I hate Smart TV's and prefer the AppleTV!!!

[kiranmk2]

Must be bottom-end, Panasonic is the best for OLED TV. Although the quality is decreasing that’s true. For instance I used to have a nice fancy remote on my old TV, on my new one from 2022, it’s plastic.

About 4-5 years ago, LG was the go to for a great all-round OLED with the best connectivity and gaming features. Panasonic provided the best colour accuracy out of the box and the highest peak brightness (in their flagship model) and Sony gave the best motion handling. For the current models on the market I think things may have changed. LG have boosted their brightness and the C4/G4 are supposed to have much better motion handling), Sony have moved to QD-OLED so have better colour volume and Samsung have joined the OLED party (with QD-OLED) but seem to set their TVs to be brighter than the standard curve and still don't support Dolby Vision.

 

[HDFan]

Samsung have joined the OLED party (with QD-OLED) but seem to set their TVs to be brighter than the standard curve and still support Dolby Vision.

Still support or still don't support?

 

[kiranmk2]

Still support or still don't support?

DON'T support - thanks for the notification of a typo

 

[shakopeemn]

Samsung have joined the OLED party (with QD-OLED) but seem to set their TVs to be brighter than the standard curve and still don't support Dolby Vision.

It's amazing how Samsung continues to this day, not to pay any Dolby Vision licensing. I get it, Samsung not wanting to be nickeled and dimed, but REALLY "premium TVs" that don't support HDR to Dolby Vision?

Thank goodness Apple makes Dolby Vision (and HDR+ for Samsung) available.

 

[kiranmk2]

Yeah it's strange. When HDR10+ was set up, the dynamic HDR marketplace was still in flux (like the early days of HD-DVD vs BluRay). Samsung has it's consortium of Panasonic, Fox and Amazon with Philips/TP-Vision and a few other minor players supporting HDR10+ & DV. However, content is king and I recall that the HDR10+ content reviews we'ren't great in the early days (I recall it seemed to be an ML algorithm creating the scene-by-scene levels rather than a human grading each scene).

Since then Panasonic now offers DV, Fox was bought out by Disney and now does DV and It's not clear to me how much HDR10+ content is out there, so it's surprising that Samsung is still holding out. I wonder how many sales they've lost due to this.

 

[mallbritton]

https://thestreamable.com/news/roku...n-patent-to-insert-ads-in-third-party-platfor

This is why I do not want a "smart" TV connected to the internet.

 

[richard13]

https://thestreamable.com/news/roku...n-patent-to-insert-ads-in-third-party-platfor

This is why I do not want a "smart" TV connected to the internet.

Wow... I didn't realize Roku was so off-putting. After reading this, I'll avoid their devices. The only saving grace is that they are looking into targeted ads. I don't want to see ads at all but if they were at least relevant to me I would mind less.

 

[shakopeemn]

Wow... I didn't realize Roku was so off-putting. After reading this, I'll avoid their devices. The only saving grace is that they are looking into targeted ads. I don't want to see ads at all but if they were at least relevant to me I would mind less.

Well, with Roku selling devices at $30 a pop...... they have to have an income stream from somewhere.

 

[jimmirehman]

Why would they though?

Understand the history of this. Even a "dumb" TVs these days needs a healthy about of processing power. Decoding a 4k input video signal, decoding and applying the HDR maps, and decoding and processing all the various audio signals takes a lot of processing power. You simply cannot build a 4K TV without it also having a fairly high-end SoC - heck even a basic 4k computer monitor these days likely has a more powerful processing chip than desktop computers from 25 years ago. And if you're sticking a high-end SoC in there anyway, might as well put that SoC to further use. Making a TV smart doesn't actually increase the cost that much - a little bit more storage space, a NIC, and an OS (some of which are free!).

So comparing costs, a non-smart TV might be ~$15 cheaper than a smart TV. That's what, 3% or less of the cost of an average new TV. Totally deminimus.

I agree with you 100%, so let me rephrase, I wish TV manufacturers would implement a “Dumb mode” option that bypasses all smart features and just has settings menu/ input select/ volume control.

