Bought a "smart tv" lately

[Dennis G]

So as I've mentioned in a couple of threads, we've recently moved, and as part of this, we treated ourselves to a couple of new TV sets, for the bedroom and office areas. Also dealing with a new cable company (no complaints, happy SO FAR). Got the TV's home, hooked up to cable (HDMI). Needed a PIN #, IP address, etc. not to mention programming the cable remote to the TV!

 

Asked Mrs. G "What ever happened to the buy a TV, take it home, plug it in days?" I'll be the first to admit that I'm a plug n play guy, and all this $hit confuses me. Mrs. G is, shall we say, "a bit more adept" at things like this.

 

I NEED A TEN YEAR OLD (but only for stuff like this, not to live here LOL)

 

End of rant.

[merciful-evans]

I am dreading the time I need another TV.

 

Maybe I'm paranoid, but everything I've read says the smart TV sits there watching you. eeekk!

[skilsaw]

About 8 years ago I bought the last of the "plug and Play" TV's. Brought it home, plugged it in and all was cool for about a year until the remote control started acting up. I'm like you. Who needs this? I threw the remote in the garbage and have been using the buttons on the front of the TV ever since.

 

Then I had a vision. The remote control needed new batteries. Who's the dumb schmuck now?

 

Where's the 10 year old when I need him? The clocks on all the appliances in my house blink "12:00" at me.

[Aster1]

Yeah, with my work we are dealing with, installing, calibrating, and building custom remote controls for small & large theaters most every day. They can be daunting to say the least. Some are great, others, & wouldn't give you a dime for and unless it's time & material for the install, I won't work with most of the brands these days.

 

Aster

[LarryUK]

I love tech. My mobile is on O2 in the UK (TU GO). I've got an app on my laptop and iPad which lets me call and text from those. I don't even need the phone. If you encompass technology it can be great, if not, daunting.

[Rosemarie]

I've always been the techie in our house. Anyone who knows me, though, knows to leave me alone while I am setting things up because there will be LOTS of cursing - and Heaven help the person who tries to ask me a question while I am doing it (my Father-in-law learned the hard way!) It's not so much that I can't do it - I can - it just takes me longer than others because of my vision, which frustrates me.

[surfpup]

I've had no problems with the smart devices. It takes a few minutes to set up admittedly - particularly since I use an access list for my home network instead of a password. Once I add the wi-fi (MAC) address of the device and restart my wireless, everything has worked flawlessly.

 

Before we added our most recent smart DVD player, I added an Apple TV unit to the living room TV for streaming - easiest set up ever.

 

Lately I've added two Amazon FireStick devices to the "not-so-smart" TVs in the house. Now they can stream as well. Nice little device for only $30.

[Digger]

I've saved the money for a smart tv and am waiting for a special before jumping in. I too love tech and have lost count of the devices that we have connected to our home Wi-Fi network. Bluetooth is also part of this household, with streaming music through the stereo via a bluetooth adaptor, or bluetooth speakers.

 

I must admit that I am now starting to struggle a little bit with technology and guess that will get worse as I get older.

[Guest Farnsbarns]

Our smart TV is one if the best purchases of tech we've ever made. Rarely do these advancements truly change anything anymore but connecting the TV straight to the internet and streaming Netflix, youtube, Spotify and others with the native software and with no other hardware to consider has made watching these services seemless. I often find myself watching an interesting video on my phone, one button and it's on my TV. Turn the phone off and the TV continues to stream the video itself. Brilliant!

[Notes_Norton]

"Smart TV" -- isn't that an oxymoron?

 

We used to call them "Idiot Boxes"

 

 

(sorry, I couldn't resist - enjoy your purchase).

[redcoats1976]

got a 50" smart TV last year during black friday,spent time hanging it on the wall.we dont use the "smart" features much but it does have a good picture when watching reruns of the brady bunch or the 6 oclock news...

[stein]

Been watching with interest.

