• Jesus
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    29 months ago

    One more thing. TVs

    You might want to consider buying a smart TV and simply not connecting it to WiFi. That’s what I did.

    If you buy a TV with CEC support, it will effectively be a dumb monitor that feels like a 1 remote smart system.

    • @[email protected]
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      39 months ago

      That’s a workaround, but IMO it has issues:

      • doesn’t signal to manufacturers that I don’t want the smart crap
      • may have ads or whatever built-in, even w/o ads
      • if anything happens to the circuit board, the TV is worthless (high repair costs); “dumb” TVs are much simpler

      What I really want is a massive monitor, but apparently I can’t have that…

      • Jesus
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        49 months ago

        The signal is arguably sales vs activations.

        And as for ads, I have a new Samsung QLED connected to CEC devices. I literally never see the TV’s UI. It feels like a computer monitor. CEC bypasses all the input selectors and UI that they would normally use to prompt stuff. It’s worth checking out. CEC is kind of rad and give the end user back a lot of control.

        Commercial displays are also another choice if you don’t want smart crap. Although, those dumb displays can actually cost more because the manufacturer isn’t able to monetize the TV with apps and ads.

      • @[email protected]
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        29 months ago

        The smart features help keep the cost down. I’m absolutely that you should never connect a smart TV to the internet. I learned that the hard way when a config change on my router slowed the UI on my Samsung TV to a crawl. Unplugging the Ethernet fixed it. Afterwards I switched to Apple TV and have been overall happy since.