own private network, and only data from the private network is counted against network caps. But, a public network also runs, and this network is a wifi network accessible to all Comcast customers. This Comcast public wifi (accessible only to Comcast subscribers) shares a common login system and credentials across the country.
While this is mainly used by Comcast subscribers as an easily accessible source of free wifi while traveling, Comcast can grant anyone it wants access to that network. There is zero reason Comcast and other companies like it can't sell access to their network to TV or other smart device manufacturers.
And since Comcast (or someone before them?) has established the precedent, who else can get in on the game? In theory your cell phone could do the same. While you're using it for your purposes, in the background its manufacturer is selling hotspot access to the highest bidder. If the TV companies pay Google to transmit user data via their Pixel phones, whose going to stop them? As long as they weren't touching the data on your phone, they wouldn't be violating privacy or hacking laws. Legally speaking, your phone just essentially has two halves, a half for you and a half for the phone manufacturer. You do your thing and the others does whatever its builders desire. And that could be to serve as a bridge for anyone that pays them enough. And this wouldn't have to be secret, they could always just spin it as, "with this feature we can sell phones cheaper."
And you, as a TV owner, wouldn't even have to own such a compromised phone. The TV could be gathering your data for a month. Then one day, a friend/delivery driver/babysitter comes in carrying a compromised phone. Their phone and your TV find each other. In a quick burst, a month's worth of your user data has been uploaded, and a fresh batch of ads downloaded.
Or, of course, if these elaborate means are too much, there's always simply the option of installing a mobile network chip directly in the TV itself. Then blocking it at the network level simply isn't an option. The only ways to keep it from phoning home are to either unplug the entire TV or to be Luis Rossman and manually alter computer circuitry to remove it. Or, I suppose you could just live inside a big Faraday cage.
However, ultimately there really isn't likely to be an elaborate cat-and-mouse game between TV manufacturers and those seeking to block tracking and ads. The vast majority of people are content to just plug the TV in as shipped, connect it to the network, never change any options, and do nothing to block it from phoning home. If Vizio finds that it's able to communicate with 90% of the TVs it ships out, it really isn't worth doing a ton of engineering to chase that last 10%. In fact, chasing that 10% could be counterproductive. If you start building a reputation as an Orwellian company hellbent on spying on people, then more people will work to avoid your tracking. Much better to be calm and discrete about it. Much better for people to think, "eh. I can block the ads and tracking if they ever get too annoying. I've heard it's possible, but it seems like a PITA to set up. I'll just let it ride."
The idea of bringing devices into our homes that are phoning home without us explicitly giving permission to do so is terrifying. I'd have way more concern about the implications of this beyond just ads on a TV.
I joked about the Faraday cage house, but there's a future where that actually becomes a selling point on new home construction. If done at the time of construction, it likely wouldn't be that much more expensive. Put some grounded mesh in the walls. The doors and windows would be trickier, but it's surely a solved problem technically, if not economically so. You can still have communications and interior wifi, but all signals have to be passed through hardwired connections that penetrate the cage. And you control what traffic goes over those wires.
Or, you know, we could just outlaw this crap and let the people who still insist on building TVs like this spend some of their own time in a nice, highly surveilled facility.
I don't see a world where Faraday-cage desiring customers are more valuable to home builders than customers that want cellular data to work in the house.
You can accommodate both. You would however need a cell phone repeater inside the house. Although, if you do that, you may run into the same problem if it's a repeater the cell phone company provides.
Probably the people who would stop buying pixels because of an always on hotspot absolutely demolishing their battery life.
It wouldn't need to be so power draining. Your phone's battery doesn't melt when connecting to wifi. Such a phone's third party functions would almost always stay in a low power mode, just listening for the signals from compatible devices. When it finds one, then it connects and does a relatively small data transfer. A month's worth of user data would take up far less space than a single tiktok video. Few would notice or care. And if your phone did this from the day you bought it, you would never even be aware of the 1-2% battery life reduction.
