Discussion
We currently have a Toshiba 'smart TV' that's c. 10 years old - now considering replacing it possibly with something a bit newer.
We've no aerial, and no longer use any of the 'smart' features of the TV as most of the apps have been withdrawn. All material comes from an Xbox (DVD/Blu-ray, iPlayer, netflix, Amazon prime, etc...)
Due to past experience with obsolescence of "smart" stuff, I'd prefer not to pay extra for it in a TV. So. does anyone still make decent 'dumb' TVs?
We've no aerial, and no longer use any of the 'smart' features of the TV as most of the apps have been withdrawn. All material comes from an Xbox (DVD/Blu-ray, iPlayer, netflix, Amazon prime, etc...)
Due to past experience with obsolescence of "smart" stuff, I'd prefer not to pay extra for it in a TV. So. does anyone still make decent 'dumb' TVs?
Sounds like you want a monitor, not a TV at all if you've no aerial.
A 'smart TV' is cheaper than a same size monitor in many cases, so no penalty in buying one and just using it as a display.
All the 'smart functionality' of our TV is duplicated by the HDD recorder, so if the apps on our TV became obsolete, we'd just use the TV as a display and renew the recorder/STB. Our recorder is older than the TV.
We could even put in a small PC, Pi or whatever and think of it as internet and not 'TV'.
Or just cast a tablet to it?
A 'smart TV' is cheaper than a same size monitor in many cases, so no penalty in buying one and just using it as a display.
All the 'smart functionality' of our TV is duplicated by the HDD recorder, so if the apps on our TV became obsolete, we'd just use the TV as a display and renew the recorder/STB. Our recorder is older than the TV.
We could even put in a small PC, Pi or whatever and think of it as internet and not 'TV'.
Or just cast a tablet to it?
silentbrown said:
We currently have a Toshiba 'smart TV' that's c. 10 years old - now considering replacing it possibly with something a bit newer.
.....
Due to past experience with obsolescence of "smart" stuff, I'd prefer not to pay extra for it in a TV. So. does anyone still make decent 'dumb' TVs?
At first sight it seems logical that if a TV has some feature missing then it should be cheaper, right? When you look into it though from a manufacturing point of view things work out differently. .....
Due to past experience with obsolescence of "smart" stuff, I'd prefer not to pay extra for it in a TV. So. does anyone still make decent 'dumb' TVs?
It's said that Henry Ford made all of his cars black because that colour of paint dried the quickest and so helped keep costs down. Something similar in cost control terms happens with TV feature sets.
Producing a run of TVs without smart features would require changing the manufacturing process and so require additional tooling and staff. IOW, to make a TV with "less" ends up costing more. It becomes a bespoke product.
Now let's look at consumer behaviour.
Back when smart features were a new thing, and fewer of us had home broadband services, and when services such as Netflix were in their infancy, then smart carried a hefty price premium of anything up to £150.
Prices soon fell. The smart version carried a £50 premium. Then the price step disappeared completely.
In the early stages only the show-offs paid the price premium for smart. These were people buying at the bleeding edge of the tech phase. Later, the £50 buyers were the tail-end of the early adopters. The Internet services had developed enough that it was judged to be worth the extra spend.
We are now in the commodity phase of smart. There's nothing special about it. Everything is smart, even selected sound bars have some streaming capabilities. When smart is everywhere, and at no price premium, then the only fat left to trim is the quality of the TV itself.
Any 'dumb' TV exists because the buyer just wants the cheapest illuminated moving image possible and not because losing smart makes for a better TV. This isn't like paying Porsche or Ferrari extra for a stripped-out lightened version of their best racing models. This is a tin of value soup where it's watery salty crap in a can. It exists only because enough people are either so tight or standards so low that they'll willingly buy utter junk in an already-cutthroat market full of tat.
If you want to make an intelligent TV purchase then just accept that smart is a core feature as much as auto-choke is on a car. It's just a fact of life. Concentrate on the things that make a good TV good: 100Hz panel, full array local dimming backlight, 10-bit panel, good light output and great contrast. Support for Dolby Vision and eARC. Read some reviews at rtings.com Look at the reliability, particularly the poorer reliability of cheaper sets from LG with backlight failures.
