[madeofpalk]

meh, i think your response is more 'typical HN'. Nether are more correct than the other, but if you're annoyed or distrustful of all the internet connected factors of a TV, just don't connect it to the internet. I think that's a fine non-perfect, pragmatic solution.

[autoexec]

"Don't connect it to the internet" might work, assuming it doesn't aggressively scan for open connections every chance it gets, but if this becomes common it'll only be a matter of time until you're forced to sign up for an account at initial setup, and the TV starts refusing to function at all without an internet connection (or it's been more than x days without one), and searches for nearby bluetooth devices of the same brand which are connected to send your data through that internet connected device instead.

The only way to solve this problem for good is to regulate the industry, but failing that, the least we should do is make it clear we're not interesting in buying their shitty spying products by refusing to hand over our money in the first place.

Buying the TVs, connected or not, signals that you support them and what they are doing, and more importantly it makes doing the things they are doing profitable for them. It reinforces the behavior you're trying to stop. That's not just "imperfect" it's counter-productive.

[anonymouskimmer]

> The only way to solve this problem for good is to regulate the industry

At a place like Hacker News I expect there will be people who have the technical know-how to make a non-smart TV, or even a modular, pick-and-choose, TV, and crowdfund it. At the very least.

Lots of industries that aren't tech-adjacent, or are very expensive, need regulation in order to stop particular practices from becoming universal trends, but TVs shouldn't be one of them.

[autoexec]

there's one person in the comments here already who is trying to build dumb TVs, and if they do it, that'll be where I'm buying my next TV, but I fear that even if they are successful eventually they too will turn to spying and ad pushing, because companies will always make more money by doing so and if their own greed doesn't push them to do it, their shareholders will.

Sometimes, it will always be more profitable for a company to refuse to provide what consumers want. There is no price they can charge us that will ever beat charging that same price and also selling every scrap of our data they can on top of it.

If the skills and materials to construct a quality TV were common or easily obtainable, I'd agree that the smart TV problem would be something we could solve ourselves in our own garages, but I'm not convinced that's the case which means nearly every one of us will be dependent on someone else to build and sell us displays, and as long as that's true we'll be at the mercy of their benevolence and their continuing willingness to reject huge piles of easy money.

[antegamisou]

But your response confirmed the parent's part about missing the point which is that Smart TVs' OS is an absolute bloatware dumpster fire.

This isn't some silly /r/privacy - tier paranoia about not wanting being tracked by your home devices, though it's a reasonable concern to an extent.

It's just about the people who don't care about those shitty overpriced streaming services and just want to watch the news without having to wait 15 damn seconds for the thing to turn on or worse, having to be more than patient to switch channels after turning it on because God knows what is running on the background and the channel hasn't changed in over two minutes in spite of having spammed the remote already.

[tsujamin]

What it doesn’t solve is the friction and bloatware of the tvos. My Sony tv’s Android interface has unbearable input lag using its menus, so I inevitably leave it set to my appletv hdmi input.

Could the TV do everything the appletv could? Yep just worse and I can’t get rid of it

[warning26]

That applies regardless of whether or not the tv is “smart” - my current “smart” Roku TV runs great, and I had an old “dumb” Samsung that took forever to do anything.

Well-written software is what helps here, not smartness or lack thereof.

[hot_gril]

No, dumbness helps. You want to solve the input delay, you can use an external HDMI switch or get a dumb TV.

[kelnos]

Personally I'm more concerned about power consumption. My current TV, when it is off, it is off. It sips a tiny amount of power so it can listen for IR signals from the remote, but that's it.

Smart TVs never really turn off. If they did, they would take too long to "boot up" and consumers would be frustrated and angry. They're more like a laptop in a not-too-deep sleep state when they're turned off. Another commenter mentioned their smart TV consumes 10-20W when turned "off". That's just gross. It should consume milliwatts, at most.

And yes, I know that there are things in my house that consume far more power. But I actually get something for that power. A smart TV that I will of course never connect to the internet gives me nothing for that waste while in standby mode.

[throwaway2190]

It's hard to understand because a smartphone can wake instantly with a fraction of the idle power draw. Smart TV = dumb TV + smartphone chipset in many cases so, where is it all going?

Here's a link to a previous discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32888844

[rolenthedeep]

Did you read the comment you replied to? Because it was a direct response to comments exactly like this one.

[hot_gril]

The comment isn't about trust, it's just that the smart TVs are slower even when non-networked.