Went over to help my Dad last week, he’s been wanting to watch Thursday Night Football on Prime so I set up a family member login for him and installed a Roku Express on his 8-10 year old Vizio 60 inch TV

I noticed the entire upper left quadrant of the screen was dark and another section was flickering so I let him know that his TV was on borrowed time and to think about getting a new one.

He says OK “but I don’t want one of those smart TVs, I just want a dumb one!” He’d bought a Vizio non-Roku “smart” TV for his upstairs living room a few years earlier and it’s been a big frustration for him, even I find the interface horrible and not easy to use or navigate so he’s a bit turned off by the idea of smart TV’s.

I told him I’d start looking and I just started perusing the Walmart website for TVs locally available to him there and it turns out that every single damn TV is “smart“ in some way.

Do they not even make plain old dumb TV’s any more?

My thought is to get him what we have and really like, which is a TCL Roku TV, I think he would get the hang of that pretty quickly.

I plan on replacing my 10 year old TV next year. My main factor in what I opt for will be the ease and speed in which the interface with the smart apps work. I will be watching this thread in hope of gaining more info.

I plan to replace My Vizio also. and have no clue what to get.
i will be watching this thread also. For help with my decision

Is it possible to use a PC monitor as a TV?

We too have 2 TCL ROKU TVs and find them both simple and quick to use. Both default to the standard TV on startup, no need to hunt around for it each time. If you want to go to a specific app it's easy to do, and quick to load.


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So many new brands I’ve never heard of, I miss my Sony trinitron

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Do they not even make plain old dumb TV’s any more?

They do, but it's rare. Not enough market demand to support it in most cases. The few that are out there tend to be secondary brands, and primarily smaller sizes.

For example: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/i...0085.p?skuId=6530085

No smart features. No 4k. No HDR. Just a cheap, basic 43" 1080P TV with zero frills for just over $100.


Another option is to go with a specialized TV that's intended to be used as a business signage display, like this Samsung: https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG...LGFXGO/dp/B0C9H1BPK3

It's several times the price, but it's dumb, has better picture quality, and is available in larger sizes. While it's intended to display digital business content, you can use it like a standard TV.


However, your line of thinking is correct, in that if you are going to hunt down a dumb TV and then install a Roku on it anyway, it's likely best to just skip the middleman and get a smart TV that uses the Roku interface.

But note that not all TCLs use Roku anymore. They recently started producing most of their TVs with Amazon Fire or Android interfaces instead, though they do still offer some models with Roku.

The other option is to buy whatever TV you want and then shut down the "smart" operating system. I've got a Sony which I originally bought because I thought it's operating system would require only one remote, which would be helpful for my wife. But it turns out the Sony OS didn't play well with my Sonos surround sound system. So I turned off WiFi access to the Sony and use an Apple TV streaming device -- which, it turns out, allows me to control both the TV and Sonos system with just the Apple TV remote.

I've got two Panasonics I bought in 2007 and they are still working fine. Believe me, given the way the quality of most goods have declined in this century, I'm as surprised as anyone that they are still working. I think one of the reasons for this is that I have Panamax surge protectors on the AC line of each set. Or, it could be that Panasonic makes a really good TV.

At any rate, I am dreading replacing them. If they last a full 20 years, I will be elated.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Do they not even make plain old dumb TV’s any more?

The major brands (Samsung, Sony, LG, Visio, etc.): Probably not.

They make more money reselling your information gathered from "smart" TV use than they do from "dumb" TVs. That explains the mystery of why, when both were still available, "dumb" TVs were often more expensive than "smart" TVs.

Solution is to buy a "smart" TV, connect to Internet to get latest firmware update, and disconnect from Internet. Then use whatever you want for a streaming device.

That's what we do.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
I've got two Panasonics I bought in 2007 and they are still working fine. Believe me, given the way the quality of most goods have declined in this century, I'm as surprised as anyone that they are still working. I think one of the reasons for this is that I have Panamax surge protectors on the AC line of each set. Or, it could be that Panasonic makes a really good TV.

