You need to be some kind of hacker to do this non-smart TV thing at this time. And thats what we are
A true monitor will be more expensive, commercial, conceivably may not have audio. Screens with audio used to only exist in the form of TVs, and monitors never had speakers built in.
Assuming that no TVs are manufactured without a computer inside, you will have to be on defense against malware, tracking, censorship.
Sound and screens do not mix well in an audiophile world. When audiophiles listen to music they cover their TV screens with sound dampening panels to prevent resonance interfere from the TV panels! These are extremes we are not talking about here but it is worth the exercise to understand what you can live with. I have two TCL smart Roku TVs and I use them for sound so I am not getting any good hifi output. But speakers are an analog vibration machine so in theory are trying to destroy your panel and electric components over time. Plus there is limited fidelity of sound reproduction (sometimes very limited such as no clear sound below 100Hz and completely missing bands of frequency).
So in my mind I am left with choosing an expensive monitor with a separate audio processing system (AV Receiver or AV Preamp, and regular hifi system to output sound (as in a home theater system).
Or…buy a smart TV and don’t connect it to the internet - input the video/audio via HDMI or Display Port (which I think is video only for most smart TVs). BUT realize that your unplugged smart TV’s INPUT source system is some kind of computer that is being monitored/tracked/hacked from the internet. Think Netflix via PC, Amazon Prime, Roku or Apple TV pucks. And of course OTA.
I have an AV receiver with speakers already, so I don’t mind going the monitor route if need be, and you are right, sound and screen don’t mix well. Part of the reason why I even have an AVR is for sound, the other was that my older tv just didn’t have enough HDMI inputs, and it just happens to work out in this scenario to work as a great piece of hardware to help solve this issue as well.
It turns out that I will be in this situation when I make use of my Panasonic 60" plasma. I got it from Best Buy for about $650 IIRC. I have an Outlaw 950 which is a decent Home Theater Preamp/Processor. (I am currently just using it as my stereo preamp). I have never used it to its potential but likely will get a lot closer with the Panasonic plasma. The Outlaw has a tuner but no amps, only Preamps. It specializes in handling all the surround processing modes.
(not my pic) Wow it is pre-HDMI. SVHS, Component, Optical audio. I am getting old. This Outlaw was a great HT device when 720p/1080i on massive CRTs was a thing. When the Matrix came out on DVD!
It occurs to me that you may want to look for gently used Panasonic Plasma TVs, which were amazing values before the smart TV revolution. I believe they are 1080p only though. So…look for gently used high-end monitors?
I hadn’t thought about looking for an older high quality plasma or something. Though I would be worried about repairability and longevity. I’m seriously considering something like a 44" monitor, though I’m not desperate to replace my current TV, but I do want to know my options type thing. I think assuming my current TV doesn’t kick the bucket, I’ll wait a year or 2 and see if some of the higher HDR OLED screen panels make their way into larger monitors and go from there.
About the time plasma TVs stopped being manufactured, 4k TV started to become a thing, as well as HDR. Definitely not universally used or required but 1080p will become more obsolete. Also older HDMI ports will be limited in bandwidth.
I would be waiting for some kind of OLED if you are going to wait a couple of years. But they do apparently get the burned in screen.
Don’t connect it to the internet. You have to go out of your way for your concern to be valid.
A TV can’t phone home if there’s no connection up-stream.
As it stands for modern TVs, there’s enough compute needed for imagine processing (local dimming, brightness management, HDR, etc.) that adding in “smart features” is free. Heck the smart features subsidize the TV’s cost because… telemetry (from the majority of people who do use the smart features).
Otherwise your next best bet is to get a computer monitor. It’ll be pricier and it’ll be optimized for a different use case.
You could “always” just get e.g. a Sony reference monitor , they’re like $30k for a 30". /joke.
I think part of the trouble with OLED TVs is that most content isn’t really mastered with such displays in mind. e.g. infinite contrast, are quite large relative to viewing distance, really fast pixel switching times… you just end up with all kinds of weird stuff like these wide panning middle of the day shots that have “motion judder” because they’re only 24fps but we’re not shot with an ND filter and used a lower end camera and faster shutter and it just looks weird. What some TVs let you do is insert black frames in between actual 24 contents frames to mimic some old school camera effects and fool your brain you’re in a cinema, at the cost of some brightness… it’s just a major PITA to make everything, or almost everything as it were look good.
I think the best you can do is stick to one of the “premium” brand TVs that aren’t as interested in watching you watching TV and don’t show ads… Like Sony or LG or similar and enable “true cinema” or “creator mode” or “director mode” or whatever is called that does minimum processing to make the content not look weird…
You probably want some processing if you’ll be consuming media and not actually using it as a monitor.
