It's not the first pointless downgrade of the LG remote: they've already removed the pause button.
Now pausing and unpausing is done with the general-purpose click-wheel, is up to each app to implement, and is dependent on the UI state.
If a wrong element is focused (which is not hard to do, because the button is a scroll wheel surrounded by directional buttons), you may end up toggling subtitles or some other option when trying to pause or unpause.
It used to be a hardware button that always worked, was trivial to find by feel, easy to activate, and worked instantly.
Now it's "wait, I need to pause! Oops, I moved the scroll wheel button by a notch when pressing it, so it's a mouse cursor now! I fast-forwarded to the second half of the movie and the audio is in French."
You can buy a LG compatible remote on Amazon for $ 10-20 with a pause button that will most certainly work. The codes are still being interpreted, just that they removed or repurposed the physical button on the remote. My kid destroy LG remotes on a yearly basis and I have purchased the cheap one (non magic wand or whatever they call the Wii like experience). It does what I need it to do. Change the brightness, input, channel and volume as well as HDMI-Arc play pause.
Just like cars, I do not put it past TV manufacturers to sell a dedicated touch-screen TV remote before the decade is out.
Imagine:
* an unpredictably modal interface
* chugging, tasteless animations
* software updates every few weeks
* terrible battery life
* a constant glow out of the corner of your eye
* easily broken
But you can sell ads on it. You know it makes awful sense.
Oh, hey, I was working on that back in 2014 for one of the big TV manufacturers. The project was ultimately cancelled.
It was nice for things like switching HDMI inputs; you could dynamically update the name and icon, making it more intuitive for someone who had never used the TV before and didn't know what was plugged into which port. You could also adjust settings more easily without everyone have to watch together with you on the big screen as you dug to find the obscure setting to tweak.
But your complaints were equally valid, and were a concern at the time.
I would have liked to see it ship, if just to see if customers liked it. A traditional remote still worked too. But oh well.
When I press the "input" button on my remote, the TV displays a list of HDMI ports and what is plugged into them. Why would I want to be looking at my remote for that information? I'm already remote-controlling the best display device I own.
Well, my TV is it's own remote: it's one of my tablets or my phone or my laptop connected to a Raspberry Pi 3B with a TV hat, connected to the antenna on the roof. It runs tvheadend and I run its client on my devices, TVH Client on Android and TVH Player on Linux and Windows. Those devices are smart and can also run Netflix, YouTube etc without the TV spying on me. Each app can do its own spying but at least for YouTube there are alternative players that are more well behaved.
If there is another person at home I can boot a second Raspberry connected to another cable from the antenna or connect one of those devices to the HDMI input of my TV that sits unused in a corner of my living room. It's not usual to watch something with other people nowadays.
With this arrangement everybody can watch TV anywhere in the house and carry it wherever they go without having to pause the stream.
This was one hell of a remote control
https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Harmony-Elite-Remote-Control...
even if it was pricey. (Used to be able to get them refurbed at a decent price...) The touchscreen works really well, you can even use it to control the cursor on a PC. It has the buttons you'd expect on a remote control. It can run your Phillips Hue, CD changer, Blu Ray Player, TV everything. Makes the dominant paradigm of Apple, Netflix, Spotify and all that look like garbage, but I guess a lot of people now don't have anything to control with it anymore.
The configuration of my system got messed up and and I didn't bother to fix it because I thought they'd discontinued it; the latest I've seen is that they quit manufacturing it but they are still keeping the database up so I might trying bringing it up again.
My more well-to-do uncle has an older version of this for his absurd setup. Idk that it was the remote's fault or not, but the system was so stupidly complicated it burned into my brain that I'd just much rather not have any of the materialistic garbage it attempted to control. Not judging exactly, because everyone has different preferences, but I just couldn't envision myself loving what amounts to the digestion of video enough to try and wrangle any of it.
A TV and a receiver? Sure, fine. But also the PlayStation, movie server, regular cable input, Roku and Netflix and the "Smart" features of the TV for some reason. So many redundant boxes and services.
Random bit of trivia: the older versions of these had the interface implemented in Flash. That's right, Adobe Flash Player on a remote.
Agree - I had one of these and was the only way to get all my hi-fi gear and other things working together. Everything just worked.
Nowadays, devices like the Broadlink RM4 Pro fills the same niche. It can learn both IR and Wireless protocols to remotely control most household devices (not just audio/video stuff).
The difference is that is does not come with a remote - instead there is either a phone app which can be used to directly control it or it can work with Alexa/Home Assistant.
I think it's a great way to "smarten" some older "dumb" devices.
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/getting-started-with-b...
Vizio did this back in the 2018 time frame (ask me how I know). It's a small Android tablet with the Vizio app on it. You can also just download the app onto your phone and use it that way. It was so unpopular that Vizio eventually relented and handed out normal remotes. As far as I know, their modern TVs continue to use a standard remote.
I still have my 2018 Vizio that came with the stupid android tablet. On day one I blocked internet access for the TV, plugged in an Apple TV, and put the android remote in a drawer where it sits to this day.
I bought a very cheap Vizio TV around that time (I was in college) that didn't include a remote in the box. You had to use the app.
I'm sure I'm messing up some of the details, but --
The TV needed to be connected to a network for the app to work. The university required you to register the device's MAC address before it could join the network. The TV had an ethernet port, and its MAC was printed on a sticker on the back of the TV, so I was able to get that going. But it wasn't convenient to keep an ethernet cable routed to the TV (the room was awkward) so my roommate and I wanted to get it on the WiFi.
There was literally no way to open the TV's OSD and view the WiFi MAC address with the Vizio app. You needed a physical remote to access that part of the UI.
IIRC we ended up finding an old WiFi access point and connected the TV to it in order to view its WiFi MAC in the access point's admin UI.
They could have just given us a damn remote in the box! It was infuriating.
https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/remote-controls-rem...
I had one of these and oddly loved it, a bit of a geek toy.
I've been in the process of making my own macro pad recently, maybe it's time to make my own remote as well.
I gotta say: Palm Pilots with IR blaster apps such as OmniRemote check most of these boxes, but we loved them. In 2004.