It doesn't melt when connecting to Wi-Fi because there are power saving techniques that a wifi client can use that a wifi access point cannot. Namely, the phone can go to sleep and only periodically reconnect to the network to check for things like push notifications and such. It can't do that while acting as a hotspot because it doesn't know when clients want to use the network, so it always needs to listen and send out beacon packets.
If you enable a mobile hotspot on your phone for an hour with a client connected, you'll notice dramatically higher battery usage, even if no data is traversing the link. There's a reason phones turn off the hotspot after it's not used for a little bit.
It would absolutely devastate battery life to have it running 24/7
There are probably clever ways get around this. I can think of three that might work, and others could come up with others.
You could have the TV itself serving as the provider of some kind of push notification. The TV, safely plugged into the wall, is constantly sending out a signal saying, "I have data to upload, and I need new ads, anyone willing to forward it for me?" Then the phones just have to periodically listen for it and serve as a relay only when prompted to do so.
You could have it be timed. The phone only activates its access point mode for 15 seconds every hour. The TVs are plugged in and can be constantly listening for a signal. One an hour, for 15 seconds the phone sends out a signal that says, "I'm here and can forward data, anyone want to connect and send it?" The TVs can have a rechargeable battery for their internal clock so they can keep track of the time while being delivered to their customers. When a connection does happen, the TV's internal clock can also be resynchronized to compensate for any drift. This wouldn't allow you to do the case of relaying a signal by the phone in the pocket of a random Amazon delivery driver. But if you have guests that stay more than an hour, then they would be able to serve as a relay.
Only activate the phone's third party mobile hotspot mode while the phone is plugged in and charging. This wouldn't be so useful for the case of a delivery driver dropping off a package or short-term guests. But if anyone stays with you long enough to want to charge their phone, then it would work.
These aren't the precise methods that would be used. But the key is that when you, as a manufacturer, have complete control of the TV or other device that wants to send data home. You can also work with the cell phone manufacturers to make the relay function work however you need it to. You in short control all steps of the process. And all you need to do is to have a way for the devices to find each other and connect for just a few seconds.
I mean, yeah, you could do all of that, all pretty significantly massive changes to how android functions, some requiring significantly massive changes to how wifi as a protocol fundementally works... Buuuuut it would be significantly easier and cheaper to just include an LTE modem on the TV if serving ads to airgapped TVs was really that lucrative for you.
Both methods could also be subverted with $0.15 worth of aluminum foil though.
At least with my Comcast provided PoS Motorola router I was able to get into it and turn WiFi off. Plugged my own OpenWRT wireless router into an ethernet jack on the Motorola and done.
I feel like it's been years since I've seen an open network in a residential setting. Even when I lived in an apartment about 6 years ago, all the networks were password protected.
It's more common out in public spaces, but even those lock internet access behind captive portal that would break this behavior in a TV.
I have never seen anyone produce any evidence of that actually happening, and neither the Samsung nor Sony TVs I've owned have done it. Do you have any sources for that being a risk?
I have 2011 Panasonic plasma TV. I made it "smart" by connecting Raspberry Pi 4 running LibreELEC (Kodi) to it. My next TV needsto have 4 HDMI inouts and if possible standard full size IR remote. I don't need anything more as it will be running from RPi again thus being output monitor for my own (managed) software. I consider this as raised middle finger towards all the anti-consumer shit!
Hello, fellow Panasonic plasma owner. I still use my Panasonic TH-50PX60 from 2006! We have it connected to an Apple TV and definitely need more HDMI outlets with our next TV, but this one has served us well for so long. We'll use it until it dies. Took 3 of us just to mount the damn thing on the wall it's so heavy.
My TV has 4 HDMI inputs, I was careful to have that when I was buying the TV. It is 103 or 106cm, so not that heavy as yours. I wouldn't give it away for anything! I just hope there is some kind of usable and not expensive technoloy out there when it dies on me... Right now, I wouldn't know what TV to buy... This one cost around 600€ bac then and I would like to buy something at least that good and not for much more. Size can be the same or a bit bigger. The thing is that everything on the plasma is so fast! And the TV has great speakers on it's own. If you account for 4 HDMIs and great remote, there isn't that much to choose from nowadays. Also - central pivoting stand (that I actually use to turn the TV)! They cared for customers back then...
