> It's basically a linux computer with a huge screen
Why would I want a Linux computer with a huge screen?
I just want a huge screen.
I’ll provide my own connected devices, independent of the screen.
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Well, you can make it a PC and then turn it off, I guess. Then let the rest of us have all the fun.
It sounds like you still want a smart TV, just with control.
Which is fine.
But for many people, we just want a monitor, maybe with speakers (I personally am fine also separating this).
I prefer separation of concerns — if I want to attach a computer to my TV, I’ll do that as a search device.
Why have a dependency on the TV hardware, when I can attach upgradable parts?
> But for many people, we just want a monitor,
> you can make it a PC and then turn it off
TV manufactories can get the best of both worlds: The people that want smart TVs, get a smart TV. The people that don't want a smart TV, can disable the smart TV features. Manufactors make one model and sell to both market segments.
Why should your preferences impose on the ones that don't want what you want? I guess the preferred way would be for manufactors to have add a feature where the tv prompts you if you want to enable smart features when you boot the tv for the first time, but it's a bit difficult when manufactors get more money when they have these features enabled by default.
> Why should your preferences impose on the ones that don't want what you want?
The problem is that I can’t have my preference: a TV that comes without (non-essential) software installed.
This means I have no choice but to deal with required updates — or at the very least, an annoying reminder that software updates are needed — for software I never wanted in the first place.
If the software was optional — could be uninstalled, or disabled so that updates weren’t required — then I would agree with you that having all TVs be smart TVs would be fine.
But not only is it not optional, it often comes with dark patterns of imposed privacy violations and/or unwanted ads.
The OP’s solution is to “jailbreak” it with a Linux install, which the average consumer doesn’t know how to do.
Again, is fine for hackers that want to tinker with things, but the whole point of the linked article is that many people are tired of smart TVs and the annoyances that come with them.
A monitor has a processor in it that is running an OS and software. These are digital devices. The nit you're picking is silly.
If you want to buy a bare LCD panel, they're cheap. But you're going to have to add a processor to it that runs an OS (which you're free to write yourself, along with the driver) in order for it to understand any input. All that slapped together is what we call a monitor, or a television.
If you want an analog television, they'll pay you to haul it off from wherever you see it, but you're going to have to add an external computer to it in order to process the digital information that you want to display into waveforms that you can push over coaxial cables.
Not wanting a "smart tv" means people don't want a smartphone for a television, an OS that they don't have any control over. If you want to make up another definition, you're going to have to set limits to acceptable RAM, clock speed, number of processors, and I don't know why you would waste your time doing that. The number, however, will never be zero for any of these things.
It's not necessary for a display to have an operating system.
They make fixed-function chips in factories every day that do stuff like convert video signals from one format to another (including formats that LCD panels can deal with).
Like the TFP401. For illustration, here is one on a board, ready to plug into an LCD panel and use for whatever: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2218
It doesn't run an OS. It's barely even programmable, and the programmability it does have relates only to configuring pre-defined hardware functions. It doesn't have an instruction set. It can't add 1+1.
But it can bridge the gap between a consumer device that produces video and a fairly bare LCD panel. It's a very much a single-tasker.
(Do any of the current crop of consumer-oriented televisions and computer monitors use this kind of simple pathway? Most assuredly not, which is the complaint that brought us here to begin with.
But these pathways exist anyway. It's completely possible to to create an entire video display and house it in a nice-looking package, put it in a retail box, and sell it on store shelves without involving an operating system. It's not a technological limitation.)
Because if you own a TV manufacturing company, you can sell more TVs if they have more features. You can get more features by including a linux SBC and integrating it. In fact, some of the paid-app makers will even _pay you_ for this "real estate". You could make a dumb-tv, but you wouldn't sell as many and you would have to charge more.
> and you would have to charge more
Non-commodity consumer products are rarely sold at cost but rather at whatever price the market will bear.
And the market will bear a lower price for a product with fewer features
Why wouldn't you want it to be a computer? Then it can be connected to your devices AND also do the job itself in a situation where it's awkward to connect to a device.
If already needs a computer in it to drive menus / modern display protocols. Having that computer be powerful enough to also decode content is barely an extra cost.
A rooted piece of trashy IOT is trashy IOT. It's an acquired taste, the excitement of putting a black box insecure linux device on the home network to add to your home infra admin duties.
A rooted computer is the opposite of a black box. This makes no sense.
Rooting gets you additional means to reverse engineer the proprietary software system but doesn't automagically lighten the box.
It's all relative of course, maybe you view anything you can Ghidra as not-black-box. (though this is kind of tangential to rooting - for a many/most devices you can get a hold of the blobs to reverse engineer without rooting anything)
If someone can get access to the TV on your local network, you're already in trouble.
