If you're going to downvote then at least prove me wrong: the social media darling is the viking tuscany range, fridges are colorful 70's inspired with no "tech" -- smeg and it's competitors. Negative signaling at it's finest, it's a flex if you don't have any "smart" appliances.
Agreed on that but probably there are different ways to waste money on shiny expensive things, likely depending on age, culture etc. Also general excessive trust in advertised technology paired with lesser knowledge about the dangers, especially when some appliance becomes obsolete after a few years, receives no security updates, if any, but keeps connecting to the Internet from the user LAN. That however is a completely different topic that someone soon will have to address to not turn any IoT installation in a field day for malicious actors.
ps. I can't know if you were downvoted but if it happened it wasn't me. I never downvoted anyone just for disagreeing with me.
I expect a lot of manufacturers see the "successful" conversion of TVs from a one time sale to a near inescapable advertising platform and are trying to emulate that in other product segments.
It's not connected to the internet, it doesn't show me any ads. When I (rarely) turn it on with its remote it boots to the last used input. If I turn it on through my set-top box, it boots to the box's input. The box can control the TV's sound volume with its own remote, and the TV has an "ambient light sensor" which allows it to adjust to ambient light. I never need the tv's remote.
It's a 65" TV which cost less than my 32" monitor. Sure, the colors aren't as precise, but I don't use it for phot editing, and delta E is actually very low. The sound is good enough to not have to turn on my stereo, and I don't need to turn it up to 11 to understand voices (my dell has 0 sound). For watching mostly voice-based content (think talk-shows, comedies), it's great.
The company I work for regularly buys "dumb" screens to be used as "signage" (it's part of what we do). I've seen those screens. The image isn't any better than my TCL, but they cost 3-4 times as much. Sure, they're supposed to run all-day-long for multiple years and burn your retinas in 0.2 seconds flat, but I only watch my tv a few hours a week tops and not in direct sunlight.
So I'm a very happy camper. An equivalent dumb TV wouldn't be a noticeable improvement for my use case.
As for network connections yeah my TV is on a firewalled VLAN that I can selectively let out if I want to do a software update, but my personal conspiracy theory is that we're gonna see cellular modems hidden in TVs at some point to pipe data back. GM got caught doing exactly that in their cars without telling anybody not long ago and I think it's already mostly forgotten. Even without that, most consumers want to plug their TV into the net anyway to watch Netflix, probably not realizing it's a poison pill.
I'm certainly not anti-"smart" appliances and I think they can add a lot of value if done well, but in response to the OP I'm saying that it's getting to the point that you're forced into it by the market regardless of your preferences. General consumers and legislators don't seem to care enough to stop bad practices via market or regulatory forces.
But the prime experience was so horrendous, everything lagged like hell that I just couldn't keep using it. So I went ahead and did a full reset, which got rid of the ads, and I connected my ISP's provided box. I didn't try the broadcast tv performance, since I didn't have an antenna cable on hand.
Now, I don't know about other markets, but here in France basically everybody gets their provider's box, even if it's only for public TV. It gets you nice affordances such as a generally better picture and the ability to pause/get back in time. Those boxen usually come with the usual streaming clients, too.
So basically, there's no need to connect your TV directly, even if you're not paranoid.
Sure, the TV can do its screen grabbing, but since it isn't connected to anything, the only possible issue is for its buffer to fill up and somehow break. This hasn't happened yet on my specific TCL.
However, I do realize that my ISP can also know what I'm watching and sell this information to "partners". I've yet to see any ads on their box, but I wouldn't bet the house this will never change. So I agree with your last point, this will probably continue going downhill until we either see the public waking up (on which I don't count at all) or some regulatory action (which seems somewhat non-nil, especially here in the EU – but they seem to have bigger fish to fry, such as listening in on my chats themselves).
This is true, which is why when my old, non-spying one breaks, I won't replace it.
I miss old dumb tvs
You eat the same thing every day?
I’ve attached power monitors to my clothes washer and dryer to make them a little smart, for notifications when they’re done (auto dry feature means it’s not deterministic). Most people wouldn’t want to diy it.
Where I am, electricity is $.65/kwh during the day and $.19 at night. If my clothes dryer were electric, I would definitely run it on a schedule. I wish I could run my dishwasher in a schedule.
These all seem desirable, to the average person, and usually only available with the smart models.
2. Why would you connect a fridge to the internet? You are visiting fridge several times a day....
The fridge is a convenient stand more than anything.
PSA: Much like YouTube's "si" parameter which tracks your individual share of a video, the /s/ value in the URL is a Reddit tracking ID generated upon selecting "Share".
These new links work like short URLs and will only redirect you after Reddit associates your visit with that particular short URL.
saeedesmaili•4mo ago
> To enhance our service and offer additional content to users, advertisements will be displayed on the Cover Screen for the Weather, Color, and Daily Board themes.
MaxikCZ•4mo ago
I so hate this kind of lies, as if it's okay to lie this way coz it aint hurting anyone.