This subject made the rounds again on Hacker News, and someone gave an example of a business-targeted UHD TV that possibly could be without “smart” functionality.
Oh, so a few months ago I did what I said I was going to do earlier in this thread; I’d had enough of the image retention and broken backlight lenses on my “old” Samsung so I bought a 43" monitor: AORUS FV43U Gaming Monitor Key Features | Monitor - GIGABYTE U.K. It has all of the features of a high end TV that you’d actually care about (4K, HDR1000, 144Hz, freesync) and none of the tracking or latency-inducing “features” we don’t want. And it is a really nice VA panel too.
This is definitely the way to go if you want a dumb TV imo.
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This has built-in speakers, yes? So the only real missing feature might be built-in OTV (DVB, ISDB, ASTC) reception.
One could use a separate machine with MythTV and required tuner cards for this I think.
It does, but I’ve never used them. Gigabyte even market it based on its “space audio”, but I have a 5.1 system so that’s not really something that I care about. Like I said before, I think the death of CRTs ultimately killed built in audio on TVs. They technically produce sound, but the speakers built into every flatscreen TV I have ever seen have been terrible. You’d be pairing the most high fidelity, HDR, high resolution image with sound that could well be coming from a phone. All of my monitors have built in audio too, and while they’re terrible they’re sadly no more terrible than I’ve heard from modern TVs. I think it’s quite mainstream these days for casual users to pair their TVs with soundbars, and for people who want something more to go the full AV receiver route.
It may be a cultural thing too, but I don’t think over the air is quite as popular in the UK as in the US – certainly not like it was in the analogue era. I think the glacially slow rollout of digital TV back in the day (as well as the collapse of ITV Digital) caused most people to already have cable or satellite before they could get a reliable OTA coverage. I could get a Freeview box for OTA, but the main ISPs here are Sky, BT and Virgin, they all offer some cable TV options, and I am pretty sure that they all offer a very basic free TV package that comes with the free OTA channels. If I wanted TV this is the route I’d go. That, or I’d see what live TV I can just watch in browser considering it’s plugged into my PC. I think ultimately even if it supported OTA digital TV out of the box new standards keep coming in so often that I’d be pairing it with a set top box before long anyway, and if I really watched TV that often I’d just get a proper cable package from my ISP.
For me that lack of a TV tuner built in is also a good thing on the very slim chance a TV Licencing inspector comes to validate my declaration that I don’t watch live TV. In the last three years they’ve tried once when I was at work.
Why would someone who wants broadcast TV do that? IIUC BBC iPlayer, ITV Player and the like make cable obsolete. Maybe for metered internet it would make sense…
(Maybe I haven’t got a clue. I’ve avoided broadcast and cable TV all my adult life.)
In theory, the equivalent OTA signal could have higher bitrate than the internet broadcast.
I have no idea what the situation is, in practise, for any country or broadcaster.
Also, OTA on a dumb TV prevents anything from directly observing your viewing habits. The same cannot be said for video stream webplayers.
As an aside, dumb TVs came up in a question proposal for the upcoming Q&A:
Ask Us Anything! That's Right, It's L1 AMA time! - #29 by bedHedd
Because you get all of the same channels that you get OTA, plus more, plus at higher resolution and bitrate AND you’re paying your ISP for it anyway, and it doesn’t involve installing an aerial on a building you likely don’t own in 2022. There are free cable services that offer just parity with Freeview, which is what you’re describing.
Perhaps, but that’s definitely not the case in the UK. At the very worst cable and OTA digital TV are equivalent. In any case like I said you can get Freeview 4K boxes that connect via HDMI if you want, it just isn’t a method of watching live TV that seems many people do in the UK. Most people just use Sky or Virgin. The former used to be satellite, but they’re pushing fibre now.
I think the TV licence is something that affects habits too. If you have to effectively pay a £12 per month subscription for “free” TV, the barrier to paying extra has already been passed so I think people are more inclined to pay for cable. The price for a basic Sky package is less than the TV licence itself.
You’re really looking for commercial displays, which are those used in hospitals, restaurants, and the security sector. They will usually be devoid of those features due to security concerns and the fact they’ll be driver by use-case devices.
Something that I’ve noticed more while watching things like LTT is how much more these “smart” features are now even making their way into screens for computers, which doesn’t make any sense at all. Hopefully some players will step up for consumer screens that just don’t have these features at all.
Oath, HDMI Ethernet Channel or HEC is a thing. Or maybe these “screens” are connected by USB C?
If one gets such a monitor, is there a convenient way to stop it “phoning home”?
In the for what it’s worth category, I bought a Samsung QN65QN90B about a month ago. I never connected it to the internet and configured it to go to the last input on power-on. So when I turn everything on, the TV comes up connected to the last HDMI port. So far, it’s never nagged me about connecting to the internet.
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