Make a dumb tv and I’ll be a buyer
I just want one DP input and I’ll decide how to split my inputs with an outside box. The TV should only decide how to show the picture. I don’t need your YouTube app
Yeah, a dream: dumb TV with awesome modern panel and range of connectivity ports like HDMI, DP, DP over USB-C, composite, scart
Look for “commercial display panels.” They’re 3-4 times the price of a smart TV, but they are just basic TVs. If you find a bank, hospital, clinic, or any other privacy focused business that’s going out of business you can generally pick those used displays up pretty cheap.
However, the image quality of those displays is usually worse compared to home displays. This is from a technical who works with these products.
Can’t you just use any modem TV and not hook it up to the interwebs?
I believe more and more TVs require network connection for setup.
I used an Ethernet cord for what they made me set up, then unplugged that and have never connected it again.
They will still have those garbage “smart” menus.
What are garbage smart menus that can’t be avoided?
I’m not being funny. I’m still on a Panasonic last gen thin plasma FHD but thinking of upgrading to a LG C5 OLED when they are on final sale when this year models are rolling out. I’m only watching movies through the box connected to it.
Android TV is absolute garbage. It’s horrible to use with a remote, is full of ads, and is somehow sluggish on a 1.5GHz quad core.
I usually do this but would still prefer a dumb TV, mainly to reduce the possible points of failure
ive heard: buy one made for business
there’s a lot more options there, that dont have ads, etc
I used to have a TCL soundbar.
In addition to being extremely mediocre, it promised to integrate with my WiFi so that music could be airplayed through it. After adding it to my WiFi, it still broadcast the open ‘setup’ WiFi network.
If you joined the setup network, you could SSH into the soundbar as root without a password and dump the dhcp.conf file, which would give anyone access to my home WiFi network. Other TCL models also allowed for root via SSH, but used 12345678 as the password. A skilled hacker could just bot these via wardriving and turn them into network listeners.
It may have still broadcast the setup network because I blocked the device from accessing the internet. I only ever went poking around on it because I noticed that the setup network kept getting set to the same channels as my home network and it was causing interference. I eventually just factory reset the device so it had no information on it at all.
After the umpteenth time of not being found by my TV, a hard reset killed it. Just got stuck booting and never recovered.Anyway - crap brand. Sad day for Sony TV fans.
TCL might not make a good sound bar,but I’ve never seen a bad TCL tv. Are they as nice as Sony? Hell no.
Do they cost 1/4 the price? Yep.
Edit: also, PlayStation is the only profit maker for Sony.
And TCL has been making displays for all of the major OEMs for years now.
Playstation is nowhere near the only profit maker for Sony https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/pdf/25q2_sony.pdf (from https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/archive.html)
Read about that boot issue and how it starts as a “full storage” message. Also how it was outside the warranty period for most cases, so you end up with a literal brick. I’d be pissed if my TV died just a few years in.
Crazy. I have a Sony XBR 46” lcd that’s almost 20 years old. It still looks great for what it is (1080p and all). It was a top of the line tv back in the day that’s held its own for a very long time. It’s sad to see great companies/products fail.
Yes, but about 5 years or so ago sony started cheaping out on quality. You used to pay more for a Sony but the TV was better and more reliable than other brands. As of late, they still charged more, but they were just as likely to break or have problems than any other cheaper TV.
20 years ago is when LCD’s got good enough compared to CRTs and plasma.
Not as good but I still have my $1k 40” Sony tv. It’s good enough I don’t think about how much better my OLED is when watching it.
In 2010 the pioneer and Panasonic plasmas had no rival in the tv space. LEDs were far from comparable. LEDs were cheaper mostly, which helped their adoption.
I didn’t say comparable. I said good enough.
That’s a shame. I’ve had very good experiences with Sony upper mid range/lower high end TVs. Their image processing is second to none IMO, they seem to use more powerful CPUs than a lot of other android TV makers, and their use of AndroidTV means I can trivially customise my TV in a way that I can’t with lots of other brands (strip out ads, basically).
Shit, my oldest daughter moved into a flat with friends when she started uni not long ago, and took my old 2007 42" 1080p Bravia that I bought all those years ago. She hadn’t even been born yet, and it still looks shockingly good.
This is sad news.
The verge is a garbage paywall site now
The worst thing about ‘smart TVs’ is that they advertise so many ‘cool’ features but most of them have less performant processors and less ram than my 2019 budget galaxy a series phone, and that’s very telling, you can’t even use their dog shit built in web browsers since everything becomes outdated after like a week, and the performance is so bad that the expensive Hisense tv my dad bought back in 2020 can’t even load Google properly.
Sony’s modern OLEDs are sick. There are a few between my family, and they have the best processing I’ve seen, they decode massive bluray rips no problem, and native options for a clean ad-free UI.
Why TF aren’t people buying them?
Probably because they’re quite expensive
TV
2026
Honestly, don’t remember the last time I watched TV
Do you think the only thing TVs are used for is watching traditional terrestrial TV? Lol
I only watch extraterrestrial TV.
It’s the main purpose of them, yes. Define TV to me. I don’t see the point of paying for decoders, smart TV and bunch of other things I’ll never use, much smarter decision is to buy a monitor which focuses on image quality and performance, far more suitable for consoles, Roku, etc.
