I have a WebOS TV and I absolutely hate how slow it is. Turning on takes a long time. Selecting apps takes a long time. Flipping channels takes a long time. Did we forget how fast TVs from the 90s were??
For older LG webos TVs, the delay between button push and action in the settings app can get as bad as 4 seconds.
The reason I bought it:
Samsung pushed ads agressively on their TVs
I had an HP tablet with webOS before and wondered what LG did with it after taking over the development. I was horrified.
The hardware is not much better. There's constantly something wrong. But the LCD panel is pretty decent, so I just patch it up every time, rather than throwing it out.
Some smart TVs require you to connect them to the Internet before you can even use them with HDMI. It's a changing world. This post has a lot of interesting comments.
Provide the citation please because the last one you mentioned to me was about a return that you heard about while standing in line at Wal-Mart about a rok/tcl tv, which btw which you don't need to do any of that to use it.
I wouldn't recommend any TCL older than 5 years. No idea about new ones but I used to sell and install them and they all just sucked. The video quality was mid and they had a weird input delay that made them annoying to use. These were tvs that were new out of the box.
Where I first caught wind of this was in the return line at Walmart where a guy was returning a smart TV because he wanted to hook up to his Dish receiver and couldn't without creating an account.
Every one I have encountered only requires that for use of the smart TV features. And if you have one that requires Internet just to use HDMI to connect to a device, your TV is 100% spying on you and you should return it.
I don't buy TVs but I quized the guy pretty heavily thinking that was an option. He seemed to know what he was talking about about. This was an Onn Roku TV.
I’ve got a crappy Samsung knockoff with its own shit version of android that constantly switches inputs on its own and tries to load the home screen all the time. When the Xbox or PS5 is plugged in it will do that, when it’s HDMI into the laptop it doesn’t so YMMV but you should be ok.
Apropos of your first sentence, I have an odd question for anyone. The tv updated itself and now will try to turn off every hour or so due to some android power save, while I’m playing a game. I have to use the actual tv remote instead of the receiver which runs the inputs and volume. Can’t figure out how to turn that off, help!
Also, fuckin fantastic name Mr President. You and my cousin should hang out
Damn wtf, that's truly unfortunate bud. Thanks for letting us know though, it'll help us steer clear of that brand. I'm also looking for a new dumb TV to use as a monitor for streaming in my living room. I'm just gonna hook up a mini pc to it and call it a day. Wireless mouse and mini keyboard is all I'll need.
I've been using a Visio smart tv and a Fire smart tv, well smart for it's time at least, and I've never had any issues with it since it's never been connected to a network.
Smart TV's run automatic content detection on all their inputs. You will also be nagged to put the device online relentlessly, and some models will not let you skip internet connectivity.
I wish I knew, but the ad industry LOVES this tech: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=smart+tv+ACR&t=ffab&ia=web Every other result is "How ACR is going to be awesome for advertisers/marketers". the ones in between are "How to shut off ACR" :-/