Edit: thank you for all the kind suggestions! 🩷 I ended up keeping my current TV for now. I was this 🤏 close to buying a 48 inch LG B6E. Just before heading to the store, I got cold feet and decided to look through the settings of my current TV again. It’s a 43 inch Panasonic 6700 from 2020. I don’t know how I didn’t realize this until now, but I was actually able to remove ALL preinstalled apps, which made the TV way snappier. I also found, after an unreasonable amount of digging, that there is a setting under input sources - HDMI 1 called HDMI Ultra HD that was TURNED OFF by default. 😱 My only gripe with my Panasonic is that it emits a lot of heat. When I checked out the LG earlier today, it barely felt hot at all… Well well… The heatwave is passing anyways, so… 😅
While I would relish the opportunity to live the rest of my life with a CRT TV, those are unreasonably expensive, being vintage and whatnot… :(
For circa five years, I have been debloating, deslopping and deshittifying my smartphones. Is this something that can be done on a modern TV too?
Preferably, I’d skip all that and instead buy a no slop, no bullshit TV. I want it to have an HDMI port, next gen picture quality and a size of 43 inches, give or take. No budget limitations as of yet. Hit me with your best shot!
Slop/bullshit = apps, AI, anything not directly related to playing motion pictures over HDMI.
I think the cool kids today buy commercial “displays” (used for things like advertising in retail areas). They don’t have smart functions. They don’t connect to the internet. There’s no tuner. You’d have to bring your own antenna, media player, HTPC, whatever to send it content, but it’s 100% under your control.
The other option is a computer display - there are pretty large ones that act the same (probably just a commercial display in a different box for a different market). The prices weren’t historically that high if you didn’t need absurdly high resolution and refresh rates (gamer stats - irrelevant for general tv watching).
I haven’t tracked any specific brands for years so can’t give a specific recommendation, but I’d suggest looking for second hand. If a store goes out of business their displays will be cheaper than anything you get directly from a distributor.
If that’s a dead end, you can still look at a bloated smart TV. Just don’t connect it to the internet, ever. Generally the same result as using a simple display, except the bundled remote will probably have a bunch of stupid buttons you’ll never use. My tv has a huge Netflix button and every time o accidentally press it I get a giant ad to buy Netflix 🙄
I’ve checked out a few of those digital signage displays, and I’m curious to hear about people’s real experience with them.
A lot of them run Android as their OS and have LAN/WiFi built in for screen sharing, or programming a rotating display.
Which means they’re just as “smart” as TVs, and might be as annoying to turn on/off and change modes.
They’d certainly have fewer intrusive ads, since businesses wouldn’t be very happy with ads running on top of their ad boards, but would the rest be any better?
Again, curious what people’s actual experience is.
There are some that have a Raspberry Pi integrated for the smart features, so you can just put whatever OS you want on it.
Yeah, I looked it up recently and a lot of them are no longer what they used to be. You take a gamble on quality too, since a lot of them weren’t really intended to do more than show static images or simple animations. And they’re not exactly cheap either.
I hate smart TVs, but just about every TV is one these days. Sure you can get a computer monitor, but good luck finding a 50’ computer monitor for the living room (and if it wasn’t disgusting enough, I’m starting to see more and more “smart monitors” too).
Best option at this point is just to focus on the specs, make sure it’s not a pain in the ass to change inputs, and never ever connect it to the internet. Ever.
Don’t buy a Vizio, I’ve heard they’re annoying about not being connected. And don’t buy anything that runs Roku.
At least you wouldn’t have ads on them. Which Might make up for any smarts. Might just be paying a couple hundred $ more for an ad free experience that doesn’t actually need Internet to work.
Thanks! I’ll look into these larger PC monitors and I guess “digital signage displays”, as the other commenter pointed out. 😊
I think the question is if any of the commercial displays actually have good image quality? As you say it’s often used for advertisements and in retail areas, and I’d expect that mean image quality doesn’t matter that much, just that it’s cheap.
If budget isn’t an issue I would strongly recommend going for something with an OLED display (but not QLED). I have owned 3 generations of LG OLEDs now, and I have to say that picture quality is absolutely amazing. Though I have to admit that the software just have gotten worse with each generation. Mostly you can avoid it if you’re not using the built in apps but unfortunately there are quite a lot of issues with HDMI-CEC as well. It works well with my Apple TV, but sometimes there’s some weird behaviour with other devices, like a Switch or PS5. I’d live with that if the alternative is some cheap LCD variant though.