I have a TV for when I have time to play games on my PS3 or PS4 these days, but I watch the vast majority of my stuff on my computer. Unless I’m watching something that’s available in 4K that I feel is worth it, why would I bother going to another room just to watch stuff that is streaming off my NAS and accessible on my computer anyway?
I feel like a lot of people just don’t have much reason to turn on their TV to watch stuff unless they still have cable and want to watch live sports.
For me, our tv room is much more geared towards comfort and lounging, while my computer room is more geared towards work and gaming.
I don’t know what your setup is, but since I work from home I found that I don’t like to be in my office doing shit on my computer that much these days 😞
Just having a screen in another room is helpful to isolate my workday from my free time.
It kinda sucks, I enjoy tinkering with shit on my computerSame. I’m barely in my office anymore since I started even just a hybrid work from home schedule. It’s good to separate the work space from other spaces imo
I bought a projector not too long ago. I’ll never go back.
I’ve never seen my son scrolling tv channels. Tv to him it just a large tablet.
Or a portal for YouTube
I just don’t want to own a smart tv, so I’ll stick with what I have.
Market’s saturated. Why do analysts not understand this? Once you hit a certain size you don’t get much more from a new tv.
B-b-but… line must go up!
I’m pretty sure that PEOPLE ALREADY OWN A TV and probably can’t afford to replace it.
I have no intention of replacing mine.Most of them are dead to me. Sell me a dumb TV or sell me nothing.
My last two purchases were a 32" PC monitor for the guest room and a projector for the main room. Both connected to a Roku and media center PC.
I don’t own one, but even if I did, I sure as hell would not want a smart television. So I completely agree with you.
I’ve got an order out for a digital signage display to replace my living room tv. It was more than I would’ve spent on a “smart” tv but it’s a dumb box that I can plug anything I want into. If they sold dumb TV’s still I’d probably upgrade some of the other TV’s my family has, but fuck smart TV’s.
What’s the go-to vendor/manufacturer for this sort of dumb tv these days?
Sharp NEC is the brand I bought from. They have models you can put a raspberry pi directly inside of it. I’ve got a pi with librelec waiting for the screen to show up. However they’re really expensive. Sceptre makes more affordable dumb TV’s but they don’t make very large ones.
I heard the color accuracy and gamut on these signage displays are terrible. Know if there’s any reviews out there with this kinda info?
How do they compare to TVs? At least the last time I looked into it, pretty much every TV was terrible compared to even a halfway decent computer monitor.
OLED TVs are insanely good and spoiled using the computer altogether for me, until I got an OLED monitor. At least on my LG B2, the color gamut and contrast are extremely good. I can’t stand LCDs for anything dark as the backlight bleed really washes out the picture.
Going to a projector was the best move for me. Easy HDMI and Plex steams seamlessly.
Which projector?
If you’re willing to pay up, there’s some amazing new laser projectors that can be placed just a few inches from the wall, so basically where your TV would sit, and are super bright. I saw some YouTube videos about some models from LG. They cost 2k or more depending on the model.
Oh pricy! That sounds amazing though, I’ll look into it
Amen. Monitors, digital signage and, as you said, business projectors are the way. CEC, auto input switching and ARC are all the smarts I want in a TV.
Okay, so people have less disposable income than they did a few years ago, and less need for indoor entertainment devices than they did during the pandemic. Is it really surprising that fewer purchases are being made? (Plus, did they include “digital signage” and monitors with HDMI inputs when they were compiling the statistics?)
That’s because there’s no reason for most people to buy another TV. The majority of people who would want one already have a TV, and there has been no technological advancement in the last decade or two that would entice anyone to throw away their already perfectly acceptable large LCD/OLED/whatever television just to buy another one just like it.
The only thing anyone has been able to come up with is making all TV’s internet connected and “smart,” which is a feature that approximately nobody except the MBA’s in charge of the companies cranking them out seems to actually want.
The one thing I disagree with is the technological advancement. I feel like there has been advancement, but the problem is the cost of those advancements. No one is pining to drop thousands/tens of thousands of dollars on OLED, Micro-led, or whatever the hell else they have come out with over the years. On top of that the crappy interfaces of these TV’s as well as privacy problems. See the recent roku debacle.
Actually, a LOT of people stream with a smart TV instead of a separate device. More than half in the US.
https://gitnux.org/smart-tv-sales-statistics/
This tends to track with what I see in my family and friend’s homes. People tend to do couch streaming via the smart TV’s apps.
Personally, I think a fast, separate HDMI CEC device is a MUCH better user experience, and it’s still one remote. But for whatever reason, a lot of people aren’t opting to go with a separate AppleTV, GoogleTV ChromeCast, Roku, game console, etc.
But do they use it because it’s there, or do they actually go out and buy a TV because of the smart features? I’d much rather have a separate device (and do) than use the built in smart features. I would greatly prefer to buy a TV with no smart features and just continue using my AppleTV than have to buy a new TV every time the built in system stopped getting updates.
There was a time when people were buying the smart TV because Netflix and Apple were then apps on the TV and used the same remote.
But the apps are old and crunchy, the tv shovels ads at you, and the steamers are no longer offering the value required to make smart TVs a prime consolidation target.
