• dangblingus@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    190
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Have a regular PC hooked up to the TV. That’s my smart machine. I control every aspect of it. Fuck Smart TVs.

    • Rob Bos@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      63
      ·
      1 year ago

      Raspberry pi with Kodi hooked up to a projector and a NAS serving files works well for me.

      • SupraMario@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        29
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        This is the way, although the pi is to slow for me at this point and I replaced it with shields.

        Also why the are people connecting tvs to their networks…fuck that noise.

        • teejay@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I’m waiting for the Raspberry Pi 5 to set up as a media PC behind my tv. There are really good, reliable, and high quality sites that let you stream any movie or TV show. No need to vpn or torrent. Firefox with ublock origin streaming anything I want in 1080 for free.

          I should add I have a RP4 and it’s not beefy enough to stream 1080p full screen from a browser to my 4k tv.

          • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            1 year ago

            Just get a micro desktop, better airflow and has all the ports you may need.

            Intel Nuc, Dell Optiplex are really cheap secondhand. And you can run 4K content on them.

          • Rob Bos@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            I use an RP4 and it’s fine with streaming 1080p h.265 stuff off my NAS drive, though it did struggle a bit with serving up the Planet Earth videos. It claims to be able to decode 4k, but probably not very well.

            • SupraMario@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              Yea, the 3b was struggling hard for larger mkv videos in even 1080p. The 4s while much better seem to not be able to handle 265 at all in 4k.

              • Rob Bos@lemmy.ca
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                Good to know, I’ll probably hold off upgrading my projector to 4k until the next-gen raspi then, or some other platform.

          • SupraMario@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            I love rpis but damn did the 4s get sold out and then spike in price almost instantly. I’m not holding out much hope for the 5 to be much better.

      • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        I mean that’s nice but can you run Netflix/Hulu/AppleTV/HBO through that thing? Or can you only play media that you illegally downloaded?

        • Rob Bos@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I haven’t tried. Through a Web browser, maybe. There’s a Kodi netflix addon, I know that. It’s just a Debian box, so any solution that’d work on a Linux machine would probably be okay.

          • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            any solution that’d work on a Linux machine would probably be okay.

            I don’t think there is a Linux solution. That’s the problem.

            • Rob Bos@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              What do you mean? I gave you a couple of Kodi plugins that cover most of what you mentioned, plus, you could probably just use a Web browser.

              • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                That’s not really a “solution” so much as a “workaround”. It’s unofficial community-maintained software with complicated installation, limited features, and that the service providers can break at any time. And even if that weren’t the case, that’s only 2 providers.

                If I need to use a web browser, why wouldn’t I just skip Kodi altogether and just plug in my laptop?

                There’s a reason Google TV is an entirely different operating system from Chrome OS.

        • Sniffy@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I also use my pc as a TV with a big monitor. I can watch Netflix/streams through Firefox and control the pc with my PS5 controller connected through bluetooth.

          • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            You can do all of those things, but it’s not remotely the same. The browser is limited to 720p, the interface isn’t couch-friendly, and now your PC is connected to a TV instead of a proper gaming monitor.

            • Klaymore@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              On windows you can just install the Netflix app or use Edge and it’s not limited to 720p, and you can just use a long hdmi cable and have your pc plugged into a normal monitor as well.

    • CoderKat@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      28
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      When I completely replaced my PC, I intended to use my old PC as a media box. But in reality, I’ve basically used my Chromecast for everything. One of these days I’ll probably want to watch something that isn’t on one of my streaming sites, but I’ve been surprisingly resistant to that so far.

      Chromecast is the ideal smart device so far, for me. No ads or anything. I use my phone as a remote and basically every video app supports it easily. Open app, press cast, select what I want to play. Exactly what a smart TV should have been like.

      • blipcast@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        What type of Chromecast do you use? I recently bought a Chromecast Ultra for a new TV after being happy with a secondhand one for years (3rd gen, I think). The difference in UI was such a disappointing step down. I don’t want a home screen with apps and ads, I just want something I can stream to from my phone! And I can’t say for certain, but it also feels like I get more ads on YouTube compared to using the older Chromecast.

        • ArdMacha@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          No you bought a Chromecast with Google TV. A Chromecast ultra is just a 4k version of the original. I used my CCwGTV for 8 months then sold it and got a CC ultra instead. I hate the promoted content from networks and apps I would never use.

