I’m considering buying a new TV. There’s plenty of posts about trying to find dumb TVs, comments like ‘just don’t connect it to the internet/network’.

What surprises me is that there isn’t a good overview of (popular) TVs or brands with basic information, answering for each TV:

  • Can you use it as a basic TV by choosing not to enable smart features during setup?
  • Can you opt out by just not accepting a bunch of agreements?
  • Does it have a camera and/or microphone? Where in the device are these? Is there a physical disable switch for microphone?
  • Does it nag when not connected to any network?
  • Does it have higher than normal power usage when not able to phone home?
  • Has it been discovered to connect to public WiFi networks? Does it have the (theoretical) ability to connect to 5G mobile networks?

And similar.

There are extensive lists with a lot of detail about VPN services but nothing like that for TVs. Am I ignorant of a good source, or does this just not exist (yet)?

  • zod000
    4·
    4 hours ago

    So I just bought a brand new “dumb” TV for $150 off of Amazon (43" 1080 Sceptre). It isn’t high end in the slightest, but it IS brand new and not some weird old stock and the picture and sound don’t feel too far off from my significantly more expensive higher end LCD TVs. I wanted one that I could put on a rolling stand and move between a few rooms and saw no benefit to 4k at that screen size. Other than that, there are some decent “digital signage” TVs that were decently priced available as well from Samsung and a few other brands. I didn’t see anything that was OLED, but I was burned hard (quite literally with burn-in) on earlier OLED gear, so I am avoiding it until the prices get low enough that I can be fine with the chance that it will be crap after 4-5 years of use.