Hmm. Reminds me of https://superuser.com/questions/1282598/what-sense-does-it-m... - what's happening with these "picture improvements" is effectively post-processing "photoshop". They will generally be displaying TV from digital sources, so the need for denoise is questionable. Anti-banding might give you nicer sunsets. But fundamentally you now have a TV that rather than displaying the input signal decides to give you something it considers better. Results are likely to be variable.
Also:
"Samsung, though it didn’t tout a new processor, promised that all its gadgets, big and small, will be a lot smarter this year—and will, by 2020, be using AI and talking to the cloud."
Fully compliant with all major buzzwords. Also employing a black box user surveillance engine.
I was recently shocked to learn that you cannot buy "dumb" TVs from any of the major brands any longer.
The only source I was able to find were random brands from China, and commercial displays from companies like NEC. Unfortunately commercial displays are optimized for longevity and not picture quality :/
If anyone knows where I can get a decent dumb TV please share.
And still likely to be awful in one way or the other. I got one of Samsung's top model TV's back in 2013, and after a year (or so) some update caused it to start crashing randomly, no matter the input source (and daily with the Netflix app it comes with) Yes, chrashes/hangs even with HDMI input sources, where the interface just hangs after adjusting the volume.
After owning the S2, S3, S4, a couple of Notes, and a Gear S3 watch, I have concluded that Samsung is incredibly bad at software. If my plan is not to wipe the device and use some OS I want to (like in my pre-Note devices), I'll stay far far away.
For a TV, I got a TCL Roku TV this past Thanksgiving (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06Y6FSV5Q/). It's been pretty good, because TCL just made the hardware (and is good at it), and the OS is Roku. I've heard complaints about it but (and myself find some features very rigid) but Roku's interface is simple and stable. I haven't had an app or the OS crash on me in a month or so.
I use one as my main monitor, it's very good. Every time I upgrade my monitor size, it's irreversible since the claustrophobia of using a smaller display increases.
Jumping in here, but I use a 55" curved 4k Samsung as a monitor (per recommendation of my optometrist). I stand around 40" from the center of the screen.
No, that was more me playing around with what would work (I started with a 4k 42" Seiki TV and this was the upgrade. At sizes larger than 40" the curved screen really helps you with better seeing the corners of the screen without having to lean.
Unfortunately it seems there are no longer any OLED computer monitors on the market, with Dell having discontinued theirs. So if you want such a display you're forced to buy a smart TV (disregarding very expensive professional reference monitors).
This is actually what I ended up settling on for my personal space. But I would still like something bigger for a group viewing scenario (i.e. living room).
You may or may not be able to get rid of some or all of the image processing, but you still have all the other issues of a "smart" TV, like auto updates/ads/tracking/infection and other problems that come with having too much cheap software where it doesn't belong.
With some smart TVs, no. For example some Vizio TVs require you to install the Vizio app on your phone (you must allow location tracking) and connect over WiFi before you can even finish the setup process.
Usually, but some won't let you finish set up without some internet access.
Even if you do keep it disconnected, there's no guarantee that a badly behaved update process or app won't interfere with the normal operation in some way.
I'm sure there do exist models that are perfectly fine in offline mode, but it's still a lot of (very opaque) room for things to go wrong in ways that a "dumb" display won't have.
But, even then it can be annoying. If I happen to press on the smart key on my remote, by mistake, the TV then takes ages to check that indeed there is no connection, with a large and unescapable message dialog.
It’s been my belief for a while now that there’s a market for premium dumb TVs. They would:
- Use high end best binned panels (lowest possible image retention for OLED, etc)
- Traditional LCD models would have very high standards for backlight consistency
- Do little to no image processing
- Be designed around being hooked up to external media boxes
- Have a nice modern OSD text
- Allow you to use your phone as a remote via Bluetooth (and control other media center components via IR cables and HDMI commands)
- Not have any means of internet connection or any other smart functionality whatsoever
Effectively, they’d be to TVs as studio monitor headphones are to audio. Enthusiasts would jump all over something like this despite inflated prices, I have no doubt.
> Effectively, they’d be to TVs as studio monitor headphones are to audio. Enthusiasts would jump all over something like this despite inflated prices, I have no doubt.
