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Comment by solardev | Hacker News Reader

PC monitors are dramatically more expensive though. A regular 55 inch TV is like $300-$500, a monitor that size is gonna be thousands of dollars. (Edit: And you can usually tinker with the color profiles or just turn on Game Mode if you hate the enhancements. It'll never get as close as a properly calibrated PC monitor with ultra color range or whatever, but it's fine for entertainment.)

Same with the Shield, it's like $150-$200 while a Chromecast with Google TV is $50 and does pretty much the same thing. Either would be a huge upgrade over integrated smart TV UIs.

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There are "dumb TVs" - https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-buy-a-dumb-tv-and-wh...

I have latest LG OLED and I would have hapilly paid more for to get it without smarts built in. Using it with attached Apple TV and the experience is sublime when compared to the builtin crap.

You can also just get any regular "smart" TV and never set up its wifi. I plugged in my Chromecast as soon as I got it, and never used the TV's built-in stuff. It works fine and has no ads or anything. It just boots directly into the Chromecast.

that's the only way.

except using a chromecast is just undoing what you thought you had accomplished.

I don't care about the tracking, if that's what you mean? The TV UIs are just so slow and bloated and terrible. The Chromecast is a little faster. Apple TV is even more performant, but their content hierarchy and recommendations suck compared to Google.

I think the Shield was nice for a while too but then Nvidia started adding their own ads.

The Chromecast with Google TV's as close to a "Pixel for TV" as we're gonna get, I think. Wish they'd make a version with a faster processor though. The current model is still noticeably laggy.

> then Nvidia started adding their own ads

It has definitely been paper cuts on my shield I've had for a long time (2018?)

Originally awesome, but then the last major Android update added the advert banner. It was defended because it basically only showed adverts for shows and movies.

In the past fortnight it has started showing other adverts, perfume I think.

People forget how much the cost of a SmartTV is subsidized with the data collection. PC monitors are not doing that, yet. I'm guessing refresh rates and some other features are playing into the pricing difference, but without them being subsidized with your analytics, it's unlikely they'll ever be as cheap

> People forget how much the cost of a SmartTV is subsidized with the data collection.

People keep saying this with zero proof or evidence.

We used to be able to buy TVs that were pretty nice and intelligent and didn't have all the data collection and they didn't cost that much more. I'd like to be able to buy those again.

Your honor, I'd like to show the jury this link we've marked as Exhibit A to counter the claim of the witness:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22773073/vizio-acr-adver...

Yeah so Vizio made $502.5M in device revenue and $57.3M in Platform+ gross profit.

So if the devices cost 11.4% more that'd compensate for the elimination of Platform+ profit.

And depending on the accounting it could be much less than that since the cost of the devices would go back to being much cheaper if they were just dumb TVs with HDMI ports and no spyware/adware.

So that's about what I thought.

> People keep saying this with zero proof or evidence.

There is so much available data on this subject I assume at this point it is common enough knowledge people don't feel the need to cite sources.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/18/you-wat...

https://tv-watches-you.princeton.edu/

https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/how-to-t...

I'd give them all my viewing data if they'd give me a free TV, lol. In this case it's actually helpful for generating recommendations anyway.

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