FWIW, it is still possible to get TVs without this stuff, albeit at a premium. TVs are still made for business usage in areas like conference rooms, wall displays etc. They're often found under labeling like "commercial digital signage" or "business display" or the like, they seem to often try to avoid using "TV" (if being cynical maybe to make them harder for normal people to discover and confuse them if they do). But they're often nice panels aimed at serious running hours, without this sort of junk (which would give enterprise IT conniptions) and can have very useful feature support like 802.1x authentication which so many devices still lack. Players like NEC will even advertise their use of an RPi compute and wink at lack of spyware [0] for some of their products, but lots of major "smart TV" providers also have a commercial lineup.
I think they're well worth considering, particularly for the HN crowd, granted I suppose for people who truly want built-in netflix or the like without connecting something like a Roku or Apple TV maybe it's less optimal. But even they might change their tunes back to the concept of separate boxes and normal panels if they dislike all the ads and data tracking.
You can still get cheap ones. And by cheap I mean TLC/Hisense level quality displays. Walmart sells Sceptre's for low prices and have no smart features, best purchase I've made in years.
We use a lot of Rokus here and my issue isn't the ads, its that every Roku built-in TV gets REALLY slow after a few updates, so now it's just easier to chuck a $20-30 device instead of having to buy an entire $300+TV.
Sure I don't get 120Hz fancyness but at least it's 4k and the picture is good enough for my consoles.
I ended up buying a Philips 55" gaming monitor instead of a TV. Seems to be the only way to get a high quality panel and proper HDR without spyware, most of the commercial displays I looked at didn't support HDR properly or had terrible panels.
Yeah, but I don't want a dumb TV. Or the side-effort of some moribund commercial line that will also cost a ton more.
You know what else kind of had this problem? Well, not the spyware as much, but just the crap software embedded: routers. OpenWRT appeared.
It appears most smart tvs are already running linux, but probably in the way that android phones are already running linux.
With android and smart tvs, the corps got a major foothold into managed computing platforms that they can control to do whatever spying was necessary. Firefox on the phone, ubuntu phone, etc, they couldn't break into Android, and nothing has broken into smart tvs.
But man if there was an OpenWRT I could replace my roku TVs with, I'd probably do it in a heartbeat.
It's not just that, my relatives have an old LG smart TV that long ago stopped adding apps. If there was an open linux alternative, it probably would be getting updates and AppleTV and Disney Plus would be options on it.
Cursory searches have basically returned "man it would be hard, you'd need to know the board pretty well", yet ... aren't there armies of linux hackers that love hacking stuff like this? Seems like Smart TVs are a big, ubiquitous consumer item with privacy concerns that the linux hardware hacking community has treated with apathy. Which seems strange.
Maybe all the hackers think "eh, plug a raspberry pi into a free HDMI port" or "eh, build a media pc".
This is corporate big brother in your grandma's living room spying. This is freedom on the line, it's strange that the linux-as-hacking-freedom and the linux anticorporate crowd haven't jumped on this.
I worked at a place where they conference room TV's were showing ads for games, netflix. Everybody else looked at it as normal but my TV at home doesn't show ads, so it seemed ridiculously unprofessional to me. Just like when Windows shows ads in the start menu, etc. I don't see how people get used to it.
If you want a TV-priced display for use as a dumb monitor, just buy a TV and don't give it a wifi password. My main desktop monitor is a 43" Roku/TCL thing that is still running the factory firmware. Works great.
However those TVs are not easy to get and, like you said, they come with an increased price.
I couldn't recommend enough to buy an Apple TV (or equivalent) and block all Internet access to your "smart" TV. I did this and everything was instantly better.
I'm considering getting a 70" version whenever I get a house. While I've been renting I always just get the biggest and cheapest TV from the local electronics store.
Besides not having the usual crap, I would imagine these use higher quality component since the TV's might be on 24/7. Even that 50" at just over 1k doesn't seem that bad, that's usually what you would pay for a high end 50" anyways.
Which brands of smart TV show ads? I live in the UK and I've had three different brands of smart TV (Philips, Samsung and Toshiba) and my experience with all of them has been pretty good. Netflix, YouTube, etc. have worked pretty well and I haven't seen any ads that weren't linked to the apps themselves. Perhaps they're tracking me in ways I don't know about, though?
