Ideas/Suggestions for large dumb display to use for movies + series with PC (Plus a little rant)

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Hi all

I tried searching the web and almost instantly got quite frustrated by the results with so many people saying that you should just not connect the Smart TV to a network.

In short, I’m looking for suggestions or ideas on how I can get my hands on like a 42 inch dumb monitor that won’t bankrupt me. I don’t care about things like HDR or dimming zones, it’s too expensive for me anyway… I just want a simple monitor to watch movies, series, and youtubes and a 42 inch display at 1080p will do just fine I think and will already be a huge upgrade over what I have been using.

Last night while in bed I started to wonder if I could maybe get a different controller board and then I could ditch all the “smart” crap, but then it got me wondering if such dumb/non-smart displays is even something we as consumers can still get? I got lucky with the 32 inch one I have years ago, but after a quick online search I just get results for smart TVs.

The obvious option would be a smart tv and to not connect to anything, but after 2 days with a 42 inch Samsung smart tv that is not connected to any network… I’ve decided it has to go. What a POS. :rage:

For those interested, here be the rant:

Summary

I’ve used an old 32 inch monitor for many years now. It was designed and built to run 24/7 in shopping centers and as such it has a ton of connection options, you can daisy chain a bunch of them together, and it can get very bright, but that comes at the cost of power draw and heat. So much heat, that it will heat up the room it’s in. From memory, I believe it can pull over 900w. It’s a Goodview m32h, but I can’t find specs for it anymore.

So I decided that I’d like something a little bigger and that does not double as a heater and got a second hand Samsung 42 is “smart” TV. This is the first LCD tv I have ever owned and had no idea what to look out for when buying one. I turned the TV on when I went to look at it and the app started up and it all seemed to look and work fine… but… after I got it home I saw something similar to this…

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You can only see the LEDs in bright scenes like an image of a bright blue sky and it’s not dimming zones. For the most part I don’t really see these spots, but every now and then there will be a bright scene and then I cannot not see them. Turns out, it’s a common issue, but that’s not the worst of it…

It’s messing with my bluetooth headset and there seems to be no way to turn the TV’s wifi and bluetooth completely off which not all that smart. I’m not 100% sure it’s the TV, but this is the firs time I’ve had issues with the BT and the issues seem to go away when the TV is unpowered…

The TV is connected to my PC with HDMI, but it’s turned off and I’ve set Windows to NOT extend my display to it. This morning, while on a Teams call with work, my PC screen flickered and I lost auto for about 1 second. Then it happened again, and again, and then I lost audio completely. I open up sound settings to find that the TV is now my default audio output… yes… the TV that is suppose to be off. I switched it off at the plug and it stopped trying to take over my PC. What the hell??? :anger:

I couldn’t make it 2 days with a “smart” tv that is NOT connected to any network which I guess is kinda funny, but I also want to snap the thing in half like it’s twig.

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Worse is most models now won’t let you do anything until you have given it network and you CC info…

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I went through a similar process looking for an entertainment display/TV a year or so ago. Something I could use as a display for Kodi, but I also wanted to use it for actual over-the-air TV (DVB-T2), including EPG (electronic programme guide) and teletext. (I’m in Sweden and we have excellent, ad-free teletext on the public service channels that’s great to get a quick overview of the news.)

After a lot of research I ended up with an LG C3. And after having used it now for a year – never connecting it to any kind of computer network, and never acceping any user licenses! – I can say that it works reasonably well.

  • If you happen to press one of the buttons for online services it will ask you to setup internet access of course, but otherwise it never nags about that.

  • It has a functional over-the-air EPG. The interface is somewhat annoying in how it focuses the selection when browsing channels (it uses the midpoint of the selected programme as “selected time” which means if you are at one channel and the time is, say, 20:00, then browse to the next channel which is showing a 2 h long movie, and then the channel after that shows shorter programs, then you might suddenly end up focused on the programme which will show at 21:30 rather than the currently showing programme). There’s also a bug in that it will always complain that the time is not set and send you to the set-up menu the first time the EPG is accessed after the TV has been disconnected from power.

  • It has working teletext with split screen (side-by-side) mode, but no buttons for this on the remote! It is possible to access teletext through the menu system but it’s too inconvenient for everyday use. Which leads me to…

  • The remote. It sucks. It has mostly the sponsored buttons (Netflix and what have you) and a very uncomfortable-to-use gyro pointer to access TV menus. It lacks both teletext and play/pause/stop buttons! So I replaced it with an aftermarket remote which has these buttons.

  • CEC has limited functionality: it works (navigation, play/pause/stop) but the TV does not pass through the subtitle, menu and settings/options buttons to the CEC device. Instead if you press e.g. Subtitles while watching via Kodi the TV just says “Function not supported”. This I think is the worst deficiency I’ve found.

In conclusion: the LG C3 webOS interface is noticeably worse than the interface on my old 2008 Sony TV, but it does function reasonably well even without a network connection.