 

I used to be hip on this stuff, and used to be the "guy" when it came to connecting stereo's and TV's and such. Now, I don't even know what a "smart TV" is. Then, there's "smart ready", yada yada.

 

I still got the old, big tube TV. Since they changed broadcast to digital, it's basically a bog, fat, heavy monitor with rca connectors. My roomy, (house guest) left one he was using, so I got two of these. But he didn't leave the remote to it.

 

Now me, I have internet, that's it. I don't see the sense in paying for any more than that. Don't want cable.

 

Broadcast TV is free, and plenty of stuff on the net. I can get glasses for about 100 bucks, so picture quality ain't a big deal. Don't need Netflix, don't need amazon, don't need to pay any more monthly "fees". Just maybe broadcast TV, internet through the TV.

 

Don't know how "smart" of a TV i need.

[milod]

We have a couple of theoretically "smart" flatscreens, and they both work well.

 

But I haven't bothered to even attempt using the "smart" stuff on them largely because my wife and I switch around which "devices" we use otherwise to have a degree of consistency with attachments to the big screens.

 

I have noticed, too, that a lot of my younger tech-savvy friends have entirely cut their "television" bill and are only using web-based any and everything.

 

Me, I like my 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. morning switching between the left-wing CNN news and right-wing Fox news while drinking my first pot of coffee. The computer doesn't quite make it, although heaven knows there's more than enough text, image, audio and video to keep one busy 24-7.

 

Broadcast TV doesn't make it well to where I live. I tried. The "digital canyon" hits easily between where I live and any transmitter antennas. Alas for the good old days of analog tv that may have been lower rez, but carried the signal much better when one lives in the boonies.

 

m

[stein]

 

Broadcast TV doesn't make it well to where I live. I tried. The "digital canyon" hits easily between where I live and any transmitter antennas. Alas for the good old days of analog tv that may have been lower rez, but carried the signal much better when one lives in the boonies.

 

m

I haven't thought of that until you brought it up.

 

Come to think of it, using the rabbit ears (here in the city), it seems it was required to move the antenna more often when the switch was made, although with the "analog" type quality might seem to be a bit less at times, where the "digital" just either comes in, or it doesn't.

[quapman]

I don't have one. Don't really need one. The kids Wii has connectivity so I can do all that jazz

through the wii. When the day comes I need a new tv I may look at them. That may be my only option who knows.

But I won't be worried about it. I'm OK in tech weenie land.

[milod]

I don't think stuff along these lines necessarily has to be "super-techs" vs "tech weenies."

 

Both of our big screen televisions set up quite easily to work the same way we were familiar with since we had televisions with remote controls.

 

What we didn't bother even attempting was connecting them to our "devices." Figure that currently in the house there are 2 desktops, 2 laptops, a "pad" and two "smart" cell phones. There's a wifi router for the smaller stuff, but set up quite simply for the laptops and "pad."

 

In short, we have access anywhere in the house to tv (although I didn't connect anything in my "cave") and internet. That's certainly more than one might argue that we "need," but it nicely answers to our "wants."

 

And... for what it's worth, we dropped landline telephone connection since it never was used.

 

m

[Kenny V]

I called one of my kids to come over and assist me. I now know how my parents must have felt when they would call me to help them with the VCR I bought them. Who even uses a VCR these days.

[RevDavidLee]

got a 50" smart TV last year during black friday,spent time hanging it on the wall.we dont use the "smart" features much but it does have a good picture when watching reruns of the brady bunch or the 6 oclock news...

 

Marcia Marcia Marcia

 

Then: (when we all wanted her)

 

 

At age 56:

 

[Pesh]

I've got one of these TV's but didn't find it hard to set up; I plugged in an Ethernet cable and it configured itself; found local media content on my network and asked if I wanted handy links stored; all very useful. It's also got a Netflix app, so I can watch stuff on there without having to be upstairs watching from my iMac.

