just checked a major review site and not a single smart TV was released in the past two years without integrated ads that you can't opt out from or disable. that's depressing.
"oh but you can just root the android TV install and patch the app so there are no ads" FUCK OFF IT'S A THREE GRAND PIECE OF EQUIPMENT IT SHOULD NOT HAVE ADS FFS
"simply enter into a long-term adversarial relationship with an object you paid thousands for" is not the sage advice a lot of people seem to think it is
@gsuberland yeah it was a nightmare when I was last in the market for mine. I just keep it disconnected from the Internet altogether and use a pi-hole and a separate device for media. To say that's not exactly a consumer friendly way of accomplishing it is putting it lightly.
oh yeeaaahh I'm sure that's a fantastic viewing experience compared to a modern 65" OLED with WCG and Dolby Vision HDR (10-bit PQ EOTF) support.
I have eyes and I would like to see nice images with them! we have the technology to do this, and there is no reason that it must be encumbered by ads.
@gsuberland while not exactly a solution it's the reason I never ever ever connect a new TV to the Internet. I'd rather use dedicated devices than be served ads because I used Disney Plus (for example).
@djb ah yes I will simply disable all the features and then pay another Two Thousand British Pounds for a media computer capable of outputting modern high end HDR content (with all the jank that comes with it because GPUs don't have proper support for most of it yet)
@gsuberland idk I genuinely have yet to see a better picture than my 2009 Bravia this side of several thousand dollars. can't see myself willingly buying anything new as long as this bad boy still works at all.
@gsuberland I mean yeah when I can get an old set for a price I can afford that has no ads I'll consider it, but until then I have a better set than any tcl pile.
@saidsoftly they don't exist. OLED is a poor choice for static repetitive content, which is the majority use-case for professional signage displays, and the tech on them always lags behind by about 5-10 years anyway (despite the prices being as much as modern TVs)
@gsuberland OMFG you've discovered the TV version of responses to, "What RPG should I play if I want it to be about [x] but not game [y]?". You'll literally get people telling you why you should play game [y].
@GyrosGeier that's not even true; commercial displays don't use OLED tech because it has poor longevity under repeating or static content. they also don't care about WCG or HDR, just high peak brightness and reasonable colour reproduction.
@gsuberland yes, but anything cheaper than the commercial TVs that would be usable in a mall would also get used instead — so if there was any non-smart TV on offer, they'd break the commercial market.
the problem with this whole thing is that it makes people say silly things like "ugh smart TVs are awful", which imo is a really backwards way of looking at it.
smart TVs are a great idea. being able to stream content from RTSP, YouTube, Twitch, Plex, etc. without needing a whole extra (expensive) computer attached is a great user experience! no mucking about switching inputs, extra boot delays, updating stuff, interop issues, etc.
the problem is specific to the ads, which ruin that UX.
@gsuberland not to mention baking an OS into a product of forced obsolescence is a security nightmare when not updating the apps is an incentive to push customers to replace products faster with new models. Almost like baking network capable OSes into products should be regulated around security updates or something…
@jbaggs none of that makes smart TVs inherently bad in any way. the problem is that the manufacturers are greedy fuckers who don't give a shit about consent. there are solutions to that, e.g. consumer protection regulations.
@gsuberland Yeah. We're down here in the weeds of policy vs product, and all I was trying to say is the people selling you the product have different goals. (As you know.)
There is a disturbingly large amount of tech that gets to circumvent past regulations by being a different industry these days. (See Uber, etc.)
Regulate smart TVs? great. Show me the policy people doing that.
