The worst thing about ‘smart TVs’ is that they advertise so many ‘cool’ features but most of them have less performant processors and less ram than my 2019 budget galaxy a series phone, and that’s very telling, you can’t even use their dog shit built in web browsers since everything becomes outdated after like a week, and the performance is so bad that the expensive Hisense tv my dad bought back in 2020 can’t even load Google properly.
So Sony is now the new RCA. This is a new low for the company. I can’t believe that they are gone just like that.
Well, their TV brand is gone. Their headphones are still the top tier of consumer stuff and price-performance king for studio headphones
Being the best doesn’t mean they’re selling well… I assume you’re meaning 7506s? So yeah they’re awesome yet dirt cheap, I highly doubt they will keep Sony floating in the long term.
The over the ear noise cancelling one’s are amazing as well
Playstation5?
Idk if I used a really bad set of wh1000xm4s but they sucked. Too bassy and muddy. Like more than they should have. I hope their studio headphones are much better in that regard.
Maybe it’s just because I’m an audio engineer so I was able to EQ them to my taste, but I love my WH-1000XM4 cans. But yeah, their studio cans are both top tier and dirt cheap. MDR-7506, they’re like $80 and generally sound like a million bucks because they’re used in basically every single recording studio as reference headphones.
Seems like they’re closer to $110 these days
Makes sense, inflation and tariffs
That’s how I eqed the set I borrowed. I had no eq in Deezer and it was a downloaded flac. It still wasn’t great but better than stock.
I have mine set like this. Clear bass can be adjusted further down, just depends on personal taste. 400Hz is the boomy, buttery part of the range so if there’s too much boxy-ness you can turn that down judiciously. Keep in mind most musical pitch lives there too, though.
My preferences are towards a relatively flat sound so my setting reflects that
I’ll try it again. They’re not mine so I didn’t get too much time with them. But the mids are indeed lacking.
https://www.soundguys.com/monoprice-bt-600anc-review-52955/ Monoprice BT-600ANC review
That’s my current pair if you want to see a frequency response chart.
Maybe. My current set is a tired pair of Monoprice BT600ANC. I found that the high end of the xm4 lacking compared to the bt600anc. Noise canceling was about the same level as the 600anc.
I had a TCL phone for a bit about 10 years ago and it was the hottest piece of garbage I had ever touched in my life
They’ve really worked to turn that around with their TVs. They’re entry level still sure, but for the price it’s hard to beat and their quality control on them has taken a big step up.
Their tvs are cheap because of all the ad and Spyware.
You mean the stuff every TV has these days? I also never hook mine to the internet so not really a problem. I haven’t seen a single ad in the year I’ve had mine
You can still get dumb tvs.
Edit: Yall. They are not hard to find. Please do a search of them. They can even be delivered right to your doorstep.
If you have a link or can tell me what store to walk in and get a dumb TV with even half the quality of my current TV I will take it. I could only find business displays which were all stuck at 60hz or had a color spectrum and contrast so bad my ten year old laptop IPS screen beat them.
Well I suspect the quality is not going to be up to your standard, but this is the one I have in my living room, and I think it’s perfectly fine. But if you just can’t live without 120hz or whatever, then I guess you’re stuck.
Walmart used to have a variety of these, now they’re down to one. All my TVs are either 10+ years old or Sceptre and therefore are all dumb. But I don’t have a purist bone in my body when it comes to AV stuff.
It’s not a bad TV. And if it was just watching movies or something I definitely wouldn’t care about 120hz, but it’s just so much better for gaming.
I’m not a purist, like I said I’m rocking a TCL which is low end, but I’ve come to appreciate some level of specs I can’t go back on.
You literally just linked me a 60hz business display. The thing I said was the only thing I could find and ruled out…
That is over twice the price with low specs. You argument is invalid.
I would LOVE to know how!
I’m not the OP, but I have this one in my living room… 50", $232.
Thrift
LOL
Yes they are hard to find. They are few and far between and cost over twice the price.
What disgusting cope. Don’t you have any self-respect?
Just because you can work around the abuse doesn’t mean they aren’t abusing you.
Edit: people like the commenter above are actively making the world worse by normalizing and even excusing abusive corporate practices. I apologize for nothing!
Dude, touch grass and calm down. You’re putting a lot of words in my mouth and completely missing the point which is why you’re getting down voted.
I’ve pushed back on “smart” TVs so much. My point was if your issue with TCL is the ads you should rightfully have issues with every TV. They’re all shoving ads, they’re all analysing watched content. This isn’t a TCL specific thing at all was my only point.