This exists, for the most part, but is prohibitively expensive. Sony's Trimaster EL OLED range for instance. Why it is so expensive, (compared to consumer OLED TVs) I don't know.
the reason the premium consumer market doesn't sell dumb TVs is that it would wring all of the profits out of selling TVs. consumer electronics companies want to be seen as "adding value" on top of the display. if they don't, then manufacturers can just go direct to consumer, cutting them out of the value chain and redirecting profits to the manufacturers (and some to consumers in the form of lower prices).
if they priced dumb TVs higher than their smart TVs, it would signal the negative value of the "smarts" in the TV, so they don't want to do that.
so none of the electronics manufacturers really want to sell dumb TVs to the mass market, since it would be akin to committing corporate suicide (in that particular product category).
of course one way around this is to brand a technical feature (as with sony's trinitron back in the day) and make that carry the value premium in the dumb TV, which would be how you'd approach the enthusiast segment you mention.
Visio had a line of TVs that we're almost this - they had no TV tuner, minimum UI, a tiny simple remote and just a Chromecast built in. After I had mine for a year it got an automatic update giving it a horrible smart TV UI and they forced you to order a new remote. It's such a shame because it was pretty much perfect for me before this happened, and now they've lost me as a future customer.
I bought an LG TV recently, the only "smart" thing about it is Google Cast is baked in, which I think is acceptable. The only reason I want a dumb TV is to hook up an apple tv / google cast / computer running airserver.
While there are a few TVs like that out there, I'm always worried they might pull what Visio did and essentially put their own stupid UI on top much later [0].
Samsung’s TVs are the best in the game, it’s ashame that they are “noisy”. No matter how much I try to disable leaky software features, there’s always something I miss: I had a roommate ask if he could connect to my TV because he could see it broadcasting a signal to Samsung phones =(
It doesn’t matter, the best quality is firmly in the hands of the LG oled TVs.
And if I buy a tv I buy it for the image quality, certainly not for the remote.
Why on earth does a TV need denoising built-in? I've noticed this trend—when I rarely visit electronic stores—where all the display models have huge vibrant screens, but whatever they show on them is always oversaturated, sharpened, and in general overprocessed. On top of that, when I visit some people's houses, they have everything setup completely wrong: stretching the picture to avoid letterboxing, upscaling from a lower resolution signal (acceptable depending on your distance, but better to have an HD signal for an HD TV), motion interpolation, and so much more. What ever happened to a television naively playing what it was given? Why does everyone want a neon prickly picture and assume they know better than the people who mastered the content? I know some will say "personal preference", but there's no accounting for taste and settings like these can ruin something carefully crafted. Lastly, to get back to denoising, noise is actually detail, stop removing it (and you'll almost never have it in modern stuff, mostly just old films—where it's part of the actual negative). This trend extends to photography as well, with editors not knowing when to ease off the saturation (the greens would hurt your eyes IRL) and contrast sliders, which might explain public perception or expectation.
Yeah it's unfortunate. It started I guess with TV makers implementing processing to fix problems with broadcasts before digital came around, and then just got progressively worse over time as the makers try to out-do each other with features that "improve" picture quality.
What's worse, at this point people are so accustomed to the soap opera effect of these features that when they are turned off they think something is wrong. Try it at a friend's or relative's house – change their settings to turn off motion interpolation and noise removal and such, and I'm sure most will start thinking something's wrong with their set. It's sad.
Games designed to be played in 4K 60FPS HDR can feel pretty "future-proof". Playing Horizon Zero Dawn, an open world rpg with mech dinos, on the PS4 is stunning. Even if rather buggy. You are reminded it has been some time since you last were awed by the quality of snowflake particle effects.
I realize a $2K+ setup is beyond the reach of all but hard core enthusiasts. Especially as Gigabit connection speed availability is all but required. But 4K video will probably remain the standard for the next 4-5 year time frame.
Man, HZD looks insanely great at 4K HDR on a 65" OLED – buy far the prettiest game I've ever played. It doesn't play at 60fps though, as far as I know it's capped at 30fps. Presumably they can't guarantee stable frame rates higher than that, which probably makes sense given the insanely great graphics. At 30fps thought it's super stable, I've never seen it stutter and I've finished both the main game and DLC. Great game, can't wait for the sequel!
Its always about the buzzwords... a few years ago I tried to buy a TV without 3D-support because I didn´t want to spend the money on a useless feature (for me). Guess what, no major brand offered a TV without 3D, I ended up buying the usual suspect. But now the situation has improved ! It got easy again to buy a TV without 3D-support at least :D
Same for the current must-have features...
I think the common nerd would love a dumb display with decent calibration etc. out-of-the-box, so he could just connect his favorite media-box and have fun for a reasonable price. But this isn´t where the profits are made!
edit: Because you could just replace your mediabox after a few years, when e.g. netflix stops playing on it. I´m really waiting for a new player who gives us this dumb high-quality display so many nerds are waiting for.
