The problem with most of not all TVs now is that they’re all “smart”. I’d say steer clear of Samsung and LG as they’re the worst in terms of build quality and privacy.
Some TVs you can keep forever offline and they won’t show you ads, but they’ll still be slow to start and operate (remember, they’re “smart” and underpowered).
The Panasonic used to be great but they apparently switched to Amazon or google depending on the model. Maybe Sony hasn’t fucked it up yet?
Otherwise, I’d also considered buying secondhand. LED LCD don’t really go bad.
I had this whole setup where I was running the servarr stack on a home server which would download off Usenet whatever I added to my IMDb list for movies and whatever shows I was watching on servarr (you enter the shows and whenever an episode is aired it gets downloaded). I then had servarr notify libreelec/kodi I had running on a rpi and used that to watch the shows (over the lan, files were streaming from the home server and deleted automatically once watched).
For Spotify, I had a denon receiver that would also have a Spotify client and would show as a “speaker” in Spotify. It worked okay most of the time.
Never used streaming services at home. But when I was away I had a cheap Roku that I used. I got this one second hand and it would do pretty much all of the streaming services.
Any tv with hdmi will do consoles.
If your living room is small or you’re sitting close to the tv, 40” might be enough (rather than the now standard 55”), or even a computer display (no smarts then)
Oh and I would research my purchase beforehand with serious websites like rtings for instance because the overlap between “looks good”, “looks good in the store under neon light and cranked out settings”, and “actually has a nice picture in real conditions” is not as big as you’d think.
For the anecdote, a few years ago go pour neighbours dumped their 2008 Sony LCD tv. I grabbed it because I needed a second tv. It’s surprisingly good! My main is a Panasonic OLED so of course they’re not in the same league but the Sony was mid-to-high range when it was released and it still holds its own. Even has a luminosity sensor to adjust backlight automatically. So don’t discount older second hand units, there are good ones. Typically flagships from years past are still pretty good today especially compared to average or low tier for this year’s lineup.
Edit: autocorrect sucks, it speaks its own language…
Mostly. There are smart Samsung monitors like the Odyssey G8 OLED. Proper OLED monitor and a bunch cheaper on account of all the smart spying they do. I got mine for a couple hundo, updated it once to iron out the early launch bugs and then disconnected it forever.
Mild (and unintentional) pedantry aside, it's indeed very unlikely you'll find smart monitors whereas the TV market is saturated with them.
As an extension to the point, you have calculators where you punch in the viewing distance and it'll tell you the right size screen. That should be the first step for OP as it significantly narrows down options.
Marketplace is filled with people offloading quality "not smart" TVs from the last generation whose tubes and features are top notch.
Look to those, and consider building a media centre using an old PC and drives that you collect over time. The high seas and Usenet are your friend, and though the price of storage is high right now, slowly building it is a good idea. With this setup, you can stream to other devices on your home network as well. Personally, I run a security camera server for my house off of the same machine that plays my tv and games.
Also, a cheat code I discovered was HDMI to Cat6 video cable extenders. The main monitor is at a desk across the room and my TV is set up as the second monitor alongside a keyboard via a ish extension cable. It's a seamless experience!
If you want to splurge a little it's definitely worth it to get MicroLED, RGB MiniLED, or QD MiniLED but the marketing jargon is often confusing where it's not 100% clear what you're getting compared to words like CRT and OLED. So it can help to compare different models carefully. Subscribing to rtings for a month can definitely be worth it.
Almost every modern smart TV operating system incorporates ads and sponsored/targeted content into the home menu. It's really hard to get away from that--nay impossible--without just keeping the smart TV offline.
Some brands are more aggressive at this than others... for their software I'd avoid Amazon Fire TVs, Insignia, Samsung, LG, Vizio.
Depending on the TV model, you might just want to have it be a passthrough and never set it up if that's an option. I currently have an Xbox as my set top box, it has YouTube and all sorts of other apps, (including Dropout, Plex, Jellyfin(!), VLC and Kodi if you want to set up a NAS) and I don't really have complaints on that side. I also like Roku because it's simple and if you don't mind that it was bought up by FOX, it's probably the most intuitive OS for finding stuff to watch. Have heard good things about Apple TV on that front if you just want as few ads as possible.
Get an old tv for cheap or free and live with it for a while. You won't know what you want until you have a bad experience that teaches you. For example, one of my tvs has no backlight control, so I can't dim it. It also has poor motion clarity, meaning it's blurry when there's a lot of movement on screen. I own another much better newer tv that has a feature called "local dimming" which cannot be disabled, and adjusts the backlight dynamically in specific zones, based on what's being displayed in those zones. Cool for HDR (yet another feature) but looks bad with subtitles, because the backlight behind the text is regularly switching between dim and bright. Imagine if a book did that while you were trying to read it. Point is, every tv has its own flaws and annoyances, and it's difficult to know what those flaws are even if you try to do research or read reviews. Not worth gambling hundreds of dollars on a new one, especially if you end up with a budget model. Old tvs are fine.
