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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.
“The greatest form of control is when you think you’re free, when you’re being fundamentally manipulated and dictated to. One form of dictatorship is being in a prison cell and you can see the bars and touch them. The other one is sitting in a prison cell but you can’t see the bars and you think you’re free.”
-David Icke
Imagine quoting david Icke unironically lol
A broken clock is right two times a day.
Great writeup, hope the world moves away from crap like this
I’ve still got an old 1080p LG TV.
I got it early in the chord cutting days, and knew that Smart TVs were going to be at shitty option.
Smartest decision I ever ever made.
(which is quite sad really, it’s just a TV).
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.
Have a regular PC hooked up to the TV. That’s my smart machine. I control every aspect of it. Fuck Smart TVs.
Raspberry pi with Kodi hooked up to a projector and a NAS serving files works well for me.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
What about the rest of them?
Do your own googling, I got bored after 3 :p
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ethernet over power devices are surprisingly good.
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.
The ethernet cable goes to the computer, not the TV.
This is why I have a dumb TV hooked up to a Linus htpc
Does Linus know that you use his PC??
No. I have fiberoptics running from his PC in Canada to here where we use furlongs to measure distance to use it for may htpc. In all seriousness typo while on mobile lol
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.
Vote with your wallet
When are we going to finally accept that this is nothing but a delusion? How many failed boycotts over and over will it take?
I agree with the sentiment, but really more than a boycott where you’re purposefully not buying something to hurt it, it’s more like people opting out of something that’s just bad. It does take a while of being put through the mud for most people to realize and more importantly take action, but eventually it happens. If you’re following video game stuff, look at what happened with Baldur’s Gate in contrast with Overwatch 2. We need some more time (unfortunately) and one daring competitor to offer the catalyst product.
Vote with your wallets or quit bitching.
I never bought one but I can’t do anything about people who have AirBnB’s who buy them or hotels that install them in every room.
There are ways around that as well. Call ahead and ask what kind of TVs they have. Tell them why you are concerned and you might just get the hotel to worry about this as well if enough people start bothering them. If you don’t have a choice unplug the TV and bring your own laptop.
I can’t call ahead if someone else made the reservation though.
Yes, there are many situations where you will not have control of what room you stay in. Are you going to list them all one by one? JFC
If you don’t have a choice unplug the TV and bring your own laptop.
You sound triggered.
Who knew my anti-consumption / general frugalness would lead to me having a better TV experience than people who buy the high end gadgets
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Don’t buy Samsung anything. Their hardware is junk. They used to be okay, but they decided years ago that they want to be an advertising company, not a hardware company, so they push cheap crap that is used solely as data harvesting and ad delivery devices. Even their home appliances spy on you and break down a few years later.
I have a samsung phone and its great…
You don’t mind the bloatware software? Or the artificial limitations out on your phone? At least it’s not an iPhone
Yeah the bloatware doesn’t interfere with anything I do. I use some apps like I’m trash so I use a dating app, and I use a podcast app to listen to a show and a banking app.
The bloatware is just kind of in the background and I never fully install it when I get a new phone so it just stays in limbo.
While they definitely have many products in the cheap junk category, but I think they have pretty good hardware in the mid-upper range.
Software is the real junk in Samsung products; their high-end TVs would be great if it wasn’t for the crappy software and updates.I thought Samsung phones were okay.
Sadly, if you are using Linux and want your firmware updates for your SSD through the proper native channels, Samsung was the only option last time I checked. Crucial used to have a half-assed solution that they abandoned recently.
Huh, I’ve never actually updated any firmware for SSD or any other drives. I’ve updated my BIOS, but only rarely. Are there any significant advantages for updating HDD firmware? I guess I wasn’t even really aware that was something that you could do.
I got a Kingston SSD once ( yes I should have known better) that kept freezing my laptop which needed to be restarted. I couldn’t narrow it down and put up with it for an embarrassingly long time, until while looking for unrelated stuff I found out that the firmware version was associated with freezes. And then I found out that it was basically impossible to upgrade it, even on windows. After many hours, I was almost ready to give up, until I found some random Russian video (which I don’t speak) that used some ancient version of their shity firmware updater that you could only find in sketchy forums and software sites that could actually upgrade the firmware to a non-crashy version. I think it still freezes, but it’s orders of magnitude rarer.
Long story short, Kingston, not even once.
That sounds like the good old days of computing. I followed so much sketchy advice that I barely understood when I was still learning computing and it somehow almost always worked out. There was that one time when a program started deleting my entire hard drive though, and I had to yank the plug out of the wall to stop it. The internet truly was the wild wild West for a time. Good times!
Kingston! Once king and now just shite.
What is it with all brands of everything that once a brand turns great, it gets popular, and then immediately it turns shit?
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.
They also spy on you and know what you watch, even if it’s not played from their apps and is just a raw display input. https://www.consumerreports.org/video/view/electronics/televisions-streaming-media/4151762767001/your-smart-tv-may-track-what-you-watch-and-say/
Back in my day you owned the hardware you bought and were allowed to install a custom operating system.
When I buy things like this, I try to buy hardware that supported by open source projects. Like routers that can run OpenWRT or Android phones that are supported by LineageOS.
It’s amazing that sometimes free projects that are made for people are better than commercial one.
Sometimes
Everytime I am forced to use a proprietary piece of software, my head starts spinning, knowing the suffering I’ll have to bear
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.
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.
