Vizio recently changed their firmware on my tv to require you to use the smart cast app just to watch antenna. It's slow and buggy and causes nothing but problems, the people writing the software clearly never use one of these tvs. Dumb stuff like it would mute my receiver every time I switch channels and immediately unmute, except sometimes the unmute would fail. It’s a shame, it was a great little tv, but this push for more ad views means I’d never recommend a Vizio to anyone.
I know the common refrain is don’t connect tv to the internet, but for whatever reason the Vizio showed up in chromecast at times when the Roku stick wouldn’t, otherwise didn’t use tv smart features
On the other hand, I got a Vizio. I've been loving every update. They've added wireless Bluetooth support so I can connect with headphones, made the UI extremely snappy, made the volume overlay be non-obtrusive in the corner.
Hey I worked on that project along with bluetooth voice remote. I personally spent a few weeks during Christmas time (2020 or 2019?) making sure the bluetooth pairing process was rock solid. Ending up root causing two deadlock bugs that had a repro rate of like 1 in 50.
The engineering leadership was going downhill with layoffs and politics. We would have the quality of the firmware/smartcast be rock solid and then following quarter it took a nose dive. Some of the best people I ever worked with are no longer there.
And last I know, VIZIO isn't like samsung and tries to randomly find an internet connection to update firmware. I still use my free 70in with Apple TV and it is great because I disconnected it from the internet (after I was laid off).
It's insane that "changed their firmware on my tv" is even something that can happen. I'd like to buy a TV and know it will work the same in two decades as it does today.
Personally, I don't own any TV, since I use my monitors. But it does beg the question of why monitors don't have these kinds of issues. Why are companies happy to sell me a "dumb" monitor, but won't sell me a TV unless it includes a bunch of fragile "smart" features?
The trend of coupling the TV to the computer (as opposed to using something like Chromecast) is the primary driver of the enshittification of the TV market. And this shouldn't be surprising - just look at what happened when the auto industry tried to invent and maintain their own entertainment systems. Ironically, they eventually came around to decoupling and delegating that work to Apple and Google, whereas TVs had it right at first and then made it worse.
I understand the business reasons why TV manufacturers want to own the computer part of their TV too. But it still doesn't have to be tightly coupled to the TV. If they really believed in their product, they could sell a dumb TV along with a dongle that competes with Chromecast. But if their product sucks and nobody would buy it, then they need to resort to forcing it on consumers as the default mode of operation.
> I'd like to buy a TV and know it will work the same in two decades as it does today.
TVs from about a decade ago fit the bill while being of "acceptable" 1080p quality. Lord knows the manufacturers aren't bothering with updates anymore if they even supported them. My primary TV is a Samsung from 2012 and I've never felt the need to upgrade. I can't tell any quality difference from any non-high end TV today.
This should be a consumer protection issue across the board.
So, you're using a free or subscription service that's enshittifying. Bad enough, but okay just stop using it or unsubscribe.
But, the idea that you can outright buy a product then have it change in any way that materially impacts its usefulness or your satisfaction with it is customer hostile at a minimum; and straight-up fraud at worst.
Between everything-as-a-subscription, monopolies, the rise of the billionaire oligarchy, defanging of our regulatory apparatus, Citizens United, etc. we're becoming a society of semi-autonomous renters.
But, I guess we shouldn't worry too much. Soon enough, Zuck will bring us our VR utopia, and we'll all be eating steak in the matrix.
Required? No, that is an exaggeration. Over the past 2 years or so, I've bought about 10 different 43 inch panels from TCL, Visio, Hisense, Sony, and Samsung. All let me watch an HDMI input without connecting to the Internet.
Show me a model number where you cannot plug in HDMI and watch from an input without connecting to the Internet. If this is truly happening, it should be easy to find YouTube and TikTok videos from customers and reviewers.
They include it in the setup screens, but they let you plug in HDMI and it works without internet. Even Amazon Fire TVs (the worst in terms of privacy) has a store mode that removes most of the "smart" features.