Commenter above low-key described that OLED as a monitor more than a TV
is your cell phone battery mostly consumed supporting phone calls
Well, the top killer is Boost, which is a client for Lemmy, sitting at 1/3 battery usage.
TCL TVs are fine for the price, but you use a TV with more processing power than whatever hamster wheel TCL uses and you get real lusty real fast. Painfully slow, unresponsive UI.
I went from Sony, Samsung, and LG to now buying TCL. At under $1000 for a 65", they’re the best option.
Anything under $1500 I’d bet on TCL. Keep in mind TCL manufacturers a great chunk of the worlds LCDs that aren’t just for TCL. Pretty sure they bought LGs LCD plants. Maybe Samsung too.
Their TVs have a lot of dimming zones. Sony I don’t think makes LCDs or OLED panels themselves. At least one line of their TVs use TCL panels already. They buy from others
Here’s a review for the model that came out last year. At this point where’s it’s regularly on “sale” for $1000. TVs are MSRP for like half a year and then the discounts always seem to me to be happening
https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/tcl/qm8k
1,680 dimming zones in the 65" model and from what I’ve read, the global models are usually one year behind China. So in 2025 China had TCL TVs with even more dimming zones. 8 years ago sub $1000 65" with array LED backlight zones were like 100-200 zones. OLED were incredibly better and would kill off LCDs when prices came down. The density of dimming zones I think progressed faster than people expected
So TCL has solid image processing while Sony has great image processing but not so much better for me to think it’s worth it. Same with the $1000-2000 mini-led backlit LCDs vs OLED. Yes OLED looks better. Don’t feel like it’s large enough for me to go much higher than a $1000 TV. That’s a reality for home theater brands today. TVs, speakers, receivers/amplifiers, headphones, mics, etc - there’s good stuff at low prices.
Everyone’s competing on value now. There used to always be rumors about a Apple TV (actual TV) and Apple EVs. Never hear about rumors for those anymore. Don’t think the quality difference possibility and profit margins exist to make those appealing anymore for Apple. Sony like Apple is increasingly a services/media company.
Samsung - Tizen sucks. I don’t recall how LG and WebOS looks, but to me Tizen is leagues above Android and Roku in making your TV into a loud billboard. At least Android you can install a different launcher.
Besides the paywall.
It doesn’t sound to me that this is making Sony go away from a market, it just sounds like they’ll still be involved.
Indeed, article makes it sound like both brands are putting their TV business into a new joint venture. Hardly the same as exiting the market.
I remember when Sony was THE brand, not? Meh
Its funny because all these grand Japanese OEMs like Sony and Panasonic got undercut by Korean rivals like LG and Samsung in the 2000s, which forced Sony to move further into exclusively high priced devices and for many other OEMs to leave the US or global market.
Now TCL and HiSense are undercutting the grand Korean OEMs, which is slowly forcing them out of the low-middle end market.
I upgraded from a 20+ year old Phillips LCD to TCL’s QM8K, and the display technology for being a QLED panel is astounding. It looks 95% like a high quality OLED for a fraction of the cost.
Only downside is Google TV (Junk Android that you have to debloat a bit) and for some reason the TV can’t passthrough Dolby Atmos from app players like Kodi, even though it can do DTS-X just fine. I’m pretty sure the second issue is just a software bug, but TCL has been taking ages to respond. Pass through from an external source works perfectly fine though.
If you’re in the market, I highly recommend seeing it in person at a hardware/electronics store. The side by side comparison is insane.
The only negative thing about my TCL tv is that it’s running Google tv launcher. I replaced that with Projectivy.
We need Graphene for tv!
Absolutly nothing Sony, TCL or any of that garbage will ever be in my home. Or any of the advertising supported TV’s. Nope.
What brand do you use of you don’t mind sharing?
Right? That leaves no TVs. I can’t really think of any TVs that are ad-free, or are guaranteed to be ad free in future.
Personally I’ve been getting android TV boxes and installing a custom (and free) launcher on it, and using SmartTube for ad-free YouTube.
Not your traditional TVs but look and see if you can get some TVs aimed at venues / advertising. I can see an LG IPS display, 98 inch for sub 10k AUD including shipping (98UM5J-B).
Phillips, LG, Samsung and others offer commercial panels without the rubbish that consumer panels are infected with these days.
Not OP but I bought a 45" LG UltraGear gaming “monitor” a while back that’s basically just a TV, no smart anything etc. Right now the only ones I see after a quick search are curved though, mine is flat.
So… on the customer market only PlayStation needs to flop and Sony is gone forever
Those long lists are mostly full of everything but consumer electronics: semiconductors, gaming studios, movie studios, TV networks, music labels… heck even real estate is on there. So they kinda have a point when it comes to consumer electronics (which is what I think they meant with “customer market”).
The current Sony has little to do with the one from the 80s, 90s or even early 2000s… In addition to the PlayStation they are strong in imaging (photo and video cameras) I think, but little else, and those products no longer have mass appeal (they are getting high-end- and pro-focused). Vaio, Xperia, Bravia, Walkman… gone or on life support. Browse their site and there’s a handful of products left, as good as they might be (which I don’t know).