It's been quite a while, but I vaguely remember my original PSP-1001 had an IR blaster program (app?) on it as well
That's essentially what the Philips Pronto remotes were.
They already have phone apps.
What are the odds that this was tested with actual users?
I remember a time long ago, in a galaxy far far away where the user experience mattered more than whatever whims designers had.
My old car, for example, had big buttons that were meant to be usable with gloves. That was a godsend in the Swedish winter. It wasn't very pretty, but the memory of it makes me want to scream every time I have to use a touch interface in a car.
> they've already removed the pause button.
This is utterly aggravating. That's literally the button I use the most by a factor of 10x. The center button behavior differs between apps and is inconsistent enough to drive me crazy. This just makes me want to live more exclusively inside a single app, and that app is without question going to be Jellyfin. I'm certainly not a normal consumer, but I'm just moving further and further away from what they want.
Jellyfin is so bad on my XBOX I'm thinking of going back to Plex. I was really angry when Plex pivoted to a FAST service but after I got sucked into Tubi it didn't seem fair to punish Plex anymore.
I have an LG remote and hate it. Why do I need to use an onscreen pointer to switch inputs?
I like their OLED, but mostly I chose LG more because I was voting against the other guys who are worse.
Can you imagine if management were to prioritize what consumers wanted, rather than jumping onto the latest trend for their careers?
We might have TVs with remote locator buttons that would make the remote control ping audible via a press of a button on the TV? So much time saved and happiness granted with ancient technology.
But no, AI. Bad product folks who want to experiment and make their mark more than they want to improve the experience.
Are there 3rd party remotes for these TVs? Or is the problem that there is not even a general "pause" command now?
I got an old TCL(don't get me started) and when the original remote died I got a noname IR thing that is even capable of switching to a custom channel.
Third party remotes do work on most TVs, I use a Nvidia Shield Remote on my TCL over bluetooth for example. I cannot however turn the TV on using that remote. Having a dedicated Play/Pause Button is still worth it however.
> Are there 3rd party remotes for these TVs? Or is the problem that there is not even a general "pause" command now
At least on my LG C1 my old Logitech Harmony still does a good job.
Note though that the native remote uses Bluetooth or since other radio technology and the Harmony uses infrared.
My 10 year old LG is like this. Are you sure they ever had anything different? I dont really like it but never had a problem.
My 2020 LG CX has a pause button on the remote, but my mum's 2021 C1 doesn't have it anymore. It's a lot worse to use because every time you pick up the remote the cursor appears on the screen and clicking the general purpose wheel will click whatever the cursor is pointing to, so sometimes you need to aim the remote(carefully!) to pause, instead of just having a button for it like on my remote.
It looks like there was no pause in 2015: https://www.lg.com/us/tv-audio-video-accessories/lg-AN-MR650...
Play and pause were there in 2016: https://www.lg.com/us/tv-audio-video-accessories/lg-AN-MR600...
There were other weird designs over the years too: https://media.us.lg.com/transform/b10eeb90-5206-4f69-9959-bc...
My LG remote from maybe 5ish years ago has a pause button
I discovered that my OnePlus has a IR blaster. Now I use my phone as remote - and it works on a variety of models (have Samsung and Vizio in house).
Well I guess I’m not upgrading. Pause is the button I use the most
not looking at how bad the new LG remote is but my all time favorite remote is the Apple remote from like 2010ish.
This one : https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/949603040
White, plastic, 6 buttons (up, down, left, right, select, cancel). That's it. Worked great with Kodi on an Intel MacMini. Could easily do everything I needed to do.
Since then they first ruined it by changing it be a kind of metal that felt like chalk on my hands. It was horrible
https://cdsassets.apple.com/live/7WUAS350/images/apple-tv/ap...
Then they broken it completely by making it larger with a touch surface.
https://cdsassets.apple.com/live/7WUAS350/images/apple-tv/ap...
It was impossible to use because trying to select (clicking the touch surface) would always end up also adding left/right/up/down events so you'd always select something other than what you wanted to select. I have no idea how that POS ever made it out of user testing.
They made it slightly better but still broken by changing it back to a circle.
https://cdsassets.apple.com/live/7WUAS350/images/apple-tv/ap...
But the circle itself is still a touch surface and still always moves your selection as you try to select something. It's atrocious!
In any case, the 6 button remote back from the beginning was the best. I still use Kodi on an AppleTV now, but I use a separate remote and only use 6 buttons.
When something is playing, pressing the cetner button pauses, pressing again unpauses, pressing up/down adjusts the volume. Pressing back exits the movie, holding the center for 2 seconds brings up more detailed controls.
Kodi also has the best queing experience of any app. Pressing right skips forward 10 seconds, again within some threshhold, 30 second, then 1 min, 3 mins, then 10. I can get anywhere in a movie instantly.
Compare this to Netflix, or Apple TV+, or Crunchyroll, or Amazon, etc... They all suck. Generally left/right jumps +10 or +30 period. If you want to get to the end you're forced to hold right, wait for it to go into "fast forward mode", then press right for 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, Then wait forever as it slowly goes through the movie. So bad.
> “For us, our biggest goal is to create enough value that yes, you would be willing to pay for [Gemini],” Google TV VP and GM Shalini Govil-Pai told the publication.
> The executive pointed to future capabilities for the Gemini-driven Google Assistant on TVs, including asking it to “suggest a movie like Jurassic Park but suitable for young children” or to show “Bollywood movies that are similar to Mission: Impossible.”
That seems so incredibly useless it reads like parody. No, I will not be willing to pay for Gemini for that.
I can’t imagine ever asking questions like those in my life... and even if one day I were drunk, high, and concussed enough to ask, I wouldn’t need to ask my TV—I could just go to claude.ai on my phone instead because I already pay for it.
Honestly, do these people hear themselves? I guess the product echo chamber is too loud to hear the needs of actual customers (or what they don’t need).
the culture of toxic positivity at work I'm afraid
The Abilene Paradox.
At last, thanks!