@gsuberland I sort of agree with you but people do tend to keep TVs for 5+ years and manufacturer software support, outside of maybe the flagship LG TVs, does not last nearly that long
@anime_reference easily solved by an "input only" mode for people who have a specific aversion to their TV operating system being a somewhat older version
@gsuberland which is well and good for people who know how to troubleshoot things, but how do I explain to my parents "okay so after you own this TV for a few years the apps are gonna get all laggy or stop working, so you'll have to buy [futuristic roku thing] and start using that instead. also once you do that, don't forget to cut off your tv's internet access so it doesn't get hacked or whatever"
@anime_reference if they can navigate a modern smart TV they can probably handle that changeover, but yes, there is an argument for "TV box" products as an external method of providing content instead of baking it into the TV, and if you're so-inclined you can do that from day one if the TV offers a non-smart mode.
but all of that is rather beside the original point of "ads fuckin suck" (esp. because they'll end up double-dipping with ads on the TV and on the "smart box" appliance)
@gsuberland respectfully, I don't understand this perspective. The "attached computers" aren't that expensive (a Fire TV Stick is ~$30), and it's always seemed beneficial to me to decouple "high-quality display" from "streaming source" so that you can upgrade or swap them out independently.
Even if truly-good ad-free Smart TVs existed, I'd still prefer a high-quality dumb TV coupled with a hackable actual-computer.
@scubbo a $30 Fire Stick is completely incapable of handling 2160p HDR10+ or Dolby Vision content. you're looking more at Apple TV 4K territory for that.
@gsuberland I guess it depends on what you're looking for.
The computer needs to exist, it's just a question of whether you build it into the display or not.
Separating the panel driver from the source of content provides the opportunity to upgrade or repair/replace them independently, and generally have more control over the software stack.
To me the only difference between a TV and a computer monitor is that the TV is larger and meant to be viewed from a larger distance.
@gsuberland The real world distinction is that most modern TVs have less flexible inputs, run all kinds of crapware I don't want, come with remote controls, and are full of DSP upscaling and sharpening that add latency and make the images look worse.
@azonenberg TVs and computer displays are completely different; even moreso in the OLED space due to having to tune for burn-in rejection. it goes way beyond viewing angles; the whole pipeline is significantly altered and tuned for completely different goals. you might as well be comparing an oscilloscope and a VNA and saying they're both the same thing.
(yes, having an external "TV box" like a Roku or Fire Stick or Apple TV or whatever is great as a backup, and nothing is stopping you from doing that even with the existing Smart TVs, although I will agree that it would be nice if there was an option to switch to a non-connected boot mode if you have security concerns after the smart OS is long gone out of support... although I guess that's called "disconnecting it from the network" lol)
@gsuberland I'm worried if they'll even work if not networked; I wouldn't put it past them to say "huh, I've had no security updates in a month, I'm shutting down for your safety until I get online"... When my ancient TV dies, I'm hoping I can get a non-smart TV to replace it and, as you say, have to attach another computer to it to make the pictures. Sucks, amirite?
@gsuberland Yeah external boxes and computers are great if you only want to watch content on your 4k120 tv in either 1080p 120 with oversharpening AI upscaling or in fixed 4k60 and get judder in 24fps content.
@gsuberland
My bigger worry is that these enshittified TV makers might later make the ads and tracking mandatory even if the user wants to disable the “smart" features and use the TV with an external box.
@glassresistor monitors aren't tuned for the same specs so they're very different in terms of viewing experience. OLED monitors are primiarly tuned to reduce static burn-in at the expense of pretty much everything else.
@gsuberland We should all keep pushing for getting better, and as long as the buyers are classed as "consumers" there's an uphill battle for regulation vs those that lobby for the manufacturers. (I honestly haven't followed it too closely in your home country, but please surprise me if it is really really different than the US at this point.)
@gsuberland@jbaggs I don’t know, I’ve been really happy with Roku for many years. Get a new one for $50 every two years or so and I’m good, great even.
@gsuberland That's my point, I expect the panel to outlive whatever the smarts are.
Why not just make them physically separate devices? I don't see the benefit.
If you want to have an internal connector for a socketed gizmo that blind-mates to a USB-C power port and HDMI output and ship that from the factory, great. As long as I can remove it and use those connectors myself without impairing other functionality.
@gsuberland afaik smart tvs have to show ads, why would anyone produce them otherwise? I don't have a tv but I imagine they can't be making much profit off a big oled panel that doesn't track you, listen to you or otherwise make $$$ in the long run 🤔
@gsuberland They're not a great idea because the useful lifetimes are vastly different. Smart TVs, even without ads, mean astronomical ewaste. The TV itself is good for decades (secondhand if the original owner is a videophile who replaces it with the latest thing every 1-2 years) but the "smarts" are quickly junk.