Have in mind that newer HDMI cables also allow Ethernet through them. Make sure to get no more than 1.4 (or 1.3, can't remember now) if you want your HDMI-connected device to never request (and get) internet from the host (which is often a PC).
The HDMI standard has it (and the cable generation shouldn't matter, as long as it has all pins connected), but does anything actually implement that Ethernet channel?
The pair used by Ethernet was optional until it was repurposed for eARC (high-bandwidth audio backhaul to a receiver/soundbar). Early-version HDMI cables were available in both "with Ethernet" and "without Ethernet" flavors.
That would require support on both HDMI ports (it's a negotiated protocol, not something that can just be passively wired), and I've never heard of any mass-market hardware that actually supports Ethernet over HDMI, despite actively searching for it on multiple occasions. Discrete graphics cards on PC don't even support CEC, which would actually be useful for some people.
Get a Sceptre dumb TV. Oddly enough they're available online from Wal-Mart. We got a 55" one with really good picture quality and no smart features, it just dutifully shows whatever signal is on its HDMI connections. We expect it to last for years if not decades.
But to be fair to TV manufacturers, if you're selling a 4K TV - you need buyers to be able to get 4K content on it.
And you've got to be a rocket scientist to get 4K video from Netflix, because of all the DRM you have to navigate. Remove the smart TV functions and 90% of customers would probably end up only getting 720p because they sacrificed a chicken instead of a swan and got their graphics card blessed by a priest and an imam but not a rabbi too.
Just don't connect the SmartTV to the network. I use mine as a monitor on my HTPC and it works fine. The firmware is about 9 years old and counting. ;)
This is easy to say until the providers start playing DRM fuck-fuck games and you can't get an HD/UHD feed. I gave up using my HTPC and just started using the TV apps because the HDCP troubleshooting was just getting too painful.
HDCP and walled-garden shenanigans are already an issue. Amazon Prime won't do 4k on PCs. I've run an HTPC for years, and still got forced into their ecosystem because the only way I could get UHD was through their damn smart TV app.
Tech communities can get a bit overzealous with this, but this is definitely one of the situations where I'd just pirate. They are giving me an inferior service due to discrimination of devices that are 4k-capable, and on top if that they increased prices and added ads late last year. They aren't even trying to earn my subscription.
Yeah, thats why I don't use streaming services much. My partner likes Netflix and that's cool, but until they stop treating the customer like a burden after they paid a fee for a service, I'll continue to sail the high seas.
Side topic on Faraday cages. I have an elevator in the middle of my building, inside is all steal panels, again in the middle of a big building, and I still get cell service. Can talk on my phone up/down the entire time.?
I thought it would be a Faraday cage and cut that out?
A true Faraday cage would kill the signals. I suspect that wasn't designed as a Faraday cage. It's an elevator.
There could also be a cellular extender inside the building.
I happen to work in a building with LOTS of materials that block signals from the outside. The windows are bulletproof, the walls contain metal plates, etc.
We have to use a cellular extender to get cell signal inside, however, the building wasn't designed as a Faraday cage. It just happens to hamper signals in a similar way.
Why are companies happy to sell me a "dumb" monitor, but won't sell me a TV unless it includes a bunch of fragile "smart" features?
Because “Smart Features” are a Trojan horse for giving the TV manufacturers ongoing revenue via ad sales and viewing metrics. This has allowed them to significantly mark down the TV selling prices as the sale price is now subsidized by the ad revenue.
Vizio actually pioneered this model with their “Inscape” product.
This is a trade off that most buyers will happily make, including the ones tech savvy enough to just not hook up the WiFi.
There’s zero market for TVs without smart features at the price they’d have to be sold at.
After owning my Vizio TV for like 4 years I am taking it back to Costco. The experience has gotten progressively worse with the updates. It is just so laggy and extremely frustrating. I'm going to tell costco the updates ruined the TV.