A name for that strange time I was in a room of ~15 people chaired by me, who unanimously decided that PHP should be used for the website, made by volunteers. Yet when I asked individuals afterwards, none of them had wanted PHP, and only one or two ever used PHP.
They chose it because they incorrectly thought that's what most people wanted, and they preferred to go along with their perception of group view so readily that nobody revealed their own tech preferences, despite a long discussion.
It wasn't a compromise, because that would start with people knowing each others' preferences, then compromising.
It was more like a bad default based on incorrect beliefs about each other.
The strangest part, for me, was realising that this happened despite meeting for a good hour discussing alternative options, with several professional webdevs in the group. The groupthink effect is powerful!
The effect of the group decision was not what people in the group had hoped for. Instead of producing an attractive common interest, it resulted in few volunteers, because everyone picked a tech choice they were not interested in working with themselves, assuming it would be of more interest to others.
The same happened to me last year, on a company trip people voted to not go to a bioluminescent swimming, but when I confronted them everyone was really wanting to go. We ended up going (I can be a bit pushy), and everybody loved that experience.
This is a really good book about all kinds of similar situations:
Thomas Schelling: Micromotives and Macrobehavior
https://www.amazon.com/Micromotives-Macrobehavior-Thomas-C-S...
"In one famous example, Thomas C. Schelling shows that a slight-but-not-malicious preference to have neighbors of the same race eventually leads to completely segregated populations."
Presumably there will be nag screens and innumerable dark patterns. So you will end up paying to stop the pain.
In order to increase interaction it will always default to playing movies that will cause the most disagreement between people in the room. You will have to pay to create family harmony and keep it from showing your children (or your parents) porn when you're not there.
Honestly, I like that kind of functionality. But you don't need AI for that. There are websites that have been doing this for years.
If that world comes to pass, it will become mandatory not optional and I would search for the nearest bullet to end it all. I would ask where Google is finding people to spout this codswallop but I know the answer.
Switching inputs is by far the thing that causes the most anxiety for a regular person (based on observational evidence). I really believe that it makes or breaks whole lines of service.
IMO, streaming won in part because once people (i.e. grandma) changed the input to the streaming device, they couldn’t figure out how to get back to the cable box, or at least didn’t want to risk “breaking anything” when trying to do it when their resident tech person wasn’t around.
Getting rid of the input button is either really bad (making this process even more fraught), or is a sign that the whole idea is just going away. Input switching should be incorporated into the home screens instead of being a separate menu/function. Hopefully this is the direction LG is going.
I really believe every software engineer should set aside some time and just watch a normal person interact with technology. Don't interrupt, just watch their process. It's mind-boggling how many inefficient workflows people are using because they aren't confident enough.
It's been at least 20 years since companies stopped listening to software developers. Now we have product owners, scrum masters, bussiness analysts, delivery managers.
Nothing blew my mind like watching my first girlfriend reset her password every single time she wanted to log into anything because she never remembered a single password.
God hope she never gets logged out of her email.
On some TVs, plugging in a USB stick pops up a notice like "would you like to view the contents?"
If you don't choose "yes" in time and the toast disappears, the alternative is to navigate a few menu items deep through an ad-filled home screen (maybe 10 clicks worth). It's easier to just physically unplug-replug.
I actually had a TV where that window was the only way to switch to the USB drive. What a pain that must've been for developers to test (though maybe they just dropped in some USB library and called it a day).
Totally agree. Learning how to explain technology as a teenager to my grandparents and assist them with it in a way they can understand gave me a much more holistic view towards tech. I honestly believe it's helped me quite a bit in my career as a software engineer because I can communicate effectively with my non-technical coworkers and serve as a bridge between them and the devs.
Growing up, I was tech support for family and friends of family and also my own friends. I eventually worked as a PC technician for a few years and now work as a software developer. I have a very keen eye for how bad UI/UX is for most devices, computers and software because of it and it's been a huge help in my work in the same way, but it's also been quite infuriating when I see decisions being made that prioritize KPIs like sale and click through rates that intentionally make the UX worse.
Is that due to software engineers or management/marketing? I doubt that engineers could make such decision
Why do you think most engineers would understand users particularly well? From my experience, they're the worst at empathising with users, understanding user pain points and the value of a good UX.
I've heard plenty of engineers say. "Yes, but that's a training issue"
> I've heard plenty of engineers say. "Yes, but that's a training issue"
I'd go one step deeper. Where did they learn to say this? I bet they learned to say this from the business.
Because I've asked about input validation on a line of business application and heard something similar to this "given this application is used by internal users only and because these users are trained experts on this subject, we don't need input validation".
You will get shut down really quickly if you ask whether a combination of choosing option A in step 12 and option C in step 37 together makes any sense at that company. Ask me how I know.
Oh yeah, of course the same person asked why we allowed these combinations once the application hit production.
> Switching inputs
It could be so easy. Just render all the inputs at once, scaled to fit all of them on screen at the same time, and then select the one you want. Could be done intuitively with as few as two buttons. Interleaving samples of the scaled inputs would preclude any dramatic hardware cost.
Maybe someone has done this, but the TVs I've seen have a primitive and hostile scheme that frequently ends in a black screen with some mystifying abbreviated label and no clue where to go next. 100% certain to traumatize grandma.
>>Just render all the inputs at once, scaled to fit all of them on screen at the same time
That is not simple at all. In fact most TV multiplexers don't have the ability to obtain frames of input from more than one source at the same time.
I have a el cheapo 2024 Hisense TV with Amazon fire TV and it does not care if I had it set to HDMI 2 when I turned it off. It always comes back to its own home screen. I haven't figured out how to have it stick to my computer when it turns on.
> once people (i.e. grandma) changed the input to the streaming device, they couldn’t figure out how to get back to the cable box
Unless you have a remote with the magical "TV" button and you only have to teach (i.e. grandma) to press that one when the TV channels don't appear.
Not sure if this would work with cable boxes though, as they might get separated from the default TV input (as in, scanned channels) but THIS is something they should make smarter (learning the default input and assigning it to the TV button)
Anecdote/Tangent: Roku TV wins an award for worst input switching UX. From Home, you have to go into Settings (the quick settings accessible from the remote aren't enough,) then scroll down the Inputs menu and then select your input. At least with LG, inputs are directly available from the Home menu.