Also disconnecting from internet is a direct way of fighting back against that abuse. You’re not giving them those analytics or ad space. Sure you can choose to not buy any TV but I clearly keep overestimating people’s intelligence and didn’t think I needed to spell out every possible option in a quick comment.
Fuck I hate the braindead keyboard warriors the internet has enabled.
Quantity control :D
You saw nothing! ＼(°o°)／ Ever since I added my Welsh keyboard my autocorrect just doesn’t even try anymore on my phone.
Hehe no worries. I’m just here thinking about TCL yeeting more tv’s when one doesn’t work.
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Make a dumb tv and I’ll be a buyer
I just want one DP input and I’ll decide how to split my inputs with an outside box. The TV should only decide how to show the picture. I don’t need your YouTube app
Yeah, a dream: dumb TV with awesome modern panel and range of connectivity ports like HDMI, DP, DP over USB-C, composite, scart
Look for “commercial display panels.” They’re 3-4 times the price of a smart TV, but they are just basic TVs. If you find a bank, hospital, clinic, or any other privacy focused business that’s going out of business you can generally pick those used displays up pretty cheap.
However, the image quality of those displays is usually worse compared to home displays. This is from a technical who works with these products.
Can’t you just use any modem TV and not hook it up to the interwebs?
I believe more and more TVs require network connection for setup.
I used an Ethernet cord for what they made me set up, then unplugged that and have never connected it again.
They will still have those garbage “smart” menus.
What are garbage smart menus that can’t be avoided?
I’m not being funny. I’m still on a Panasonic last gen thin plasma FHD but thinking of upgrading to a LG C5 OLED when they are on final sale when this year models are rolling out. I’m only watching movies through the box connected to it.
Android TV is absolute garbage. It’s horrible to use with a remote, is full of ads, and is somehow sluggish on a 1.5GHz quad core.
I usually do this but would still prefer a dumb TV, mainly to reduce the possible points of failure
ive heard: buy one made for business
there’s a lot more options there, that dont have ads, etc
I used to have a TCL soundbar.
In addition to being extremely mediocre, it promised to integrate with my WiFi so that music could be airplayed through it. After adding it to my WiFi, it still broadcast the open ‘setup’ WiFi network.
If you joined the setup network, you could SSH into the soundbar as root without a password and dump the dhcp.conf file, which would give anyone access to my home WiFi network. Other TCL models also allowed for root via SSH, but used 12345678 as the password. A skilled hacker could just bot these via wardriving and turn them into network listeners.
It may have still broadcast the setup network because I blocked the device from accessing the internet. I only ever went poking around on it because I noticed that the setup network kept getting set to the same channels as my home network and it was causing interference. I eventually just factory reset the device so it had no information on it at all.
After the umpteenth time of not being found by my TV, a hard reset killed it. Just got stuck booting and never recovered.Anyway - crap brand. Sad day for Sony TV fans.
TCL might not make a good sound bar,but I’ve never seen a bad TCL tv. Are they as nice as Sony? Hell no.
Do they cost 1/4 the price? Yep.
Edit: also, PlayStation is the only profit maker for Sony.
And TCL has been making displays for all of the major OEMs for years now.
Playstation is nowhere near the only profit maker for Sony https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/pdf/25q2_sony.pdf (from https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/archive.html)
Read about that boot issue and how it starts as a “full storage” message. Also how it was outside the warranty period for most cases, so you end up with a literal brick. I’d be pissed if my TV died just a few years in.
Crazy. I have a Sony XBR 46” lcd that’s almost 20 years old. It still looks great for what it is (1080p and all). It was a top of the line tv back in the day that’s held its own for a very long time. It’s sad to see great companies/products fail.
Yes, but about 5 years or so ago sony started cheaping out on quality. You used to pay more for a Sony but the TV was better and more reliable than other brands. As of late, they still charged more, but they were just as likely to break or have problems than any other cheaper TV.
20 years ago is when LCD’s got good enough compared to CRTs and plasma.
Not as good but I still have my $1k 40” Sony tv. It’s good enough I don’t think about how much better my OLED is when watching it.
In 2010 the pioneer and Panasonic plasmas had no rival in the tv space. LEDs were far from comparable. LEDs were cheaper mostly, which helped their adoption.
I didn’t say comparable. I said good enough.
Non-paywalled link: https://archive.ph/noqtk
Thanks.
I don’t really know why it is so hard for people to post things like this in the beginning. It’s just a way to annoy us because they should know we all don’t intend to pay some subscription to read news.