As a rule of thumb, I never connect my smart TVs to the internet. I go chromecast or PC connection.
Some may say there may be improvements, but the streamed ads, and surveillance and phoning home of my behavior, the benefits of privacy certainly outweigh the downsides.
I used to love my Chromecast but I feel like it's gone downhill significantly. The amount of bloat and ads when you fire it up is annoying. Thankfully there is an 'Apps only' mode now but you are still plastered with ads before you can select an app.
I did the same thing with my old Samsung. Disconnected it from wifi and immediately had way faster boot-up times. The ads were really bogging it down.
Somehow, 3 years later, it still recommends the movie "Hancock" every time I turn it on. Perhaps it was the last ad it ever fetched? And it has an eternal cache? Who knows.
Turn off wifi, get a chromecast, an Apple TV, or a gaming console.
Yes. Ever since Microsoft started serving ads with "Tiles" on the new Xbox 360 interface, back in Windows 8 era, the enshittification began the creep.
Xbox one, it's bundles of ads. When it first released, the UX was so horrible, I remember getting lost trying to find the menu to launch a game from disc. I had to page through ads just to find it.
Playstation, there's popups, and non-disable-able promotions for games and subsriptions. (There's also these "Stories" I think they're called, that tell you about the progress in a game, that are heavy with spoilers").
Both interfaces are masterclasses in optimizing noise/signal and adding as much noise as possible before the user stops using it.
Loved my Vizio 60 until the backlights died; a known bad power supply engineering issue caused them to fail early. I have to wonder, though, why? Its not like led engineering isnt a solved problem. I'll leave that for someone else's discussion.
I am going to speak to manager, normally it is 90 days. I've had TV for 3 years but I really hate using it. Normally I wouldn't care but it makes me angry that TV used to be fine but Vizio just made it worse with ads and updates.
Ironically, the only “whiner” comment I’ve seen has been this one, whining about people whining.
The topic is about Walmart purchasing Vizio. Discussing the quality of Vizio’s products, their business practices, and anecdotal experience + general discussion about the companies involved in the purchase are entirely reasonable.
Complaining that no one actually read or is engaging with the posted article is absolutely less whiny than airing grievances that are only tangentially related to the posted topic.
This was a big deal to RV / motorhome users. I remember a Reddit thread where people were complaining that they couldn't use the TV without internet service. There were some Vizio people on the thread insisting that you don't need internet so I don't know the whole truth but at seems at least it wasn't obvious to a non-technical user how to simply connect an antenna and watch over the air TV. My RV has a Vizio TV but it's old enough to not be smart. I don't watch OTA anyway.
The next OTA broadcast standard has an internet connection requirement for targeted ads built into it, that is how far gone we are.
My policy is to never connect these TVs to the internet. If I accidentally bought one that required it I would return it to the store as defective.
Of course, that won't stop them from programming the firmware to wait until outside the return period to start demanding internet access. And I expect sets to start showing up with built in 5G you can't turn off quite soon. The perversion of ad and user tracking will never be satisfied, it is a cancer that only stops if the host cells have entirely died.
I'm... oddly glad I got in on a Vizio at the weirdest time of their "smart" history. I got mine when it was just Chromecast Built-In -- a Chromecast just acting like a virtual input alongside a couple HDMI ports. No other streaming bullshit, just a mirroring client.
In one way I was very angry I found out I was "abandoned" by Vizio and couldn't get their "new streaming experience" they were delivering, but looking back I'm now very glad all my "smart" TV is is a very dumb Chromecast.
> "We believe VIZIO’s customer-centric operating system provides great viewing experiences at attractive price points. We also believe it enables a profitable advertising business that is rapidly scaling,”
Customer-centric ad-pumping platform which consumers love. What a great and lovely contradiction.
Alot of these ad centric platform moves fund things like the popular free TV apps like Tubi and Freevee.
Vizio had an eye on something not dissimilar, and Walmart until 2020 owned Vudu and while that didn't pan out in this space, I think they see this as another avenue in that space to try again, its relatively good business if you can manage it.
