[samtho]

It’s funny, if you open a TV set it’s already super modular like computers were before we had standardized parts, ports, and form factors. It’s got the power supply which makes the 24V for the display, 12/5/3.3V for the other electronics, an I/O interface board, the MCU and its peripherals, the sound driver, and the IR receiver/Button control.

They do this so a manufacturer can use the same parts among different products or simply install an upgraded one to unlock more features.

If it were standardized, this would be fairly easy given that they all pretty much work the same but then they would have write actually good software and UI for people to elect to use their specific product.

[throwaway2037]

    > 24V for the display

Is there a reason that the industry settled on 24V for most large displays? I would like to learn more. Are they trying to keep wire gauge small by having fewer amps to deliver watts?

[cosmic_cheese]

Following this, an idea I’ve had for years without any ability to act on is a smart TV replacement board that’s sold alongside adapter boards for various popular models of TV that handle differences in power, display connection, etc, making dis-enshittifying one’s smart TV as easy as upgrading the GPU on a computer tower.

You could have 2 tiers of board: Essentials, which is cheap and only has as much hardware and software as is strictly necessary to produce a pre-smart-TV experience, and Deluxe which would be pricier and built around a recent flagship SoC (e.g. Snapdragon 8 Gen 1/2/3) with an unlocked bootloader and preloaded with Android TV.