Late edit to add: There’s another serious deficiency with the LG C3: it has approximately 100 ms of audio lag. This is present on both HDMI input and on the TV’s own DVB-T2 receiver, when using the TV’s own speakers. I setup Kodi to adjust for this so I forgot about it when first writing this post. It’s just enough to be noticeable to me when watching TV and is a little bit annoying but not a dealbreaker (to me). Out of the box, with all the “AI image enhancements” enabled, the audio delay is much larger and completely intolerable.

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Could a projector work for your use case? For 1080p and small throw area you could get a small portable unit and just set up when you want to use it

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So… I’m still using the stupid TV and I’m using the exact same HDMI cable I was using for the old 32" so I know it’s good cable… and yet… I’ve been having issues were the screen would sometimes go black and then come back or sometimes not. I’ve taken the resolution down from 4k to 1080p thinking that it’s maybe a signal issue, but the problem persists.

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This happened after watching 3 episodes with zero issues. It was all great and then it just randomly disconnected it self about 5min before the last episode finished. To get it back I have to switch power off at the plug and leave it for a while. I may have to put old faithful back…

I’ve spoken to a friend who also has a smart tv and he said that he’s experience has not bee great either and that some of the features of the tv is now broken after an update and there is nothing he can do about it. I’m kinda shocked at what a crap experience these things seem to be.

I just can’t believe that large-ish dumb monitors are not a thing. I’ve known the software industry had been in a poor state, but I thought TVs were a solved problem. Turns out, we somehow made them a problem…

Projectors might be a good idea depending on what they go for, but don’t they normally have noisy fans?

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Go to https://skinflint.co.uk/ (a UK branch of the German deal search engine) and have a go at filters in Display, TV categories. Make sure to select “All regions” in search at the top, so it will show you more models to review.

I feel you. The full replacement is very likely to consist of separate parts:

  • HTPC or an HDMI-pluggable microcomputer
    • integrated or add-on cable/satellite receiver
  • Display itself
  • External speakers

I have a supposedly high-end Sony Android TV here and the hardware is trash. The SoC/RAM is underpowered even though the panel itself is great and is supposed to support 4K120?

Back around 2011-2014 Samsung still ran their in-house TV OS/shell. It was evidently Linux-based, but behaved in many ways like an old dumb TV. Plus modern UI for EPG; of course support for Teletext. Older models had decryptable recordings, but this feature is pretty much unusable today (channels can and do restrict it via flag). If you kept out of internet services and avoided the buttons on the remote, it never nagged you. Startup times were instant too.

Modern TVs likely come in the varieties of: Android TV, Tizen, webOS. I have no experience with them, but their bloat and “smart” TV focus likely means home-menu-first and long boot up times; where you can’t just skip and instantly boot into receiving an HDMI/DP signal. Well, I hope it can remember the Input selection setting, but I mean you can’t avoid the minute-long boot times.

Even if they increasingly support “Game mode” with cut down processing and latency times, you’ll be warned to actually see it for yourself. It shouldn’t turn the panel into garbage by disabling color calibration while enabled.

In the end, I don’t know either. Assuming these bloated OSes are unusable, these are all the options you have with modern TVs. Then you must either go for actual monitors or look into overly expensive industrial display options like your old one.

PS: Just because your panel can theoretically draw 900W doesn’t mean it will. In practice in benchmarks, OLED monitors consume more power than a backlight-driven IPS panel (LED backlight). CCFL backlight is the old tech that’s indeed power-hungry.

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My LG C3 (webOS 8.3.0-1508) boots from standby to last selected input in 7 seconds (I just timed it). Cold boot takes 10 seconds.

The default setting is to boot to the (pointless) “home” screen, but that behaviour can be disabled in the settings.

I have no idea how webOS behaves in current generation TVs though.

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I was the same fed up with intrusive smart TVs. Personally, I ended up looking for an old plasma or LCD pro screen (like NEC or Panasonic pro display) in 1080p on classified ads, often much better built and without “intelligence”. Otherwise, a good AZ video projector, it can be a nice alternative too.

Mini Militia App Lock

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Smart tv is for… I don’t know ‘who’. I have a samsung smart tv, for which at first I gave a try with it being ‘smart’. Then I bought a pair of speakers, asking myself a question of ‘who the hell expects this to sound actually good’… in the end… well, yeah, I can say that the only part of that ‘smart tv’ left was the ‘monitor’. Hooked it up to a pc, built from parts, left after an upgrade. And have upgraded it even since.

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My primary display these days is a Pioneer-branded “smart” 4K TV. It has the redeeming quality of having been less than $200 several years ago, along with not being anywhere near as frustrating an experience as some other “smart” TVs I’ve tried. One LG of the same size had seconds of input delay unless you got it into game mode, but opening a full-screen application (such as a game, but also sometimes switching to fullscreen video) would kick it back out until you manually reenabled it through the menu.

Unfortunately, while this one is generally fine, I can’t necessarily recommend any later variant that may now exist. I know this one is out of production and has been replaced (and is likely a rebrand of something else anyway).

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Found this Mecer I can get locally… don’t know if I should buy it as it’s hard to know what the quality is like, but I can return it within 7 days. So I probably should…

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https://www.takealot.com/mecer-43l88-43-1080p-full-hd-8-ms-flat-monitor/PLID91177984

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1080p is a little low for a 43 foot display, I’d say. :smiley: :wink:

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