I'm honestly shocked they didn't buy Roku yet.
Not that I like it, but I see their business reasoning here. There's a whole new set of streaming services that are becoming similar to over the air TV delivery in the sense that they're 100% ad supported and Vizio wanted in on that, and I think Walmart does too.
Its not only about showing "homescreen" ads, though that itself is a surprisingly burgeoning advertising business.
All this is to say, I'm glad I have an Apple TV and I don't put up with any of this. None of my TVs have ever connected to the internet. The next one I buy might just be a monitor made to purpose
I'm a person who generally prefers to pay money rather than attention and time, but if people really like to be bombed with ads and (mind) seeds planted to their brains, I can't argue.
On the other hand, I don't watch "TV". I watch a couple of shows semi-regularly and use my TV as a glorified HDR monitor for movies I own or as a second screen, that's all.
>but if people really like to be bombed with ads and (mind) seeds planted to their brains, I can't argue.
I can argue. The whole point of society is that we can choose to say "no, you can't have/do the thing YOU want because it has externalities that affect everyone else"
The advertising economy is corrosive and toxic to society
I understand where you're coming from, but neither society nor the people in these societies are black and white.
Personally, I know a couple of people who prefer to have ads in YouTube because they like targeted advertisements, and claim that they're informed by them.
On the other hand, I'm against advertisement economy as much as you.
Lastly, please tell me, how many times society collectively said no to some entities, and how did it went? Backlash is allowed to the point where the tension is relieved and the old thing continues as is, maybe with a different paint job, that's all.
Users of an application protesting a company is not the same thing society protesting something against a sector or government. It's very hard to pull the latter one off.
If you own a Vizio, your viewing data is collected and sold to advertisers anyways. They have ACR software running that can recognize any content playing on the tv. Casted, OTA, streaming… they’re all logged and tracked for advertisers.
Other TVs are doing similar things but Vizio pioneered it. That’s how they subsidized their TVs to offer the lowest prices and the rest of the industry followed.
Do note that you can opt out of ACR and data collection, though who knows what data they are still harvesting anyway. Most/practically all newer TVs are doing it, even e.g. my high end LG.
Sadly opting out of this junk is the first thing I do on any TV nowadays, along with sticking it in a locked down VLAN if it's mine.
I wrote most of the VIZIO code for consenting and turning on/off the Viewing Data, Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. You can easily toggle that stuff in the settings menu and during the Out-of-box-experience.
Last I was there was over a year ago, but VIZIO was one of the first to get in big trouble with the US government due to privacy issues back around 2016 I think? It's on wikipedia if you are curious.
Unfortunate that it sounds like they're going to use their platform to shove even more ads in our faces, Wal-mart has oddly become one of the last places you can still find a brand new "dumb" TV.
Another brand that was moderately OK about 10 years ago down the drain, but they've been on a path of enshittification since about 2017. My family bought a brand new Vizio TV for our living room in 2022 and that thing is nothing but headaches. It forcibly updated once while I was playing my PS3, took 15 minutes and I wasn't even showed a changelog or any reason I should've had to update. We should've just saved up for a Sony, but we had no working TV in the living room.
> but they've been on a path of enshittification since about 2017. My family bought a brand new Vizio TV for our living room in 2022 and that thing is nothing but headaches.
It sounds like you knew it was on the path of enshittification since 2017, so then WHY would you buy one 5 years into that descent that you decry?
Yeah, it's about the same as how my dad buys those Amazon Echo things. I absolutely hate them and am incredibly uncomfortable with having them in the house, but he sees no issue with them whatsoever despite the fact nobody uses them and they just suck up our power. He's quite the impulse customer however, so I can see why he would buy anything Amazon would show him that remotely resembles a "good deal". He was really confused when he got that big Echo Show they came out with that could run Fire TV applications because it was like $30 one Christmas and I told him I really hated it.