I am looking forward to the contraction of the market and a shift back to “just a TV with 4 HDMIs” models. No tuners even.
Yep, this here. I have a 10 year old tv and was considering buying a new one last year but it just didn’t seem worth the price for the upgrade.
Tvs have a short lifespan, now. People have to replace them like every 5 years on average, I’d guess. I think people have less tvs in their homes, though.
The other part of this is that people brought a lot of tvs up to a couple years ago when there was a decade long stretch of LED back-lit tvs. The problem was that there might be 100 leds back there and a single one going out junked the tvs. They were cheaply fixable, but not easily fixable. Most people wouldn’t be able to do it.
People replace them that often!? Damn…I have an old 1080p LED tv from Samsung that’s more than a decade old and still going strong. Blacks aren’t the best on it, but not bad enough to warrant an upgrade.
You kind of got lucky. I have the skills and equipment to find the bad ones and replace those LEDs on them. Keep an eye on Facebook marketplace and it’s impressive how many people will put up their three year old 65+ inch tvs that don’t work for free just to get rid of them because they can’t fit in a trash can.
Getting to the LEDs without breaking anything is usually the hard part. Aside from like a million screws and clips, the screen itself is extremely thin and fragile, and you have to pick it up and move it around without cracking it. Little 40 or 50 inch tvs are fairly easy to do, but those 70+ inch tvs are going to take handled suction cups and a couple of people.
Then finding the burnt out led isn’t much work with the right tools, and neither is soldering on a new led. So much trouble for just a single little LED that I can literally but in rolls of 100 for like $12.
So yeah, your TV breaks because of a 12 cent led. And that’s consumer prices. Samsung probably pays like 5 cents.
replace them every 5 years
Less if you went with Visio lol
Vizio
Walmart bought the brand and made it worse with more ads.
This. Nowadays people mostly buy TVs when their old ones break. There’s no marginal improvement. The industry is here to stay, but its high growth days are in the past.
We have also seen the budget range improve in quality and affordability. There will always be cheap junk TVs and overly expensive TVs, but that midrange, where most people buy, has become rock solid. There just isn’t much region to upgrade at the moment.
And we’ve mostly hit the limit of usable maximum sizes. For like the last two decades you could upgrade your TV to the next bigger size every few years for the same money you paid for the last one.
I remember starting with a maybe… 21" LCD TV back in 2005ish, and for that money today I could get like 70" TV. I don’t have space to fit one that large, nor do I have any need for it even if I could.
Gizmochina doesn’t understand that physical TV sales has nothing to do with “TV being dead,” what a disconnect here.
“TV is dead” because it is full of ads, and crap nobody watches, not because global flat screen TV sales are down.
With some exceptions, enthusiasm in technology is in decline in general. We are peaking in terms of rate of progress across the board, from computer speed to smart phone innovation to TV specs. When’s the last time ordinary folks got excited about a new phone release? Who cares about a TV larger than 60 inches? It’s not like most people can even afford a wall big enough to put it on. Who cares about anything more than 4k on a tiny screen?
Meanwhile, the cost of living is only increasing, and consumer trust in product life support is in decline. Stories about TVs listening to private conversations, or holding your device hostage for forced TOS updates, anti-right to repair, the mountain of e-waste and micro plastics, pervasive DRM, enshitified services, subscription hardware…
Should we be surprised? No.
The only thing that gets me excited about tech any more is repairability and offline/local networking.
Has there really been a killer must-have feature from TVs in the last couple of years? If yours is still working is there a need to buy another?
QD-OLED just came into the market in the past couple years and is definitely worth some hype for someone like me that was hanging onto an old plasma, but in general TV’s have been excellent for ages, if you already have an OLED or higher end TV with HDR you probably don’t need to upgrade for a long time.
For gaming probably HDMI 2.1 for higher frame rates, VRR, and/or 40fps with ray tracing and whatnot.
But in general…not really. I just got a new tv for these features plus it having a brighter oled panel than my last one. But at this point I imagine I’ll have this tv for years and years.
For gaming you are better off with a proper monitor.
Not if I want to play on a giant screen in my living room on my couch with proper, nice surround sound.
And most TVs will work just fine for that.
I wasn’t arguing most TVs weren’t ok for that.
But as an answer for if there were any “killer features” in TVs for the last few years, better inputs and panel refresh rates are about the best new things outside of brighter OLEDs.
I was playing devil’s advocate to that, implying they are not killer features. TV gaming is generally consoles, which are all 60fps in 99% of cases anyway.
TVs with actual new panels or features are far too expensive for people to consider, when their current ones already do the job.
OLED, highly-localized dimming, and HDR10
The thing is, all those features are locked behind units that cost several thousand dollars. So, they’re never going to see large volumes of sales or widespread adoption until they trickle into the sub-$1k and sub-$300 price points.
They’ll pry my 10-year old non-smart TV out of my dead cold hands. It’s a 1080p Toshiba that can connect to anything (4x HDMI, VGA, composite, component, SCART, coax and satellite), has a CI/CI+ slot, has DLNA support, and can record/replay using a USB SSD. The only regret I have is that I should’ve bought the larger model.
Tvs peaked with oled
And OLED burn-ins are ruining longevity.
I won’t buy another tv. Only dumb monitors now.
Link a dumb Monitor that is 65 inch pls
