At only double the price of an equivalently priced smart one! Bargain ~/s~
Comment on I love my smart TV (From Mastodon) - Repost
randomwords@midwest.social 1 month ago
There is a brand that makes dumb TVs.
Piece_Maker@feddit.uk 1 month ago
01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 1 month ago
The smart ones are sold at cost or at a loss, and your privacy is then sold to subsidize the profits. A dumb tv costs more money up front (since it’s not subsidized by your privacy), but it costs far less in overall value. It’s a tradeoff that the consumer needs to make. The lovely thing, is that (for now, at least) it is still a choice we can make.
hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Or you could just block the Spyware TV from accessing the internet.
01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 1 month ago
Not all tvs allow you to do that. Some require you to be online. Some took it a step further and are equipped with 4/5G modems to bypass your network restrictions.
Piece_Maker@feddit.uk 1 month ago
Which is an entirely fair compromise for people who use Lemmy, but means precisely nothing to the majority.
locuester@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Well that’s not true. They have been in business for 40 years. They sell TVs for people who don’t want anything except video in. Mainly commercial places like offices, stadiums, etc.
oftheair@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
Good luck finding them though, we’ve never found a place either offline or online that sells them.
randomwords@midwest.social 1 month ago
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perishthethought@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Good to know about, thanks a lot!
DdCno1@beehaw.org 1 month ago
Keep in mind that these are low-end TVs with, according to reviewers, generally subpar picture and sound quality, with quality issues that make them worse to look at than even old TVs. If you just need “a TV” and your only concerns are that the device is flat, the image in color and some sort of noise is escaping the speaker holes, they’ll do, but don’t expect anything more than that. To me at least, it makes more sense to not connect a smart TV to the network and use a separate streaming device attached to it.
I would even buy a slightly older used dumb TV from a reputable manufacturer over one of these sketchy things, since it’s not like LCD TVs are finicky technology - they tend to last for an incredibly long time in my experience, easily 15 years or more. On my parents’ 2008ish Toshiba (1080p and every analog and digital input in the known universe, which, in combination with an excellent analog upscaler, makes it awesome for old games consoles - but it’s of course no looker in terms of colors by modern standards), the only thing that has broken so far is the spring of the power button, so I bent a wire press it in and a switch at the plug to be able to turn it off completely.
This is getting a bit off-topic, but a relative of mine replaced her flatscreen TV from 2002 (!) just two years ago - and it was still working fine, but since it only had an analog tuner and SD resolution, she was looking for an upgrade. I got her a small 4K OLED from Samsung (since discontinued) and she’s very happy with it (even the “smart” features are quite inoffensive), although I did have to get her a soundbar as well, because if there’s one thing that has regressed on TVs, it’s sound quality, in part due to how ever thinner and lighter designs have reduced speakers to little more than phone speakers on some devices.