I use jellyfin to serve media streams. It's stupid simple and it works great. I used kodi for many years but jellyfin is far superior in my case: I store the media on a server and serve it with jellyfin, all from linux on an old desktop. There are jellyfin clients for various platforms that are very easy to use and work great - I use the clients on Android, google TV streamers and firetv dongles.
If you want something to manage media downloads, sonarr and radarr are also great. They work well with sabnzbd if Usenet is your thing.
TV: Definitely check out used market, plenty of good deals on there for 2-3 year old TV's that are still very good quality. I would avoid using the 'smart' functions on the TV or connecting it to the internet at all. Privacy nightmare with some saving screenshots of all content, even when you are using HDMI inputs. They are usually very under powered and laggy. Try getting a TV box like a roku, personally I have an nvidia shield, spent some time in the privacy settings turning things off, and also installed the 'projectivy launcher' which gives you a much cleaner interface without ads.
Streaming your own content: Check out jellyfin. Tons of guides out there, you can make it super simple or relatively complex and connected to automated downloads/torrents. I got a used dell desktop PC to use as a dedicated media server, and run jellyfin and a bunch of other stuff. You can stream content from your jellyfin server to other devices including TV's on you local network. Jellyfin will create a netflix style interface that is really easy to use, and it's free and open source. Tons of guides out there, and also LLM's are very useful for giving step by step instructions and troubleshooting.
Roku has the same Automatic Content Recognition that the privacy-sucking TV smart OSes do. Do not get a Roku if that's a concern. The only good choices are: Linux box you build, a trusted Android device (idk what are), or an Apple TV.
So I normally hate Vizio branded stuff, but since Walmart bought them, they've accidentally made it super easy to turn their TVs into an old school dumb TV.
On their newer models, if you simply decline to accept the terms and conditions when it asks you to make a Walmart account, it gives you a big scare warning that none of the smart TV features will work and your TV will just behave like it's supposed to - turn it on and show a picture. None of the smart stuff is even activated.
If you also want an ad free experience, you're basically stuck with an Apple TV. All the other platforms feature ads on the home screen and while you can remove them on some devices, it requires extra work.
preposterous | 14 hours ago
The problem with most of not all TVs now is that they’re all “smart”. I’d say steer clear of Samsung and LG as they’re the worst in terms of build quality and privacy.
Some TVs you can keep forever offline and they won’t show you ads, but they’ll still be slow to start and operate (remember, they’re “smart” and underpowered).
The Panasonic used to be great but they apparently switched to Amazon or google depending on the model. Maybe Sony hasn’t fucked it up yet?
Otherwise, I’d also considered buying secondhand. LED LCD don’t really go bad.
I had this whole setup where I was running the servarr stack on a home server which would download off Usenet whatever I added to my IMDb list for movies and whatever shows I was watching on servarr (you enter the shows and whenever an episode is aired it gets downloaded). I then had servarr notify libreelec/kodi I had running on a rpi and used that to watch the shows (over the lan, files were streaming from the home server and deleted automatically once watched).
For Spotify, I had a denon receiver that would also have a Spotify client and would show as a “speaker” in Spotify. It worked okay most of the time.
Never used streaming services at home. But when I was away I had a cheap Roku that I used. I got this one second hand and it would do pretty much all of the streaming services.
Any tv with hdmi will do consoles.
If your living room is small or you’re sitting close to the tv, 40” might be enough (rather than the now standard 55”), or even a computer display (no smarts then)
Oh and I would research my purchase beforehand with serious websites like rtings for instance because the overlap between “looks good”, “looks good in the store under neon light and cranked out settings”, and “actually has a nice picture in real conditions” is not as big as you’d think.
For the anecdote, a few years ago go pour neighbours dumped their 2008 Sony LCD tv. I grabbed it because I needed a second tv. It’s surprisingly good! My main is a Panasonic OLED so of course they’re not in the same league but the Sony was mid-to-high range when it was released and it still holds its own. Even has a luminosity sensor to adjust backlight automatically. So don’t discount older second hand units, there are good ones. Typically flagships from years past are still pretty good today especially compared to average or low tier for this year’s lineup.
Edit: autocorrect sucks, it speaks its own language…
CptBluebear | 5 hours ago
Mostly. There are smart Samsung monitors like the Odyssey G8 OLED. Proper OLED monitor and a bunch cheaper on account of all the smart spying they do. I got mine for a couple hundo, updated it once to iron out the early launch bugs and then disconnected it forever.
Mild (and unintentional) pedantry aside, it's indeed very unlikely you'll find smart monitors whereas the TV market is saturated with them.