People dont go read an article then frantically look for the same article on another website before sharing it
i suggest, the link posted on lemmy, is translated to archive.ph, if one is available. But that requires work …
Because it’s even easier to just set up the right filters in uBO and never have to think about it again
The verge is a garbage paywall site now
That’s a shame. I’ve had very good experiences with Sony upper mid range/lower high end TVs. Their image processing is second to none IMO, they seem to use more powerful CPUs than a lot of other android TV makers, and their use of AndroidTV means I can trivially customise my TV in a way that I can’t with lots of other brands (strip out ads, basically).
Shit, my oldest daughter moved into a flat with friends when she started uni not long ago, and took my old 2007 42" 1080p Bravia that I bought all those years ago. She hadn’t even been born yet, and it still looks shockingly good.
This is sad news.
It’s like when IBM left its PC manufacturing to Lenovo. And, probably a ton of other examples I’ve never paid any attention to.
It’s starting to feel like only old people look at a screen bigger than six inches. That, combined with displays becoming a commodity item, leads to the manufacturing being abandoned to commodity manufacturers. If Sony could bring anything of value that would justify the cost of holding on to this, they would. Sony’s name hasn’t been synonymous with quality for decades now, that’s partly their own doing through poor choices, but also the quality of cheap displays is perfectly adequate for most people.
Dafuq are you on about, Sony’s image processing and colour reproduction is one of if not the best in the entire display industry.
They were getting squeezed by Samsung and LG display for their OLED products so they just decided to engage in a joint venture with TCL that results in less costly manufacturing while leveraging the brand recognition and existing distribution channels. Basically TCL becomes an OEM. It’s not ideal but if this was to be avoided, we should have detached from the US based order in the 80s when it became obvious the US doesn’t like to compete and sniped the entire Japanese economy.
Sony’s main tech was in manufacturing. TCL will be getting a HUGE upgrade.
TCL TVs are fine for the price, but you use a TV with more processing power than whatever hamster wheel TCL uses and you get real lusty real fast. Painfully slow, unresponsive UI.
Sony’s modern OLEDs are sick. There are a few between my family, and they have the best processing I’ve seen, they decode massive bluray rips no problem, and native options for a clean ad-free UI.
Why TF aren’t people buying them?
For me, for my use case it’s primarily because of the size TV I want. Mine is going in the basement on a wall where I want the biggest TV I can afford. That means I could get an 83" screen in OLED or a 98-100" QLED. 15" difference is pretty dramatic.
Oh man, you’re missing out on OLED in a basement though. It’s so fantastic for dimly lit evironments that I’d take the smaller size any day, and just sit a little closer. LCDs, on the other hand, look pretty terrible in a really dark room.
The only thing that would make me pause is if you’re trying to squeeze a big family around the TV. In that case, it would make sense to get a bigger one, so everyone can sit farther back without compromised viewing angles.
in our case the primary seating position is about 13 ft from the screen making the larger screen a little more important due to the layout. The couch is aligned with the side speakers where they can be and that’s where the seating is
That’s very distant! Yeah, you’re right about size then:
https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/size-to-distance-relationship
Probably because they’re quite expensive
TV
2026
Honestly, don’t remember the last time I watched TV
is your cell phone battery mostly consumed supporting phone calls
Well, the top killer is Boost, which is a client for Lemmy, sitting at 1/3 battery usage.
Do you think the only thing TVs are used for is watching traditional terrestrial TV? Lol
I only watch extraterrestrial TV.
It’s the main purpose of them, yes. Define TV to me. I don’t see the point of paying for decoders, smart TV and bunch of other things I’ll never use, much smarter decision is to buy a monitor which focuses on image quality and performance, far more suitable for consoles, Roku, etc.
Commenter above low-key described that OLED as a monitor more than a TV
TVs are fantastic monitors.
It sounds reasonable to not want to pay for basically a small computer inside the TV.
But in practice, its not that expensive of a component. And TV volumes are so high that they’re bigger and cheaper and higher quality than an equivalently priced monitor, anyway.
Hence, while I’m fine with the monitors I have, I’m never buying a “monitor” again. It just makes no financial sense when I can get a 40" 4K TV with 120hz VRR instead, that happens to work fantastically as a streaming box too.
My experience is that they all look terrible up close, for whatever reason. TVs are essentially designed for further-back viewing
Besides the paywall.
It doesn’t sound to me that this is making Sony go away from a market, it just sounds like they’ll still be involved.
Indeed, article makes it sound like both brands are putting their TV business into a new joint venture. Hardly the same as exiting the market.
I went from Sony, Samsung, and LG to now buying TCL. At under $1000 for a 65", they’re the best option.