Tildes needs an
enshittificationtag, I suspect it would be one of the most used on the site.Edit: Ah, there is one. We should use it more, lol.
No, we should be able to have thoughtful conversations without relying on memes.
Is it a meme, or is it just a succinct phrasing for a specific process? What other term would you use to concisely describe "progressive degradation of services in the name of value extraction due to service in the boost phase of a product being run without a coherent profit model in place?"
I think it’s better to just talk about whether or not a particular service or product has gotten worse, and in what ways. People often have different opinions on this, and it can be difficult to establish, because people use services in different ways and have different experiences. (The recent discussion of which appliances are good is a good example.)
To really do it right requires some rigorous testing, like professional review sites do.
I don’t believe there is any single reason why things get worse, so leaving that assumption aside (that they have something in common) is probably for the best.
Usage on a topic like this would would be too subjective. What part of this is enshittification? Vizio's TV business turning into an ad business? Well that's not really what this topic is about. Walmart buying Vizio is enshittification? Maybe within the perspective that it's yet another giant corporation buying another corporation and expanding it's ever growing reach. I also don't know if that fits the typical usage of enshittification, but the term and its perception of what it covers/means is growing so I guess it depends. In this case I wouldn't necessarily consider this to be enshittification of Walmart or Vizio, but rather enshittification of our regulatory environments and markets as a whole. If you view the term as just 'anything getting shittier' then that's so broad as to be relatively pointless.
I think tildes has fueled the enshitification of the word enshitification.
I thought it was e-shitification for the longest time so I’m part of them problem for sure. But I also feel like the word defines the current generation of technology we are in.
Any recommendations for high quality "dumb TVs"?
If you search for stuff like "commercial display" or "digital signage" instead of TVs then you can still find some high quality displays without any of the shitty consumer smart functionality, but they also usually come at a premium cost.
Best compromise is to just buy a smart TV and never hook it up to the internet--then all you need to worry about is whether it's one that will nag you about it or not. I've got a couple offline Vizios and they essentially function as dumb monitors when they're not connected.
One rude discovery I had about commercial TVs: they may not have all the latest display features of the consumer models.
This only really applies if you're interested in high quality console gaming but, as an example, the Sony commercial models cannot do VRR and HDR and 120Hz at the same time, but the equivalent consumer models can. At least, as of a few years ago. But this may still hold true with the latest and greatest display technology in the future.
Not just gaming, digital signage usually lacks features like eARC, so they won't play as nice with your audio system. You also can't really get OLED digital signage, and the ones that support HDR are super bad at it.
These displays are designed to run 24/7 showing fast food menus or cable news.
Ah I didn't even think about that. My experience with them is at my office, where we've hooked up some video games to one in a game room. But we're using TV audio there, there's no real sound system. The lack of eARC really limits their use for home theatre and entertainment then.
The good thing about commerical displays is that they are at least in theory made of higher quality (read: less likely to fail) parts. I wonder if TVs these days are actually price-subsidized by the expected revenue that selling our data provides. But given how much companies these days seem to be OK with double-dipping I doubt they do.
Unfortunately I don't think they really exist anymore. All the best tech is going into Smart TVs. The best you can do is buy a good TV and never set up the network functions.
It astonishes me that there are significant numbers of people clamoring for this, and NONE of the manufacturers are catering to them. There’s a clear market opportunity here.
Significant numbers on Internet forums. But not enough IRL. Most people are happy with smart TVs. They’ll buy them and never say anything about it online. Whereas we’ll complain that they don’t make them (but then probably go out six months later and buy one because we need a TV and don’t have $5000 for a good 4K projector). It’s a form of selection bias.
I think there's probably a lot of people who actually do want smart TVs, as well. I remember having a long drawn out conversation on Reddit with someone who absolutely could not believe that an AppleTV could do everything with the same level of integration that a SmartTV could do, even when I pointed out every single example they gave me was something I could do with it.
