Technology

All of my TVs have never seen an internet connection.

I don't want this device, or one like it, because it's proprietary and there are good, open "streaming/media/PVR device what connects to a TV" devices out there. I can get HTPC hardware and put Kodi or MythTV on it.

But.

This isn't a TV. It's a device that connects to the Internet on one side and to the TV on the other, like a cable box.

For me, at least, there's a very large difference there. I absolutely do not want a TV that connects to the Internet for a long, long range of reasons. I want a TV that is a dumb display. I want it to be a good display, but just a display.

• All-in-one devices need to get thrown out when some part of them is obsolete. The streaming aspect has been rapidly changing, as well as the computing aspect. Sometimes new security issues arise. Sometimes new functionality (like wireless) arises. Dumb displays, in contrast, can often serve for a very long time. You can use an old, analog TV quite some decades after its manufacturer has gone out of business. I want a modular setup, not an all-in-one, given the considerable disparity in when each component is likely to become obsolete. Same thing with stuff like building Android computers into cars -- that Android computer is likely going to be obsolete long before the car is mechanically obsolete.

• A "smart" TV sees and can act on everything that you're viewing. An attached box only knows about what it is outputting to the TV.

I'd also add some other points, not specific to the all-in-one aspect.

• You may not want to use a commercial streaming service at all. But if you do, I'm not aware of any that offer a no-log policy. I mean, personally, I get a lot of good out of YouTube and would happily buy YouTube Premium if I could be certain that it'd come with a no-log policy, but what Google's selling, as best I can tell, is no ads. If I pay for YouTube Premium, it just reliably links my financial information to my profile. I don't want that. And the same is probably, though I haven't gone through and audited them, true of other streaming services. Frankly, if I were to buy one, I'd rather have any such service that might be data-mining me on a little box that only talks to my TV and the Internet, not living on an Android device or personal computer that I use.

• Even if a company doesn't do ads, they'll likely outsource it to someone. Like, even if a company offers a commercial service and has premium, ad-free service, my guess is that they will probably also have an ad-supported mode of operation to appeal to customers who don't want to pay the fee. I mean, most television in the US, even in the pre-Internet era, traditionally has been substantially ad-supported. If a service cannot insert ads, then people have found other routes to get ads in front of people's eyes, like paid product placement in the actual media that you're watching. Even if I were going to watch ads, I'd rather have them separate from the media that I'm watching than worked into it.