Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
I'm not seeing much of a price difference (if any). Not when it comes to bargain shopping anyway. Comparing list prices, smart tvs may cost fractionally more. But I've found many a smart tv (with all the non-smart features I was looking for) on sale for less than a comparable (size, resolution, screen-technology) "dumb" tv. *shrug*
If had to pay more for a smart tv, I'd avoid them for many of the exact same reasons you mention, though.  |
I 'caved' and got a 50" Fire TV: $259. It's less than what I paid for our 42" LG Plasma TV (720p) maybe 8 years ago, after it had already been discontinued. The only 50" dumb panels I could find were $399 or so and I doubt the quality is any better than Amazon's: they probably don't mind breaking even on Fire TV as they have every reason to believe they will make money selling content and streaming subscriptions. Same is not true of dumb TV makers.
At this point I'm just planning to plug in our Apple TV 4K, BluRay, and vintage Wii and not connect the Fire TV itself to the internet. It supports HDMI-CEC on one of the ports so if Apple TV is connected to that we should just be able to use its remote for everything but the rare case where we Wii or watch a disc. We currently just use a HomePod pair (the big ones) for sound, with the TV speakers disabled. We also have an old 5.1 system that we can turn on if need be but I'd like to do away with it and get rid of the bulky cabinet our current TV sits on, and hang this new one with a wall bracket and something smaller to put the BluRay and Wii inside of and set the HomePods on. Our living room is not that big.
We used Fire TV box when it first came out and for several years, but I switched to Apple TV about 4 years ago and it works much better with all my other iThings.
Looking forward to finally having a 4K panel for the 4K content.