But still… there’s no shortage of high-end AV equipment marketed toward audiophiles and home theater folks. Surely there’s significant overlap between those people and those of us who want well-built, full-featured, privacy-respecting dumb TVs. We would pay a premium for it, if anything that satisfied those criteria were available.
On the high end, I suspect that need is filled by projectors. And in most cases, TV manufacturers probably found the data/ad revenue outweighs any potential premium for dumb TVs.
But unless you're willing/able to have a theatre room where you control the light completely, a projector will be way more expensive than a TV, especially once you're talking about 4k media, no? I don't know, I just got a 55 inch TV a couple years ago and it still blows my mind how huge it is. I'd need to be a lot richer to have a bigger lounge if I wanted a bigger unit. I bought a 27 inch monitor in 2011 and it was the bee's knees, to be honest. I also rented a very small flat, so it all worked!
Key phrase: high end. For the home theater nerds who want a good experience (and have the money), a 4K HDR projector is price-competitive to a >90” TV. When you factor in the other AV equipment, blackout curtains, seating, etc, springing for a projector isn’t as big a deal; especially when they likely already have a dedicated room.
It astonishes me that the idea of buying a cheap smart TV and not connecting it to the internet isn't the obvious choice for people wanting a dumb TV. Why spend hundreds more on a computer monitor or a commercial display when you can just get the smart TV and lobotomize it?
I can't speak for everyone, but I know that I would rather have a true "dumb TV" in part to ensure that no other software is running to ruin the experience. Even disconnected from any network access my TV runs a crappy laggy fireTV OS that I just don't want or need.
I have a standard antenna plugged into my TV so I can watch the normal channels in my country, but I think the last time I watched live TV was maybe when the Olympics were on, I'm not sure. I just have a raspberry pi running Kodi plugged in to the HDMI port. The TV gets switched on when the signal begins (HDMI CEC), and I watch media from my own library. It's great. Every few years the media player device gets replaced (I'm on a raspberry pi 4 now, I started with a Raspberry Pi 1 in ~2011) so I never get too deep into the laggy experience of TV OSs (visiting in the in-laws' place is torture, as sharing a youtube video to the TV takes about 5 minutes and the TV will just show a grey screen in the meantime - it's an old Sony Bravia that was slow the day it was delivered).
I agree with you, I wish I could buy a dumb TV, and know that every euro I spent on it had gone to making those basic components good, rather than a bunch of components/software that I actively don't want peeling money off that budget, but it is what it is. Just strip it down to a monitor, and manage the input yourself, it's the best way
It's not that people don't find it to be the obvious thing to do, it's that the basic assumption would of course be that there are non-smart TVs out there since that's the case for everything else. Is there any other household appliance where it is impossible to get a "dumb" version of it anymore?
Yeah, any TV. I can foresee a future in which most TVs have to be connected to the internet for "security updates" or something, but for now the solution is to simply buy a cheap smart TV and never let it connect to the internet. My TCL works just fine for me, cost like $250 for a 55" display, and the only 1s and 0s it gets are from the HDMI cord and the remote.
If you don't need your TV screen to be huge, you can use a computer monitor instead. We are planning to replace our old dumb TV soon, and we will be going with a very large 4k monitor. It will cost more, but the screen quality will be higher and it won't have any smart features (other than whatever we add ourselves through a separate device), which means it will not become outdated as quickly and we should save money in the long run.
Pixel density matters. TVs have them spaced out more for distant viewing and you can absolutely tell the difference between a tv and a monitor at the distance you usually sit from a tv. So keep that in mind when you take that route.
I don't think this is the best route. There are more compromises to monitors as a TV than vice versa. The display technology in TVs is much further along than monitors, especially in these days of OLED and MicroLED screens. Monitors still don't really go past HDR 400 specs since they're meant for up-close viewing, and they're often made of last generation's screen tech.
I've been keeping an eye on the monitor scene and one that matches many of the display technology features my years old Sony TV are only finally coming out this year, after what seems like a breakthrough in OLED and MicroLED manufacturing. And yet they still won't be able to match the HDR capabilities.
The monitor may not be as quickly outdated as the smart TV due to the lack of software but the display technology will be outdated more quickly.