This would be consistent with it being, like all TVs, terrible, and getting worse, but not quite having reached the incredible heights of awfulness of the average TV.
TVs have become a bit like printers; one starts to suspect that the manufacturers gain some sort of actual benefit from making them ever more annoying.
(Personal conspiracy theory: An evil billionaire left their money to, er, the opposite of a charity, which compensates companies for making products deliberately more irritating.)
> Personal conspiracy theory: An evil billionaire left their money to, er, the opposite of a charity, which compensates companies for making products deliberately more irritating.
Bigger driver are consumers’ demand for high returns from their pension funds.
For those looking for dumb TVs since Vizio sort of was a last holdout (although I’m reading they’ve recently become more garbage like), may I suggest the commercial kiosk versions of popular brands? I’ve found that you pay a little more but they don’t have the crappy OS installed and it’s just a dumb TV. You’re paying more to remove the ad experience manufacturers want you to use hence the price tradeoff.
Would you be able to buy say.. an LG C3 that has things like Dolby Vision/HDR10, VRR, 120hz?
I'm skeptical Dolby Vision would be present on a display not intended for movies given the licensing fees to Dolby. I'm a fan of dumb TVs in theory but I'd rather just airgap a smart TV and plug in an Apple TV than lose DV and the like.
Agreed on all counts, airgapping a TV is trivial I don’t get the complaining here for a dumb TV (aside for less technical people). That said, my LG G2 will full screen block content to show a “voice control” feature awareness notification that tells me to connect the TV to the internet about once a month :/
I have a C2 myself, C3 was just my example, I imagine the OS is similar to your G3, but in anycase maybe it's worth updating the firmware? That can be done by USB. My C2 had some odd behavior relating to complaining there was no internet connectivity and other misc bugs before I did that. Now it's basically perfect and I won't touch the firmware again without a really good reason.
Yes this is the problem! Complains there is no network so voice control doesn’t work even though I never initiated voice control and I don’t allow it on the network. I’ll check firmware version but I updated it relatively recently… though I just had a full screen replacement so maybe that moved my firmware back to whatever the new screen’s is somehow. Thanks!
The difference is that a Roku or Fire Stick is $50 or less. If I need to upgrade my device to support a new compression standard or something, it's only $50 to replace, rather than needing to buy a whole new TV.
It's definitely more practical to buy a dumb TV and connect a streaming device, especially when smart TVs value their smart functionality at a couple hundred dollars.
I'd far rather buy a dumb OLED for $1500 and connect a $50 Fire Stick than buy a $2000 OLED with smart features, if it was an option.
Seriously, what's the benefit for having all that built into your TV?
The benefit should be completely obvious. Having a single integrated system is always going to be more reliable than running 2 separate machines that need to cooperate. Otherwise every issue needs to be isolated to the TV, the streaming device, or the connection between the two.
Also hand waving about "new codecs" doesn't hold any weight. A Roku/Fire/Google TV is a Linux computer with hardware acceleration for all modern codecs. By the time AV1/VP9/H265 are being replaced in the 2030s, you're going to need a new TV anyway to support 8K and whatever other features are de rigueur then. Same goes for audio codecs and Wifi support.
> "This device will not support X service after Y date" has happened.
Again, that's a symptom of shitty manufacturer firmware, it's a burden on streaming services to support these devices because they are the ones that have to maintain software packages for hundreds of different TV models.
In contrast, Fire/GoogleTV OS are built on Android, so streaming networks don't need to support individual TV models, they just have to target supported versions of Fire/GoogleTV OS. Android has APIs to handle Smart TV functionality.
> Again, that's a symptom of shitty manufacturer firmware, it's a burden on streaming services to support these devices because they are the ones that have to maintain software packages for hundreds of different TV models.
That's exactly my point.
I operate under the assumption that my TV will have shitty firmware. Always has been shitty, always will be shitty.
So rather than relegate the shittiness to a $1500+ device that will be very expensive to replace if/when the software becomes obsolete, I'd put the burden of shittiness to a $50 device that I don't mind upgrading as necessary.