          • blipcast@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Aha, thank you for clarifying. It’s easy to overlook the difference between “Chromecast” and “Chromecast with Google TV”. Unfortunately, it looks like if you want 4k you are stuck with the Google TV interface. :/ [Edit: I was wrong, see below]

        • credit crazy@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          How are you crome casting I suppose it doesn’t help that I only ever Chromecast when I’m at my parents and want to show them a yt video but I’ve found that sometimes my phone is able to make the connection and other days the option is either gone or my phone became blind

          • blipcast@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            Casting is dependent on sharing a network, so maybe on the days it didn’t work you were using the cell data network instead of your parent’s wifi?

      • rothaine@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        My only beef with Chromecast is I feel like they are designed to die after 2 years. I’ve gone through three now; it always seems like right around the 2-year mark, it starts having issues staying connected to the network. But I keep buying them because, like you said, it’s basically the ideal smart device.

        • Fermion@feddit.nl
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          Did you try getting the chrome cast ultra that has the ethernet port on the power adapter? I’ve had a lot less trouble with connectivity on that one vs the original wireless only.

          Every 4 months or so it will lock up and require a power cycle. So I do still have some of the problems you describe.

          • rothaine@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            I did not even know that was a thing. Maybe I’ll get it when my current one shits the bed in 8 months or so.

            I wouldn’t be able to use the Ethernet though since the router is upstairs.

        • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          They are designed to die, almost everything is now a days. Why build a robust system that lasts forever when you can build a cheaper system that breaks every couple of years and charge as much as you would for the robust system? It’s not like consumers can choose an alternative that doesn’t use the obsolescence model.

        • ArdMacha@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          I’ve had a couple that died after a year but still have some gen2 and gen3s running fine.

      • ArdMacha@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        You are better off sticking with the Chromecast and setting up the old pc as a Jellyfin/Plex/Emby server with a playback app on the Chromecast. You can even run a pi-hole on it too.

    • _number8_@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      this has been an absolute game changer for me. i run an HDMI thru OBS so if i’m watching sports, i can crop out the distracting awful score ticker / now permanent ad space. and an even bigger game changer, i got a USB foot switch that i set as the mute keystroke, so instead of scrambling to hit the right key or find the remote while i’m busy, i can just stomp on the pedal to mute. it’s bliss.

    • ramble81@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      Careful though, some smart TVs actually list in the ToS where they’ll take screen captures of what you’re watching for “informational purposes”, make sure you have all data collection turned off anyway even if you don’t use it as such.

    • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      The Nvidia Shield is a very solid sub-pc option. This said, they do still shove ads in your face in the form of a scrolling banner with new shows on it.

      It doesn’t bother me too much, though, and you might be able to disable it. Every blue moon it’s useful is the thing.

    • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      I do something similar with an Nvidia Shield but inevitably I get regular giant reminders that I need to connect my TV to the internet (for my benefit, surely).

    • Zink@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      This is what I did for a long time, and I still have a PC permanently connected to the TV (it doubles as the home server).

      But once I got a decent smart TV, a WebOS based LG that lets you disable or avoid ads, I’ve been happy to use the TV’s apps with the remote control’s voice or wiimote-like pointer.

  • Beefalo@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    147
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • hedgehogging_the_bed@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    111
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Nearly hucked my Vizio out last night as I discovered that between last football season and today they have hidden the broadcast channels I receive with my antenna, in their “Free+” offerings and no longer show the channel number when you rotate between them.

    This also means that when you choose “Antenna” from the input menu, you get around 15 seconds of black screen while it loads an informative slide about the change and then demands you press the OK button to finish loading their program

    Then, to change the channel you must open their fiddly “broadcast guide” and use it to choose the channel you want to watch (after 15 second loading delay for the guide and another 5 second delay once you’ve picked a channel.

    To change the TV from the Nintendo game to Fox took me 10 minutes. Then I realized Fox was showing the Packers game and I needed CBS and it took me 5 more minutes to find the menu again and find CBS.

    Just last February this exact same action took maybe 20 seconds? Turn TV on, change input to Antenna, flip channels manually.

    • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      Look into plex! They have a dvr option, and you just need some sort of old, but functional PC to run the server and a cheap add-on to connect your antenna to it. It’s amazing if you get clear signals!

      • CeeBee@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        1 year ago

        There’s also Jellyfin, which is better than Plex as your login doesn’t rely on their corporate servers. Jellyfin is 100% local.

        • Sjy@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          My support also goes to Jellyfin but I have both plex and Jellyfin running because occasionally Jellyfin will have a playback error that I’ve tried to but failed to diagnose. Have yet to have any playback errors on plex, but again my go to is Jellyfin because it’s local, the UI is more customizable and in my opinion the UI is just better.

          • CeeBee@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a playback error on Jellyfin that wasn’t related to my power going out and my NAS not coming back up (thus Jellyfin not having an actual video to serve). Jellyfin has been incredibly stable for me.

