Its been so long since ive had or bought a tv, what are the brands that are the least shitty now? I used to always be a samsung everything kinda guy but fuck them now. I wish they never started fucking around with software and stuck to just hardware. Their products from strictly the hardware side are still excellent. My zfold7 is amazing the older gens started rickety but each version i got (so the 3, the 5 and the 7) has been a respectible improvement but the 7 really stepped up the quality. The last samsung tv i got was like 65" curved screen amazing picture but the fucking interface was pure cancer and i will not buy another. My samsung 4k monitors, non-smart normal fridge, and my equally as dumb oven are great and dont have any stupid shit so Ill buy more dumb samsung products lol.
Technology
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
By any brand which lets you use HDMI devices without connecting to Wi-Fi. TCLs have better specs than most for the price and they have a Basic TV mode which doesn't need internet.
However, their Google TV mode is still good as it lets you disable the ads on the home screen with apps-only mode and it supports sideloading of SmartTube (an ad free YouTube app) and free movie apps.
Required to use smart features? Thank you Walmart for encouraging people not to connect their TVs to the internet!
I have an extremely expensive smart TV that probably cost around £4,000 (I didn't buy it so I don't know what the actual price tag was) and it's UI is awful because of stuff like this and it's all stupid. It has an app, it's a TV, I already have a method of controlling it why do I need an app?
As a result it's purely a media streaming platform I don't use any of its smart features. It's just hoocked up to a mini PC and it's just been a display.
Its crazy how shitty they've gotten. I got one on black Friday probably 10 years ago and it didnt have and built in apps just casting from your phone. A few years later they updated it and suddenly it had apps and demanded you agree to their TOS and all that (possibly also download their Vizio app?). I didnt keep it for long after that (mostly because it was a budget ass TV with 4K but not HDR) and replaced it with an LG C3 AMOLED from Costco, which I couldn't be happier with. In our bedroom we have a TCL and I think that's where the sweet spot is with budget TVs
I think I prefer my 14 inch CRT
I used to prefer CRTs too... And then I got an OLED. Nothing else comes close, not even the best CRTs. Especially if it's got quantum dots in combination with OLED.
Given that input lag was already solved five years ago, really the only advantage CRTs still have left is their ability to look great at non-native resolutions. But upscaling filters like HQX/xBR for retro games, and DLSS/FSR for modern titles, have all but completely eliminated that last remaining advantage. These filters are really good at upscaling lower resolution content to fit your display's pixels. Hell, DLSS is so good that it looks better than native 4K.
My "big" TV is a dumb 55" Toshiba I bought in 2012. It works just fine plugged into my computer to display VLC. I don't need anything else. I don't bother with Jellyfin anymore, because all I do is "acquire" the content, watch it immediately, and delete it. I don't keep anything apart from a few old movies, because I don't rewatch anything.
Tonight I'm watching the next episode of Survivors, a BBC series from 1975.
This is why i don't like "smart" tv.
Buy commercial displays, not TVs
Does that mean it disables all Tue smart shit about f you don't connect an account? Nice.
Yeah I've been sitting here trying to figure out the downside.
It would not surprise me if the tv it's self will not work until you run through a setup process, and during this process you are required to create an account.
Sounds like a feature