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All I want is a dumb devices brand.
So sick of smart devices that don't need to be smart. The more unnecessary things something can do, the more it can break.
I wonder if we'll ever get reliable, long lived products ever again or if planned obsolescence has won forever.
I gave up for a dumb TV, I just don't hook mine up to the Internet.
Gotta hope that stays viable. But as we saw with Windows 11, if there's a financial incentive to push you online to harvest information and force-update trash onto your screen, they will eventually find a way to strong arm you into doing that.
I'm doing the same right now, but the next TV I buy will be a commercial-grade Large Format Display
Short of undoing decades of neoliberal globalism and free trade agreements that destroyed a litany of domestic industries by sending them offshore, and as a result, collapsing an economy of 'repair, don't replace', we'll never ever see the days of buying anything for life again.
Welcome to the future. It sucks.
Yeah, this disposable economy is in large part thanks to the destruction of the middle class. If the bottom 80-90% got their "fair share" of the economic pie again, people could actually afford quality (and save money in the long term).
I'm not as doomerish about the future. If people can be educated on what the real problems are, it can be fixed. As long as social media stays relatively free and unmanipulated, it is inevitable. What I'm seeing currently is an educational revolution, even if everyone likes to rip on social media.
AI is a wildcard however, not sure how it will change things, could go either way. Since open source models are just a few months behind at worst, things could go better than expected.
Another factor is that once technological development starts to slow down, companies have to compete on quality. The gap between cheap smartphones and flagships used to be huge, but since smartphones mostly don't change anymore the gap has become really small.
Basically as technologies mature, the only unique selling point that is left is quality and reliability. Once we run into the physical limits of computation by the end of the century (unless efficiency growth slows down), devices will stop being so disposable. Then a device you buy 30 years later won't be significantly better than the 30 year old one. In the past a 30 year difference roughly translates to a 30k times difference in performance. That's why electronics are so disposable.
I think smart devices will eventually either mature to reliablity and minimum necessary features or we'll return to dumb devices again.
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Buy whatever TV and don't plug it to the internet?
how can anyone so completely miss the point?
It won't break out of the blue, don't use the features and if it works out of the box it will continue working without updates and worst case if something is problematic you plug it, update and unplug it.
TVs aren't mechanical devices like a washer where they switched metal parts to plastic to save a couple of dollars here and there.
Heck, you can even just buy a PC monitor or a projector if you're just against smart stuff!
First of all, you're still paying for all those features you don't need, that's bad.
Second, these "smart" features almost always slow down the devices, so even simple tasks get sluggish.
Finally, electronics absolutely do break, and the more of it you're having, the likelier it is for something to break. Memory and CPUs can overheat, capacitor can (and do) leak, especially in very thin TVs that's a common problem, and solder joints can break.
You don't pay for those features, you pay less than the device would sell for without them because it's a trade-off, sell for less but profit off features, that's why the cheaper models have more bloat.
If these features wouldn't be implemented in the first place, they would be even cheaper.
In the last about 5 years there was no innovation whatsoever in the TV market. Yet, there's more and more bloat, more "smart" shit nobody needs and higher prices.
If these features wouldn’t be implemented in the first place, they would be even cheaper.
No. They would not. The bloat that comes with any new tech device is there specifically because it gives the company selling it more money. Windows is really easy to install with no bloat, but practically every laptop manufacturer installs a bunch of junk like mcaffee on it. They sure as hell don't do that because they tibk it'll actually help the laptop work better.
No innovation? TVs have better picture quality every year and you pretend nothing's changed in the last 5 years? 🤔
i mean, i get his point. but most of these smart devices need an internet connection for any of their smart stuff to work. so long as you don't give it your wifi pass, or wire it in, it's just going to be a dumb device.
i have a newer LG TV i use with my PC. it's just wired to my PC. at some point i connected it to internet to see how the IP Channel stuff worked on it. it would let me watch stuff for about 10 minutes before it prompted to download an app. that shit got disconnected quick. never again.
all this 'smart' stuff needs to be granted access to your network to serve ads and recommend apps. don't connect it.
I had a Sony TV that was an early 4K device. It got an update that allowed it to be 4K/60FPS compatible. So updating them isn’t all bad.
My LG OLED got an update for Dolby Vision I believe.
some 'smart' ones need the internet just to do a 'setup' when its first turned on.
Take it back for a refund and send a complaint to vendor.
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Thanks, that's great and useful advice.
It would be cool if all TVs were just dumb displays + a standardized dedicated spot for a module for whatever internals you want to put in it.
Maybe I should petition the EU for this lol. cuts down on e-waste.
Large Format Displays like those made by NEC are my secret tip, they usually don't have any "smart" garbage, they're great for wall-mounting and you can even get them with an anti-reflective coating
Sceptre still makes dumb TVs.