Funny, I just commented that I like the Roku method. My inputs show up as tiles on the home screen alongside the other apps. You can show/hide the ones you want.
When I first got a Roku TV I had to uninstall a ton of applications that were auto installed, which are treated just as equally as your actual inputs on the home screen. Then once I got that done I later realized removing an input device left that tile on the screen, you would think the OS could be smart enough to see that the device isn't connected for a while and maybe drop it off after some time? I find Roku TV kind of clunky.
Dropping access to disconnected inputs is extremely annoying. When connecting something new, you often want to change the TV to the input before powering on the device.
Why? I think most users would only want to show devices that are alive. Displaying everything can be quite confusing.
I've had multiple Roku TVs. All the inputs were in the list of apps. You can easily rename them, order them in the grid, change the icon, etc.
Strange, my TCL Roku TV just has them on the Home screen. What type of TV do you have?
They should make apps in the home screen for switching to other inputs. I wonder if HDMI CEC is now good enough to do the job. The hard part is switching back to the streaming device. Maybe use the home button and try to act like the TV/Bluray/Xbox is an app.
Ha, the SAP button must be a close second. I remember my neighbors literally screaming at the cable company on the phone over it while I was over there to watch a movie. I hit the SAP button and went back to my beer.
What’s a SAP button?
[Second audio program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_audio_program)
Yeah that's what I was thinking too while reading the article. For a tech-focused person, sure, input switching might me obvious. But to a lot of people having only active and valid inputs being selectable might be the best solution.
> Google is also working toward having people pay a subscription fee to use Gemini on their TVs, PCWorld reported.
> “For us, our biggest goal is to create enough value that yes, you would be willing to pay for [Gemini],” Google TV VP and GM Shalini Govil-Pai told the publication.
> The executive pointed to future capabilities for the Gemini-driven Google Assistant on TVs, including asking it to “suggest a movie like Jurassic Park but suitable for young children” or to show “Bollywood movies that are similar to Mission: Impossible.”
You don't even need LLMs for a recommendation system. Just matrix factorisation is enough for a very good recommendation system. A local transformer model is enough for the Text to Speech part.
Surely is the product (Google Play TV & Movies, Youtube Premium) is selling you video content, recommending content to spend your money on is just marketing not a user facing subscription service.
Imagine Spotify wanting to charge you on top of your subscription to get music recommendations.
A real world use case I'd want is "what was that movie with the guy who looks like Pacino where they drove around in Paris for a while?" Or "play the scene where the muppets are floating around in a hot air balloon". And just have the information ... pop up. Like... real search about concrete specific stuff I just can't quite find on my own.
LLMs are really bad at this. I tried finding long lost comic book using everything available on the market and got either basic bitch replies listing biggest authors and suggesting its in one of their works or plain hallucinations.
Doesn't have to be LLMs specifically. With how much data and metadata major companies have on all this media, it shouldn't be impossible to do this sort of stuff. But it's probably not mega-profitable enough. They'll just keep shifting buttons on devices and maybe rounding some corners on UI buttons.
EDIT: Maybe LLMs trained on the media itself - cast, crew, physical descriptions of people and places and equipment in various scenes, along with timestamps... - maybe LLMs and other search tech together could do this.
I was recently hunting down an 80s TV episode with a particular supporting actor. ChatGPT confidently lied about the actor's name despite it being in many data sources.
Seconded. ChatGPT is terrible at saying "I don't know".
And Elon says they have run out of training data ...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/09/elon-musk...
Scary. Sometimes I wonder how many insane ideas were collected by product owners from posts on this website that start with "imagine x".
Tangential but I've learned to skip any comment starting with the word "imagine". Ironically they tend to be the least imaginative and insightful and usually only serve to aggravate and polarize.
In his 1948 novel '1984', George Orwell imagined 'telescreens' - devices that enabled two-way surveillance while broadcasting content. In the story, 'The Party' had to mandate their installation, because of course no one would install such an Orwellian device voluntarily!
Today, we voluntarily install smart TVs, always-listening assistants, and IoT cameras in our homes. Unlike telescreens, which were limited by human monitoring capacity, modern devices can automatically process, store, and analyze surveillance data at scale [1].
The dystopian technology wasn't just recreated - it was improved upon, then marketed as a convenience.
(See also: Torment Nexus)
[1] At the very least the theoretical capability is already there.
It’s more in the line of Robocop but I could imagine a dystopian reality TV show where the show clips from people’s unguarded cameras.
I know hackers already do this but this would be the TV companies doing it without any shame.
i’ll never understand people who put surveillance cameras _in_ their houses.
like everything there are of course exceptions, but a normal ass everyday person… i can’t imagine living with this kind of paranoia.
Because they aren't connected to the "cloud", they are completely isolated. Ever hear of a baby cam, definitely useful!
It's not paranoia, it's convenience.
Obviously, but people are also perfectly happy having a cloud connected camera directly in their living room so they can watch the dog or whatever when they aren't home. That's mad to me.
>aren't connected to the "cloud"
Yeah they just need an an app.....which is connected to the cloud lol
I know there isn't a market for it, but I'd really like a dumb TV that is snappy with an excellent panel. I don't even need speakers, or multiple inputs...
Sony Bravia. You can opt out from the smart TV features when you set the TV up.
Last I knew they support firmware update via thumb drive too (mine does) so if there’s some critical fix you need you’re not locked out if you don’t want to hook it up to the internet.
Also, I thought I heard "commercial" TVs are dumb TVs. Although, I haven't heard much about those.
I think there is a market for it. There's no way that most people actually enjoy the slowness and bloat of modern TVs. The only potential snag (and it's a big one to be fair) is that modern consumers are extremely price sensitive, to the point that it's literally the only thing a lot of people care about. So as long as the shitty bloatware TV is cheaper than the actually good TV, they'll sell more of the shitty bloatware TV. But the market for an actual good TV is still there if only some company will actually bother to serve it.
