Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world
7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I think the cool kids today buy commercial ādisplaysā (used for things like advertising in retail areas). They donāt have smart functions. They donāt connect to the internet. Thereās no tuner. Youād have to bring your own antenna, media player, HTPC, whatever to send it content, but itās 100% under your control.
The other option is a computer display - there are pretty large ones that act the same (probably just a commercial display in a different box for a different market). The prices werenāt historically that high if you didnāt need absurdly high resolution and refresh rates (gamer stats - irrelevant for general tv watching).
I havenāt tracked any specific brands for years so canāt give a specific recommendation, but Iād suggest looking for second hand. If a store goes out of business their displays will be cheaper than anything you get directly from a distributor.
If thatās a dead end, you can still look at a bloated smart TV. Just donāt connect it to the internet, ever. Generally the same result as using a simple display, except the bundled remote will probably have a bunch of stupid buttons youāll never use. My tv has a huge Netflix button and every time o accidentally press it I get a giant ad to buy Netflix š
I've checked out a few of those digital signage displays, and I'm curious to hear about people's real experience with them.
A lot of them run Android as their OS and have LAN/WiFi built in for screen sharing, or programming a rotating display.
Which means they're just as "smart" as TVs, and might be as annoying to turn on/off and change modes.
They'd certainly have fewer intrusive ads, since businesses wouldn't be very happy with ads running on top of their ad boards, but would the rest be any better?
Again, curious what people's actual experience is.
Yeah, I looked it up recently and a lot of them are no longer what they used to be. You take a gamble on quality too, since a lot of them weren't really intended to do more than show static images or simple animations. And they're not exactly cheap either.
I hate smart TVs, but just about every TV is one these days. Sure you can get a computer monitor, but good luck finding a 50' computer monitor for the living room (and if it wasn't disgusting enough, I'm starting to see more and more "smart monitors" too).
Best option at this point is just to focus on the specs, make sure it's not a pain in the ass to change inputs, and never ever connect it to the internet. Ever.
Don't buy a Vizio, I've heard they're annoying about not being connected. And don't buy anything that runs Roku.
At least you wouldn't have ads on them. Which Might make up for any smarts. Might just be paying a couple hundred $ more for an ad free experience that doesn't actually need Internet to work.
There are some that have a Raspberry Pi integrated for the smart features, so you can just put whatever OS you want on it.
Thanks! I'll look into these larger PC monitors and I guess "digital signage displays", as the other commenter pointed out. š
I think the question is if any of the commercial displays actually have good image quality? As you say itās often used for advertisements and in retail areas, and Iād expect that mean image quality doesnāt matter that much, just that itās cheap.
If budget isnāt an issue I would strongly recommend going for something with an OLED display (but not QLED). I have owned 3 generations of LG OLEDs now, and I have to say that picture quality is absolutely amazing. Though I have to admit that the software just have gotten worse with each generation. Mostly you can avoid it if youāre not using the built in apps but unfortunately there are quite a lot of issues with HDMI-CEC as well. It works well with my Apple TV, but sometimes thereās some weird behaviour with other devices, like a Switch or PS5. Iād live with that if the alternative is some cheap LCD variant though.