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What use is WiFi on a Costco Viso TV?

There are a lot more Canadians here and we don't have an ass kicking thunderstorm every afternoon.

Reply to
gfretwell
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My point being, *you* are part of the control loop. I can't take your solution and transplant it to northern California, or expect it to perform optimally in Summer, etc.

Putting smarts *in* a device (e.g., via an MPU/MCU) lets that device meet a variety of needs without requiring a knowledgeable, involved user to remain (forever) part of the solution.

Reply to
Don Y

Is this correct yet?

  1. You hook up this "smart TV" to the power but to no other wires.
  2. The WiFi connects to your router, so the TV is "on the net".
  3. The TV has built-in apps to get movies on Youtube, Hulu, Netflix.
  4. Some TVs have a web browser - but they're so slow as to be useless.
  5. Some have a DirectTV (coax wired?) input in the back of the TV?
  6. Some TVs have built-in games.
  7. You can't *add* anything; it's all built in to the TV OS.

Is that the sum total of the advantages of WiFi on a TV?

Reply to
Ewald Böhm

Every Smart Tv that I've seen included normal inputs, eg HDMI, composite video, antenna, etc. just like TV's before the smart tvs became available. They work just like any other HD TV, with wifi added in addition. I would think almost all smart Tvs are hooked up to cable, sat, or antenna just like they were before, with the wifi being an additional way of using them, if you choose.

Yes

IDK about the speed of the web browser. With fast processors available today, at modest prices, I don't see why they can't make a web interface that performs well.

Per previous they have all the normal TV inputs.

I think that covers it.

Reply to
trader_4

Ya, so now you get to wait for it to boot up every time you turn it on.

Mikek

Reply to
amdx

I have a Sony, and it's slow too!

Reply to
amdx

A disadvantage to Smart TVs is that they quite literally spy on you. At least one manufacturer has issued a warning about it:

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I really don't understand why anyone would even consider the purchase of such a device. I suppose for many that convenience and entertainment trump all other considerations these days.

Reply to
Roger Blake

If I turn on my TV and computer at the same time, the TV barely beats the computer at booting. It takes 17.86 seconds for the picture/sound to show up for the TV.

Reply to
Vic Smith

BTW, that's a hard-wired HD TV attached to a basic cable box not providing HD.

Reply to
Vic Smith

At the time (70s) we were in the DC area. The photo cell still worked

Reply to
gfretwell

It takes about as long as it used to take for a CRT to warm up. My dumb Samsung takes almost as long as the smart one so there is a processor in there too.

Reply to
gfretwell

I got one that was just a little dumber than that (no voice control)

Reply to
gfretwell

From the manufacturer's standpoint, this approach (to the imagined problem!) makes sense: why incur the added cost of putting enough processing power in the TV to be able to decode INFREQUENTLY spoken commands? It makes more sense (assuming transit times are short) to ship the "data" ("sound") off to a server (located at some firm that you CONTRACT WITH -- not even *your* server!) and have it do the heavy lifting.

And, the TV needn't deliberately be "spying" on you to still allow them to harvest other information from it. I.e., if you are

*talking*, then, chances are, you are still sitting in front of the TV! Your eyes are more likely to be viewing than looking through the refrigerator for a snack! That's worth something to the content distributor pushing that "movie" to you; or, the vendor who has purchased the ad time!
Reply to
Don Y

On 04 Sep 2015, Ewald B?hm wrote in alt.home.repair:

Not necessarily. If you have a TV feed from an antenna or cable service, you hook that up, too. The "Smart" features are internet only, so you need an internet connection to use them. You could hook that part of the TV to your home router with a cable or wirelessly.

Yes.

Yes.

Well, mine is. It displays content slowly (I think that there isn't much memory or storage in the TV for buffering, plus the browser itself may be a Java app, which is inherently slow to start up) but the worst thing about it is that you have to navigate using your TV remote. You may be able to hook up a computer keyboard, which would help.

There's a coax input on mine, but I don't know anything about DirectTV.

Yes. There are "apps" included with the Smart TV software, analogous to the apps on your smart phone. The apps on my Samsung TV can be updated from them. You can purchase others, I think.

The OS and apps may be updateable from the manufacturer.

There may be others. Actually, if I knew then what I know now, I'd get a dumb TV and add one of those add-on boxes like Chromecast or whatever to get the content I use. Most of the apps on my Samsung suck royally. I only use a couple of them.

Reply to
Nil

That's about it. I think my Sharp TV is Android. Slow, clunky. Even the apps that work are inferior to what you would have on a phone/tablet/PC.

I use the "MiraCast" option to cast my Android tablet to the scrren quite often, so I can see my cat videos from YouTube in better quality.

Reply to
dold

Don Y: Good Question as we didn't have a smart TV before--just a 30 year old tube type. So apparently the new TV sent a signal "home" reporting that it couldn't spy on us. Not a coincidence.

Reply to
Ameri-Clean

Okay. I can remember that too. But I'm getting discouraged.

I think I should follow Mark Lloyd's advice in next thread about using wires when one can.

So I think I'll just get a USB active extension cord and a keyboard/mouse to plug into it;, and an AV balun with cat6 to connect the computer to the DVDR

Reply to
micky

Do I understand the situation correctly that the WiFi enabled TVs are dog slow, for example, at browsing, because of two fundamental flaws?

  1. The CPUs are slow, and,
  2. Using a remote to type URLs is slow.

You can't fix the CPU processing power. But, can you simply add a standard bluetooth keyboard?

Reply to
Ewald Böhm

Can't you just connect any old bluetooth keyboard to solve that problem?

Reply to
Ewald Böhm

Don't think blue tooth is not on the TV. I have an AMD A10 laptop dedicated as HTPC. Laptop connects to AC2600 router on 5GHz. My down load speed is 50mbps solid. No problem even real time streaming 1080P,4K UHD, 3D videos. Native 4K material is rare but A/V receiver upscale to

4K on 4K 60" set. Our HT is 7.1 set up. Biggest I could afford for the family room space. For storage I have small 4 bay Synology NAS with 4x2TB WD Red drives.(not powerful enough for some codec)
Reply to
Tony Hwang

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