I don't think people are as price sensitive as is commonly believed. I think consumers broadly don't have reliable signals except for price, so they prioritize what they know. Look at companies where brand is also a reliable indicator of product quality (in popular perception) like Apple or Louis Vuitton. When there's other signals, consumers are frequently willing to prioritize them over price.
Yeah, for many categories of products there's basically two reasonable approaches to buying something: put lots of effort into research, or just buy the cheapest one. Many people are willing to pay more for a better product, but that requires being able to identify the better product.
TV as a whole seems to be basically deprioritized versus one's smartphone and/or gaming PC. In a year or so when I get my own place, I'm not so sure I'll care about having a TV, at least not right away, and if I do, price will be the main factor.
It doesn't help that TVs have pretty much all plateaued at excellent picture quality. The main perceptible difference is the size. So, when I go to my local department store and see 3 72" TVs, by different vendors, and can't really tell any difference in picture quality, why wouldn't I pick the cheapest?
Price sensitivity - I find it funny that there is seemingly an immense amount of resources going into things that enable tracking for advertising purposes, but consumers as a whole are getting poorer and poorer. At some point it calls into question whether it's really about selling ads.,
It doesn't help that the are all stuck on the one video feed and you dont get to play with the remote to explore the ui and get a feel for it.
I've had excellent experiences with a few different Roku TVs. I think my old dedicated Roku was a tiny bit faster in some menus but in the end it's been the same experience. I do acknowledge the privacy implications of Roku and the fact they inject some ads on the home screen but it's probably been the smoothest streaming platform thing I've used.
I had a recent model Vizio. That was absolutely terrible. Eventually the power supply killed itself and I haven't bothered replacing it. Over a decade ago I was a fan of Vizio, that one purchase forever soured me on the brand. I'll never buy and never recommend them again.
I have a 65" 4k LG Panel that has literally never been connected to the internet and never will be. It does not have nags nor does it automatically attempt to connect itself to the internet.
It works fine connected to an AppleTV 4k and and appleTV is the only smart TV software I'll use. It's smooth as butter, has no ads, and integrates with the rest of my devices with minimal setup.
I have basically the same setup. I like it, and agree its probably one of the best setups, but to be fair its still a user hostile battle field.
Apple has their dark pattern approach to promote the Apple TV+ service. Netflix refuses to participate in the global search. Apple constantly injecting ads about their content into other content.
It seems that many don't realize at least Samsung and LG both have an option (albeit buried deep in the menu structure) to turn off the smart TV functionality. One of the first things I did on my new set. It now powers up set to a single input and my AppleTV takes it from there.
Where is that option for LG TVs? I don't think I've ever seen it, but my LG TV is a few years old now so it might not have it yet.
Awarded you a point for this top tip. Really hate my samsung tv’s software. Because of that I use an apple tv to control it anyways.
Sounds like I'm hunting through menus on the weekend....
I don't get the hate for smart TVs. I don't have strong feelings either way. I activate my Apple TV and my Sony TV automatically turns on, switched to the correct input. Same for my Nintendo Switch. The only time I ever interact with the TV's UI is when I accidentally sit on the remote and mash the buttons. The TV isn't even connected to my WiFi, so I don't worry about it spying on me or getting hacked.
For me it's a few things.
First, most/all new Smart TVs are doing automated content recognition, collecting and sharing details about what you watch with the manufacturer, which they sell and/or use to show you ads. My understanding is that most new Smart TVs are showing you ads regardless. I'm opposed to this on principle.
Second, at least the Smart TVs I've personally used (a couple of Vizio sets, a late-00s FHD Samsung, a mid-10s 4k LG) all have really slow and unpleasant UIs. The Vizio in particular was glacial, and I couldn't understand why the set owner even bought it (they were only streaming through built-in apps). I'm guessing newer and higher-end sets are fast, but I haven't used one myself.
And finally, I don't want an integrated device like this anyway, I would prefer to pair a really nice panel with a separate smart device (roku, apple tv, linux, whatever) so I can upgrade those independently. If I am buying a Smart TV with no intention of using the smarts, I feel like I'm either paying too much, or not getting as nice a panel as I otherwise could.
Sony let's you either opt-out of content recognition (yeah, it's hidden in the menu) or you can disable the smart features altogether and just use it as a dumb tv.
When I think of smart TVs it's less about the kind of quality -of-life improvements you're describing and more about pushing users towards the in-TV apps and software to more effectively capture and sell usage data.
Though I do have a funny interaction with the former kind of "smart features" with my (otherwise wonderful) LG C1 and PS5 where if I start the PS5 first it takes too long to trigger the TV to turn on and gets confused and puts the PS5 back to sleep as soon as the TV wakes up and switches to the input. But honestly I think I get more amusement than frustration watching the two smart devices outsmart each other constantly.
That's CEC working for you, nothing to do with a Smart TV. And you likely avoided the worst attributes by not connecting it to the internet.
My Apple TV always steals the input focus back from the Switch constantly. There is a specific order of turning things on that must be adhered in order to not accidentally disturb the Apple TV and awake it from it's slumber.
And there's key combinations on both Apple TV and Roku (rot in hell) that will occasionally trigger the LG WebOS UI to take over requiring fetching the LG remote from the bowels of the console to deactivate it.
God forbid someone slam a door while you're watching TV and it triggers the gyroscopic TV remote to wake up and put a hot pink mouse cursor on screen.
I do too. But what you describe there is basically a monitor.
I use a TV as a monitor. When looking for a monitor at the time I noticed TVs are much cheaper. When I compared the specs, I couldn't find any disernable difference.
1. Is this still true that TVs are considerably cheaper than monitors?
2. Is there a difference, or one I should care about between the two?
TVs still are cheaper.
There are differences.
Just to name a few:
Monitors have better colour accuracy, higher refresh rates, have features like Gsync/freesync, way faster response times, more and better ports like displayport 2.1 and usb c, lower input lag.
This comment answers your first question in considerable detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42427344
Yes. Can I get a 60" monitor for cheap?
Can you get one for cheap? Yes Can you get a good one for cheap? No
Sceptre has a few 55 inch and 65 inch models.
