My apartment's current A/V setup is an old third-hand projector I picked up for free pointed at a blank wall of our living room. The only thing I paid for was the serial cable so I could configure the correct input port, but even if I'd purchased the projector new it would run me about $150. In comparison, one of the article's top recommended dumb TVs is $450, while the other is "no longer available". Plus we can use a real computer with a keyboard sitting on our coffee table to control it instead of using the TV remote to painstakingly enter every character. Sure, we could have a less janky setup in many ways -- one day I aspire to build an actual wall shelf for the projector -- but the experience is miles better than any TV, smart or otherwise.
dsclough|5 years ago