Anything under $1500 I’d bet on TCL. Keep in mind TCL manufacturers a great chunk of the worlds LCDs that aren’t just for TCL. Pretty sure they bought LGs LCD plants. Maybe Samsung too.
Their TVs have a lot of dimming zones. Sony I don’t think makes LCDs or OLED panels themselves. At least one line of their TVs use TCL panels already. They buy from others
Here’s a review for the model that came out last year. At this point where’s it’s regularly on “sale” for $1000. TVs are MSRP for like half a year and then the discounts always seem to me to be happening
https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/tcl/qm8k
1,680 dimming zones in the 65" model and from what I’ve read, the global models are usually one year behind China. So in 2025 China had TCL TVs with even more dimming zones. 8 years ago sub $1000 65" with array LED backlight zones were like 100-200 zones. OLED were incredibly better and would kill off LCDs when prices came down. The density of dimming zones I think progressed faster than people expected
So TCL has solid image processing while Sony has great image processing but not so much better for me to think it’s worth it. Same with the $1000-2000 mini-led backlit LCDs vs OLED. Yes OLED looks better. Don’t feel like it’s large enough for me to go much higher than a $1000 TV. That’s a reality for home theater brands today. TVs, speakers, receivers/amplifiers, headphones, mics, etc - there’s good stuff at low prices.
Everyone’s competing on value now. There used to always be rumors about a Apple TV (actual TV) and Apple EVs. Never hear about rumors for those anymore. Don’t think the quality difference possibility and profit margins exist to make those appealing anymore for Apple. Sony like Apple is increasingly a services/media company.
Samsung - Tizen sucks. I don’t recall how LG and WebOS looks, but to me Tizen is leagues above Android and Roku in making your TV into a loud billboard. At least Android you can install a different launcher.
Makes sense, bc idk anybody with a Sony TV anymore. Even loyalist fans friends of mine from the CRT days switched.
I own a sony TV. The hdtvtest guy is my goto for staying updated on TV tech and sony regularly comes out as his best of the year. Yes, they’re pricey but you’re getting something for that premium.
This is a sad day in my books now that TCL will be able to enshittify the Sony brand.
When 4k/120 TVs came out, their Bravia was the best midrange you could get. Price doubled to get anything better.
Their early “4k/120s” weren’t even actually 4k/120. Enabling 120hz refresh rates on early Bravias would cut horizontal resolution in half, and then crudely attempt to upscale it.
I mean the true 120hz, not the upscaled crap.
They came out the same time hdmi got the bandwidth capacity, so before that, it wasn’t even possible.
I partly use Rtings.com for my info, and they test everything.
No I know what you mean. I’m not talking about the “Trumotion” 120hz motion smoothing technology.
The first generation of Sony Bravia TVs that advertised native 4k/120hz, specifically to coincide with the release of the PS5, couldn’t actually do native 4k/120hz. It wasn’t until their following generations that were finally able to, in a post-launch firmware update.
Then you’re misremembering a lot of stuff
https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/sony/x900h
This tv came out around the same time as the ps5 (Nov of 2020). A few features came in a later update, but it is 4k/120 out of the box. You couldn’t get a better tv at the time.
The 800 was never advertised as 120, this is the first model.
I’m not misremembering anything. I have the x900h in my living room right now. It cannot do native 4k/120hz, to this day. It can do Native 4k OR it can do 120hz but not both. If you enable 120hz, the horizontal resolution is cut in half to only 1080 pixels. This couldn’t be fixed with a driver update because it’s a consequence of Sony cheaping out on the processor. It is physically not capable of it.
VRR was added in a firmware update, but again due to Sony’s poor choice in hardware components if you enable VRR it disables local dimming entirely. Being an LED panel, without local dimming the picture is significantly degraded. It’s a truly terrible TV for anything but casual Netflix watching, given its price point. If it was half the price they sold it for that’d be a different story.
At the time, you could have bought a Samsung Q70T instead for the same price which actually had native 4k/120hz.
I also have a Sony TV and watch Vincent on HDTVtest.
The TCL news is shocking. Time will tell but it doesn’t seem good to me.
Sony TVs are absolute garbage devices designed by actual morons, with the worst customer support in the industry.
Back when the PS5 came out, they advertised their Bravia TVs specifically for its support for the PS5 and its feature set. I spent something like $1,200 for a Bravia x900H which at the time was very highly reviewed. When the PS5 released shortly after, we had to wait months for Sony to actually release drivers to support the PS5 features promised like VRR and 4k/120hz, and when they finally did the monkeys paw finger curled. If you turn VRR on, it disables local dimming. This is important because those panels look like dogshit without local dimming. So right off the bat you have to choose between a smooth picture, and a good looking picture.