E.g. 4k 55" for $599: https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV/U557CV-UMRB-55-4K-UHD-T...
I've also seen Supersonic and Caixun mentioned in these discussions.
Can also be worth looking at "outdoor TVs" like Sunbrite.
60" is too big even for me, but I'd pay good money for a 42" 8K monitor.
How about Postium? If you're willing to pay good money there are actually bunch of options even for individuals.
https://www.postium.com/8k-series
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1768977-REG/postium_k...
I don't think these are 8K monitors. They support 8K input via 4x 12G SDI, but they contain 4K panels at 3840 x 2160.
OK that's fair since I said "good money" but $10K is a bit out of reach. I was thinking more in the $2K range. My best option today is a MacBook Pro Max with a quad 4K setup, which is relatively affordable but unwieldy and requires at least two Thunderbolt cables (or a desktop setup).
The one I'd really like (and I've mentioned this before here on hn) is a Framework-like TV where you could easily swap memory, processor, drive, ports... even its panel.
Like, I don't want to plug a chromecast into my "old" tv to "upgrade" it and having to live with a second remote control and more batteries, plugging another device to the electricity outlet and being able to use it only with wifi while the ethernet port of the TV is now rendered useless - I'd really like to be able to upgrade its internals without having to go broke while buying a new one.
It’s funny, if you open a TV set it’s already super modular like computers were before we had standardized parts, ports, and form factors. It’s got the power supply which makes the 24V for the display, 12/5/3.3V for the other electronics, an I/O interface board, the MCU and its peripherals, the sound driver, and the IR receiver/Button control.
They do this so a manufacturer can use the same parts among different products or simply install an upgraded one to unlock more features.
If it were standardized, this would be fairly easy given that they all pretty much work the same but then they would have write actually good software and UI for people to elect to use their specific product.
Following this, an idea I’ve had for years without any ability to act on is a smart TV replacement board that’s sold alongside adapter boards for various popular models of TV that handle differences in power, display connection, etc, making dis-enshittifying one’s smart TV as easy as upgrading the GPU on a computer tower.
You could have 2 tiers of board: Essentials, which is cheap and only has as much hardware and software as is strictly necessary to produce a pre-smart-TV experience, and Deluxe which would be pricier and built around a recent flagship SoC (e.g. Snapdragon 8 Gen 1/2/3) with an unlocked bootloader and preloaded with Android TV.
There was (still is?) a standard of pluggable computer interface into commercial displays. Like you'd get a TV with one or more bays where you'd populate with essentially a small computing blade with whatever capabilities you needed. Different inputs, chaining displays together, running signage apps, etc.
Cathode Ray Dude has a few episodes about them.
https://youtu.be/q9a3dCd1SQI?t=2006
They're called Open Pluggable Specification Modules.
I think this would be helpful, although it will need to be fully documented, and should also include FOSS (although this is probably less important than having comprehensive documentation about all of the parts, since the software can be written by someone else if the documentation is available).
I do want speakers (although also the possibility to connect external speakers) and multiple inputs, though, as well as controls for picture settings such as overscan, aspect ratio, YIQ->RGB->RGB matrix, backlight control, etc. But I don't want all of the other "smart TV" stuff, and I don't want excessive software to get it to work, slow software, etc.
My 8 year old Samsung Serif TV is running as good as new, it does have Wi-Fi and an app store but I've never had to use it, my Apple TV controls it over HDMI ARC and I never see any interface other than that. No ads, tho I'd be wary of performing a firmware update.
If it has wireless transmission (by Wi-Fi or others, whether or not that feature is activated) then that is something that I would not want it to have.
Look at Samsung commercial displays. Usually no smart features - but pricey.
Samsung are some of the worst offenders enshittifying all these products. I would never give them the satisfaction.
I feel like there's some modern version of the Henry Ford quote, "if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Users say they want all of these features in an integrated package; who would say no to a new feature? But the end result is a jumbled mess and the sacrifices made along the way weren't considered.
Henry Ford said customer feedback was bad because people actually wanted a transformative product. I feel like the modern version might be that customer feedback is bad because people actually don't want a transformative product, despite surveys all saying "yes" to everything.
I've come to dislike this quote over the years. For the overwhelming amount of product categories, people really do just want faster, cheaper, etc.
There is no moving from horse to car to flying machine, because there's no energy efficient way to do it, and no feasible path to infrastructure to support it.
There is a way to make a better TV.
Henry Ford never said this anyway.[1][2]
1: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/37637/did-henry...
You're reading the worst possible interpretation of that quote, and applying it to all situations. Of course it's not valid for some mundane field - Ford delivered a whole new form of movement to the masses. It would be like if mass space-travel suddenly became available and cheap for us all.
The original quote talks about transformative development, not iterative development.
Say what you will about Steve Jobs, but he was an unparalleled salesman because he was seemingly capable of forereading what people really wanted. Nobody said they wanted an iPod or iPhone or iPad or a Macbook Air before, but when Jobs sold it to the people they went completely bonkers lining up for the goods.
> Nobody said they wanted an iPod or iPhone or iPad or a Macbook Air before
What do you mean? There were MP3 players before the iPod, Blackberries and PDAs before the iPhone, and tablet computers and lightweight laptops before Apple popularized them, and people did expect the somewhat clunky early versions of these technologies to improve. For instance, there were a lot of jokes and commentary about the rapid evolution of cellphones in the 1995-2005 era as they went from horrible bricks to trendy gadgets with cameras, software, multimedia, and e-mail -- all before the iPhone had even started development. People were not totally blindsided when Apple offered their streamlined version of already-existing ideas.
Jobs should get credit for the leap in quality, functionality, and mass appeal his products represented, but lately I've noticed the history is getting exaggerated to the point where we were all using rotary phones and beige boxes like cavemen before Steve Jobs singlehandedly invented the laptop, tablet, and smartphone. But the truth is far more nuanced than that.
> For instance, there were a lot of jokes and commentary about the rapid evolution of cellphones in the 1995-2005 era as they went from horrible bricks to trendy gadgets with cameras, software, multimedia, and e-mail -- all before the iPhone had even started development. People were not totally blindsided when Apple offered their streamlined version of already-existing ideas.