FWIW we just upgraded to a 98" NEC "commercial display" C981Q and couldn't be happier with it. I looked into the Raspi compute module but we just have a PC and some Crestron gear running it all, Shure ceiling tile mic and a vladdio cam.
I looked at an LG one, 65EP5G. It's around 10x the cost of other 65" LG OLED displays. I get that it might be higher quality, but not 10x higher, and I know there's some revenue from ads, but not $10k.
> Some may argue that there's no need to be dramatic and that there's nothing wrong in seeing an occasional ad every now and then.
Oh, no, I am very dramatic about this. I will go to any lengths not to see advertising. I will entirely forgo any platform that shows me even one ad, especially when I pay them. Amazon Prime video is already pushing it with their preroll previews. The second it's something else I'm canceling and going back to P2P. Fuck 'em.
This probably sounds over the top, but at some point it feels like they're saying they own you. You're paying them for one service, and they'll unilaterally decide it's not enough and they are going to make more money on you. But they don't do it via a price increase that gives you a fair opportunity to decide on the value exchange. They just start shoving this stuff on you.
And worst of all, it's your time they're taking to do it. The one thing there's never enough of, and that you'll never get back.
Desire is the cause of suffering. Advertising, in its way, generates desire where there was once none and therefore causes suffering. And, it does so on industrial mass-scale!
Worst of all, there is no mechanism, at all, to restore the bliss advertising has destroyed. Because, money cannot buy confidence, friendship, fulfillment, or (most famously) happiness. So, once exposed, you have no way to regain what has been obliterated from your soul.
Advertising is not harmless, adblocking is not immoral, and your well-being is more important than anyone’s profits.
Yup. It's kind of incredible how these platforms are fucking up their services. Like, all they had to do was to provide the content in a way more convenient than pirating, but they've managed to go down a path where the experience get more and more user hostile by the day.
Ditto. I got rid of windows shortly after they introduced ads in the OS. It really doesn't matter to me that there are technical ways of blocking them, I don't want to have to think about it or play cat and mouse with them.
When it comes to websites I really wouldn't care if they blocked my access because I use an ad blocker. I don't feel any entitlement to their content and they have no entitlement to what displays on my machine.
It should be mentioned that "advertising" is not "showing an ad". it is collecting and selling detailed information about people's activities and behaviors.
Amazon Prime Video showing preroll ads is massively dumb on their part. I'm already paying you and already actively using your service. I specifically have a Prime subscription because it gives me access to a huge catalog of obscure sci-fi & horror films. Really awful stuff. I'm not interested in the latest content you paid some outrageous amount to acquire the licensing rights to.
I dumped Prime a couple months ago. So far the only consequence has been having to use an alternate platform to watch a specific movie and I have much less random "stuff" arriving in my mailbox/front porch now that I have to give some thought about shipping costs for cheap items.
At home, I've never connected my TV to my network. The few firmware updates I've needed to do were applied using a thumb drive, and I use an AppleTV as my interface.
When I travel, I bring along an AppleTV and plug the HDMI port into their set. This lets me keep the services I subscribe-to and use them with their display. This has worked great until my most-recent rental, which had a RokuTV -- presumably setup on Wifi.
When content was streaming from my AppleTV, Roku would overlay a panel along the bottom-part of the screen proposing that I can watch what I'm currently watching from a variety of other providers. This must mean that the TV set is analyzing the video or audio signal to fingerprint what the content contained, then matching it against a library of content to feed into its profile of my use.
This is the first time I've seen something like this. I'd always assumed that if you used the TV's UI and if it was connected to the internet, then you'd probably be subject to their ads and data analysis, but it never crossed my mind that they'd perform the same data-analysis over any signal passing through its silicon.
Is this commonplace or is Roku the first of what's likely to be many doing the same?
The new Google TV launcher complete with ads on an expensive TV or a Shield is getting a hammering in the ratings, shows how little they care about customer feedback.
Bonus points for making the preview images in the store not show the ads you'll see. If any other app tried to mislead users like that they'd be banned from the store.
Although it's not like we have a choice, they've also disabled the option to change the launcher on the newest Android TV version as well to coincide with adding the ads on the home screen.