 

[oneMadRssn]

I agree with you 100%, so let me rephrase, I wish TV manufacturers would implement a “Dumb mode” option that bypasses all smart features and just has settings menu/ input select/ volume control.

Yes, agreed. A "dumb mode" would be awesome.

 

[phrehdd]

I am lucky I am still using Panasonic Plasmas connected to AppleTVs. I bought one of them so long ago, I bought it at Sears.

I have a VT50 65" sitting in storage ... a great match to ATV or other streamers for 1080p goodness. Glad to see another fan out there.

 

[philstubbington]

They don't seem to sell TV's these days that are not smart. My previous TV was a Roku but I never used the Roku just the apple TV and blueray player. My new TV is Samsung but the darn TV kept on hassling me to connect to WIFi so I finally had to in haste. I don't have cable but only antenna so flipping channels is sluggish compared to cable. The smart TV has a mind of its own and defaulted me for day or two to the medium channel and I could not turn off the demons as fast as I wanted. It finally started to behave and I wish I know how to delete that channel so I never see it again.

But anyway the point. Why would anyone use the smart TV features which are sluggish and poorly organized compared to a polished AppleTV I have to wonder? ATV is fast, has lots of apps, and is far easier to use.

Our smart TV (LG) supports UHD which the Apple TV doesn't (or at least not for the BBC iPlayer app). Other than that we use the Apple TV. Annoyingly (probably down to how I cabled things up) the LG home page comes up when I go to the Apple TV and I have to dismiss it to get back to the Apple TV home page.

 

[SactoGuy18]

They don't seem to sell TV's these days that are not smart. My previous TV was a Roku but I never used the Roku just the apple TV and blueray player. My new TV is Samsung but the darn TV kept on hassling me to connect to WIFi so I finally had to in haste. I don't have cable but only antenna so flipping channels is sluggish compared to cable. The smart TV has a mind of its own and defaulted me for day or two to the medium channel and I could not turn off the demons as fast as I wanted. It finally started to behave and I wish I know how to delete that channel so I never see it again.

But anyway the point. Why would anyone use the smart TV features which are sluggish and poorly organized compared to a polished AppleTV I have to wonder? ATV is fast, has lots of apps, and is far easier to use.

I still wonder why the TV manufacturers don't offer a 40" or bigger TV with NO apps but up to six HDMI 2.1 ports with eARC? They could save quite a bit of money at the retail level.

By the way, I am going to get an Apple TV 128 GB this weekend. At least with the current A15 SoC and TvOS 17.4, the streaming device will be reasonably stable and be way more flexible than the Amazon Fire TV stick I'm now using.

 

[HDFan]

I still wonder why the TV manufacturers don't offer a 40" or bigger TV with NO apps

Simple answer: $

I assume they get revenue of some sort from the apps they supply in addition to ad revenues. Profit margins are so low they have to get income anyway they can.

 

[SactoGuy18]

Simple answer: $

I assume they get revenue of some sort from the apps they supply in addition to ad revenues. Profit margins are so low they have to get income anyway they can.

I agree with your sentiment--unfortunately. I still wished that my suggestion configuration for the TV is still around for those who want to use their own streaming device.

 

[oneMadRssn]

I still wonder why the TV manufacturers don't offer a 40" or bigger TV with NO apps but up to six HDMI 2.1 ports with eARC? They could save quite a bit of money at the retail level.

They'd save $15 tops. In the face of a ~$650 TV, which is often on sale for $150 off, $15 is deminimus.

I explained this above. A modern TV needs a pretty powerful SoC just do the basics: decode and process a 4k signal from an HDMI input, decode and apply HDR tone-mapping, decode and process all the various audio codecs. So the TV companies are already spending the money on relatively powerful SoC anyway. Making a TV "smart" requires nothing more than adding some storage, a network interface, and an OS (many of which are free). So it costs them very very little to do so while at the same time adding a ton of marketable features.

Someone else above suggested that TV manufacturers should instead put in a "dumb mode" in the settings. This mode would turn off the smart TV OS and apps and disable all the smart features, leaving you with just a dumb TV and switchable inputs.