Dumb TVs are generally kinda crap for a home theater. They cost a ton of money, since they are sold primarily to businesses, and they lack features you actually want in a home theater because they are meant to be used as digital signage. I don't even think there are any OLED options yet, because they wouldn't be very good for digital signage...
Just buy a good TV and don't connect it to the internet. Voila, instant dumb TV. To find a good one, I recommend RTINGS and HDTVtest. Don't trust what your eyes see on the shelf at Best Buy, because those TVs are not calibrated properly and the brightly lit showroom floor probably isn't a match for your at-home viewing environment.
Ironically, I have a 2011 Vizio 42in HD. Still works great. Don't know if you can buy them anymore though
Walmart and Vizio sounds like a match made in heaven. Both are brands I avoid like the plague, so having them bundled together will make staying away from them even easier.
The great joy of "buying" something "smart". I could actually see the utility in having a basic general purpose compute hw in appliances(remote control, smart home) on conditions that it easily upgradeable and runs open source sw.
Sadly "smart" means cheapest possible hw running closed source sw that does its worst to extend the monetization beyond the purchase. Somehow it became completely normal to buy something that then runs adversarial software requiring workarounds to disable the worst if it is even possible at all.
Even more sadly for some classes of products there is not really any option to buy something "dumb"(aka does what it needs to) or the options are massively limited such as TVs or phones and not so slowly it creeps even into fridges, washing machines, doorbells or anything it possibly can.
Ads anywhere are possibly the most expensive possible thing for the end user but the costs are obfuscated and indirect so most people just go along with it and it presents ongoing revenue stream instead of simply selling a thing for reasonable price.
It is not always possible to opt out of these trends but it is entirely possible to minimize the usage of clearly harmful things, most people simply do not bother.
In relation to "smart" TVs the general advice is not connecting them to internet which entirely misses the point. It means going out of ones way to get the bare minimum advertised functionality using workarounds that will get deleted as soon as practicable.
I don't think looking at it as an average cost per user works that well when judging people's motivations. It's possible to use services in ways that aren't profitable for the vendor. For example, always paying your credit card bill in full. Also, for video games, there are sometimes "whales" who end up paying for the rest of us.
The cost of advertising seems like that. It varies greatly depending on who you are and what you buy. Some are better at ignoring them than others, and many ads are just irrelevant.
There is a game to it and how well you play it varies.
I mean individually it could be possible to come out ahead compared to paying for it but then the incidental costs that are unavoidable also need to be considered. Data mining, ads in public spaces, the cost of blocking/avoiding/wading through/ ads, degradation of ownership of physical goods, degradation of control of sw, pollution of internet spaces by automated content farms, masked advertising on public forums, removal of features/products due to disproportionate influence of ads.
Personally I would rather just pay for it and know what I am paying instead of having to deal somehow with a thousand annoyances. I bet the goods/services would not actually be more expensive overall to spending ability due to the ads having to be paid by someone.
It’s not going to fix systemic problems, but I think it’s important to remember that there is a lot you can do yourself to fix your home environment. Blurring the distinction seems unnecessarily disempowering and pessimistic.
Sure, maybe some of our workarounds will stop working, but maybe we will find other workarounds.
Also, sometimes we can work together on the workarounds. There was a time when Linux didn’t exist. The open source movement was built on repurposing commercial hardware.
I'm not sure I follow what you're saying here. To me if I want a dumb TV, and a smart TV that stays offline essentially functions as a dumb TV, then I got what I wanted. I guess you could consider that a "workaround" but it actually involves doing less work than if I did connect it. I probably also got the TV at a lower price than I would have if it were a true dumb TV, because the manufacturer can sell it at a lower price thanks to the additional money they're earning off less savvy people who do suffer through their ads.
...assuming it's not the type of TV that will connect to any open network, like your neighbors. Then you'll need a faraday cage for your TV.
Do you have any evidence of that actually happening, though? I've seen this repeated over and over again on the internet but nobody has ever actually seen it happen, and the Sony and Samsung TVs I've owned (and run 100% offline) haven't done it.
Surely if it's a programmed behavior someone would be able to catch it.
