Sceptre makes a good dumb TV. I use one personally and other than taking a few extra seconds to boot up, it's fantastic. No WiFi info to load, no pop ups, just a big dumb pane of LEDs and ports to use them.
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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💯 I bought a Sceptre as a smaller living room TV, which became our main TV, and it’s great. A smart TV is just a good TV with a crap computer built into it. I’d rather just have the good TV.
Great info, we need a list of such TV which are single purposed.
It’s a VA panel tho 🙁
VA has gotten really good over the years and I‘d prefer it over a similarly priced IPS, if neither has local dimming or quantum dots or something like that. VA has so much better contrast. Of course, it’s nothing against OLED, QLED, microLED, etc but it’s also in a very different price class.
We need more dumb tv's in the higher price class.
In my experience, most smart tvs work perfectly fine without being intrusive, if you simply never connect them to the internet.
"Smart TVs are all well and good"
no they aren't, so far they are a disaster.
Don't connect it to the internet and just use peripheral devices
I was only using Roku for a long time. It has ads but they're not particularly intrusive and I honestly don't notice them half the time. I recently got a new Amazon Fire TV for free through my jobs reward program and that thing is just a big ad delivery machine lol. The OS is so slow it's like it was almost an afterthought when someone realized they actually needed a way to show all these freaking ads... Its so slow and buggy it drives me nuts! I'm seriously considering just plugging a Roku box in the back and just using the TV like a monitor
Roku is honestly as bad or worse. Someone is getting promoted in their marketing team for finding new rectangular places on the various home screens to place ads. It started small with Roku and they built up a lot of good will. But they're cashing it in, and it's already deep down the enshittification curve.
I recently bought a TCL google tv and first thing I did was install smarttube and a different launcher.
That being said the first question in the setup proces was if I wanted the "smart" functions on or just have a basic experience and only use HDMI and cable tv.
But the ads on the home screen with Google tv are really annoying. They are front and centered. I want my apps and inputs where the ad's are.
I feel like I've managed to really get out ahead with my latest TV purchase - I managed to buy a really nice large dumb TV for like $200, used. I then connected a Chromecast running Android TV, which I have modded extensively to get around "the bad parts". Quite nice!
Install a better launcher, done.
As has always been the Android way.
Can you recommend a launcher for a smart tv?
I use Projectivy, on my Google ChromeCast:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.projengmenu&hl=en
I used Flauncher and button mapper to program my home button to open Flauncher. Worked well for me.
Same for me, now if I could only find a way to have it boot directly to f launcher, but so far I still have to see the home screen occasionally with all of its ad infested malware BS
Yeah, booting directly into the Google TV launcher instead of Flauncher is annoying, but I'm so used to it now, I instinctively press the home button on boot up these days so I barely ever see it.
You can try launcher manager and then the android tv version.
Or you can use the adb commands your self. You don't need root just developer mode.
Assuming your smart TV is android, project ivy is my favorite.
I never regretted the 200€ I paid for an appleTV 4K. No ads, no nonsense, just a smooth and pleasant smart tv experience. Even got almost all the features I was missing compared to android tv through updates over the 4½ years I’ve had it (like vpn support). Whichever brand I‘ll be getting, when I eventually upgrade my tv, I‘ll never connect it to the internet and just continue using my AppleTV.
Whats the benefit of an Apple TV if you don't connect it to the internet?
I think he's saying he doesn't connect the smart TV to the internet. He plugs in his apple TV (and that is connected to the Internet) and has all of the 'smart' technology.
Ah, same then, but I just use an old Chromecast instead.
Lets go back to microconsoles for streaming and dumb TVs
Change the launcher