Edited by Lucid_AV on Saturday 23 April 13:10
Bit of info for OP. If ,like me you like to check up on news via BBC1/2 and text, be aware that a few makers have decided that on modern Smart TV they will no longer provide this. Some months ago our Samsung flat screen ( non smart) went PHUTT. As we only use the TV to play recorded stuff from our two old Set top boxes, I would have resorted to the old Panasonic CRT set I still have, but Swmbo said NO,and I resorted to another Samsung from Argos. I managed to get it set up ( and these days, forget the "user manual", it's in the set software). Then tried to get Text on the set. I did manage to contact Samsung customer services to get waffle ,then a manager explained that although the "user manual" says Text is available, it's not built in. So when I want to see news on Text, it's back to old tech, an old Humax Set top box.
silentbrown said:
does anyone still make decent 'dumb' TVs?
No. Streaming and smart functionality is a completely normal part of modern life and no manufacturer worth their salt is going to waste money and resources building a TV without any of these features, market it to a teeny tiny audience, and not sell it at a massive premium as a result. Accept it and move on. 
silentbrown said:
We currently have a Toshiba 'smart TV' that's c. 10 years old - now considering replacing it possibly with something a bit newer.
We've no aerial, and no longer use any of the 'smart' features of the TV as most of the apps have been withdrawn. All material comes from an Xbox (DVD/Blu-ray, iPlayer, netflix, Amazon prime, etc...)
Due to past experience with obsolescence of "smart" stuff, I'd prefer not to pay extra for it in a TV. So. does anyone still make decent 'dumb' TVs?
Unfortunately, 'Smart' features are now part of the standard equipment of anything other than a budget TV and the cost is rolled into the overall selling price whether you like it or not.We've no aerial, and no longer use any of the 'smart' features of the TV as most of the apps have been withdrawn. All material comes from an Xbox (DVD/Blu-ray, iPlayer, netflix, Amazon prime, etc...)
Due to past experience with obsolescence of "smart" stuff, I'd prefer not to pay extra for it in a TV. So. does anyone still make decent 'dumb' TVs?
With a decent remote control system like the Logitech Harmony (now discontinued) you can just use external units (Android/Google TV, Fire TV, Apple TV) and kind of forget that the smart functionality in the TV exists but sometimes it can even impact your general use when the implementation is really bad. I initially had issues with my Sony Bravia (2015) TV that meant slow channel change, EPG locking up and even the speakers muting (due to the Chromecast receiver App in Android TV playing up) that took ages to get fixed with firmware updates.
[quote=Who me ?]Bit of info for OP. If ,like me you like to check up on news via BBC1/2 and text, be aware that a few makers have decided that on modern Smart TV they will no longer provide this. Some months ago our Samsung flat screen ( non smart) went PHUTT. As we only use the TV to play recorded stuff from our two old Set top boxes, I would have resorted to the old Panasonic CRT set I still have, but Swmbo said NO,and I resorted to another Samsung from Argos. I managed to get it set up ( and these days, forget the "user manual", it's in the set software). Then tried to get Text on the set. I did manage to contact Samsung customer services to get waffle ,then a manager explained that although the "user manual" says Text is available, it's not built in. So when I want to see news on Text, it's back to old tech, an old Humax Set top box.
[/quote]
I thought it was pretty common knowledge that the BBC announced the intended closure of their Red Button teletext service? This was after they got screwed over by the Government in the funding negotiations, and the BBC got lumped with the cost of providing free TV licences to pensioners. This was originally a Government pledge, so passing the buck to the BBC was a pretty dirty trick.
Anyway, there was a big protest from the public, and so the BBC did a rethink. However, some TV manufacturers had already responded by planning the withdrawal of the soon-to-be-redundant MHEG feature. They got caught out with the reversal in the decision.
Any smart TV connected to the Internet can get the Red Button services that way. Older devices and those TVs that retained which MHEG can get the via-an-aerial-only text services.
Inevitably there are TVs caught in the middle or where the manufacturer has decided that putting MHEG back in isn't worth it.
For any smart TV with an Internet connection then this isnt an issue.
[/quote]
I thought it was pretty common knowledge that the BBC announced the intended closure of their Red Button teletext service? This was after they got screwed over by the Government in the funding negotiations, and the BBC got lumped with the cost of providing free TV licences to pensioners. This was originally a Government pledge, so passing the buck to the BBC was a pretty dirty trick.
Anyway, there was a big protest from the public, and so the BBC did a rethink. However, some TV manufacturers had already responded by planning the withdrawal of the soon-to-be-redundant MHEG feature. They got caught out with the reversal in the decision.
Any smart TV connected to the Internet can get the Red Button services that way. Older devices and those TVs that retained which MHEG can get the via-an-aerial-only text services.
