can someone explain to me why this exists when smart tv's are your only option for 4k anyway? so confused...

[silentbogo]

Oh, and I totally forgot about all those "contraband" Samsung Smart TVs with region lock and online activation
If someone here lives in EU or CIS, you probably know what I'm talking about

 

[P4-630]

Because smart TVs are ad-laden sponsored content monstrosities in a lot of brands, if not all.

Hmm, my new 4K TV doesn't do that. (Philips)

I might see some ads when using youtube on my TV, or is that what you mean.

 

[silentbogo]

Hmm, my new 4K TV doesn't do that. (Philips)

For most electronics it's also region-dependent.
Kinda like prebuilts bundling shitty McAfee suite in US, or ASUS routers bundling questionable Yandex services in CIS.
Some regions have lax rules about ads and crapware. Sometimes so lax, it may turn into advertising diarrhea.

 

[Vayra86]

Get this instead

NVIDIA SHIELD TV 4K HDR

The best streaming media device today with all the amazing features.

www.nvidia.com

I had the first version, best HT'PC' ever. Still managed to sell that off this year (!) for 100 eur, go figure.

The support is pretty good and in home streaming works well, lots of connectivity and networking options.

 

[mtcn77]

I will pretend I didn't hear the sheer ignorance flaunting from the underlines of the question, but there are things not open to boxed solution tv users. They are;

• MadVR,
• SuperXBR 75/100 luma upscaling,
• Bilateral chroma upsampling.
• Streaming over Samsung Explorer which integrates with adblockers,
• Streaming over feature movies not found on "internet service" providers like the "left media".

 

[P4-630]

I utterly hate how just going into the menu I got ads. Its seriosly ridiculous even on high end tv.

Luckily I've never seen such things in the menu on my TV....
(Philips The One 58" (58PUS8505) - Ambilight (2020))

 

[Mussels]

As someone who owns smart TV's: because their software is f*cking garbage

I'd rather have a 42" 4K PC monitor with an nvidia shield than a smart TV

 

[las]

There is a night and day difference between a low to mid-end TV and a high-end one, in terms of how well and responsive apps, and navigation is.
High-end TV's uses fast SoC's with alot of RAM. Cheap ones dont. Even mid-end TV's tend to use slow SoCs with (too) little RAM.

This is the reason why built in apps runs absolutely horrible on some TV's. Hardware is mediocre.
Even using an external box, image quality is not going to be great. When a SoC is too slow, proper motion (interpolation) in 24-30 fps content, is going to be bad.

And this is why I never buy "cheap" TV's.
I would rather get a high-end TV from last year, than going mid-end this year. Often same price, but you will get better hardware 99% of the time, in some cases, ALOT better hardware and apps will run perfectly fine (as in fast, responsive with no crashing)

 

[R-T-B]

it's not just Ads.
my Samsung TVs Storage is 95% filled with forced bloatware.
and the best thing is it can NOT update its firmware since at least 1 year because the storage is completely full and i am not allowed to uninstall all the crap the pre installed.

There's certainly degrees of bad. LG is actually on the low end of bad, based on reports like this. My sympathies for your shitty firmware.

My LG C9 has zero ads and all apps runs flawlessly and fast.

It's the recomended apps on the homescreen, at least for the b9. As said, it's not that bad as you can just avoid the homescreen. It's like a 1/10 on the "evil scale" but it's still there.

Hmm, my new 4K TV doesn't do that. (Philips)

I might see some ads when using youtube on my TV, or is that what you mean.

Some tvs are ad-free, but it's pretty rare today. You may just be lucky.

did the maid take off for a month? Swiffer has a nice duster model thats easy to use.

BTW have you tried to access the OS on that ?

I gave up on the endless dust battle in this room months ago. I swear the stuff oozes out of the ceiling. If I clean it it will be back in 6 hours. That and the OLED surface is sensitive to many common cleaners, leading me to just go "meh, fuck it." Welcome to the pacific northwest.


The OS is LG propietary.

 

[P4-630]

Some tvs are ad-free, but it's pretty rare today. You may just be lucky.

It's a 4K Philips high-end TV from 2020.

 

[R-T-B]

It's a 4K Philips high-end TV from 2020.

Sounds like Phillips did something right then.

 

[phanbuey]

You can turn all the ads off on an LG... it's just a setting in the menu. I have 0 ads.

 

[Bill_Bright]

You can turn all the ads off on an LG... it's just a setting in the menu. I have 0 ads.

^^^THIS^^^

Also, "smart" only comes into play if you are upgrading the firmware of the TV, or if you are using any of the TV's integrated streaming services. But if your "source" is an antenna, cable TV "box", or a separate streaming device like a Roku or Amazon Fire "stick", you can simply disable network access in the TV and block all ads if your can't otherwise disable ads with a menu option.