I'm curious why you would need to block MAC addresses. Why wouldn't just not plugging in ethernet and not giving it the WiFi password be sufficient to stop your TV from going online?
Yes, making these "improvements" completely useless to anyone who occasionally plays videogames (and therefore most likely leaves their TV in game mode).
I'd honestly pay extra for _less_ processing: give me a 65" dumb monitor with as little latency as possible, please.
> The company gave a don’t-blink-or-you-might-miss-it peek at what it says will be the world’s first commercial MicroLED display, available sometime this year. MicroLED technology operates like the Jumbo Tron in a football stadium, with a dedicated LED for each colored subpixel—shrunk down to the size of a standard TV, that is, with subpixels so small your eye can’t distinguish them. It doesn’t require filters or backlights, so color and brightness can be exceptional.
Roughly: Primarily carbon or carbon-hydrogen-based, often complex, molecules. If not naturally occurring in organisms, then made from the same "toolbox".
(The liquid crystals in LCDs generally are organic compounds as well, but traditional LEDs are not, thus the OLED distinction in that case)
"In the shorter term, the technology would enable scenarios like someone asking the TV what is in the refrigerator, then having it display a recipe then send that recipe to the stove."
From now on, I will interpret this being the first idea floated as the use for some IoT tech as "we have no f'ing clue what we're going to use this for".
Thirty years ago, this problem was perhaps unsolved. Now it's solved in at least two ways, with tablets and voice interactions, and those are better.
Sorry, Sony, Samsung, etc, there is no way my TV, which is in the ENTIRELY WRONG ROOM, is going to wedge its way into my recipe workflow, and if that is the best idea you have, as evidenced by it being the first idea mentioned in this article... you have no ideas. Note how even in the example I quote above, WTF is the TV doing in that interaction flow in the first place? What I should be "asking" what is in the fridge is my cell phone, and by extension since they share OSes, optionally a tablet.
(The core problem here is that Smart TVs are now mature. Ignoring surveillance and privacy issues, what we need are just more responsive UIs, and preferably, some sort of plan for how we're going to maintain these TVs in the future because especially at the high end these things are too expensive to be treated like cell phones that don't get updates after a year and a half. But that sure doesn't win any CES awards.)
> be great if they were more modular to a standard
There is actually. The Open Pluggable Specification [1] which is primarily used for digital signage screens. It's a shame consumer TVs don't use this standard (or something similar).
It's like they have two wheels one with names of household appliances on it, the other with popular online services. Then they spin them and build the resulting combination: "toaster with a Facebook Account", "shredder that talks to Instagram", "lava lamp that posts to Reddit" etc.
Their basic "problem" is that existing products in the sector has long since reached saturation, so they are looking at anything that may entice a customer to replace their existing, fully working, product.
Will these household appliances with general purpose CPUs and WiFi chips receive the necessary updates for an entire lifetime? I have a CRT TV that is over 17 years old and still works. Will manufacturers provide even 5 years of security updates? Because if not, the next big vulnerability could mean we're all screwed.
My 2 year old LG TV isn't receiving updates to the webOS anymore, and there are some apps for their store which aren't available for older OSes. I don't know how long I can keep buying 'other devices' like Chromecast/Roku to get around the problem.
70 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 191 ms ] threadAlso:
"Samsung, though it didn’t tout a new processor, promised that all its gadgets, big and small, will be a lot smarter this year—and will, by 2020, be using AI and talking to the cloud."
Fully compliant with all major buzzwords. Also employing a black box user surveillance engine.
The only source I was able to find were random brands from China, and commercial displays from companies like NEC. Unfortunately commercial displays are optimized for longevity and not picture quality :/
If anyone knows where I can get a decent dumb TV please share.
But that's just an anecdote.
For a TV, I got a TCL Roku TV this past Thanksgiving (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06Y6FSV5Q/). It's been pretty good, because TCL just made the hardware (and is good at it), and the OS is Roku. I've heard complaints about it but (and myself find some features very rigid) but Roku's interface is simple and stable. I haven't had an app or the OS crash on me in a month or so.
Those are the best products! :)
I've got newer Vizio's with Chromecasts connected to them... no issues with them being disconnected.
Even if you do keep it disconnected, there's no guarantee that a badly behaved update process or app won't interfere with the normal operation in some way.
I'm sure there do exist models that are perfectly fine in offline mode, but it's still a lot of (very opaque) room for things to go wrong in ways that a "dumb" display won't have.
But, even then it can be annoying. If I happen to press on the smart key on my remote, by mistake, the TV then takes ages to check that indeed there is no connection, with a large and unescapable message dialog.
