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Comment by ska | Hacker News Reader

Readily available at a good premium.

You can sometimes get a great deal on these during liquidation though.

> Readily available at a good premium.

You have this backwards. The consumer "smart" units are subsidized by the monetization of the data they hoover up as you use it. This subsidized price has become accepted as normal price, but they clearly are discounted prices.

Yeah yeah, economy of scale on consumer vs prosumer+ units, but if you really believe that is the sole reason you are sorely mistaken

You are assuming that consumer electronic devices are sold at cost and not at whatever markup that the manufactuer thinks they can get away with.

Nope, you're getting the ad-infested TVs for a good discount.

Well, they're at a discount if your privacy has no value.

You have to decide what's more valuable to you - an extra chunk of money or the privacy which is endangered with the cheaper option.

You do not get to decide because privacy concious options are simply not available at the high end. You'd also need to significantly compromise on quality.

No, they're at a discount period. They're sold for less money.

I really doubt manufacturer lose money on smart tv sales.

I wanted to find a reputable source to back up this claim but instead I found a link from the atlantic. I did not read it, its behind a paywall and its not peer reviewed. The general concensus is that smart = subsidized by adware

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/01/smart...

> I did not read it, its behind a paywall

Browse to the article, click reader mode, click refresh. Might need to be in a private window, in case of cookie shenanigans.

The link simply states that they make a lot of money from the malware on TVs, something I'm not disputing. I am disputing that if I would buy a TV burn it without ever turning it on they manufacturer would lose money. In essence: The ads are simply pure profit on top of the TV sale.

I literally only use my smart tv with external devices. There’s no TV ads I see.

Cool bro. How does this relate to the discussion about whether smart TVs are sold below cost though?

Are you claiming that the delta is entirely covered by the fees payed to manufacturers to add apps, ads, etc?

Yes, how else would it be covered?

By increased margins? Common enough when your target market is not consumer.

Then the equivalent business tvs with no apps wouldn’t be thousands of dollars more.

This is backwards, increased margin would allow exactly that without all of it being covered by increased cogs.

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