Inevitably there are TVs caught in the middle or where the manufacturer has decided that putting MHEG back in isn't worth it.
For any smart TV with an Internet connection then this isnt an issue.
Lucas Ayde said:
Unfortunately, 'Smart' features are now part of the standard equipment of anything other than a budget TV and the cost is rolled into the overall selling price whether you like it or not.
......
What is the cost of the 'smart features'?......
A bunch of aps, which the content providers probably pay the TV maker to install?
A wifi and ethernet interface and a bit of processing. That sort of functionality can be bought for the price of a round of drinks retail, so probably costs the TV maker a few dollars.
I doubt there's much of a business case for non-smart TV.
5 years ago, I virtually never used catch up TV. Now I us it most weeks, and I think I'm very much the low-user conservative end of TV viewing.
Any TV you buy now ought to still be working in 10 years time, by then I think watching broadcast TV live over the airwaves might be seen as a rarity.
[quote=Who me ?]If ,like me you like to check up on news via BBC1/2 and text,...
[/quote]
No aerial
But, understood: basically accepting that you can't get a TV without it.. So as long as the TV has a sensible HDMI input I'll be happy,
It's still odd, though: When DVDs were 'the thing' it was impossible to find a decent TV with a built-in DVD player.
[/quote]
No aerial
But, understood: basically accepting that you can't get a TV without it.. So as long as the TV has a sensible HDMI input I'll be happy,
It's still odd, though: When DVDs were 'the thing' it was impossible to find a decent TV with a built-in DVD player.
silentbrown said:
It's still odd, though: When DVDs were 'the thing' it was impossible to find a decent TV with a built-in DVD player.
That's because the DVD mechs that got built in to TVs were incredibly unreliable. Also, the DVD tech was already dated by the time LCD/LED TVs were really taking off. Blu-ray has been around since 2006, and by early 2007 the format battle between it and HD-DVD was over. At the same time Plasma was still the king of TVs and a 50" would have set you back anything from £1500 to £2000. Big screen LCD sets weren't available in those sizes. Within 5 years that all changed, but by then DVD as a format was getting on for 15 years old.
Howard- said:
No. Streaming and smart functionality is a completely normal part of modern life and no manufacturer worth their salt is going to waste money and resources building a TV without any of these features, market it to a teeny tiny audience, and not sell it at a massive premium as a result. Accept it and move on.
I bought a JVC LT-40C590 last year, no smart features at all. It wasn't a concern as it's hooked up to a computer which is much smarter than any TV I've used. £200 doesn't seem like a massive premium for a 40" display.wrong_turn said:
I bought a JVC LT-40C590 last year, no smart features at all. It wasn't a concern as it's hooked up to a computer which is much smarter than any TV I've used. £200 doesn't seem like a massive premium for a 40" display.
Sorry to say this, but what you bought was not a high-performance non-smart TV. The low cost wasn't a direct result of omitting smart features, which is what the OP was after. Your non-smart JVC at a bargain price is a 1080p TV in a world of UHD sets, and it rolled out of a factory belonging not to JVC but to a Turkish company called Vestel. This company bought the rights to stick the JVC badge on its product. The same factories make TVs that they stick on badges for Bush, Alba, Polaroid, Technika, Wharfedale and dozens of other supermarket brands.
A year down the line and the same £200 buys you a Bush 43" Full HD TV with smart features. Same price, same resolution, but bigger screen and smart too.
To show you how little smart features really matter to pricing take a look at this. For £10 more, Argos market a Bush smart TV with a smaller screen (39") and that's not even 1080p resolution. It's HD ready - 1366 x 768 pixels. Smaller screen, lower resolution, yet more expensive. Here's the link
JVC hasn't made its own TVs since 2010, and even then they were nothing to rave about. The sad fact is that there aren't that many companies still making their own TVs. In the UK market it's mostly Samsung, LG, Sony, Philips, HiSense and TCL. Panasonic recently announced they're going to outsource their TV production too. Most of the rest of what's sold here comes from either Vestel or UMC in Europe or one of the equivalent badge operations in China.
Accepting most of what has been said before, the fundamental problem is that TV interfaces have become much more complex (and buggy) in trying to incorporate both smart and recorder features. My Sony A9 is a case in point - the recorder facilities and smart features are far less user friendly than comparable features on an external PVR or Fire stick. It's a bit like phones trying to be do-it-all devices.
Lucid_AV said:
Sorry to say this, but what you bought was not a high-performance non-smart TV. The low cost wasn't a direct result of omitting smart features, which is what the OP was after.
