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A comment on My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force me to use a new app. Parent comment

Re:My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force ... by userbinator on Sunday April 01, 2018 @01:37PM (#16729425)
The best alternatives were super large monitors (way over the price of a TV, and with no decent sound built in), or corporate display panels (for advertising, signage, etc) whose prices are also way above a TV and include no sound system at all.

I wonder how big the market is for "dumb" TVs priced lower than smart ones --- given that the development costs, if any, for one would be much lower since you're basically just asking an OEM to combine existing parts (panels and electrics), perhaps it could be a startup opportunity to sell "the TV you watch" --- essentially big monitors with speakers and tuners and nothing else. Some things they could advertise:

    - absolutely no data collection
    - zero boot-up time
    - near-instant control response
    - no software requiring constant upgrades or maintenance
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Re:My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force ... by freedomben on Sunday April 01, 2018 @02:24PM (#16729696)
What you say makes sense, but I wonder if the amount of money they make re-selling our data would allow them to actually undercut the cost required to produce a "dumb" TV. So it's possible it would cost more for a dumb TV because it isn't subsidized by data reselling (I'm purely speculating here. I would guess dumb TVs would drive down the cost of smart TVs as they eat into their profit margins to maintain market share, which is important to the value of their data).

Nevertheless, a dumb TV marketing to me like that evokes an immediate "take my money!" response.

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Re:My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force ... by kalleboo on Monday April 02, 2018 @12:25AM (#16732328)
Not only selling data, but selling pre-installed app slots as advertising. Sure they won't be able to convince Netflix or YouTube to pay to have their apps pre-installed on the home-screen, but other wannabe streaming platforms would probably be happy to cough up
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Re:My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force ... by ricardobeat on Sunday April 01, 2018 @03:28PM (#16729970)
I doubt that would be any cheaper. Something like that would already have an ARM processor inside for all the digital housekeeping, the cost to bump specs a bit and make it run an embedded OS and GUI are likely extremely low.

The boot time is something that has irked me forever, and it seems the culprit is the HDMI protocol itself, so that wouldn't be improved either.

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Re:My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force ... by PeterStuer on Monday April 02, 2018 @03:13AM (#16732880)
They would be more expensive, same as buying a laptop with no bloatware is more expensive than its loaded equivalent. Manufacturers/Labels/distributors get kickbacks from the bloatware companies per install so they can afford to reduce the price of the machine vs a 'clean' system.
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Re:My Sony "smart" TV has updated itself and tried to force ... by bognition on Sunday April 01, 2018 @08:30PM (#16731380)
Why would a dumb tv cost less than a smart one? Presumably the manufacturers are making money on each sale because of the ad tech. So wouldn't TV's without the tech cost more?
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