[ksdaddy]

We have cable and internet through the same company. My youngest daughter is getting ready to move into the trailer across the road and my stepdaughter will be going off to college in a couple years so it will be just the two of us. We've pretty much decided we are going to kill off the tv part and just keep the internet. We pay a huge amount of money every month so we can MAYBE find something fit to watch. MAYBE.

 

There is only one commercial tv station in the area, plus PBS. Back in the analog days I also watched the Canadian station. I am tempted to pee away $20 for a digital antenna and just hook one tv up to it and see what I can pick up. Haven't done that since 2000 when we got satellite (cable didn't run by my old house).

 

Or I could just shut it off. That would be the ultimate payback to the Kardashians.

[Notes_Norton]

<...snip...> Or I could just shut it off. That would be the ultimate payback to the Kardashians.

The only thing I know about the Kardashians is seeing their names at the checkout line in the grocery store or when someone mentions them on-line. I wouldn't know them if they knocked on my door. I've never seen Cheers, Seinfeld, Taxi, American Idol, Desperate Housewives, Sopranos, Simpsons, Dancing With Stars, and any other show that has been on since the 1980s.

 

I quit TV in the mid 1980s while working on cruise ships for 3 years.

 

I got off the cruise ship, reconnected the cable, and seldom watched it. When I did, I found myself figeting, wanting something interesting to do.

 

So I disconnected the cable. I live in a fringe area, and you can't get anything without an antenna. The house is wired, and the mast is still there, but I never bought an antenna. Therefore, no TV, broadcast, cable, or satellite. I never even bought a digital converter.

 

Instead I learned to play lead guitar and wind synthesizer, learned to write aftermarket styles for Band-in-a-Box, learned to run that Band-in-a-Box thing as a sideline business selling them first by mail-order and then by Internet, learned to write web sites, spent a lot of fun and quality time with my wife, learned over 500 songs for my duo, sequenced the backing tracks myself, and plenty of other things to pass the time in a way that is for me interesting than watching actors pretending to do things.

 

And I may be weird, but I'm happier not watching TV. I might not have done it if it wasn't forced on me (Cruise ships didn't have TV in the 1980s), but after breaking that habit, I find life much better and more fun.

 

Full disclosure, we do have the minimum mail-order package from Netflix and we watch one movie per week - that's the only time the TV goes on. Renting flicks like Jeff Beck Live at Ronnie Scott's, Muscle Shoals, Stax, Symphonies and so on enhance my musical knowledge. We also rent non-musical documentaries and movies that although I don't like the term, are usually classified as 'art films'.

 

I've also seen some TV in doctors waiting rooms, my mother-in-law has Parkinson's Disease and my wife was her caregiver for 11 years. Usually propaganda disguised as news, and that's enough to confirm my decision to not hook up the cable or an antenna.

 

Perhaps it's because I play music for a living, and live in fantasy land so I don't need fantasy TV but a dose of reality. Life is about passing the time away until you're gone, and we all choose how we want to pass the time away. I guess I'm just more active than passive.

 

My TV is dumb. It only knows how to work when a DVD or Blu-Ray is in the player.

 

Quitting TV isn't for everybody (obviously) but it certainly works for me.

 

Notes

[kidblast]

it's all part of the game my boy..

 

if you got hulu/netflix/etc accounts, a smart tv is the way to go IMHO

 

I suggest you get a usb wireless keyboard and mouse,, plug them into the usb ports.

 

it's WAY freakin easier to get around.

[vangoghsear]

We just got a Smart TV when our older one started acting up. It cost about twice as much as a dumb TV I could have gotten, but I liked the idea of using less energy by only operating one device instead of two (my Bluray is also a Smart device) when watching Netflix, which is mostly what we do.

 

The Smart TV is pretty clever. When I do use the BluRay player, it senses what we are doing and the remote controls both devices and detects the source without manually having to change settings in the TV. It detected our WiFi very quickly and easily too, I just needed to put in the pass codes. I'm pretty pleased with it.