As for 4k/120, they cheaped out on the MediaTek processor so it can’t actually do native 4k/120. Turning it on halves the horizontal resolution to 1080, and then it crudely upscales it back up causing a now infamous blurry mess to the picture.
Those are just the problems that affect everyone due to design flaws and false advertising. But on a more luck-of-the-draw level, when I bought mine brand new, it had significant backlight bleed. I was upgrading from a $150 Costco LCD and I swear to you the picture on the Sony was actually worse. 25% of the screen was permanently tinted blue the bleed was so bad. No problem I thought, I just bought the thing brand new, these things happen with LED panels from time to time, I’ll call Sony and RMA the thing. But after a week of arguing with Sony’s outsourced support, they refused to honor the warranty. According to them backlight bleed is expected and no matter how bad it is, they don’t cover it under warranty. So whether or not your Sony TV is even functional as a TV is simply luck of the draw.
I have no doubts about your experience. I can only rely on personal experience, which has been the exact opposite, and that of expert reviewers.
Ive got a Bravia. They’re good like upper midrange TVs, like the top end before you really start spending crazy cash
I’m not meaning nobody owns them, just a lot of the people I knew back in the day who were die-hard Sony fans, have moved on due to price or quality or both. My dad was one of them with a full high end Sony TV (36" CRT Trinitron series) and receiver, dual cassette deck, CD player, etc lol. Yes, this was the 90s, but still.
I do, and it’s great. It isn’t OLED, but the 4K panel is still decent. It has thin bezels, lots of inputs, and most importantly, it’s just old enough to not run android. I’ll take this thing to my grave.
My 4k/120 one just started getting a few dead pixels. It’s on almost everyday for a hours between me and the kids.
What did they switch to?
Initially, in the late 00s, Samsung was up-and-coming for LED/LCD so they started to quickly catch on. Then in 2010s, LG started to leap ahead before the price caught up. Now, TCL is that for me, great prices with great quality. Hisense is probably next
They started making shit TV’s (for their price) is why. They kept charging premium prices, but their quality of buying a TV that wouldn’t break like all the others dropped off a cliff.
Every friend or acquaintance that has asked me “What TV should I get if I want a really nice LCD TV?” was always told Sony, so I know lots of people with them. I guess I have no good answer for these people now, every brand other than Sony had become enshittified.
I honestly don’t mind TCL, they’ve really come a long way, especially for the price! I have the 2022 TCL 85R655 that was rated extremely well, and supported all the Series X features (ALLM, VRR, 4K/120, HDR10 +DV gaming, etc for $1800) and that only replaced my 2016 LG 65UH8500 because, well, way better specs (minus no 3D anymore lol).
I had an issue with the PCB 12 months into warranty (literal days left) and I got a full refund because they had already replaced that model with the next Gen and didn’t have the proper parts available or something to fix.
The picture quality, when calibrated, is pretty damn good despite not being OLED.
The higher end TCL have very good specs, but my issue is only with the software. At this point I’ve been leaning towards “dumb” TVs. My most recent TV is not a smart TV and can’t be retroactively ruined with ads or additional spyware. I just wish there were high end models available for when my larger living TV bites the dust.
Ah, see, ok, that makes sense. I forget most everyone else in the real world isn’t obsessed with ad-blocking like me. So, this one is Roku but I have others that are Fire TV and Android (all TCL). None are connected online, and honestly it’s creepy as FUCK that the fire TV has never been connected to the Internet, yet still somehow has its own ads for shows update every so often. IDK if they’re cross-communication like a mesh network of TVs so if one is offline it can still get some sort of content refresh, or what, but I don’t like that it knows to update/refresh with no network.
Amazon does have a patent specifically for that sort of mesh-like communication, so it is possible. The TCLs I have/had were Roku based, but kept getting worse and worse until I gave one away and reset and disconnected the other. I also refuse to see ads, but that wasn’t really an issue because I didn’t use any services that showed ads. Then the TVs themselves started to and I was done. I think many of the manufacturers are getting wise to the “never connecting” trend and making it more and more obnoxious. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if most TVs started becoming unbearably naggy until you connect it to an internet connection. A friend of mine also recently got another TCL TV, this one being Amazon Fire based. Apparently, it was so bad he just gave it away within the first couple of months (it was a really cheap TV).
Probably the F35 series. I grabbed a 55" for outside for $219 lol. It’s just for hanging out in the hot tub or grilling out.
Edit: wonder if that Amazon shit can be blocked
His was a 42" he got for around $100, ludicrously cheap, but after using it he saw why.