I get we need to have ads to pay for services but come on, the TVs they're doing this to are not your cheap Aldi ones, they're high end Sony Bravias. Most of the ads are even for other paid services like Disney+ and Netflix.
Downfall implies a failure or ending, it seems like they're still selling like hotcakes. This is why we need regulation to save us from surveillance, most consumers want cheap and don't understand/care that they're selling their privacy instead.
Sometimes I have this interesting thought, that someday, when even the oldest people alive will not know or will not remebered how things worked back then. Then someone, or a group of people, will suddenly rediscover, or reinvent (as we always do throughout history) things that today still exist. Maybe someone will come up with "shops where you are served by real people", or paying for content you watch. Or a "shopping mall, but without cameras" ("but who will be watching me?"). Or a vehicle you can drive yourself.
I know it's a silly philosophical thought. But what it points to, for me, is that data harvesting works because it trades privacy for convenience, and even if it's too little, there are ways to opt-out (the trivial case being opting out of convenience). But it's a much too thin line to thread.
People are aware of the massive commercial surveillance. They just don't care. Human society is built upon trust or its lack thereof. When trust can't be established, surveillance arises. It only becomes a moral problem when it is done asymmetrically, and in an unprecedented scale.
When is too much too much? When your TV starts showing ads, even when unplugged from electricity? When you have to watch an ad to start your EV car (unless you purchase the Quick Start+ package for 9.99/mo)? You can take a break from ads today. That, in a way, ensures that you can consume ads for longer. But industry seems to be moving in the direction of eventually leaving you with no way to opt out. Then, the convenience might not be worth it anymore. That means either a market demand for ad-free products, and a subsequent return to pay-for-content business model, or some sort of social turmoil.
Or maybe that's their plan to get us to consume less: just stick everything with insane amounts of obnoxious ads, so we won't buy anything anyway.
One thing I fundamentally don't get: all this endless shoehorning of ads into everything is dependent on there being a seemingly unlimited amount of ad revenue on the table.
Why? Do ads actually work this well if everyone hates them? What about ads shoehorned into marginal spaces and presented in ways that are barely relevant to the material?
The only ads I EVER click on are relevant ads that come up from a search in which I am looking for something potentially to buy. In media and platforms (software, OSes) I usually associate the presence of ads with low-end crap.
Am I weird? Are there tons of mindless ad clickers out there who actually buy based on irrelevant ad spam?
Why are companies so stingy with wages and willing to outsource their core competencies in exchange for small gains but at the same time are willing to piss endless amounts of money away on ads?
I run an hdmi cable from my laptop and have a bluetooth keyboard with a scroll pad on it. My wife doesnt like it. But its so much faster than a "smart tv". My issue isnt even the ads. Its that half of these tvs feel like they are running on low memory because of how slow they are. Add in the streaming apps that crash just often enough to be really annoying...
The latest Sony TV's that offer Google TV can leverage "Basic Mode" which disables the 'smart' functionality leaving you with a dumb TV with best-in-class picture quality.
It's perfect to pair to the device of your choice (Roku, Apple TV, Media Server, Xbox, etc).
I have a Samsung smart TV but have never agreed to the EULA or connected it to the internet. Not sure if this is good enough but I never see ads or really anything unexpected, just good old fashioned TV. I do worry though that some other EULA I’ve agreed to might give them the ability to connect the TV through SmartThings or something similar without my permission. Doesn’t this seem crazy to even have to consider?
I bought a smart LG TV about a month ago. This is my first smart TV, and I was very cautious about it because of "too smart TV" stories. It is OLED and the picture worth every euro I paid for it (and it was quite a few euro, to be honest). I am downloading HDR 4k movies and playing them from USB stick. I also watching YouTube occasionally, casting it from the phone (TV plays it by itself, not receiving a stream from phone, which is great for quality).
I didn't see any ads yet (including YouTube, because of Premium). What am I doing wrong?
YouTube's advertising strategy is pushing me to get rid of my SmartTV, or at least find a 3rd Party solution to completely block the ads. I was completely fine with one or two 6 second ads randomly playing before a video, or during a lengthy video. Then they added 14 second ads, which was very annoying, but bearable since it's about the same length as the two short ads.
But now they're advertising even if I simply open the app. Furthermore, they're "hiding" 14 second ads behind the shorter 6 seconds. I've even seen 41 minute advertising content. I'm guess they're banking on users leaving the app on "autoplay" to dupe advertisers into thinking that people actually consume this trash.
