I’m considering buying a new TV. There’s plenty of posts about trying to find dumb TVs, comments like ‘just don’t connect it to the internet/network’.
What surprises me is that there isn’t a good overview of (popular) TVs or brands with basic information, answering for each TV:
- Can you use it as a basic TV by choosing not to enable smart features during setup?
- Can you opt out by just not accepting a bunch of agreements?
- Does it have a camera and/or microphone? Where in the device are these? Is there a physical disable switch for microphone?
- Does it nag when not connected to any network?
- Does it have higher than normal power usage when not able to phone home?
- Has it been discovered to connect to public WiFi networks? Does it have the (theoretical) ability to connect to 5G mobile networks?
And similar.
There are extensive lists with a lot of detail about VPN services but nothing like that for TVs. Am I ignorant of a good source, or does this just not exist (yet)?
What I don’t understand is that if you want the TV to be offline, why don’t you just buy a monitor and connect a digital TV receiver to it via an adapter (if it doesn’t have an HDMI output). It’ll be more expensive for sure and it will require a design-hostile antenna but all the privacy issues should just go out of the window.
Do they make 55" OLED monitors? Only stuff I’ve seen is LED, and I’m pretty sure the picture/color quality is inferior to proper tv panel
I think the color quality of good monitors is far superior to it in TVs because monitors are meant for professional image editing. The size may be a problem though. Usually monitors are not more than 27".
A big monitor with 100% AdobeRGB is going to be very very expensive. And if you want it to be 65", you just can’t find them…
And it is a monitor, meant to be watched from a close distance. It will not be such a great experience for movies and such.
I guess we just have different preferences on TVs then.
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monitors are generally made to be viewed up close - if video quality is no issue, then a commercial display /digital signage is also okay.
however, a good detailed list of tv aspects would help with even that choice.
not shooting any option down - just wondering about available resources/information.
That’s not a solution since smartness is already in monitors as well.
Never seen a smart online monitor yet. Maybe $5000+ are but I don’t follow that.
From trying to get people to do that (with no success), it’s because it seems too much like work. Folks want something they can plug in and go… but plugging in one extra thing is just a bridge too far these days. It’s frustrating as shit.
I hear you, but I’m not an example of this. I have a Pi-hole set up, firewalled my phone, happily use LibreWolf, etc.
Besides that, I also want to do the research on what screen to get. If a worse screen (small one, monitor or digital signage) is the only acceptable solution, then that’s what I’ll pick – but having some idea of what it would mean to pick a typical smart TV and try to limit the consequences is also something I want to consider. The only frustrating thing to me is that it’s hard to find out details about this (and that includes details about digital signage screen quality, for instance, since businesses don’t seem to care all that much).
That’s great, I didn’t say you were. I was speaking specifically about people who, on the one hand lamented the risks of smart TVs, but on the other hand didn’t realize that they would just be plugging their existing digital cable STB’s HDMI cable into what amounts to a very large flat panel display.
Can’t relate. Privacy is not a plug and play thing nowadays.
You missed the point.
My point was that having unrealistic hopes is solely the users’ problem. They should lower them a bit. If they care about privacy, they should be able to do it. But yea many haven’t grown to that point yet.