Very similar to reason I hated TVs with integrated VHS player when I was a kid helping check/fix broken AV gear in school. Flaky tape stuff breaks, CRT becomes trash.
@gsuberland@Catfish_Man Sceptre sells not-smart TVs with 10-bit HDR. Not sure if it covers the fancier stuff, but it’s definitely current tech. I’ve bought three over the years and I can’t imagine settling for a “smart” TV just to get a modern screen. Hope that helps!
@gsuberland
-'"simply enter into a long-term adversarial relationship with an object you paid thousands for" is not the sage advice a lot of people seem to think it is'-
For this same reason I never recommend that anyone to buy a 3D printer. Not even once.
@gsuberland A friend of mine has seriously looked into starting a business of "neutering" smart TVs.
Open it up, completely remove the motherboard. Keep power supply and panel, replace the electronics with an FPGA that just takes HDMI/DisplayPort in and drives the panel.
I have an older Smart TV. I've never used any of the 'smart' features and I've never connected it to a network. It works fine as a dumb screen when I select an HDMI port using the remote.
@azonenberg@gsuberland Could also do that on reclaimed garbage where the smarts are painful because all the video providers switched to the newest js framework 10x larger, with bigger profit margin.
@azonenberg@gsuberland I would pay for a kit with instructions on how to do this. I was so disappointed to learn when I bought my TV that I basically can't bypass the "smart" part and have it actually function as, you know, just a display that defaults to HDMI. It does, in theory, let you set HDMI as the default "application" but then it sometimes "crashes" back to the main OS, plus it panics if it can't detect a signal immediately. It's the furthest thing from an actual "smart" design.
i currently use my sony "smart" tv in completely dumb mode, no internet, just HDMI. but i had to put it on the internet and let it "phone home" once or it wouldn't even have booted up. that's just evil.
@azonenberg@gsuberland That gate-array thingy doesn't have to be dumb. It can be a smart motherboard but loyal to us, rather than to Google or Microsoft. Like you also proposed.
@azonenberg@gsuberland they would still need some kind of components/code to receive and decrypt the encrypted 4K HDMI signal to stream from the Hybrid/OTT STB. The owner would likely want to have the Dolby Vision, HDR10, AV1, etc. Unless you have a very expensive FPGA decoding, most of these things will result in al kinds of stream artifacts in the 4K panel.
@azonenberg@gsuberland AliExpress is a treasure trove to make things like that easier. Here's a driver board to turn pretty much any telly into a plain DVB & HDMI input for example:
@azonenberg@gsuberland I wouldn't mind that since my current set is obsolete and the next set would be horribly enshittified. (I do still kind of want an ATSC tuner though, I still watch NewsHour and Nova over the air.)
@azonenberg@gsuberland@YsengrinWolf they're embedding the "smart" shit onto the same board with the LCD drivers, and that's not something easy to recreate? I don't see that working out very well. TVs are also a royal bitch to ship around.
The easiest way to get a "dumb" tv is to buy a commercial display/tv. More expensive up front but free of all the "smart" junk. Better prices found with used ones, as businesses shut down or upgrade to new stuff. Try to find runtime first tho.
@gsuberland@gearlicious I mean of course it's going to cost more, it's not subsidized by ads and data mining.
But have panels really improved that much in the last few years other than 4K becoming more broadly available? My TV in the living room is a 1080p 50-something inch dumb panel, one of the last of a dying breed circa 2016.
@azonenberg@gearlicious yes, lmao, by a ludicrous degree. modern OLEDs blow older tech out of the water. the difference is like upgrading from a budget VA panel to a professional IPS. in fact it's even more striking.
@gsuberland@azonenberg can't argue with OLED I'm afraid. Except for the potential for screen burn-in. Are there any commercial display panels worth a consideration that are OLED?
@azonenberg@gsuberland I've bought a smart TV and I absolutely love it.