These days I just cancel every ad out of principle until the video plays. This takes on average 6-7 attempts. But now more often than not I just quit the app completely. So they are depriving their own content creators of views. And then they have the gall to present surveys asking what my advertising experience has been like...
Last year I gave our smart TV to a friend as a gift and bought a “dumb” TV for $190 from Walmart. It has two inputs: one for an old fashioned antenna lead, and the other is HDMI.
I plugged an Apple iTV black box into it, and except for a slightly funky remote, it is a fantastic viewing, navigating, and discovery experience. I did give up image quality but I am much happier.
Signage displays are the solution, that is, those big screens used in malls, airports, stations etc. they're sturdy built and guaranteed to work 18/7 or 24/7, so don't expect to pay them like a shiny but crappy consumer Smart TV. However pay attention before buying since manufacturers started to add Android based crap and "smart" features to them as well. Usually the lack of any networking, both Ethernet and WiFi, on their technical sheet is the indicator they're dumb enough to be worth of trust. This arrangement of course requires an external receiver since they're essentially beefy monitors. They also make almost-dumb TVs for the above markets.
As for the brands, I'm aware of Swedx.com in the EU and Sceptre.com in the US. Samsung also makes some interesting products employing the Tizen OS (any jailbreaking available?).
I don't have any direct experience with any of those however.
I bought my first TV as an adult last year. I’m 44. I barely use it…
The problem I had with Smart TVs (Samsung then return to get the LG) are their absolutely abysmal system performance. Jerking, stuttering movement, menus that lag, a counterintuitive controllers, and streaming services usurping the experience; I do not want a permanent Disney+ button!
[+] [-] xoa|3 years ago|reply
I think they're well worth considering, particularly for the HN crowd, granted I suppose for people who truly want built-in netflix or the like without connecting something like a Roku or Apple TV maybe it's less optimal. But even they might change their tunes back to the concept of separate boxes and normal panels if they dislike all the ads and data tracking.
----
0: https://www.sharpnecdisplays.us/products/displays/me501
[+] [-] SayMyName|3 years ago|reply
We use a lot of Rokus here and my issue isn't the ads, its that every Roku built-in TV gets REALLY slow after a few updates, so now it's just easier to chuck a $20-30 device instead of having to buy an entire $300+TV.
Sure I don't get 120Hz fancyness but at least it's 4k and the picture is good enough for my consoles.
[+] [-] LeifCarrotson|3 years ago|reply
https://i.imgur.com/D3p8bCA.png
That's amazing!
[+] [-] drcongo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AtlasBarfed|3 years ago|reply
You know what else kind of had this problem? Well, not the spyware as much, but just the crap software embedded: routers. OpenWRT appeared.
It appears most smart tvs are already running linux, but probably in the way that android phones are already running linux.
With android and smart tvs, the corps got a major foothold into managed computing platforms that they can control to do whatever spying was necessary. Firefox on the phone, ubuntu phone, etc, they couldn't break into Android, and nothing has broken into smart tvs.
But man if there was an OpenWRT I could replace my roku TVs with, I'd probably do it in a heartbeat.
It's not just that, my relatives have an old LG smart TV that long ago stopped adding apps. If there was an open linux alternative, it probably would be getting updates and AppleTV and Disney Plus would be options on it.
Cursory searches have basically returned "man it would be hard, you'd need to know the board pretty well", yet ... aren't there armies of linux hackers that love hacking stuff like this? Seems like Smart TVs are a big, ubiquitous consumer item with privacy concerns that the linux hardware hacking community has treated with apathy. Which seems strange.
Maybe all the hackers think "eh, plug a raspberry pi into a free HDMI port" or "eh, build a media pc".
This is corporate big brother in your grandma's living room spying. This is freedom on the line, it's strange that the linux-as-hacking-freedom and the linux anticorporate crowd haven't jumped on this.
[+] [-] jollyllama|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NaturalPhallacy|3 years ago|reply
First result from brave search: https://www.samsung.com/levant/business/smart-hospitality-di...
[+] [-] ajross|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nesk_|3 years ago|reply
I couldn't recommend enough to buy an Apple TV (or equivalent) and block all Internet access to your "smart" TV. I did this and everything was instantly better.
