Be sure to change the admin password.
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I couldn’t believe this when I found out, but Samsung, funnily enough, makes non smart TVs, even now. That is, they make smart TVs that completely disable all smart functions if you don’t connect them to the internet (at least their current Series 6 units seem to). And I do mean completely, I’m getting the exact same experience as a dumb TV on my 2016 Series 6 unit, it’s great!
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Personally using a moderately large TV suits my room design better, since I can stick it against the other side of the room instead of in the middle. And in the 40 inch plus size class, not only is it damn near impossible to find a decent monitor, but the rare ones that do exist are actually worse than equivalent TVs, something that should never be true. On the plus side, it turns out that at the very least for Samsung (at least their current Series 6 units), and maybe other brands as well, you can get the no smart TV experience by just not connecting your TV to the internet, and all of those features get disabled anyway.
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Almost every piece of TV-related electronics I’ve seen wants to connect me to Netflix and Hulu. The Smart TV itself, DVRs, DVD players, any BluRay player I’ve seen, Roku, AppleTV I won at a trade show before I even had an HDMI-capable TV, all those stick-based things. I don’t need the TV to do the internetting.
And it’s really easy to find a non-smart tv. Just get a smart TV, and don’t tell it the wifi password so it doesn’t try doing stunts like this.
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But what if you prefer the economics of streaming over disc based media?
Why add a device and make it more complicated when the TV already does it though?
Whether you need it or not, most TVs will do it at this point.
But you already paid for the capability. Why plug up an HDMI port and an electric plug to add another device to do it?
I’ve never owned a BluRay player and have no plans to ever buy one. Why bother?
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I find these “smart” things irritating. First we upgraded from the DVD player to a ‘smart’ blu-ray player, which could play video from a USB drive and had apps for netflix and stuff. That was cool. It even had a web browser that you could excruciatingly control using buttons on the remote for both mouse pointer and typing. (That feature only got used once.)
But it only worked with some video files, not others, and the apps mostly don’t work well anymore, except Hulu. Then we got a ‘smart’ TV, which can play video from USB and has apps and stuff, but it only works with some video files, not others (and not the same ones as the blu-ray), and the apps don’t all work well anymore, except Netflix. And we have a game console, which for some reason has an HBO Go app that works, unlike the other two. I hear Amazon prime sometimes works on one of the things, but I don’t know which.
So we have a big pile of remotes and it takes awhile to get everything booted up, switch among systems and apps to find a show or find which one will play a video file, etc. The redundancy seems silly, but since none of the ‘smart’ things is really very good on its own, having all that in each device is kinda needed so they can cover each other’s weaknesses if you want the functionality without a PC.
But we got a roku stick for christmas, which, from what I can tell is about the same in intent as the ‘smart’ parts of any of the other bits, but actually has up-to-date apps (currently) and can be controlled via phone, so it’s much easier. For now.
Personally, I still prefer to watch on my PC, which has better UI, keyboard, mouse, and a smaller, closer screen. And it all just works and is easy to control and update.
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Quality is far better, you’re not relying on streaming or connectivity, and you get all of the special behind-the-scenes and other features (commentary tracks, concept art galleries, etc) commonly found on blu-rays. They’re easily found for under $30 these days. Or just use the one built into a PS4.
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Send this video to the set, it will help
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OR I can write some kind of API so people can login and crowd source how much insulin I should be getting. What’s the worst that could happen? Oh. Right.
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