> Why wouldn't you want it to be a computer?
Because I can then easily upgrade my computer without upgrading my TV.
Do you have to upgrade your computer when you upgrade your router?
This entire subthread is not computer-literate. Your monitor contains a computer. A dumb display contains a computer. Your keyboard contains a computer.
You can strip the software down on them so they do nothing but take commands and drive whatever electronics you have attached to them, but it will still be software on a computer. If there's a lot of RAM and a fat processor, like on a rooted smart TV, I might (but not necessarily) make it do a little more than that.
For the same reason I don't want a self-heating mug.
Why wouldn't you want that? Genuinely curious
Modularity and separation of concerns can extend into other domains than software.
For me, it seems so much simpler to keep the two separate. You won't be forced to wash the heating element every time you wash the cup. Can't heat a different cup while the other is in the dishwasher, unless all your cups are self-heating. Normally, the only way for a cup to break is if it shatters, but with an inbuilt heater there's electronics that can break too. And should the cup shatter, now the heater is unusable too, or vice versa.
Exactly!
I have to have a kettle for other purpose (including heating water for other mugs than mine), and no self-heating mug is going to be as efficient as a kettle to heat water.
Furthermore, I also put cold or room temperature liquids in my mug. With a self-heating one, I would be carrying the heating parts for absolutely no reason.
Same goes for a TV. By keeping things separated, I can decide what I do which each device and manage their lifecycle separately. If the device reading video files is included in the TV, I can't plug it to another TV or a projector or even take it with me to use it elsewhere. While I've upgraded three times my video playing device to follow tech evolution, I've kept the same TV to plug them in.
I have a multi-purpose kettle that I can use to boil water, heat the room, cook a small amount of food, or use as a sand battery for when its cold in the desert, where the kettle is designed to operate as long as there is a handful of material to burn.
It is fair to observe a separation methodology, but I also have to say, in some cases multi-purpose devices have their place.
If, say, the self-heating mug involved solar harvesting, I'd put a couple in my kettle bag, for sure.
But like, a coffeemaker is a thing.
You can make coffee with a kettle, but if you are making enough coffee often enough, it does make sense to bundle a second kettle into a dedicated coffeemaker, even if you are reducing the functionality of it by doing so.
It's a thing and it's convenient as a smart TV is convenient for people who don't care much.
But as a "power user" of a TV, I want to compose my own setup.
In the same way, "power users" of coffee don't use a coffeemaker. They use things like French press.
(I use instant coffee myself in my non-heating mug so in this comparison I would be the person not owning a TV and watching everything on their phone?)
Arguably the outcome you’d want there is to be able to add your own kettle to the coffee maker, so you can have the best value/option for you if you want it. Want a cheap thing or none? Fine. Want one with remote start and modded temp controls or whatever? Fill your boots. Got a new coffee part but like the existing kettle? Reuse it.
This applies less for some physical items, I know some people are already preparing to explain why it’d be harder to make or dangerous or something but that would miss the point. Computers are incredibly easy to swap out, we already have so many ways of doing that.
Maybe I want a fast computer. None. Maybe I want to upgrade later. Maybe in a year there’s a faster cheaper one. Maybe mine is just fine right now but I need a new screen. Why do I need to bundle the two things together? There’s a simplicity for users unboxing something but there’s not (I think) an enormous blocker to having something interchangeable here.
The microwave in my house is built into the oven.
This provides absolutely zero advantages to the oven or to the microwave. It does cause a lot of stupid, easily foreseeable problems:
- There's only one control panel, and if the oven is currently active, some of the microwave controls get disabled.
- The microwave is awful in various ways -- regardless of whether the oven is active -- which wouldn't ordinarily be a problem, because microwaves are very cheap. But...
- It's impossible to replace the microwave, a $50 device, without simultaneously replacing the oven, a $2000 device.
Most likely it will not be dishwasher safe.
> Why wouldn't you want it to be a computer?
The same reason I don't want anything else in my life to be a computer. A computer is one more component that can fail and take down the whole product. I want my computer to be a computer and that's it.
How about the abdysmal security Smart TVs either have right of the shelf or for certain after they are no longer kept up-to-date? I don't want to worry having my TV act either as botnet or spying device (many come with microphones and cameras nowadays). I rather purchase additional device that has decent security that I can attach to the TV if I need to.
Yeah, I'd absolutely agree here. The article didn't "miss" this option. It just isn't relevant here.
I feel you, that's exactly why I was using only monitors before! I got convinced to go for this as an acceptable compromise with much more control than some proprietary backend.
Begs the question, how long before smart monitors.
Unfortunately, they already exist - the M-series smart monitors, made by Samsung (who else?). They made a splash a few months ago when they started showing popups over people’s screen content nagging them to update or register for some service during the normal monitor-like usage