[+] [-] _fat_santa|3 years ago|reply
Besides not having the usual crap, I would imagine these use higher quality component since the TV's might be on 24/7. Even that 50" at just over 1k doesn't seem that bad, that's usually what you would pay for a high end 50" anyways.
[+] [-] nsgi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcpham2|3 years ago|reply
It was $8500 + 1500 freight IIRC
[+] [-] dehrmann|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rendall|3 years ago|reply
Oh, no, I am very dramatic about this. I will go to any lengths not to see advertising. I will entirely forgo any platform that shows me even one ad, especially when I pay them. Amazon Prime video is already pushing it with their preroll previews. The second it's something else I'm canceling and going back to P2P. Fuck 'em.
[+] [-] 1ncorrect|3 years ago|reply
It indiscriminately pollutes the environment, and inflicts harm on non participants by incentivising unbridled data collection.
[+] [-] unclebucknasty|3 years ago|reply
This probably sounds over the top, but at some point it feels like they're saying they own you. You're paying them for one service, and they'll unilaterally decide it's not enough and they are going to make more money on you. But they don't do it via a price increase that gives you a fair opportunity to decide on the value exchange. They just start shoving this stuff on you.
And worst of all, it's your time they're taking to do it. The one thing there's never enough of, and that you'll never get back.
[+] [-] vonwoodson|3 years ago|reply
Worst of all, there is no mechanism, at all, to restore the bliss advertising has destroyed. Because, money cannot buy confidence, friendship, fulfillment, or (most famously) happiness. So, once exposed, you have no way to regain what has been obliterated from your soul.
Advertising is not harmless, adblocking is not immoral, and your well-being is more important than anyone’s profits.
[+] [-] zppln|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] have_faith|3 years ago|reply
When it comes to websites I really wouldn't care if they blocked my access because I use an ad blocker. I don't feel any entitlement to their content and they have no entitlement to what displays on my machine.
[+] [-] welder|3 years ago|reply
Not just that, it also means having thousands of companies know every show or movie you ever watched:
> [tv manufacturer] shared IP addresses of its consumers with the data aggregators who then would find a person or a household to which it belonged.
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] secret-noun|3 years ago|reply
I mute the volume for ads to take away some of that edge. It's one of the few things I can control about it.
[+] [-] jbirer|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m463|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sidewndr46|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weberer|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brewdad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b0afc375b5|3 years ago|reply
The best explanation I can come up with is that it wastes my time, and I value time above all else.
I have never bought or purchased anything advertised online. And nowadays I consciously try to avoid products that I see on online ads.
[+] [-] blibble|3 years ago|reply
I've already bought the service... why show me ads for it?
[+] [-] Datagenerator|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericmay|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geophile|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uptown|3 years ago|reply
When I travel, I bring along an AppleTV and plug the HDMI port into their set. This lets me keep the services I subscribe-to and use them with their display. This has worked great until my most-recent rental, which had a RokuTV -- presumably setup on Wifi.
When content was streaming from my AppleTV, Roku would overlay a panel along the bottom-part of the screen proposing that I can watch what I'm currently watching from a variety of other providers. This must mean that the TV set is analyzing the video or audio signal to fingerprint what the content contained, then matching it against a library of content to feed into its profile of my use.
This is the first time I've seen something like this. I'd always assumed that if you used the TV's UI and if it was connected to the internet, then you'd probably be subject to their ads and data analysis, but it never crossed my mind that they'd perform the same data-analysis over any signal passing through its silicon.
Is this commonplace or is Roku the first of what's likely to be many doing the same?
[+] [-] cube00|3 years ago|reply
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
Bonus points for making the preview images in the store not show the ads you'll see. If any other app tried to mislead users like that they'd be banned from the store.
Although it's not like we have a choice, they've also disabled the option to change the launcher on the newest Android TV version as well to coincide with adding the ads on the home screen.
I get we need to have ads to pay for services but come on, the TVs they're doing this to are not your cheap Aldi ones, they're high end Sony Bravias. Most of the ads are even for other paid services like Disney+ and Netflix.
[+] [-] candiddevmike|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DethNinja|3 years ago|reply
Buy a large/modern computer monitor and connect it to your homelab’s media server.
