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.

- 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.

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.

Have several studio monitors. Can confirm.

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.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/2/16083238/vizio-smartcast-r...

I plug the TV into a HTPC so I really don't need any smart TV feature, ever.

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.

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.

Those are the best products! :)

It's missing the "blockchain" and "cryptocurrency" buzzwords.