I had an old Vizio set that I really loved before they went "smart"; what I liked about it was that whoever designed it thought really hard about the bank for the buck for features. It was a fairly chunky set that would be a pain to wall mount but it had good-sized speakers in it. I had it connected to a soundbar but the soundbar wasn't much better than the internal speakers so I hooked up the soundbar to my PC in the "living room". A high-end Sony has 4-7 HDMI ports that will burn out over time (that's why you have a huge number of ports) but the Vizio had just two.
I had the Vizio fail on me and somebody gave me a bottom-of-the-line Samsung which is also not "smart" that I don't like anywhere near as much.
I have been thinking about getting a 4K HDR set or maybe a used 3D set for a long time and also about upgrading my computer monitor but with free TV sets showing up I never get around to it.
I know Vizio is considered more of a low-end brand, but I have a ... probably 2010s era Vizio that's one of the best TVs I've had. 32" or something, never had a single issue with it. It's a dumb panel that displays whatever I put on it. How a TV should be.
I had a more recent 65" Vizio (2020, I think?) in my living room, which was also a great TV. It was something like $600 (crazy cheap for the size!), great picture, never connected it to the net, always worked like a charm. Was a great panel for my Nvidia Shield.
That TV was broken in an unfortunate incident involving a toddler and a thrown wrench, and was replaced with a similarly priced TCL TV (which was the best rated one in my price range on Rtings at the time).
That TV is nothing less than a hunk of shit - constant sound issues, molasses slow UI, built in Roku stuff is all crap. Picture is decent, but I liked the Vizio better.
I've often considered shelling out the big bucks for a better model TV, but given the industry trends I'm terrified of the thought of spending triple the price of my current TV and still hating it. Happy to pay for good quality, but just extremely skeptical of most offerings in the market these days.
I want to offer supporting evidence. Had a Vizio that is closing in on a decade old and runs great. Was given a TCL 4k Roku TV that is a piece of crap. Can't complain too much since it was free, but I'll never buy a TCL or Roku TV. And I used Roku's for almost a decade since I was an early cord cutter.
Both of the early cord cutting companies that drove all this are on the decline: Roku and Sling. Google especially has stolen a lot of marker share with Chromecast and YouTube TV, respectfully. Kind of sad to see it happen, but monopolies are the norm now.
I had a higher end TCL Roku TV that was pretty nice, actually. I know I used one at a rental unit that was an absolute piece of junk - I’m a little surprised they didn’t have the thought to make two separate brands.
I have a Sony X900H, which is a 2020 model*, and it's a great device. Snappy, works with everything, updated for better now and then.
Its picture quality is great, and sound is more than enough. I can always get a soundbar, but actually we don't want more devices and wires at home. It's good in this configuration.
The advantage of Sony is, they're an audiovisual company, so they design their own DSPs and algorithms. I never disappointed by any Sony device I had from Hi-Fi to speakers, cameras and TVs. If Sony's style is your cup of tea, it's hard to change to any other brand after getting used to them.
*: I shocked when I learnt that every year TV manufacturers update their TVs and people flock to their brands not unlike phone fanboys and shout to each other about this years' new features, on-paper numbers and whatnot. It's a display panel, c'mon.
I personally don't prefer OLEDs in anything large like TVs. Call me old, but I don't want inconsistent wear on display panels, and I don't change my devices every n years.
Really depends on your usage. Burn in is only a problem if you watch something frequently with a constant element on screen like the CNN news ticker or a video game HUD. I have an OLED from 2019 with no signs of burn in and fully expect it to last at least another 5 years.
Of course, but I'm not the only user of that TV, and sometimes we watch snooker, etc. with my parents, which boils down to painting 50% of the screen green for long periods of time.
I won't be comfortable with that kind of usage pattern. Moreover, I'm pretty happy with the image quality of the device I own. I'm not that sensitive to image quality after a certain point (my wheelhouse is Hi-Fi audio).