I have a 2018 Panasonic OLED that I’ve dialed in to look right for me and I’m pretty happy with it.
Pretty much all OLED TV panel silicon is made by LG (including in Samsung OLED TVs, not their QLEDs or mini LEDs but actual oleds which I keep forgetting what they chose to call). There’s differences in picture processing and OS on the TV, most chipsets inside are made by mediatek, and usually with OS updates you also get picture processing updates.
There’s 2 generations of OLED panel technology made by LG display and used by everyone else over the last 5 years. The second gen panels (of 2020 onwards) are more efficient and more heat tolerant - they use more power and are brighter. LG display still makes and sells both kinds themselves and through other brands. Sony went a step further than most and attached some additional panel cooling heatsink on their “master series”, and then changed the picture processing parameters and power circuitry to allow for same brightness but larger/longer exposures… but otherwise it’s the same second gen LG display silicon.
… if you want to spend extra money on a better TV spend it on getting one of those fancy Sony or LG TVs (I guess Panasonic don’t sell stuff in North America and I’m assuming you’re from there, if you’re from rest of the world they’re ok too - just a plain light sensor not a camera, Philips usually cheaps out on the chipset and pulls the same things with firmware that Chinese manufacturers do, and does no development past initial sale). I don’t know about Vizio or TCL.
…
Also, with a TV you don’t need to worry about widevine and 4k HDR10+/DV from various streaming services… although it should just work with an apple TV as well.
Just aim for a gigabit Ethernet into the TV, because blu-ray content can actually go past 100Mbps for periods of 10s … which is usually enough to exhaust ram buffers.
And be aware that not all TVs have all their HDMI inputs the same, most only have 2 full bandwidth HDMI ports because they all use the same 1st gen LG OLED display + mediatek chipset combo and slap random OS menu system and a price tag.
This is definitely true, there are very few movies that actually go all the way down to black in order to avoid clipping, which kind of sucks when you spend the big bucks for an OLED. And the big disadvantage of that infinite contrast is being able to see all the compression artefacts that they can normally hide in the poor dark performance of most displays.
The Omen x65 might fit what you’re looking for. It’s big like a TV but dumb like a monitor. There IS an Nvidia shield integrated into it though, it’s easy enough to turn off.
First of all if you are buying a tv or other tech say like printers or monitors go to rtings.com to look at their reviews as they by far are the best on the net. Easy to understand information and they even offer up their settings to get displays looking right. They have helped me buy two tvs for me and one for my mom plus an all in one printer and everything that was said as a negative or positive with the items were true. You will know what you are getting into if you decide to buy something after you look at their reviews there.
Second of all in regards to tvs specifically well let me say that you don’t need to use the smart features. I don’t enable them. Simple as that. Now as for a tv I highly recommend for the budget user that wants decent HDR and a great picture well get the following …
The tv is mentioned at the top or near the top of so many videos I see when talking about best budget tv of 2021. It truly was a shocker that a brand I thought would never end up in my home is staying in my home.
Please keep in mind that it is not just about “not using” or “not enabling” at least as far as analytics/tracking; I see no guarantees that marketing technology like Automated Content Recognition (ACR) is in any way limited to only content provided by the “smart” feature:
Currently, never connecting a smart-tv to internet is the only way I would feel remotely safe from tracking, and only if it were completely factory reset before selling or giving it away. I do not know how much of a tracking backlog the TV might cache for periods where it is disconnected from internet.
The trouble with this situation is that tracking information really only needs to be a few bytes; I can imagine a minimal scenario where the on-board detection engine merely spits out an ID, which is combined with serial number and timestamp+timezone. This kind of tracking payload would easily fit in an Amazon Sidewalk broadcast.
I have seen promotional material for cellular/mobile 5G/6G, where the idea is to further promote everything being IoT; if nothing changes besides cellular/mobile providers bringing down costs for low-bandwidth, machine-to-machine (M2M) use, it could become cheap enough for TVs to integrate a cellular/mobile side-channel to relay the collected ACR tracking data.
That might seem overly complex, and therefore unlikely, but it is certainly possible; part of the proposed ATSC 3 specification (potentially future OTA broadcast standard for South Korea & USA) is to use an internet side channel to deliver tailored ads rather than relying on one-size-fits-all OTA delivered advertising.
So I highly doubt that gratuitous complexity is off the table if there is the promise of tailoring/tracking/analytics for TV manufacturers.
Following this thread I am growing more and more wary about the future. When time comes to upgrade the 1366x768 TV, I will probably consider just a bigger PC display.
I used to be a big fan of projectors because the display size was worth the hassle of the noise and managing light in the room. And then TV’s got huge and cheap and I was completely done with projectors. Now maybe I’ll have to look into a projector again for my next main display just in the hopes that it’ll be the only way I can get one that won’t spy on me.