Literally there is no need for a smart TV so long as you are capable of setting up a small homelab.
[+] [-] buro9|3 years ago|reply
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/business/media/tv-viewer-...
And the Pi-Hole list you want is here: https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist
[+] [-] cerol|3 years ago|reply
Sometimes I have this interesting thought, that someday, when even the oldest people alive will not know or will not remebered how things worked back then. Then someone, or a group of people, will suddenly rediscover, or reinvent (as we always do throughout history) things that today still exist. Maybe someone will come up with "shops where you are served by real people", or paying for content you watch. Or a "shopping mall, but without cameras" ("but who will be watching me?"). Or a vehicle you can drive yourself.
I know it's a silly philosophical thought. But what it points to, for me, is that data harvesting works because it trades privacy for convenience, and even if it's too little, there are ways to opt-out (the trivial case being opting out of convenience). But it's a much too thin line to thread.
People are aware of the massive commercial surveillance. They just don't care. Human society is built upon trust or its lack thereof. When trust can't be established, surveillance arises. It only becomes a moral problem when it is done asymmetrically, and in an unprecedented scale.
When is too much too much? When your TV starts showing ads, even when unplugged from electricity? When you have to watch an ad to start your EV car (unless you purchase the Quick Start+ package for 9.99/mo)? You can take a break from ads today. That, in a way, ensures that you can consume ads for longer. But industry seems to be moving in the direction of eventually leaving you with no way to opt out. Then, the convenience might not be worth it anymore. That means either a market demand for ad-free products, and a subsequent return to pay-for-content business model, or some sort of social turmoil.
Or maybe that's their plan to get us to consume less: just stick everything with insane amounts of obnoxious ads, so we won't buy anything anyway.
[+] [-] api|3 years ago|reply
Why? Do ads actually work this well if everyone hates them? What about ads shoehorned into marginal spaces and presented in ways that are barely relevant to the material?
The only ads I EVER click on are relevant ads that come up from a search in which I am looking for something potentially to buy. In media and platforms (software, OSes) I usually associate the presence of ads with low-end crap.
Am I weird? Are there tons of mindless ad clickers out there who actually buy based on irrelevant ad spam?
Why are companies so stingy with wages and willing to outsource their core competencies in exchange for small gains but at the same time are willing to piss endless amounts of money away on ads?
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|3 years ago|reply
I wish it didnt have to be that way.
[+] [-] guidedlight|3 years ago|reply
It's perfect to pair to the device of your choice (Roku, Apple TV, Media Server, Xbox, etc).
https://support.google.com/googletv/answer/10408998?hl=en
[+] [-] afiori|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubyfan|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SergeAx|3 years ago|reply
I didn't see any ads yet (including YouTube, because of Premium). What am I doing wrong?
[+] [-] antx|3 years ago|reply
As a matter of fact, it's now the top-blocked domain in my pi-hole.
It's a shame Roku won't allow you to at least opt-out of telemetry.
[+] [-] ilitirit|3 years ago|reply
But now they're advertising even if I simply open the app. Furthermore, they're "hiding" 14 second ads behind the shorter 6 seconds. I've even seen 41 minute advertising content. I'm guess they're banking on users leaving the app on "autoplay" to dupe advertisers into thinking that people actually consume this trash.
These days I just cancel every ad out of principle until the video plays. This takes on average 6-7 attempts. But now more often than not I just quit the app completely. So they are depriving their own content creators of views. And then they have the gall to present surveys asking what my advertising experience has been like...
[+] [-] dabeeeenster|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|3 years ago|reply
I plugged an Apple iTV black box into it, and except for a slightly funky remote, it is a fantastic viewing, navigating, and discovery experience. I did give up image quality but I am much happier.
[+] [-] squarefoot|3 years ago|reply
As for the brands, I'm aware of Swedx.com in the EU and Sceptre.com in the US. Samsung also makes some interesting products employing the Tizen OS (any jailbreaking available?). I don't have any direct experience with any of those however.
[+] [-] Overtonwindow|3 years ago|reply
The problem I had with Smart TVs (Samsung then return to get the LG) are their absolutely abysmal system performance. Jerking, stuttering movement, menus that lag, a counterintuitive controllers, and streaming services usurping the experience; I do not want a permanent Disney+ button!