But - it's one of the earlier Android TVs, it's from a reputable manufacturer, and it wasn't cheap, so the build quality is pretty good, the hardware is pretty good, and after almost 8 years, it's still working great.
I've been thinking about the upgrade, I wouldn't mind a bit bigger screen and a 4K resolution, but having ads I can't turn off is just a no go. So no upgrade. :/
@azonenberg@gsuberland I got a nice TV a few years ago. I have no need for "smart" functions, so I did not connect it to any network. As a result, I can't use half of the buttons on my remote, because all of them trigger an "Accept our TOS" screen. (And I really don't accept this TV's terms.)
@azonenberg@gsuberland Was thinking that too. Who needs a TV when all the programmes you watch are online? Watching Finnish TV on Areena at times of my own choosing... when our house was built, a TV/FM antenna cable was included. I don't even remember where it comes out of the wall 😁. Expect TV to go the way of copper-line phones and combustible-fluid burning cars.
@rubinjoni I wish there was. My wife's car is a 2013 without too much idiocy, and my primary transport is a bicycle but between having a two-year-old and more renovations to do on the house I'm looking at getting a cheap old truck I can use for hauling materials without preventing her from going places.
But modern vehicles are so software driven it's ridiculous. I'd love a modern EV drive train and body that meets current safety standards, but without all of the telematics and android auto and touchscreens and other user-hostile BS.
The problem is that if you remove all of the ECUs that do this, you're basically building a new car from scratch (no instrument cluster, no air conditioning controls, no door lock controls, etc).
I do want to explore how hard it'd be to buy a late-model vehicle and just remove/disable all of the radios, as a starting point.
@gsuberland@venite also you shouldn't expect people to dick around with stuff which will void the warranty. Most people will not be confident with doing that and blithely saying "oh just do this [complicated and scary thing to your new and expensive equipment]" is unreasonable, IMHO.
There's a reason most people don't have linux computers and that's because most people just want to be able to plug the thing in and have it work.
@gsuberland my samsung tv has a workaround that if you parental lock the "smart guide" all the ads dissapear
also works for the normal apps, but may get annoying if you plan on using them
@JessiCum my current one is on the old Tizen OS which is hot garbage in general, but I did at least manage to neuter all ads and sponsored content crap through the developer menu, aside from one tiny ad panel on the bottom left of the nav menu which now only shows a single static "R" logo (no idea what brand it's for).
but it's still a shitty deal to have to see ads on something you bought. I've been boycotting Samsung forever as a result.
@gsuberland almost all support the Google cast protocol and I just use my phone at other people's houses (still don't have a smart tv maybe when we move)
@gsuberland I'm probably going to piss you off by jumping back to this post after my last comment, but isn't the ability to shove ads in your face what corporations think is "smart" about smart tvs? (That and any data they can get about viewing habits.)
@gsuberland@hypebot I did. What‘s wrong with more customer choice though? Nobody forcing you to buy a ‚dumb‘ TV. (Loewe‘s smart features also do not have adds, but those are very premium TVs).
@gsuberland@hypebot How about instead of bathing in your pre-conceived notions you go back to what I wrote: Those are actually premium TV manufacturers (obviously, as German/Austrian brands), asking for premium prices, which they couldn‘t if their products sucked: see fe https://int.loewe.tv/
@Squig@hypebot this isn't me saying "oh shitty little eurobrand can't possibly have good TVs" - I know there's good stuff coming out of the smaller players. the problem is that economies of scale mean you have to pay twice the price for the same product quality (albeit with no ads as a bonus, but nearly two grand extra for that feature alone is a lot to ask)
@Squig@hypebot or, more accurately, I want to regulate the hell out of the market so that it's simply illegal to plaster ads all over products that a customer has purchased.
@gsuberland@hypebot there are still very good reasons to strengthen the ‚dumb TV‘ market for people who do not want to buy new TVs every 2-4 years (or used TVs that are 4-6 years old), but that‘s a goal I can support.
