The time has come for me to get a new TV. I’ve been dreading this because I keep hearing how shit modern smart TV’s are with the ad situation.

Anyone got any recommendations? Even the best of the bad would be a step up from nothing.

I should also note: I’m not looking for any kind of complicated self hosted thing. This needs to be usable by your grandma. 😄

  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
    7·
    5 days ago

    Anecdote:

    Our Sony OLED is Google TV based (aka Android), so it works with every app out there.

    It’s default homescreen is awful and ad ridden, but it recently got an ‘app only mode’ that gets rid of EVERYTHING. I kid you not, the home screen is utterly barren except for a grid of the apps you installed; it’s glorious. It’s even cleaner than a relative’s old Nvidia Shield, or old ‘dumb’ TVs.

    …No idea how such reverse enshittification happened. My only guess is that Sony put a gun to their head and made Google do it, though the option is well hidden.

    Looks great. You can look up Rtings for specs.

    But that aside, it’s internal ASIC is excellent. It decodes ridiculously high bitrate BD rips with zero stutters. The upscaling is good, the motion smoothing is legit good; the best I’ve seen. It has stutter compensation by default, and BFI if your eyes can take it. Both of ours were decently calibrated out of the box.

    …And none of them have busted, not even the old one.

    I swear, I am not a bot or shill. And this is a sample size of one family…

    …But yeah. Having experience them with friends/family, I would not touch Samsung TV with a ten foot pole. LG would be my second choice, but I’d still assume I’m going to hook it up to a streaming box.

    • Bwaz@lemmy.world
      4·
      5 days ago

      If getting a Sony Bravia, check carefully that it actually has the Apps Only option. My 4yr old one doesn’t and it’s horrendously laggy, gets easily confused or locked up if you push remote buttons too fast, has to be power cycled several time per week, and takes a crazy amount of time after tirning it on before it will respond to the remote. An absolute POS. Removed all excess apps, went through the settings, turned off anything fancy, to very little improvement. Never again.