Owner of an X900F here who has been similarly happy. Great picture with excellent color, contrast, and uniformity that has stayed as good as it was on day one for the past 6 years through probably thousands of hours of usage. (As it turns out, LCD TVs can experience picture degradation as bad or worse than OLED burnin[0])
It’s been perfectly happy to remain totally offline too and is built as if it’s expected to be connected to a streaming box and/or receiver, as opposed to some TVs where the manufacturer really pushes the onboard “smarts” over external sources. Works wonderfully with an Apple TV 4K, PC, and PS5 and can have its firmware updated offline with a thumb drive. Its smart bits are vanilla Google TV though and would be reasonably usable if one were inclined (though I’d advise removing a preinstalled content ID package with a laptop and ADB first).
Also an X900F owner here. TV isn't perfect because we use the "smart" bits of it. I still prefer my old Samsung dumb TV, but it isn't 4k. Overall we're happy with the Sony. Being Android and not updated, it's probably full of security holes. But we have it on its own network and blocking a lot of traffic. UI can also be slow, but after removing and/or disabling a lot of software, it's better than it once was. It plays Netflix and HBO Max great, so we're happy.
Have you updated its firmware? Looks like there’s a new update available as of September 2023, which I haven’t installed yet but I’ve installed a couple before this one.
I haven't. I'm in the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" camp for TVs. But you've also piqued my interest. I'm curious how much of an improvment it offers, and what features it may or may not have removed.
My recommendation is a Sceptre. They make 65", 4K dumb panels. I bought mine last year and the picture is great, the UI is fast, because it's just a regular TV menu, and best of all it cost less than $400.
I have a Sceptre and a Vizio, and I bought another Sceptre fro my mother. For the price, the Sceptres are really great panels. However, a soundbar or a decent sound system is a must with them, their builtin audio sucks terribly. Also, they are a bit slow, and the remotes that come with them suck. Overall, I prefer my 10 year old Vizio, but for a good dumb display, the Sceptres are hard to beat for the price.
Since the transition to flat screens I haven't seen a tv with good audio. It could be my bias, but I think that you basically need external speakers with any tv right now.
I have a 2008 Vizo TV from Costco. It is 47" dumb TV. I'm still using it in my game room for call of duty. Even though it still works I think it's time to get a 4k TV. My conundrum has always been finding a dumb TV at this point.
Strongly consider whether you even need it for console gaming on a couch. At least for my eyes I can’t really notice pixels on a 1080p screen from couch distance. Maybe its different for 70 inch tvs though, mine is maybe 40 inches.
anecdotally, i have a tcl 4k 49" model i got 2018 for $329 - and yes the stock interface is garbage, but after hooking up an apple tv to it, it works perfectly for me. i'm not particular about image quality - everything looks great for my taste and the soap opera effect is off. i would absolutely get another one if this craps out but getting 6 years out of it was more than i expected.
> I know Vizio is considered more of a low-end brand, but I have a ... probably 2010s era Vizio that's one of the best TVs I've had.
I bought a Vizio back in 2006 that is still running today. It's now at my parents' house but runs as well as when I bought it.
Unfortunately I also have a modern Vizio I bought for the guest bedroom. That thing is a piece of shit. It's just ridiculously slow, sometimes won't display the picture from an input signal, and software updates break stuff all the time. Before I bought it I hadn't ever bought a cheap "smart" TV but it's been worse than I imagined they would be.
Going off reviews, it looks like Vizio has taken a nosedive in quality over the last 5 - 10 years.
When I bought a TV ~10 years ago, rtings had various Vizios as their top-rated TVs at different price points. I remember my choice at the time being less "which of these TVs should I buy" and more "which of these two Vizios should I buy".
But looking now, I can't find a single model that's rated highest at any size or price point. It's a pretty stark difference.