 

[Splinterdog]

Our LG 4K Smart TV is always connected via ethernet and we watch Netflix, Prime and YouTube, nothing else. I've never seen one ad on the TV, apart from YouTube of course.
I was very sceptical about Smart TVs at first because we were using a dumb 32" HD TV with a small form factor PC connected. We can still do that of course, but the LG is the best TV we've ever had, bar none.
I also disabled auto-updates.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I'll add another reason for why these things exist. It's for the the "smarts" in your SmartTV are shite.
Our main TV is from Samsung and sometimes (wired or wirelessly) the internet connection is so crap that it can't stream for shit.
I posted some pictures in another thread and the download speed is rarely over 5Mbps.
Having another option then, that actually works, makes a huge difference.
I got a FireTV 4k dongle attached to it and it works much much better.

The other reason might be because a third party device supports a service that's not available for your SmartTV platform. Maybe that's not as common as it used to be, but there are still services that are not available on all platforms.

 

[R-T-B]

Also, "smart" only comes into play if you are upgrading the firmware of the TV, or if you are using any of the TV's integrated streaming services.

Or simply follow the on screen setup guide and connect it to the net in the case of a vizio. Then, it will auto update the firmware immediately without asking.

Our main TV is from Samsung and sometimes (wired or wirelessly) the internet connection is so crap that it can't stream for shit.

Humourously, even on my high end OLED, the ethernet port is 100mbit lol. Like that's as bad as the original xbox.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Or simply follow the on screen setup guide and connect it to the net in the case of a vizio. Then, it will auto update the firmware immediately without asking.

Not sure the point of your "Or". Whether it updates the firmware automatically without asking, or you have to select a prompt or menu option that tells the TV to go look for and install the update, those are still both "smart" functions. Even if you have to copy the firmware file to a USB thumb drive you downloaded with your computer, then connect the thumb drive to a port on the TV to install the firmware, that is still a smart feature.

Personally, IMO "smart" has become an over-used, and often misused "marketing" term. Traditionally, a "smart" device simply means it is an electronics device that has the ability to communicate with another electronics device. While typically that means the connection is via a network of some type, it does not have to be - as in the example of the thumb drive. It can also mean a simple wall clock that can sync itself via RF to the NIST time standard at Ft Collins is smart device.

Beyond that, it is all about the "features" and "services" that smart device provides.

I was very sceptical about Smart TVs at first

I was (and still am) very skeptical about smart TVs because many have integrated cameras and microphones and I do not trust they cannot magically turn on by themselves - ether by a bad guy for nefarious deeds, or by the company wanting to collect "anonymized data" (spy?) on us for "legitimate" advertising purposes.

And to R-T-B's point, I don't want any of my smart devices automatically updating themselves without asking. What if the update bricks my TV when I am not around? Will I even know why it suddenly does not work? And besides, I have always been of the mindset, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!". So if working fine, I don't need no stinking firmware update.

 

[R-T-B]

Not sure the point of your "Or".

The point was the "smart" can come into play completely unintentionally on some sets. Sorry if I am driving that a bit hard, I am just a past victim of such a thing.

 

[Bill_Bright]

The point was the "smart" can come into play completely unintentionally on some sets.

Ah! Yes. And I agree. And "victim" is an appropriate term, IMO.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Humourously, even on my high end OLED, the ethernet port is 100mbit lol. Like that's as bad as the original xbox.

String and a tin can would be faster...

 

[80-watt Hamster]

Humourously, even on my high end OLED, the ethernet port is 100mbit lol. Like that's as bad as the original xbox.

Hey, I resemble that remark!

(Home network's still 100-Base)

 

[R-T-B]

Hey, I resemble that remark!

(Home network's still 100-Base)

lol. Believe it or not I was 10base into 2005 or so because my bottleneck was an old school cisco router I was studying the cli of. So I can relate. /OT

 

[Bill_Bright]

Humourously, even on my high end OLED, the ethernet port is 100mbit lol. Like that's as bad as the original xbox.

100Mbps is more than enough. That can easily support two streams of UHD 4K with full surround sound with another 30+Mbps to spare.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Humourously, even on my high end OLED, the ethernet port is 100mbit lol. Like that's as bad as the original xbox.

Same, but I only get 5Mbps out of mine...

 

[R-T-B]

100Mbps is more than enough. That can easily support two streams of UHD 4K with full surround sound with another 30+Mbps to spare.

That's all well and dandy but it's still a dated standard and weird that the wifi link can outperform it, particularly if transfering media files to tv storage