In my opinion, the biggest innovation by Apple with the iPhone was that the touch screen is glass and works with skin instead of with the finger nail / stylus. I understand apple didn't invent this but it made multi touch capacitive touchscreen popular.
Did those Mac vs PC commercials also personally offend you?
Agreed, but the thing they wanted was flashy cool design more than features. Ultimately it was more about hype and being trendy is what he sold - with solid UX being number 2.
There were mp3 players, tablets and phones prior to Apple. The main innovation they really provided out kf the gate out of all of those 3 was a touch screen input for the phone. The rest were just incremental improvement / polish on existing product design.
Not that that isn't important (as the sales showed), but we should be clear about what was truly new to market and what was just cleaned up.
It wasn’t just a touch screen though.
Ericsson had touch screen phones for many years but they where a single touch, stylus driven UI that was clunky.
I had Nokia phones with web browsing, media and a camera but it was WAP not full web and the UI was so bad.
Listening to media required proprietary headphones and data was extremely expensive.
Jobs changed all of that in one product without adding bloatware.
Not having an'input' button on a TV remote is really stupid.
My Samsung has one, but it opens a slow, animated, dynamic menu based on HDMI data. So depending on what devices are turned on, the input you want might have moved in the list.
When I turn the PS5 off before the TV, the TV forgets the input ever existed. So it goes back to the TV's default channel - which oh, is GB News (the Fox News of the UK).
So every time I play I have to watch a bit of bilious TV while I scroll through the input list.
Truly a cursed device.
It would be better to display the menu immediately and to display according to the physical ports, with a number associated with each one, so that you can push input and then the number and then it switches immediately (even if nothing is connected, e.g. in case you will connect something later). Unfortunately, too many modern computers and other stuff have excessive animations and other stuff, and the numbers on the remote control will not work, because they will not make them to work. (Unfortunately, some TV remote controls (such as the one in the article) do not even have numbers, and even when they do, they often do not work with all of the functions that they should work with.)
My Samsung does that too. The most enraging thing though is they fucked up standard HDMI. Like, I can't even plug in my laptop or steam deck. It will show up fine for about two seconds, and then the TV cycles it off. It seems to be looking for some kind of two-way communication or signal which it never gets. But plugging a laptop HDMI in has worked on EVERY SINGLE TV I'VE HAD FOR MANY YEARS, maybe decades, yet it doesn't work on my new TV. Aggravating.
Try turning off Input Signal Plus. That seems to attempt to do some fancier detection of the HDMI signal that breaks some things.
My LG is like that too (well, not quite that bad), but holding down a number key is a shortcut to that input. Huge annoyance mitigator once I learned that.
You should not have to - but if you're talking about Samsung's shitty home hub streaming service, that can be turned off (I think you disable "Autorun Home Hub" or Smart Hub or...).
I was sick of getting Fear TV or some garbage poorly streamed to me when all I care about is Apple TV, Roku, or Art mode on my Frame TV.
I blocked all samsung ads in my router for my tv. Still got that samsungtv ehich always started playing. Also got rid of that by putting it behind a childs lock iirc. Now, if for some reason my apple tv does not properly switch on, i do not get that samsungtv channel anymore, but a black screen instead.
It is terrible ux. After the samsung galaxy s i swore off samsung, but somehow got tricked by the looks of a frame.
Never again. And the tv can be thrown out of the window, but my better half still likes tv.
I prefer Roku TVs at this point. No input button but the inputs are listed alongside the other apps on the home screen which works well for me.
“Hey now, how do you expect users to quickly open Netflix or prime or Disney+. Psssh no one uses video inputs now anyway!”
It should really be an input button per input.
We gave up on TV completely. We bought a projector and painted a wall white, plugged it into a spare old laptop, and watch everything through that. Works great.
Bonus: the projector plays on the wall behind our main gaming desk, while the laptop sits between our gaming monitors. So if the wife is watching a show, she can turn her chair to the projector wall and watch the big screen, while I can fiddle around on my desktop and see the laptop screen version of it, too.
Why? Projectors generally have worse picture quality (ie. brightness and contrast). Smart TVs might be privacy nightmares, but thankfully they can still be avoided by plugging in hdmi/displayport directly. The only real advantage is that you can get a bigger screen for a given cost.
Brightness and contrast isn't too bad when you're in a dark nerd cave.
Definitely no comparison to an active display in a well lit room though.
I don't find any difference in how much I enjoy a movie/show from the picture quality, down to a certain limit. The projector is above that limit.
Here in France people my age (millennials) don't have a TV. People watch movies and series on their laptop, and those who are more into it have a video projector for home cinema. I'm always surprised to read that a TV in the living room is still a thing for non-older generations.
Same here. I don't watch TV. I just need a big screen to watch movies on the weekend. For watching, things like YT a cheap tablet is enough.
The screen is hidden in the ceiling in the middle of the room. The sofa is at the wall. This makes the living room feel incredibly big. Before the sofa was unwieldy in the center. Highly recommend.
The remote control is terrible. In addition to lacking a pause button and input select button, it also lacks: play, stop, rewind/fast-forward, previous/next track, mute (I may be wrong but I do not see it in the picture), and numbers. If I was designing it, I would get rid of the buttons for Netflix, Disney, etc, and also get rid of the scroll wheel, in order to make room for that other stuff.
(However, I also think that such video services, etc should be separately and not a part of the display itself, so that all of these functions can be disabled if you are not using it and not take up any more power, or any conditional branches in the software either.)
I also think to make up a "Movie Decimal" system, like the Dewey Decimal system of classification of books, that can be used for classifying movies and TV shows that you can then easily and quickly enter them on the remote control. When you activate the Movie Decimal mode then it will display what each digit means and you can enter all of them quickly (without having to wait for the next menu), or one at a time in which case the menu will display the subclassifications from that point in case you do not know what the numbers mean, that you can learn.
(Also, I remember operating a Telus set top box once, that the control has a play/pause button, but it was the remote control that kept track of the play/pause state, which meant that sometimes you have to push it twice in order for it to work. It would have been better to put separate buttons for play and for pause.)
