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Incubator Q&A

Welcome to the staging ground for new communities! Each proposal has a description in the "Descriptions" category and a body of questions and answers in "Incubator Q&A". You can ask questions (and get answers, we hope!) right away, and start new proposals.

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Incubator Q&A How do I find a good dumb TV?

A lot of TVs on the market these days are "Smart TVs" which I don't want. I've had smart TVs in the past and found that I don't use any of their features. Further, the software is often laggy, bugg...

2 answers  ·  posted 2mo ago by matthewsnyder‭  ·  last activity 9d ago by Spamalot‭

#1: Initial revision by user avatar matthewsnyder‭ · 2024-03-10T21:23:13Z (2 months ago)
How do I find a good dumb TV?
A lot of TVs on the market these days are "Smart TVs" which I don't want. I've had smart TVs in the past and found that I don't use any of their features. Further, the software is often laggy, buggy and gets in the way. Moreover there are concern about privacy and ads.

When shopping for a new TV, how do I find a non-smart TV? Are there specific manufacturers or stores that specialize in them, or at least provide a good selection with appropriate filters/categories?

I know that a few "budget" stores like Target, Bestbuy and Walmart can have token dumb TV options. These are usually a brand called ONN. These are good for their price, but they are very cheap TVs ($100-200) and the sound/picture quality is correspondingly poor. I have not seen any products that are similarly "dumb TVs" but have decent video quality.

A few things that I tried:

* Searching for "dumb TV" on Amazon provides very few results. A lot of them are still smart TVs, Amazon's search feature just sucks.
* B&H Video has categories for non-smart TVs, but they are usually "outdoor screens" that cost multiple thousands of dollars
* When I search for "commercial screens" many of them still have smart TV software, it's just less prominent in the product blurb
* When I search for large computer monitors, many end up being "gaming monitors" or "smart monitors" which have the same smart TV software

Have non-smart TVs become a lost technology now? How do you go about finding one?

I've also heard the theory that smart TVs are actually cheaper to sell, because the ads/anti-privacy features are an extra income stream for the manufacturer. That's fine, I'm willing to pay more (up to $1000) for a dumb TV even though it has fewer features. However, the more it costs, the more research I have to do to make sure it's really what I want, and I've noticed that more expensive dumb TVs are obscure and have few reviews, presumably because few people buy them.