At any rate, I am dreading replacing them. If they last a full 20 years, I will be elated.

Before I got the Sony, three years ago, I had a 37" Panasonic Plasma that I bought in 2010 which is still going strong. I wanted a bigger set and so I gave the Panasonic to a friend's son, and they are still using it.

I think what I'll do is get him the TCL Roku TV to replace the dying one down in his man cave and then move the Roku Express to the upstairs Vizio smart TV that he struggles so much with. That will eliminate the horrible Vizio interface and then he will have a common, easy to navigate (Roku) interface on both TV's.

quote:

Is it possible to use a PC monitor as a TV?

^^^^^^^^^^
Yes. I do watch the local news on my office PC as well as some College football. Convenient for when you are doing other work as well.

I have a circa 1988 Proton 27" I got when I was a distributor for them.
It works most of the time but we got a replacement LED TV to use.
It is still stuck in an upstairs office until I get the energy to move it - weighs a ton.

I kind of fell into being a Roku guy. Am I missing out? Should I switch to Apple or the fire stick stuff?

It was my understanding that by using the Roku stick I was bypassing all the smart features anyway other than the ability to stream wifi. Am I misunderstanding?

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
I kind of fell into being a Roku guy. Am I missing out? Should I switch to Apple or the fire stick stuff?

Not really. It basically comes down to personal preference on which system's interface you like. 99.9% of the app availability and functionality are the same between the various major competitors.

So if you like Roku, there's no reason to switch. But if you don't like Roku, try one of the others like Apple TV or Amazon Fire, and you might find you like it better.

Most folks tend to prefer the Roku interface, since it's a bit simpler/more intuitive than some of the others.

quote:

It was my understanding that by using the Roku stick I was bypassing all the smart features anyway other than the ability to stream wifi. Am I misunderstanding?

Kinda.

By using the Roku, you are not using the smart features on your smart TV. But you're using the same smart features on the Roku. And the Roku is collecting data on your browsing/watching habits, and showing you banner ads on the menu, just like a smart TV interface would be.

So you're not really bypassing or avoiding anything. Just doing all of it via an alternate means.

The main benefits of using a standalone Roku are that it allows you to use smart features on an otherwise dumb TV, or that it allows you to use the familiar Roku interface instead of the potentially inferior interface of whatever other OS the smart TV might be using.

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:


I kind of fell into being a Roku guy. Am I missing out? Should I switch to Apple

IMO the Roku is the best one out there. I was introduced here!

It's my understanding that Apple has not updated the Apple TV streaming device in a long time and may be moving away from them?

Goodwill has plenty of dumb TV's

You could just not require it to do that smart stuff.
It doesn't make it dumb but they then get the same test scores.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:


I kind of fell into being a Roku guy. Am I missing out? Should I switch to Apple

IMO the Roku is the best one out there. I was introduced here!

It's my understanding that Apple has not updated the Apple TV streaming device in a long time and may be moving away from them?

Actually, the Apple TV streaming device, which I own, has received several major OS updates just in the past year.

I have used Roku, Amazon Firestick and Apple TV streaming devices and my favorite is the Apple TV device. The Apple TV device makes especially good sense if you have other Apple devices. For example, if I want to search for a title, as soon as I hit the search function using my Apple TV remote, my phone asks if I would prefer to to the search on my phone, where it's a lot quicker to type.

Also, as I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, the Apple TV device plays much nicer with my Sonos components than other devices I've tried.

Finally, the Apple OS in the device plays nice with my Tablo over the air streaming device. FYI, Tablo devices plug into an over the air antenna (I use an indoor window antenna) to wirelessly stream over the air channels to the various TVs in your home using wifi. Many streaming devices and smart TV operating systems from Samsung, Panasonic, etc., are incompatible with Tablo. devices.