> mute (I may be wrong but I do not see it in the picture
If it's anything like the Samsung remotes (to which it bears a passing similarity), the volume toggles are 3-way controls, with up-down-press modalities. Press = mute/unmute.
It's surprising though for sure; there's no real signifier that you can do this.
This question gets asked all the time, but what's a good setup if I want a real remote and no bloatware? Sometimes people recommend digital signage TVs (does LG make any?) And what's a good device to use for steaming apps?
In a fantasy world, there'd be something like OpenWrt for TV firmware, but I doubt it exists.
Here's an AI feature I actually want: I want a language model to watch the show with me, and when I inevitably get distracted and miss something, I want to be able to ask the TV to explain what is going on. Since the TV is watching with me, it can answer my questions without spoilers.
Similarly, when watching sports on a delay (hello Aussie F1 fans) I want an LLM that won't spoil the result of the game I'm watching if I ask questions about the teams / players etc while I watch.
Amazon has this feature built into their prime video app
Imagine Neil Postman living to see a generation for whom television is too demanding.
Why connect it to the network or use the ui? Just get an AppleTV / Roku / Chromecast / Shield and use that. The spyware on your tv is optional.
I miss the times where you could really feel the speed of the remote while you browsed through the channels. Feels like emulated, bloated and slow to interact with TVs nowadays..
That "AI remote" sounds like something that'd be satire 20 years ago. It's "intelligent" in that it controls you, not the other way around. As for TVs with cameras and mics, the Soviet Russia jokes just write themselves.
> But a lot of this week's TV announcements underscore an alarming TV-as-a-platform trend where TV sets are sold as a way to infiltrate people's homes so that apps, AI, and ads can be pushed onto viewers. Even high-end TVs are moving in this direction and amplifying features with questionable usefulness, effectiveness, and privacy considerations.
They will lose to Apple's 2025 launch of per-room "control panels" with >1M apps, AI, E2EE video conferencing and zero ads.
Honestly, my TV is connected to my AppleTV, and that is connected to the internet. I don't use any of the "smart" functionality of the TV. I don't even use the remote for anything.
Same. The only time my TV leaves HDMI3 is when I want to watch a Kraken game (local OTA subchannel that isn't on YoutubeTV) or Formula E (US broadcast rights are on Roku Channel which isn't available on AppleTV devices). I do have a Blu-Ray player on HDMI2 but I haven't used it in about a year.
We switch ours to OTA once a year for the thanksgiving parade, and use AppleTV the rest of the time.
This is the way.
I turn my TV on and off with a button on the TV. I never use the remote for any purpose, except turning off all the picture "enhancing" garbage.
My dad's old Telus set-top box way worked better than his new Telus box for one reason. It stayed on the same channel even when you turned it off. It didn't show a screen of apps if you left it alone for too long or turned it off and on.
Future is i'm only buying TVs I can drop into dumb-mode and plug an AppleTV into... hate all these different TV OSes so much
I don't want Gemini on my TV.
I don't want an LLM on my TV.
I would like android, or as close as possible with an ability to manage 3rd party app installation by myself please.
I absolutely despise this trend. I don't want a "smart" TV, and I don't want a new car. They are objectively awful products.
I am not your revenue stream.
The only hardware specific complaint this comes down to is one manufacturer swap g the input button for a long press of the home button.
I’ve used this TV and remote a lot. It’s not going to be particularly hard to learn that action.
It is weird how fabulous new technology is wrapped in pointless, AI and not AI, filth
It has happened to cars (no, I do not want to supply Ford with all my driving data)
It has been a long standing anti-feature of phones
Thank Dog (and of course RMS and Linus) for free operating systems otherwise it would be my computer
First thing I did when I set up my TV was making sure I won't have to touch any of its 'smart' features by connecting to Apple TV. My Pi-Hole was constantly crying about tremendous amount of requests coming from webOS.
LG IMO is the best (W)OLED TV in the market, but their software as all other TVs' software is crap.
do you have to connect it to the internet?
No you don't.
The Samsung recipe AI totally reminds me of the silicon valley jian yang hot dog app episode. Lol
Feel extremely lucky I picked up a brand new Best Buy brand Insignia brand tv recently that was the only product available at my store when you filtered for NOT-smart TV on the website. I also saw this the other day and it blew me away. It is the perfect product, it feels like it comes from an alternate universe where things aren't universally shitty. Why can't we have more things like this?
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-am-fm-radio-portable-c...
This "senior technology reporter" doesn't understand the GOMS fundamentals of a television remote.
Is GOMS even the appropriate model for a consumer product? From the Wikipedia page:
GOMS only applies to skilled users. It does not work for beginners or intermediates for errors may occur which can alter the data. Also the model doesn't apply to learning the system or a user using the system after a longer time of not using it. Another big disadvantage is the lack of account for errors, even skilled users make errors but GOMS does not account for errors. Mental workload is not addressed in the model, making this an unpredictable variable. The same applies to fatigue. GOMS only addresses the usability of a task on a system, it does not address its functionality.
I don't understand your comment, is it like a three seashells joke?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOMS
The comment is taking a swipe that the disappointment here is the reporter's lack of grasp of why the remote control is designed the way it is when they complain about it. The downvotes are likely that the comment was made in a relatively low effort/attack-ish way rather than discussing why they think that.
Thanks for that.
I should've offered more explanation in my, regrettably, "snipe-ish" earlier post. It was wrong not to do so.
I was, and still am, frustrated that someone whose bio indicates a decade of consumer tech review experience doesn't understand modern OEM TV remote design isn't about being GOMS-efficient.
Honestly, "TV" remote GOMS usability probably peaked with the TiVO.
Modern OEM remotes attempt to derive slivers of software revenue from these commodity and retail loss-leading hardware products by explicitly injecting less-efficient workflows into common use cases.
This analysis was done (poorly) at the beginning of the article, but the the writer doesn't connect the obvious dots wrt to removal of the "Input" button.
The Wikipedia page is incredibly abstract. Could someone please explain how a GOMS model justifies removing a dedicated "switch input" button from a television remote?
