It used to be easy to watch television. You could get seven channels by fiddling with an antenna. The proliferation of programming platforms and the advancement of technology has made interacting with your television a much more complex experience. All the major streaming platforms are pre-installed on connected TVs, which offer an all-in-one convenience.
There are a lot of reasons to want a smart TV, but there are also a lot of reasons not to. You should buy the dumbest TV you can find here.
Smart TVs are marketed to you as the ultimate entertainment experience, but you are not the only customer. Many smart TV makers are selling viewing data and advertising. Televisions that cost thousands of dollars come out of the box with a lot of apps and ads.
Worse, they often bury the settings you need to change in order to eliminate most of the ads.
The privacy issue is not small. When you buy a smart TV, you have to click through a legal agreement, and somewhere in there you agree to let the TV's manufacturer monitor everything you do with the device and sell that information. Is that information bought by the companies? It will be used to target ads on your TV. Not only will a faceless corporation know that you watch Is It Cake?, they will also use that information against you.
Some TV makers are experimenting with ads that push at you while you watch TV. This is in addition to the ads that a broadcast or cable channel might be serving up to you. The TV has been gathering viewing data since you powered it up, and these live ads are adjusted using that data. Ad models that pop up every time you turn on the TV are becoming more difficult to avoid.
Do you want to avoid this? You should buy a dumb TV. With a dumb TV you can hook up any streaming box you want, and if that platform starts to mimic a smart TV in terms of advertising and other concerns, you can switch to another platform.
When I bought my first smart TV a few years ago, it was great to have streaming services pre-installed. The TV's manufacturer allowed the device's operating system to decay and never updated the built-in app. I was forced to buy a Roku just to get the current version of the app.
That is not unusual. Television manufacturers tend to orphan their platforms almost as soon as they release them. This is a huge security concern and it is inconvenient to have outdated apps. Your smart TV is connected to the internet and has your personal information attached to it. Microsoft issues security updates for Windows on a weekly basis, so how do you think your TV is doing after two years of zero software patches? With a dumb TV, you don't have these concerns, but no software is going to make a 4K TV into an 8K TV, so the benefits are minimal.
Going with a dumb TV gives you more control over your entertainment experience. You can use a dumb TV to stream whatever you want. An Apple TV box or an Amazon Fire stick will give you the same options and features, with the bonus of being able to switch at any time. When you buy a smart TV, you are locked into that company's interface and platform, and it can be difficult to interact with it.
It can be difficult to find a dumb TV that has the screen size, resolution, and other features of a smart TV because they are not the priority in the market. It's not impossible. Identifying and finding dumb TVs can be difficult, as evidenced by the fact that Sceptre makes a 65-inch 4K dumb TV. If you have decided to go dumb, here are a few tips.
It should be easy to buy and set up a TV. If you go dumb, you will gain back your privacy and control over your couch-surfing, which is priceless. If you decide that the trade-offs for a smart TV are worth it, that's fine.
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