@Squig@hypebot my current one is a decade old and still fully functional; the claims that they're obsolete after just a couple of years is mostly hyperbole
@gsuberland@hypebot depends on the manufacturers, but the ones from 10ish years ago tend to have the ‚dumb‘ feature independent of the chipset that makes them smart, still. The problems will be bigger for ones bought from cheap brands, and for IT security of the home networks they are connected to.
@Squig@hypebot security is my day job and honestly it's fine. the vulns in these things are typically quite boring and it's pretty hard to use them to pivot even with a good vuln.
@Squig@hypebot (ideally we wouldn't have to worry about that at all, but on my list of reasonable things to include in a threat model it's very low down)
@gsuberland@hypebot a law covering these kind of electronics would hopefully also apply to babyphones, toasters, fridges, etc, but yeah.
(And we aren‘t talking about pacemakers, artificial hips, etc being controlled by relatively standard computing electronic nowadays, with some kind of wifi-ish connectivity, and no IT-security regulation governing them :( )
@Squig@hypebot there actually are controls around this on medical devices (it's a space I have worked in) but it's primarily driven by industry self-regulation which has its own problems. the NHS has specific requirements too, but they're kinda janky and open to interpretation. early days really.
@Squig@hypebot luckily there's a lot of incentive for the medical device companies outside the US (inside the US is a whole mess) to get their stuff tested, and it's something we get approached about on a fairly regular basis at work. and that includes both implantable / portable devices and smart equipment used in hospitals and surgical theatres. folks in these spaces have been behind the times for a few decades (same for the industrial space) but they're finally catching on :)
@gsuberland@hypebot that‘s very good to hear, I worked on it from the EU-side when I was in the EP some 7ish years ago, back then it was mainly crickets…
@gsuberland And I've got one from three years ago and its features are increasingly failing. Most of the built-in streaming channels don't work anymore and tell me I probably have a bad internet connection.
It seems like it might be better just not to connect the TV in the first place and get a Roku or suchlike.
@gsuberland Bang & Olufsen TVs may be the exception. They are a bit expensive, because they are high quality TVs, but if you’re looking for that, maybe it’s the answer.
@iCarlosPro last I checked they had middling display performance and cost eight times as much as the top-end options from competing brands, but admittedly I haven't checked their lineup in a few years.
@gsuberland you shouldn't need a $2k PC to replicate the $200 in tech that's inside a smart TV. Any device with HDMI 2.1 would have the bandwidth to support 4k HDMI HDR at 120HZ with 16bpc.
Devices that support this bandwidth have been out since 2020, and are specifically designed to be low cost multimedia centers.
Gaming capabilities are not the same as media encoding and decoding which is highly optimized.
@gsuberland because you're looking for a specific feature?
It's been a couple years since it's literally been my job to test HDMI standards and 4k/8k playback. But I've always hated just the idea of smart TV's, beyond just the lack of control over it, there are the security risks and eventual obsolescence (which adds more security risks). Closed ecosystems are a pet peeve, moreso when a TV manufacturer can suddenly decide that your TV that you've had for years will no longer support, say YouTube
@stephlahs thing is, in that case you can just plug an external thing in and get up to date apps that support whatever's new and hot. but the TV's smart features mean you get seamless integrated stuff out of the box, for free, for typically at least a decade after launch (hell, even my shitty old TV that runs an ancient build of Tizen OS still supports YouTube, Plex, Netflix, and Prime) so you aren't losing anything by having them there too, except for the case where they shove them full of ads.
@gsuberland took a quick look, looks like a competitor to HDR10+, and is more of a display side standard requirement than a device side. If the media player supports it and the TV does then it should be possible, however Dolby is notorious for making things as difficult as possible. It turns out that many Media targeted CPUs often just convert Dolby Vision content to HDR10+ which is royalty free.
Also looks like Dolby gives terrible PC support too (linux, win10) and I'm not surprised.
@stephlahs Dolby Vision is Rec. 2020 with the PQ EOTF. HDR10+ uses the HLG EOTF instead, which primarily exists for backward compatibility with the Rec. 709 EOTF on SDR content.
