In Defense of Dumb TVs

As a home theater nerd, I’ve hated “smart TVs” since my first flat screen in 2009.

I’m IRRATIONALLY disappointed that there isn’t a Framework 55 I can configure with literally just 1 HDMI 2.1 port, no speakers, and whatever the best panel is from Samsung Display.

Despite standards, all the OEMs manage to completely screw up the process of having a central AVR handling multiple devices.
Handshakes? MAYBE
ALL the features you paid for working? NOPE
Consistent behaviors? HELL NO

I swear it’s like cable companies are almost out of the stone age with their set top box UI and TV’s are like “Hold my beer”.

I literally want to pay for the screen quality, not a bunch of stuff that is fine for most people (Except for smooth motion).

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I would so hard give Framework more of my money of their next product category is a dumb and/or modular TV.

Could they design a TV that will accept a FW13 mainboard? Could they design a (cheaper) FW13 mainboard with an low-end (Arm or maybe Atom/Celeron) SoC on it that will enable both a “Google TV” module for the TV but also a low-power low-budget variant of the FW13?

Yeah I’m firmly in the “smart tvs are stupid” camp. Always been of the opinion that any “smartness” should be brought in by the consumer and not packaged. That basically applies to all smart devices, including cars.

I’ve been looking around for a decent dumb 65" tv for the boardroom at work and just can’t find anything other than displays that are double the price of a projector. Knowing my end users I can hardly trust them to press the on button on the current setup, let alone navigate a smart tv interface.

A Framework Panel with customisable IO cards would be a god send, doesn’t need sound or anything fancy, I just want to display things.

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You should try being the AV guy in a scientific establishment - these guys just don’t read the instructions pasted to the wall beside the ON switch. A colleague of mine got very frustrated because nobody would read the instructions and then call him up when he was half way across campus, and of course, all such calls were ‘URGENT’ because they hadn’t allowed enough time to set up for their video conference.

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Oh I can believe it haha, something about using tech at work causes people’s reasoning to fly out the window.

No, this wasn’t a case of using tech, it was a case of a roomful of PhDs of several disciplines just not reading the instructions. The higher qualified they were the less likely they were to read anything that told them what to do.

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I hate how true this is.

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As one of those idiots, my most sincere apologies for our reading comprehension skills :joy:

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

The catch is that there would be no extra dollars. Smart TV makers get a lot of income from selling your data, so much so that a dumb TV would likely cost MORE than a smart TV. The loss of that income stream would exceed the reduction in cost of the TVs.

Vizio has released financial data that makes it clear in their case. Vizio barely makes any money selling TVs. Nearly all their profits come from selling customer data.

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When I go to the cinema, it has a big screen. I don’t like sitting at the front because the screen is too big and I cannot take in everything. Also, the back of a cinema is too far away. There is a sweet spot somewhere in the middle. Similarly, sitting in my TV room at home. There is a sweet spot distance away from it. Similarly for a laptop screen watching a movie, there is a sweetspot distance away.
If I had a laptop screen that did HDR and could exactly match the various movie/tv frame rates (24, 25, 30 fps etc), i would probably ditch the TV and just use a laptop.