Hmm, I guess not. Perhaps it's an urban legend that I'd taken on face value.
It happened in my home. Of course, it's always possible that someone connected the television to the wifi and then forgot/lied about it, or that data over HDMI is more supported than I thought, but my experience is one of never having entered network credentials to a Samsung smart TV, and a year later it getting a software update, somehow, and suddenly being able to load Samsung's streaming service. I promptly reset its network settings, which claimed to have no entries...except for the whole "clearly accessing the internet" wrinkle.
I didn't exactly document this, so it's just another voice from "the internet", but that's what happened. I mostly treated it as a rumor myself until a few weeks ago.
This seems like it'd be more likely caused by an LTE chip in the TV that Samsung can remotely send commands to the TV through than accessing hidden open wireless networks.
Is it more likely for them to pay extra to install an LTE antenna, licensing and all, as well as for service for some-to-every television, just for their software updates and streaming service, but without advertising that feature, than to write a script that scans the wifi bands automatically?
I wouldn't really put it past them, but I don't see why it's more likely.
I'd say it's more likely an LTE antenna because they are fairly cheap to add in at scale and they're small enough to go in phones, so definitely small enough to slap into a TV. Kinda like how Bluetooth is also pretty cheap and easy to add to things when you're already manufacturing at scale. Making a B2B deal with an existing telecom with good coverage to whitelist those same antennas for connectivity also doesn't seem that difficult to pull off if we're talking Samsung-level resources. Your comment sounded like the TV was incredibly out of date, so just having a script that turns this LTE chip on after a year (or some other long time frame) of no updates and then turns it off after again, really wouldn't be that hard to do.
I worked for a WISP and to configure radios in the field before they were on our actual network, they had LTE chips on them with a script that ran on boot that would pass their MAC address up to our config service that would hand down every value it needed to configure itself and get an IP on our network.
Something that scans for open Wi-Fi networks and is just praying for an open network that doesn't have a captive portal is so much more error-prone and edge-case prone.
Fair enough. The aspect that confuses me about that explanation is the Samsung TV Plus streaming over what seems like would be a network meant primarily for updates.
I mean, this is in the context of home appliance use, right? In the service of keeping an offline device up to date (supposedly)? These edge cases are very low-cost, from Samsung's perspective. I suppose there's always the chance of someone building a honeypot based on some vulnerability, but that's a local approach, so it wouldn't remotely scale, and I don't know what a rogue individual with unlimited access to a smart TV whose software is not being used would do with that. Listen in?
I guess I don't see why Samsung would be so invested in updating these unnetworked devices as to install LTE radios surreptitiously. For what benefit? The pure pleasure of security?
Fascinating. Add this to the list of reasons I avoid Samsung TVs, then.
Does such a thing exist already!? Part of me wants to say that no TV manufacturer would be that brazen, but I suppose something like that (or maybe embedded sim cards) is probably inevitable.
It would be trivially easy to find out (host an unsecured wifi network somewhere where it's the only network and set up a TV next to it) and enough people repeat this idea online that it's unfathomable to me that it wouldn't have already been discovered.
I kind of wish that appliances were smart in a dumb way. Maybe have a socket that provides +5V and an i2c connection, and then you can plug in whatever module you want that will connect to whatever kind of network works and provides smart functionality. That way when things change for whatever reason you can just replace or reprogram the module instead of having to throw out the whole appliance to maintain functionality.
Does anyone think there's a point at which ad saturation hits critical mass? It seems to me that there must be, and with the focus moving more and more to a demographic that is actively struggling financially.... Won't this revenue stream dry up eventually? Maybe I'm missing something, but it feels like it's almost becoming advertising-for-advertising's sake. Is user data really so useful in the abstract that it's no longer necessary to be squeezing us for every last penny?
It's pretty clear that enormous amounts of ad money must be wasted. (Consider that Bloomberg's expensive political campaign didn't get him elected.) But it's not all wasted, and hope springs eternal.
Walmart seems to think it's worth it, but their previous acquisitions haven't always done well.
News to me. I thought they already owned visio >_<
Bought mine at a Target back a few years back.