@gsuberland uh oh, sorry about that, lol. I'm the same way, I'll spend days, if not weeks or months looking for the ideal solution. In this case you're at the mercy of some rather big companies. Don't be like me and go so far that you start looking into how you can get a TV custom manufactured to your specifications. 😅
@gsuberland well, that's kinda the point, being able to just plug a thing in. If they removed the "smartness" and allowed the user to choose, and the price for such was subtracted from the cost, then it wouldn't matter either way.
HDMI has CEC for the seamless integration.
And there is nothing to stop whoever manufacturers a smart TV to suddenly decide to have ads later. They gotta pay for updating software somehow and people don't want to pay for that and neither do stockholders.
@gsuberland I'd say it's about taking back control. In any smart tv, you have zero control over the entire thing and have to trust some giant corporation to do the right thing, and we all know how that goes.
They can screw you over any time they want and you end up needing to buy a set top box regardless. It's really messed up, and not having the option to just get a dumb TV is just a problem overall.
You want a smart TV without ads, but doing so means that you need control, not the company.
@gsuberland to me it's the same as buying a Tesla, where suddenly some asshole decides that you didn't pay the annual fee for your brakes to work.
The problem isn't just the adds, it's the lack of control and choice, just like what would happen if you bought the Apple TV.
It's only depressing if you watch television? By that I mean, that's what television has always been as a media. At best you could turn it off, or turn the channel or run to the bathroom during a commercial.
@Frances_Larina that's not what I'm talking about at all? I'm talking about the TV itself displaying ads in its user interface. not ads being in live broadcast TV (which I've not watched in 15+ years)
Also, that's terrible! What's next, a bathroom scale that forces you to see an ad for omeprazole before it will display your weight? Basic UI design should NOT include advertising layout!
@gsuberland we did the upgrade from a 1080p older TV, to our first “smart” TV, 4K, a year ago. I bought an AppleTV 4K and plugged it in, never connected the TV itself to our wifi or anything. I shouldn’t have to, but there’s no way I’d trust the software it’s comes with
@gsuberland If you mean the ads on the home screen, then:
How To Turn Off Sponsored Advertisements On LG Smart TV
Power on your LG Smart TV
Access the Settings by pressing the Settings button on the remote
Go to All Settings, then select General
Select System and click on Additional Settings
Click on Home Settings
Turn off the toggle icon under Home Promotion
This will turn off the sponsored ads from your LG Smart TV home screen
@jann@gsuberland
Turning those off doesn’t stop “suggestions”. Sometimes when I turn on the TV, a notification on the top right kindly informs me that I have an Apple TV free trial or that some sports thing is going on. That’s the kind of sneaky ad that we can only escape by never connecting to the web
@dontony@gsuberland funny… I didn’t even do that in my C2 …and my husband never sees ads (it’s his TV in his man cave). Yes he uses Apple TV but still. He never ever experiences ads on the TV.
@gsuberland just checked and my Android TV projector was literally bought two years ago (Nov 2021), which prob explain why I don't see any ads. Was thinking to upgrade because it's a slow device, but your experience certainly made me think twice.
@gsuberland it's quite disheartening. I have an "old" C7 that - relatively speaking - has basically no ads and still looks amazing. But every new model since then has just doubled down on amount of ads. I mostly want to upgrade for size and HDMI 2.1, but it somehow feels like a step back :(
@sen@alexkalopsia except it isn't because commercial monitors are primarily used for static and repetitive content, which OLED is unsuitable for, so you're never going to find a competing quality TV in the commercial space
@gsuberland I am going to buy TV within a year and I have a solution for that. First of all I really don’t like being spied on and I believe that every android device does mainly that. Second I am tired of ads being everywhere.
That’s why I am going to buy TV and never connect it to the internet. But… I will pay a few dollars more and buy Apple TV or something like that and use internet throught it. No internet - no ads!
@tcely I know but Apple TV does not have this feature (as far as I know) and as far as I know both devices have to have this capability for it to work 🤔
@gsuberland Dumb people just keep noise making out of their food hole "It's just how things are. It's fine. Stop trying to fight it."
I want to own their brains and use them as a zombie army. Cannon fodder, good cheap analogue stock.
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