I'm starting to think that it is a crapshoot. I like my upper end TCL a lot and I'm a big roku fan. I HATE my low end Hisense. It has a coil whine. The built in speakers are shit. The android tv just locks up. And it will come on in the middle of the night (luckily it is in another room but if I wake up in the middle of the night and it has turned on I can see the light from it). But all the reviews say Hisense is good.
I like my HiSense 65 Android TV, and used to love it before the app providers started screwing with app updates (Netflix! Prime!). And the audio data stream/output conversion could do a little better to my home theater, but its fast enough, have bluetooth keyboard for quick searches/data entry. I think it is stupid that I cannot easily find a no-cost, dumb, Android photo screen saver for it (I think it ostensibly would rob from some Android app developer/Google Photos/Google Home). But it appears I can side load stuff, but I like to keep things clean. Anyhow, my original 60 Vizio was great, but died early b/c of known bad engineering of backlight power supply. But I like this even better.
Manufactures are very good at cost cutting / value engineering. A friend bought multiple low end hisense panels for business bought over multiple years, basically same 50inch model from costco, but each year the hardware gets noticably revised. Thinner legs, 4 buttons replaced by single 5 way switch, a mold change to remove a few extra square cm of plastic etc. No idea what was going on inside.
My 2 Samsungs are still running strong from 2008 and 2010. Except instead of looking at a horrible monitor for 10 years I’ve been enjoying a decent picture for over a decade.
However, I bought a cheap Roku TV for my family’s beach house. I don’t care about quality in this situation because it’s not used much and I should be outside at anyway.
If Wal*Mart (and everyone else) sold great TVs without the spy/spamware then this would be a great deal for everyone.
However from the article:
"But in buying the company, Walmart touted the potential to boost its ad business through Vizio’s SmartCast Operating System, which allows users to stream free ad-supported content on their TVs."
At the time I thought the dumbest thing they did was sell Vudu. Now buying a TV brand with its own streaming service after selling off the successful one is the dumbest move.
I just never could be happy with a TV without an OLED panel after i got my first one last year. Since then all other screen types look like garbage to my eyes, the better cinema projectors too.
Shouldn't have bought an expensive big monitor for work without OLED the year before, but i hear that OLED is not that great for close up text rendering.
You know I have a dumb Samsung Plasma TV 720p from like 20 years ago? Some more? Some less? Scared to lose it because it's hard to find dumb TVs, will have a look at these Vizio ;o Thanks!
You make a good point and I don't get why you are being downvoted.
> Reuters reported earlier this month the deal would be blocked by European Commission antitrust regulators and that its main concerns were that Amazon could thwart iRobot rivals on its online marketplace, especially in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Amazon could have delisted rival robot vacuum cleaners, reduce visibility of rivals or raised costs of iRobot's rivals to advertise and sell their robot vacuum cleaners on Amazon's marketplace, Vestager added. - https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/amazon-irobot-abandon-...
The same can be said about this deal too. And ofcourse, since Vizio is a data harvester and broker, there's the additional privacy angle involved.
I liked my Vizio TV at first, but it gradually became awful through firmware updates, to the point I sometimes actively hope the thing will break. Walmart will no doubt find ways to make it even worse, but this brand is no great loss.
Vizio electronics tend to have pretty decent value, especially the sound bars. But know what you are buying: Vizio doesn't make anything good, just good enough. Vizio, TCL etc are great for, let's say, guest bedroom TVs, kitchen TVs but if you can afford it, the Japanese and Korean electronic brands tend to be a lot better for your main electronics.
I don't know if I'm just lucky or what, but the 55 inch Samsung I got at Costco for around $400 works great. It's smart, but we never connected it to the Internet...it just shows a graphic asking where wifi is, closes it after about 15 seconds, and goes on being a TV. We get streaming from an external Roku, which has minimal advertising on its home screen. Someday we'll get a soundbar for it, but sound is OK for now.
I know the common refrain is don’t connect tv to the internet, but for whatever reason the Vizio showed up in chromecast at times when the Roku stick wouldn’t, otherwise didn’t use tv smart features
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