            • Sjy@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              Unfortunately I can still reproduce the errors. Happens with a few shows but only when using the Jellyfin app on a fire stick. I’ve never had any playback issues using the Jellyfin app on my Roku TV. So, in those very few situations, I just use plex.

              • CeeBee@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                1 year ago

                It sounds like a codec error. I would bet that if you checked the files experiencing the errors it would have some esoteric codec or be a format your host can’t easily decode, or it’s a format the playing device hardware can’t decode but the Jellyfin player doesn’t know that (somehow Jellyfin isn’t getting correct info).

                I’ve had that before with a really old avi file with divx. I re-encoded the file to MP4 with h264 and it works perfectly.

                • Sjy@lemm.ee
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Well, thanks friend, tried to figure it out again and couldn’t. But I did a full, I’m going to figure this out and changing some playback settings fixed it. Not sure why it only threw the error on one show, but it’s fixed now…

                  Now, you wouldn’t have any clue how to setup Jellyfin (or would you be able to point me to somewhere that would help) so it has the option of skipping intros, would you? I’m running it in a docker container on a synology nas.

        • voxel@sopuli.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          plex still has some advantages, like it can run natively on more devices (e.g. playstation)

      • hedgehogging_the_bed@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Ooo, there’s a name I haven’t heard in a bit. I had Plex sometime a decade ago. I had a Boxee 2 Beta test device around the same time or maybe later. They were followed by an early Roku which I have neglected to replace and got stuck relying on the Vizio software for the antenna.

  • KptnAutismus@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    84
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    time to hook an old pc running linux up to that bad boy. while you’re at it, maybe set up a NAS. they can’t get to you on open source software!

  • kcfb@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    80
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

      • enragedchowder@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        Just got a used Vizio and I have the same problem. 100% of the time I’m using my Apple TV on one input, but as soon as I turn it off it switches to smart cast. Except it can’t even find my wifi network, so all it does is give me a screen saying it can’t connect. Why can’t it just stay on the input I set it to??

        • assassinatedbyCIA@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Well you see if they did that then the shareholders would be sad. You wouldn’t want the shareholders to be sad now would you.

      • criticon@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        I disconnected my Vizio from the Internet and attached a Chromecast with Google TV because it was getting extremely slow after turning it on because it was trying to download a lot of ads

    • _number8_@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      1 year ago

      i had a vizio tv in high school, i remember that it quite literally took 10-15 seconds from the moment you turned it on to actually see live picture from an HDMI – it spent at least 2/3 of this time displaying a black screen with a giant ‘VIZIO’ logo. most egregious thing i’ve ever seen.

      this isn’t a phone where you turn it off rarely! this is a television!

      look! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVth6PP9t14 i timed it to TWENTY FIVE SECONDS

      • kbtaco@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        This is our current living room tv. It was perfectly fine until a random update made it take 10-15 seconds to turn on and then 15 seconds if you want to change inputs. It’s still our living room tv but I would not buy another Vizio.

  • Skullvalanche@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    73
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I hope everyone reading this knows that you can just not connect a “Smart” TV to the internet. Leave it as a “dumb” TV.

    Get a separate device like a Roku or AppleTV or Amazon Fire or whatever. The garbage hardware that TV manufacturers slap inside a TV so they can advertise its “smart” features will always be inferior to a purpose built external device.

    To say nothing of the security implications of having an unpatched probably unsupported IoT device running on your network for years.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    56
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    For those with similar problems, use pihole dns to effectively block all that bullshit

    Also, do NOT buy a Samsung TV, it’s the worst offender of them all. Nothing but bad experiences with itl

  • ByteWizard@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    62
    arrow-down
    10
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • Random_user@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    46
    ·
    1 year ago

    We have the burdon of knowledge. We know too much. We were there when a TV turned on and you were presented with channels. Some fuzzy some clear. Sometimes your had to wiggle the antenna. The point is, there is a generation that has never known that. They have only seen a smart tv. They don’t know the greener grass. TV makers are waiting for us to die and the next generation to just accept their shitty product as normal. I hate it. I hate it so much.

  • AdmiralShat@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    43
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m not an advocate for smart TVs, but my experience has been different. I found a deal for an 86 inch LG, and it’s been nothing but smooth for me. No advertising built into the os, always has the apps I use right on the bar. The air mouse onnthe remote is reminiscent of owning a wii.

    • Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      36
      ·
      1 year ago

      My LG TV on the other hand is crammed full of ads. I’ve blocked as much of them as I can but it looks like some of them are impossible to get rid of.
      The remote is really cool though, much better for typing.

      • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Which model? The only thing my LG has is a small ‘suggested app’ or something in the home menu… But there’s never any need to open the home menu anyway

        • Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          I have a Nanocell. The ads in question are mostly on the Home screen but every once in a while I get a pop-up telling me to sign up to Paramount Plus or something like that.
          Turning off every ad setting I could find has helped a lot.

    • MrCalyx@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      My Smart TV is now blocked from the wifi, I use a Fire TV stick in the back of it now, it was just far too slow.

      Also I can bearly use the TV remote because it takes ages to wake up and reconnect to the TV.

      • WashedOver@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        I was becoming frustrated with how slow my Vizio “Smart TV” had become. I went with a FireCube that was on sale. It was overkill but I don’t want to deal with it slowing down again for awhile.

        I’m looking at getting back into a PC hooked up to my TV with the fragmentation of the streaming services. It’s becoming as bad as cable again.

    • Ataraxia@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Same. Our OLED LG and roku TV have had no ads. While I have my old laptop connected to the LG anyway I don’t actually need it, it’s just for gaming and the browser.

      • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Depending on what you use it for, I actually found the built in browser to be rather useable

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      arrow-down
      56
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Because the vast majority of times people complain about this stuff, they have no idea what they’re talking about.

      If you buy a nice TV and spend 2 seconds going thru the options you won’t have a single issue OP is complaining about.

      Edit:

      Apparently OP banned me for saying their meme doesn’t make sense…

      The only thing that a “cheap” TV would do is slow down overtime, because it’s cheap and has the absolute bare minimum processing speed.

      You need that processing speed to properly up sample to 4k from streaming.

      If you want a cheap one, buy a decent 1080p so it doesn’t have to upsample.

      Rtings.com is a good resource.

      But it should be common sense that buying a cheap product will give you poorer results.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        54
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Why should you have to buy a nice TV for this issue to not be an issue? Why should shitty TVs have built-in advertising and glacially slow “smart” functions? Either don’t include that as TV software or fix it.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Capitalism baby!

          They want to make the same profit no matter the product you’re buying. On nice TVs they make it by making more profits on the sale, on cheap TVs they make it by selling ads.

          The reason the cheap TV is cheap is also because it’s using (even) older hardware so it’s no wonder they’re slow…

        • xander255@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          The price of the TV is subsidized by the ads, promoted apps, and usage tracking. But usually poor hardware to keep the cost even lower. That’s why the models with Fire TV OS and similar ones are usually the cheapest.

            • TyrionsNose@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              8
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              TVs have improved in quality since smart TVs we’re introduced. However, it’s kind of like everything else. They have stopped producing the old dumb stuff.

              It’s another reason why I advocate that we should compensated anytime our personal information is used or harvested.

              • Throwaway@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                5
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                Quality? Built in apps when a roku is 30 bucks? Is that whats so expensive?

            • Ataraxia@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              I couldn’t get a TV anywhere near the size of the roku for the same price. 350 bucks for something 3x as large as a 400 dollar boob tube in 2002. Also it still has no ads.

      • Muehe@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        34
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Apparently OP banned me for saying their meme doesn’t make sense…

        I don’t think OP can ban you, just block you. And considering in this comment you implied they are stupid, while in your other comment you implied they are straight up lying, it wouldn’t surprise me.

      • WormFood@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        35
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        unhelpful and rude comment. the only advice you have to offer is ‘buy an expensive tv’. do you think people buy cheaper tvs out of ignorance?

        • newDayRocks@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          12
          ·
          1 year ago

          Partially, yes they do.

          It’s been years since the black Friday secret about TVs have been spread on the internet, yet people will still but them. A cheap TV with our without ads will suck because you get what you pay for.

          Also the meme is obviously overexaggerating because it’s being memey. Most TVs don’t restart on their own for example, or get slowed down by updates. If you have any specific examples please share and shame the models.

          • AProfessional@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            The top 2/3 of the Home Screen is ads. A big Sponsored tile plus a row of “Top picks for you” which includes sponsored content.

            They also store your watch data.

            • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              For me when I press home the top 2/3 is the show I’m watching, bottom is my row of apps. The only ads I see are ‘recommended apps’ filling the start of the LG content store which is the default tab. But then I just hit the search icon and can pick the app I want.

              Perhaps it’s a different market with less consumer protection? I’m in the EU

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        My grandparents have a cheap 2014 1080p LG LCD webOS TV that they never connected to the internet but it is and always was very slow, and the LED backlight became dull blue in places. Our dumb CCFL-backlit 2007 768p Sony Bravia has <100 ms response time in menus as opposed to 1~5 s, and is awesome with a Linux HTPC (which frankly should get an upgrade to an SSD but no big deal – I can still start streaming any major movie in <3 minutes).

