The problem with trying to avoid the current smart TVs is that the industry has started to subsidize the pricing by selling viewing data. It’s going to be harder moving forward to compete on price without having “smart” features that are really a shim for getting the analytics and tracking packages in there.
I’ve been running a pihole on my home network which also actually removes a lot of client side inserted ads during video playback which is another huge upside.
What frustrates me is the lack of options and lack of transparency. Amazon do it right with the Kindle imo—you can get it with ads or pay slightly more and get it without.
My other issue is that I find ads on something that costs > £1000 to be incredibly distasteful. If it was some bargain basement thing fine, but this is meant to be top tier.
Conversely, the advertisers are becoming increasingly less hesitant about doing what they want: exploiting high-end products instead of low-end products. The fact that you just spent north of £1k on a TV is an unambiguous proof you're much more lucrative target for advertising than someone who only buys the cheapest things available.
This is why "pay XOR ads" is a pipe dream: vendors will always turn it into "pay AND ads", because selecting for people with disposable income makes ROI on advertising much better.
But that only works as long as everyone is at it. As soon as you have one brand that makes a point of not doing anything like that and just providing good quality gear, the market of people with enough money to feature in this part of the discussion has another option they may well prefer. And if people buy Apple gear, no-one is convincing me that such a brand couldn't sell a TV with $1000 hardware specs and no junk at $1200 or even $1500 to that market.
How many such brands exist? Apple is the obvious example, but what else? I can think of only single other one - Framework[0] - but it's pretty niche at the moment, and it's too early to tell how successful it'll be. A mass market brand? Can't think of one.
The problem here is, by not doing this kind of shady shit, which is currently normalized as a business practice, you're leaving lots of money on the table. The temptation to pick it up is strong. Maybe you can resist it, but will your investors? Will your shareholders?
If we could figure out how to resist, in a reproducible way, the market pressure favoring antisocial behavior, the world would be a much better place.
> If we could figure out how to resist, in a reproducible way, the market pressure favoring antisocial behavior, the world would be a much better place.
Isn't that what regulation is for? If business practices harm society, then you legally rein in the business, financially discouraging them from committing such practices.
I'm not arguing that recent Apple is a business to be emulated here. However its success is clear evidence that if something is shiny enough and has otherwise good specs then there is a large market willing to pay a large premium for the shiny.
Buy an LG TV that's never hooked into any network and an Apple TV. The only interface I ever see on my Sony TV (which has an LG panel) is the input switcher.
I’ve been running a pihole on my home network which also actually removes a lot of client side inserted ads during video playback which is another huge upside.