Bad design decisions all around.
I plug the TV into a HTPC so I really don't need any smart TV feature, ever.
There is really nothing valuable that Android TV could get from manufacturer these days, only potential issues.
Maybe for me it's easier since I just use it as PC projector and watch content from it, don't have set top box connected to it at all.
- Use high end best binned panels (lowest possible image retention for OLED, etc)
- Traditional LCD models would have very high standards for backlight consistency
- Do little to no image processing
- Be designed around being hooked up to external media boxes
- Have a nice modern OSD text
- Allow you to use your phone as a remote via Bluetooth (and control other media center components via IR cables and HDMI commands)
- Not have any means of internet connection or any other smart functionality whatsoever
Effectively, they’d be to TVs as studio monitor headphones are to audio. Enthusiasts would jump all over something like this despite inflated prices, I have no doubt.
Have several studio monitors. Can confirm.
if they priced dumb TVs higher than their smart TVs, it would signal the negative value of the "smarts" in the TV, so they don't want to do that.
so none of the electronics manufacturers really want to sell dumb TVs to the mass market, since it would be akin to committing corporate suicide (in that particular product category).
of course one way around this is to brand a technical feature (as with sony's trinitron back in the day) and make that carry the value premium in the dumb TV, which would be how you'd approach the enthusiast segment you mention.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/2/16083238/vizio-smartcast-r...
It's missing the "blockchain" and "cryptocurrency" buzzwords.
What's worse, at this point people are so accustomed to the soap opera effect of these features that when they are turned off they think something is wrong. Try it at a friend's or relative's house – change their settings to turn off motion interpolation and noise removal and such, and I'm sure most will start thinking something's wrong with their set. It's sad.
I realize a $2K+ setup is beyond the reach of all but hard core enthusiasts. Especially as Gigabit connection speed availability is all but required. But 4K video will probably remain the standard for the next 4-5 year time frame.
I think the common nerd would love a dumb display with decent calibration etc. out-of-the-box, so he could just connect his favorite media-box and have fun for a reasonable price. But this isn´t where the profits are made!
edit: Because you could just replace your mediabox after a few years, when e.g. netflix stops playing on it. I´m really waiting for a new player who gives us this dumb high-quality display so many nerds are waiting for.
Or have DHCPd map them to static IPs and block those.
Either way, most people on HN can do this... and most TV purchasers aren't even aware that it's an option.
I'd honestly pay extra for _less_ processing: give me a 65" dumb monitor with as little latency as possible, please.
Isn't that what OLED is?
Roughly: Primarily carbon or carbon-hydrogen-based, often complex, molecules. If not naturally occurring in organisms, then made from the same "toolbox".
(The liquid crystals in LCDs generally are organic compounds as well, but traditional LEDs are not, thus the OLED distinction in that case)
From now on, I will interpret this being the first idea floated as the use for some IoT tech as "we have no f'ing clue what we're going to use this for".
Thirty years ago, this problem was perhaps unsolved. Now it's solved in at least two ways, with tablets and voice interactions, and those are better.
Sorry, Sony, Samsung, etc, there is no way my TV, which is in the ENTIRELY WRONG ROOM, is going to wedge its way into my recipe workflow, and if that is the best idea you have, as evidenced by it being the first idea mentioned in this article... you have no ideas. Note how even in the example I quote above, WTF is the TV doing in that interaction flow in the first place? What I should be "asking" what is in the fridge is my cell phone, and by extension since they share OSes, optionally a tablet.
(The core problem here is that Smart TVs are now mature. Ignoring surveillance and privacy issues, what we need are just more responsive UIs, and preferably, some sort of plan for how we're going to maintain these TVs in the future because especially at the high end these things are too expensive to be treated like cell phones that don't get updates after a year and a half. But that sure doesn't win any CES awards.)
Then consumers wonder why due to software support obsolescence that their working TV becomes less functional after a few years.
So it is like Goodyear selling you a car with the tyres that they stop supporting way before the tyre is even close to end of working life.
There is actually. The Open Pluggable Specification [1] which is primarily used for digital signage screens. It's a shame consumer TVs don't use this standard (or something similar).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Pluggable_Specification
Refrigerator with a Twitter account is my personal favorite https://techcrunch.com/2011/06/21/samsungs-lcd-fridge-with-a...
It's like they have two wheels one with names of household appliances on it, the other with popular online services. Then they spin them and build the resulting combination: "toaster with a Facebook Account", "shredder that talks to Instagram", "lava lamp that posts to Reddit" etc.