      • Jay@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Andriod tv’s take a long time to boot because they literally have to boot an operating system when they fire up, there’s no way around that in any settings.

        That said, I don’t have any of the other issues because my tv has never had net access and I have a pc with wireless keyboard/mouse hooked to it, and typing this while sitting on my couch.

  • Adalast@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    43
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    I tried to find the article, but of course it is lost to the anals of the internet. (Yes, I know what I said). I saw an article a couple of years ago about how there was a push in China that would use the built-in cameras in smart TVs to watch how many eyes were looking at the screen during rented features and charge extra if there were more than some small threshold of people watching it. I think 3 people were allowed for a single rental price and it would be charged again if more than that watched.

    This is likely coming for us. Also… Yo ho ho.

  • pirrrrrrrr@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    37
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Why the hell would I connect my TV to the internet? It’s a display device.

    You will take my Display Port/HDMI/RCA input and like it.

  • root_beer@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    33
    ·
    1 year ago

    Alls I can say is that when the “smart” tv has “run out of memory” so it intermittently cuts out when I’m trying to beat Ridley in Super Metroid, it’s time for a lobotomy.

    • Hobo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      1 year ago

      You have an LG TV? Cause I have one and want to go Office Space on it because of that shit. Not only will I never buy another LG TV, I’ll never buy another LG product because of it.

        • Hobo@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yeah mine was vlaned off from everything else and ethernet connected. I factory reset it and took it off the internet completely, but the problem still pops up every couple of months. Unplugging it and letting the capacitors discharge (like 15-20 minutes) seems resolve it for a few weeks but it just happens again.

          Glad you got a good one, but the issue is something that apparently plagues their TVs. Just looking around on forums for “LG out of memory” and you’ll find people with a ton of different models and firmware versions complaining about the same issue. LGs fix for it also hilarious cause they’re like, “Have you tried deleting all your apps?” Which really is just admitting they have no clue why it keeps happpening.

      • root_beer@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Yep, it is an LG. However, after doing a factory reset and plugging a roku soundbar into it, I’ve had no problems with it since. I did the same with our other tv, a Samsung—sans the reset because I never bothered setting it up with Wi-Fi access in the first place.

        I too saw all the complaints from others, which led me to the soundbar because I figured that if they’re going to suggest deleting all the apps as a solution, I may as well make sure and make it permanent.

    • Hello Hotel@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Sounds like a memory leak. Because your not diging thru menus, your using HDMI, either its doing some background task or its the hardware excelerated video decoding. either way, the company using their own product would find bugs like that as fast as you did.

        • Hello Hotel@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          What do you mean the robots are turning on people?! Mine has always been a good boy. He always lets me get easy access to his off switch. You must be dumb! Its almost like you need to spend 100 hours with one to fix the “killing people” thing.

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Not every model has such generous user respectful features. Just because your TV doesn’t have issues, doesn’t mean it isn’t an issue that plagues smart TVs. There are blogs dedicated to document which models allow telemetry disabling, user update control, performance, etc. There are numerous consumer reports, data privacy analysis from different firms, and they all point that there are issues with smart TVs. Some even point that even those with options to disable tracking, ads, and privacy options, still collect quite a lot of data they sent back to their corporate home. So it’s not that users are lazy, dumb or any other negative thing you want to imply about others, you’re not a special boy, this are legitimate issues.

        • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          But it is important that the problem does not lie in the fact you have ‘a smart tv’, it lies in the fact people buy ‘shitty smart tv’s’. Those of use with good working smart tv’s (mine’s 5yo LGC8) read these posts of people saying “never buy a smart tv, always buy another device for it” and roll our eyes.

          You have internet. Just so some research and include in your criteria that the new tv mustn’t be shitty. Don’t reward the marketbros by buying shitty tv’s.

          • Hobo@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            You have the same TV I do. That thing has been nothing but shit for me. I currently have it internet disconnected after doing a factory reset and it still goes out of memory and starts chain resetting after it’s been plugged in for a couple of months.

            Before the factory reset I had it vlanned off and opted out of telemetry tracking, uninstalled all the bloatware apps, and spent a good while waching idle traffic to make sure nothing was sending data… None of that mattered for me. You’re attributing something to skill that is 100% luck.

            • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Maybe it’s a different market with less consumer protection?

              Regarding memory I’m using 2 out of 4 gigs with about 10 apps installed so I don’t know how you’d run out of it after factory reset and no internet. I’m reading there are 2gb LG’s as well but I’d think C8 all have 4?

  • Raz@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    32
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.