Hi there!
So I am looking to buy a new TV, but the latest smart-TVs all seem to be very bloated with ads and other ridiculous and unnecessary features. I know very little about TVs, and therefore wondering if anyone has any tips on some good TVs that include as little bloat as possible.
Thanks for any recommendations or tips!
A few years ago I got a Sceptre UTV 55" U558CV-UMC on Amazon. It was about $250 and has been pretty good! Probably out of stock now but there may be a similar one available.
My newish Sony has a basic mode where it just functions as a tv. No smart bs. Picked that at setup and never looked back.
Nice! Which model is that?
A80J. The “cheaper” oled model. Watch for sales next week during prime day.
I went on that journey a couple years ago. What I ended up buying is technically considered “digital signage” rather than a TV. Basically zero bloat. You may have to pay a little extra but I don’t recall it being that much. Pretty sure I got it here.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using an URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]
The Little Bot That Couldn’t
Based
Bad bot. That URL just has a /c/ in it. Although connect also seems to be screwing up.
Jerboa appears to be treating it as an internal link as well, rather than redirecting to the browser, which is causing it to not load.
You tried, little bot.
Yep, a commercial display is what OP is looking for. You won’t get fancy stuff like high framerates or digital audio processing, and they cost a bit more as many of them are meant to be on 24/7/365, but there are no apps installed. They’ll have network connectivity, but only so you can manage them.
Be careful when buying commercial displays for digital signage, some do not have speakers built in, though they should still have a 3.5mm and/or optical out and you can always strip the audio from an hdmi cable.
Quite right. I did get one with speakers, but they were even worse than I expected. I bought a sound bar to go with it. There are also a few quirks that remind me it’s a commercial display. Like there’s no power button on the unit. I have to use the remote. I suppose one wouldn’t want their signage turned off by randos.
They have robust command documentation as well, so controlling them over a network is pretty easy. Lots of possibilities there.
I don’t know if it’s in your budget, but my wife and I went with an ultra short throw projector and ALR screen. No smart features at all, and a better and larger picture in our living room. We’ll never go back to TVs again.
I’m inherently skeptical that any kind of projector can match a modern OLED. What are your thoughts?
Depends on the projector. Good ones can get close, but of course not exactly as good as OLED. Haven’t got much experience with UST-s; a Xiaomi one I have tested was OK, except for HDR content which had some problems. But the conventional JVC D-ILA ones are jaw-droppingly good, not too far off from OLED.
The ALR screen (which was admittedly a bit of a shock at $600 for the 134" we bought) makes a WORLD of difference, even with our cheap wall mount laser projector. Yes, OLED technically is better, but we can control lighting in our living room with blackout curtains, so we can’t really tell. When we upgraded to the UST4K, we both said never again to TV’s. Other bonus was if we need to move them around, much less risk of accidental damage as compared to a heavy TV panel.
Have you been to a movie theater lately?
Hard to use that as your standard, as those cost more than 5k.
Pretty hard to come by, imo just disconnect the TV from internet entirely and don’t use its garbage smart TV functions.
I think lg was quite good. It’s full of ads but if you don’t sign in you don’t get them. Lose some functionality but it’s not terrible. Not sure about anything else
I’ve had a TCL Roku tv for a while and I love it. There’s really only one ad and it’s off to the side of the list of apps, so really non-intrusive.
You can actually block adds on roku through a secret menu in the settings
Can you elaborate on this secret method?
The Roku secret menu can be found on Roku devices only, and you can adjust what ads you see through it by clicking the home button 5 times, pressing up,right,down,left, and toggling different advertisement settings once the menu opens.Jun 22, 2023
Cool, gonna try this later!
Same, but I have that one ad blocked with PiHole so it just an empty rectangular box.
The only thing I don’t like is the crappy remote and the fact that “they” switch my theme.
Yes just a NonSmart TV they are usually cheap or very expensive or old
I couldn’t avoid a smart TV without overpaying or compromising on features. I bought an LG but I blocked it from communicating over the WAN when it was clear there was no way to disable occasional ‘notifications’ advertising features or content I had no interest in.
Now I just turn it on/off with wake on LAN and get all my content through external hardware hooked up to an AVR.
Plug a computer into it. There are little machines that you can hide behind the TV, if that’s what you want. Not only will you not get ads, but you also won’t get ads with stuff like YouTube if you use an ad blocker.
Sony Bravia running Android TV (Google TV, whatever they’re calling it these days). I refuse to buy any other kind of TV based on how clean, ad free, and easy to use I’ve found my Bravia to be. They have a variety of LED options and sizes
Are they still trash in terms of performance (I know that all smart tvs have weak hardware but my experience with Sony was even worse than average)?
Maybe you can consider using a computer monitor as a tv if you can find one large enough.
There is a “apps mode” on Google Chromecast with Google tv - that takes out all the recommendations and stuff and just shows you the apps, fwiw.
It still shows adverts on the homepage though.
Not if you install a custom launcher.
I’ve heard Sceptre TVs are non-Smart TVs.
Holy crap this changed my life thank you!
Recently LinusTechTips posted a video vouching for Roku TVs. It seems they have a really snappy UI with no ads.
Roku does have ads but they are pretty minimal and not invasive. I’ve had roku since almost the start and have had a roku tv for several years and love it
Roku TV owner here: Yes, mostly.
The main screen does show one “banner ad” (which you can briefly see in the LTT video), usually for some show that is streaming on some platform.
But that’s the only one, and I appreciate that it’s microphone is built into the remote and only activated when pressing a button on said remote.
Otherwise it stays out of your way, and the app selection is quite good, if you need them - otherwise just a really solid, budget friendly TV.
My 5 year old Roku which I used to block it from internet a access as it is so chatting talking to Roku all the time, even when itin use suddenly would not work at all unless I gave it access to the internet. So be wary of Roku tvs if you plan to not let them use the internet. In fact is is the second most block domain on my network.
If I could figure out how to post an image I could show the almost 11k requests it blocked over the last 7 days. And I don’t use any of its smart features as I have an Apple TV connected to it that I use.
I got an LG TV but it will never be connected to the internet. I use an Apple TV for content because Apple is the most privacy focused platform available for this, and even then, I still use NextDNS to disable any possible tracking/telemetry that has.
Yeah I could not live without NextDNS!
Best $20/year I spend, hands down.
Did it work right out if the box or did you have to connect to update it first? I haven’t bought a tv for some years but I just use a laptop connected to my tv to stream anything, so all the smart features are pretty useless to me. I was wondering if it was possible to keep it a “dumb” tv by simply never connecting it to the internet or updating it.
I did update it just to get any bug fixes, but then disconnected it from wifi and blocked the network from allowing it back on as a precaution.
Ahh ok. So after disconnecting you don’t get any ads or suggestions or anything right? Just functions as a dumb tv?
Correct
Awesome, good to know, thanks!
