[jader201]

It sounds like you still want a smart TV, just with control. Which is fine.

But for many people, we just want a monitor, maybe with speakers (I personally am fine also separating this).

I prefer separation of concerns — if I want to attach a computer to my TV, I’ll do that as a search device.

Why have a dependency on the TV hardware, when I can attach upgradable parts?

[ranguna]

> But for many people, we just want a monitor,

> you can make it a PC and then turn it off

TV manufactories can get the best of both worlds: The people that want smart TVs, get a smart TV. The people that don't want a smart TV, can disable the smart TV features. Manufactors make one model and sell to both market segments.

Why should your preferences impose on the ones that don't want what you want? I guess the preferred way would be for manufactors to have add a feature where the tv prompts you if you want to enable smart features when you boot the tv for the first time, but it's a bit difficult when manufactors get more money when they have these features enabled by default.

[jader201]

> Why should your preferences impose on the ones that don't want what you want?

The problem is that I can’t have my preference: a TV that comes without (non-essential) software installed.

This means I have no choice but to deal with required updates — or at the very least, an annoying reminder that software updates are needed — for software I never wanted in the first place.

If the software was optional — could be uninstalled, or disabled so that updates weren’t required — then I would agree with you that having all TVs be smart TVs would be fine.

But not only is it not optional, it often comes with dark patterns of imposed privacy violations and/or unwanted ads.

The OP’s solution is to “jailbreak” it with a Linux install, which the average consumer doesn’t know how to do.

Again, is fine for hackers that want to tinker with things, but the whole point of the linked article is that many people are tired of smart TVs and the annoyances that come with them.

[pessimizer]

A monitor has a processor in it that is running an OS and software. These are digital devices. The nit you're picking is silly.

If you want to buy a bare LCD panel, they're cheap. But you're going to have to add a processor to it that runs an OS (which you're free to write yourself, along with the driver) in order for it to understand any input. All that slapped together is what we call a monitor, or a television.

If you want an analog television, they'll pay you to haul it off from wherever you see it, but you're going to have to add an external computer to it in order to process the digital information that you want to display into waveforms that you can push over coaxial cables.

Not wanting a "smart tv" means people don't want a smartphone for a television, an OS that they don't have any control over. If you want to make up another definition, you're going to have to set limits to acceptable RAM, clock speed, number of processors, and I don't know why you would waste your time doing that. The number, however, will never be zero for any of these things.

[ssl-3]

It's not necessary for a display to have an operating system.

They make fixed-function chips in factories every day that do stuff like convert video signals from one format to another (including formats that LCD panels can deal with).

Like the TFP401. For illustration, here is one on a board, ready to plug into an LCD panel and use for whatever: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2218

It doesn't run an OS. It's barely even programmable, and the programmability it does have relates only to configuring pre-defined hardware functions. It doesn't have an instruction set. It can't add 1+1.

But it can bridge the gap between a consumer device that produces video and a fairly bare LCD panel. It's a very much a single-tasker.

(Do any of the current crop of consumer-oriented televisions and computer monitors use this kind of simple pathway? Most assuredly not, which is the complaint that brought us here to begin with.

But these pathways exist anyway. It's completely possible to to create an entire video display and house it in a nice-looking package, put it in a retail box, and sell it on store shelves without involving an operating system. It's not a technological limitation.)

[gosub100]

Because if you own a TV manufacturing company, you can sell more TVs if they have more features. You can get more features by including a linux SBC and integrating it. In fact, some of the paid-app makers will even _pay you_ for this "real estate". You could make a dumb-tv, but you wouldn't sell as many and you would have to charge more.

[account42]

> and you would have to charge more

Non-commodity consumer products are rarely sold at cost but rather at whatever price the market will bear.

[gosub100]

And the market will bear a lower price for a product with fewer features