Actually that's very close to what I'm after. Given the screen size we're looking for and viewing distance, 4K is pointless.If it's not "smart" why does it have an ethernet port?
This is certainly annoying. I bought a whiz bang Sony A80J OLED with all the bells and whistles. Within about a week of getting extremely frustrated with trying to be friends with the built in apps, I'd gone back to using my trusty BT Youview box for terrestrial TV and Netflix. And the Nvidia Shield for everything else.
The TV'S built in Google apps are just rubbish, clunky and annoying. All now disabled. TV is now just an excellent dumb monitor.
The TV'S built in Google apps are just rubbish, clunky and annoying. All now disabled. TV is now just an excellent dumb monitor.
silentbrown said:
Actually that's very close to what I'm after. Given the screen size we're looking for and viewing distance, 4K is pointless.
If it's not "smart" why does it have an ethernet port?
The Ethernet port doesn't have to be for a network connection. It could just as easily be the way the TV firmware and country preferences are loaded at the factory. If it's not "smart" why does it have an ethernet port?
I understand you saying that 4K is pointless with certain viewing distances, and I completely agree.
Personally I think the biggest benefit to the newer TVs isn't the resolution, it's the HDR and Wide Colour Gamut that are more noticeable. I would have been very happy to keep 1080p resolution and just improve the panels to proper 10-bit colour and with the brightness capability to do High Dynamic Range full justice. But of course the manufacturers love to sell bigger numbers; more MPH, more Watts, more pixels. So long as it can be quantified regardless of whether there's any real benefit then they're happy. It's idiotic.
Before you pull the trigger on a new 1080p TV though you should really look into these sets in more detail. They're built by cutting a lot of corners. I'm not talking about the fancy features here. The stuff I'm going to mention is the real basic building blocks. Do you remember that thing a few years ago with the horse and pig meat in beef burgers and beef sausages?[ Most sensible folk looked at it and said "[i]well of course it's not 100% beef. How can anyone expect to buy 20 economy beef burgers for £1 and not wonder what they're made from?[/?]" These sorts of economy TVs are a similar case.
I run an audio visual installation business. Part of what I do is installing TV aerials and putting TVs on wall brackets. I see a lot of economy TVs.
With very few exceptions, the pictures they produce are dreadful. I'm not being elitist here because I work with high end OLED and QLED sets. I have supplied and installed plenty of basic TVs for meeting rooms and museum displays, so I am used to specifying on a budget. These economy sets though just go too far.
The first thing I notice after turning down the overplayed sharpness is that faces look plastic. It's like everything has those Instagram filters applied. That's usually a sign of bad video processing along with some colour tone problems. In the world of PC peripherals here are a lot of budget PC monitors that have been able to reduce the panel cost by ditching 8-bit colour and using 6-bit + 2-bit dithering. This is a bad thing. Dithering tries to make a colour that the panel doesn't support by rapidly flicking between two adjacent colours. Standard PC colour used 8-bits for each of the red, green and blue channels. If the monitor can't support that then you lose some colour definition. I'm convinced that the same tech is being used in really cheap tellies.
They do something similar with 4K TVs, but this time its 8-bit+2 which isn't so bad because a lot of what we watch is 8-bit colour anyway. What you have to watch though is that they sometimes describe the panel as 10-bit then add (8+2FRC). That's the sign that the panel isn't a true 10-bit unit.
Back to the economy TVs, the lack of processing power means that the TVs render colour badly, and this may be made worse if the panel isn't full 8-bit. Other areas the video processing reveals the short cuts is with motion. Stuff looks blurred and sometimes it judders too. Fiddling around with the controls can't fix this.
The backlighting shows some problems as well beyond the usual patchiness and backlight glow when dark scenes are displayed. The first thing is the lack of brightness. You'll find yourself having to dim the lights or close the curtains. Next is the colour of that light. A common trick to fool the eye in to thinking the image is to tint the backlight colour and TV colour balance towards blue. It makes the whites look brighter but casts a colour wash over everything else too. As a result there's a loss of colour saturation, particularly in skin tones. Everyone looks pale and colours look washed out. To compensate for that broken thing they then ramp up the colour which gives faces a magenta cast. These TVs lack the sort of colour tone controls of better sets, which means its very difficult to dial out the effects of all the broken stuff.
Where you're trying to buy something decent on a budget then I would look at second-hand TVs. A mid-market LCD set from Sony or Panasonic may have been replaced by something larger with more up-to-date apps or features, but that set will still be a country mile better than the economy Bush or similar.
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