[TACD]

This is exactly what we did. Our ‘television’ was never hooked up to actually receive broadcast signal, we’ve always just used it as a big screen for the media/gaming PC set up in the lounge, and at some point I realised if I’m going to spend my evenings staring at Good Screen I might as well upgrade from this 40” 1080p TV with a dead pixel row.

So I looked around and eventually bought a Philips 559M1 55” monitor instead. The price difference compared to an actual TV is a little tough to swallow (~£1,200 vs £?00), but the size, the resolution, and the overall picture / sound quality upgrade is very nice. The HDR leaves a lot to be desired but that’s probably inevitable when getting an LCD panel instead of OLED (which was not considered because of the likelihood of burn-in).

Worth it? Eh… maybe. When compared against the available market for “TV-sized monitor” or upgrading from 1080p, absolutely. But if you’re coming over from an equivalent-sized OLED TV, you’ll be paying a hefty amount for a visual downgrade, just to escape the ‘smart’ features.

[Brian_K_White]

Monitors are now starting to go smart. Not just the Apple one.

And you no longer always have the option to prevent a net connection unless you live in a faraday cage.

The only way they won't all be smart eventually is if there is a market for dumb monitors that outweighs what the manufacturers make from putting remote agents into them.

I doubt that will happen. The people that even know or care at all are few, and even fewer of those vocal.

[chrisjc]

> Monitors are now starting to go smart.

This an understatement!

I recently watched a review for one of Samsung's new monitors and it turns out you don't even need to connect it to any source.

I don't just mean media sources like Netflix, Amazon, TV, etc... You can literally connect to MS Office and perform trivial desktop activities on it once you connect a mouse and keyboard.

All of this at a pretty compelling price even if you take all of this bloat out of the equation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pVapqSSccc

> The only way they won't all be smart eventually is if there is a market for dumb monitors that outweighs what the manufacturers make from putting remote agents into them.

And really, if one of the manufactures is doing this, they all have to... There will be no way to compete with those that are able to lower the cost of their product by subsidizing it through these agents. The average consumer isn't savvy enough to understand this difference and chose the "better" product.

[JohnFen]

Maybe it will be necessary to do what has to be done with newer cars: physically disable the radio transceiver.

[blable2]

Uh oh... this comment brings it to the front of my mind and seems correct.

[kjs3]

We should start a bidding pool for which monitor manufacturer starts stuffing ads onto the screen first.

[MandieD]

This will make you feel better about that 1200 GBP: we're still rocking the 55" 1080p Sony Bravia we bought in 2010 for 2000 EUR.

I am also delighted to hear that a 55" 4K monitor can be had for well under 2000 EUR, and will gladly do that when the Bravia finally bites the dust, because that's the only way we are taking that thing off the wall over the piano!

[everyone]

Afaik the difference between whats called a "monitor" and whats called a "TV" nowadays is that..

TV's show a compressed or upscaled image. TV's have much higher latency.

And thats why something called a monitor is so much more expensive for the same size display.

[oynqr]

Having a TV work well as a monitor is usually just a few settings away. It was this way ten years ago.

[gruez]

>TV's show a compressed or upscaled image

TVs can show a "compressed or upscaled image", but that doesn't mean it can't show uncompressed full resolution images (ie. HDMI input). In that regard they aren't that different from monitors.

>TV's have much higher latency.

>And thats why something called a monitor is so much more expensive for the same size display.

This is more due to their firmware containing image processing logic (to improve image quality), than TVs being intrinsically lower quality than computer monitors.

[baq]

Most TVs nowadays have a 'Game' input setting which disables most latency-impacting post-processing. Always check before buying, though.