It’s wild just how much they’re trying to shove AI down our throats.
My next tv (don’t have one) is just gonna be attached to a laptop by hdmi. That’s it.
Meet ACR
Holy shit, I had no idea that exists. My next TV will be a monitor with no internet access.
I’m in the process of making all our media sources and tech independent, starting with my dad’s laptop. I’ve already set up easy remote access so I can always help him with anything. I am NEVER using mainstream shit from now on.
Thrift stores usually have some older dumb TVs if youre okay with 1080p, and Sceptre still makes dumb consumer-grade TVs if you are willing to shop on Amazon or at Walmart
What i don’t get is there is clearly a market here. Why doesn’t some lesser Known TV manufacturer make a dumb TV and steal all those customers from the big ones.
The common “why doesn’t someone just make a ‘dumb’ TV for people who don’t want this crap?” question has an easy answer. Dumb TVs do exist, they’re called “commercial monitors” or “commercial displays” and just show the audiovisual signal given to them by whatever else you hook up, in the manner of old TVs before additional apps or spyware were a thing. As implied by the name, stores and other businesses use them to show what they want without the added guff of the apps and ads they wouldn’t be able to fully control.
Important detail: commercial displays tend to be fuckoff expensive compared to smart TVs of comparable size, quality, and feature set.
“Hey,” you may be thinking, “how do they get away with charging so big a premium for an appliance with fewer features?” And you wouldn’t be out of line to think that. However, what’s going on is more insidious.
The higher price of a “dumb” TV is more correctly thought of as the real price of the appliance. The reason you pay so much less for a comparable “smart” TV is because the companies behind all the apps and spyware, the preinstalled shovelware apps which get you interested to subscribe to their services (Netflix, Hulu, Prime, etc.) and/or send you advertisements, as well as the spyware companies who profit from all the data about you that gets phoned home as you use the thing, pay the hardware manufacturers to put their shit software onto the device at the factory. That money made by the manufacturer from the shit companies goes, at least partially, toward lowering the price of the TV to entice you to pick it up at the store instead of a competitor’s TV.
Look at that big chunk of money you save buying a smart TV over a comparable dumb display, and consider that the shit companies are paying the manufacturer that amount or more for the opportunity to monetize you and your household.
Then, if you have the wherewithal to pay what is now easily considered a ridiculous amount more for an appliance that isn’t part of a system meant to take permanent advantage of you, you can just buy the commercial display instead. Alternatively, you can find clever technological ways to buy the cheaper “smart” one but counteract the ways in which it monetizes you, whether technical ways like jailbreaking or installing alternative OSes (some very early-stage efforts to get this sort of thing going are out there, but still very scattershot compared to the scene for doing so to smartphones) or simpler methods like just never letting the thing onto the Internet no matter how much it begs or enshittifies your user experience (a strategy which will stop working once it becomes cheap enough for the shit companies to just include their own connectivity hardware in the device which uses its own wireless and doesn’t need your network.)
It’s a continuing battle.
That was an excellent explanation. Thanks.
Thanks for your kind words! I’m happy to help.
Incredible. What a shit idea.
Anyways, kids, remember: never let your smart devices talk to the internet. We actually love our LG OLED - it’s fantastic hardware. But it has not once, and never will, get the chance to phone home.
But what do you use instead? The onboard apps work well and having two remotes always sucked.
Thanks to HDMI-CEC you can control additional media players with your TV’s remote. Sometimes it might not be perfect for things like long presses and stuff, but for basic controls it works.
That’s my experience with an Nvidia Shield and a Raspberry with KODI. I wouldn’t really recommend the Raspberry though.
So long as the GabeCube is at a decent price it is going to be my TV’s media center. My old plan of building a new main rig and repurposing my old rig with an arc B580 upgrade went out the window for my budget when ram prices went through the roof.
Just consider that Netfliix and Co. don’t offer higher resolutions than 720p (?) on browsers that are not Edge (or does Chrome support it by now?). I really forgot the details because it’s such a mess using them on Linux. But maybe you use other sources for movies anyways. Also if you need to use your browser for media streaming you might lose some benefits from CEC because you still control things with mouse and keyboard.
Just consider that Netfliix and Co. don’t offer higher resolutions than 720p (?) on browsers that are not Edge
- Specifically, on browsers that are not Edge on Windows. And yeah, I genuinely don’t know the reasoning is behind specifically requiring Edge on Windows, when I’m sure Chrome on Windows supports the same DRM. Does Edge have some additional Windows-specific DRM on top of Widevine that’s connected to TPM2 and VBS that the streaming services use for authentication or something?