As an extension to the point, you have calculators where you punch in the viewing distance and it'll tell you the right size screen. That should be the first step for OP as it significantly narrows down options.
kingofsnake | 8 hours ago
Marketplace is filled with people offloading quality "not smart" TVs from the last generation whose tubes and features are top notch.
Look to those, and consider building a media centre using an old PC and drives that you collect over time. The high seas and Usenet are your friend, and though the price of storage is high right now, slowly building it is a good idea. With this setup, you can stream to other devices on your home network as well. Personally, I run a security camera server for my house off of the same machine that plays my tv and games.
Also, a cheat code I discovered was HDMI to Cat6 video cable extenders. The main monitor is at a desk across the room and my TV is set up as the second monitor alongside a keyboard via a ish extension cable. It's a seamless experience!
xk3 | 7 hours ago
If you want to splurge a little it's definitely worth it to get MicroLED, RGB MiniLED, or QD MiniLED but the marketing jargon is often confusing where it's not 100% clear what you're getting compared to words like CRT and OLED. So it can help to compare different models carefully. Subscribing to rtings for a month can definitely be worth it.
Almost every modern smart TV operating system incorporates ads and sponsored/targeted content into the home menu. It's really hard to get away from that--nay impossible--without just keeping the smart TV offline.
Some brands are more aggressive at this than others... for their software I'd avoid Amazon Fire TVs, Insignia, Samsung, LG, Vizio.
There's also the privacy issue: LG Isn't the Only TV Company Spying on You
Sony, TCL, and Hisense are competent brands and their software usually isn't too terrible... but the overall experience can vary a lot by model.
My Hisense TV is probably spying on me but I just keep it offline and in apps-only mode so the interface is very simple
moocow1452 | 7 hours ago
Depending on the TV model, you might just want to have it be a passthrough and never set it up if that's an option. I currently have an Xbox as my set top box, it has YouTube and all sorts of other apps, (including Dropout, Plex, Jellyfin(!), VLC and Kodi if you want to set up a NAS) and I don't really have complaints on that side. I also like Roku because it's simple and if you don't mind that it was bought up by FOX, it's probably the most intuitive OS for finding stuff to watch. Have heard good things about Apple TV on that front if you just want as few ads as possible.
shrike | 7 hours ago
The basic formula I suggest is to get the best TV possible (LG C series OLED) and NEVER let it connect to the internet.
Then get an Apple TV for all your streaming needs. It’ll turn the TV on and off and adjust volume so you can chuck the TV remote in a cupboard.
bonsai_angel | 4 hours ago
Get an old tv for cheap or free and live with it for a while. You won't know what you want until you have a bad experience that teaches you. For example, one of my tvs has no backlight control, so I can't dim it. It also has poor motion clarity, meaning it's blurry when there's a lot of movement on screen. I own another much better newer tv that has a feature called "local dimming" which cannot be disabled, and adjusts the backlight dynamically in specific zones, based on what's being displayed in those zones. Cool for HDR (yet another feature) but looks bad with subtitles, because the backlight behind the text is regularly switching between dim and bright. Imagine if a book did that while you were trying to read it. Point is, every tv has its own flaws and annoyances, and it's difficult to know what those flaws are even if you try to do research or read reviews. Not worth gambling hundreds of dollars on a new one, especially if you end up with a budget model. Old tvs are fine.
moshizzle | 7 hours ago
I use jellyfin to serve media streams. It's stupid simple and it works great. I used kodi for many years but jellyfin is far superior in my case: I store the media on a server and serve it with jellyfin, all from linux on an old desktop. There are jellyfin clients for various platforms that are very easy to use and work great - I use the clients on Android, google TV streamers and firetv dongles.
If you want something to manage media downloads, sonarr and radarr are also great. They work well with sabnzbd if Usenet is your thing.
treebeard | 5 hours ago
TV: Definitely check out used market, plenty of good deals on there for 2-3 year old TV's that are still very good quality. I would avoid using the 'smart' functions on the TV or connecting it to the internet at all. Privacy nightmare with some saving screenshots of all content, even when you are using HDMI inputs. They are usually very under powered and laggy. Try getting a TV box like a roku, personally I have an nvidia shield, spent some time in the privacy settings turning things off, and also installed the 'projectivy launcher' which gives you a much cleaner interface without ads.
Streaming your own content: Check out jellyfin. Tons of guides out there, you can make it super simple or relatively complex and connected to automated downloads/torrents. I got a used dell desktop PC to use as a dedicated media server, and run jellyfin and a bunch of other stuff. You can stream content from your jellyfin server to other devices including TV's on you local network. Jellyfin will create a netflix style interface that is really easy to use, and it's free and open source. Tons of guides out there, and also LLM's are very useful for giving step by step instructions and troubleshooting.
gary | 4 hours ago
Roku has the same Automatic Content Recognition that the privacy-sucking TV smart OSes do. Do not get a Roku if that's a concern. The only good choices are: Linux box you build, a trusted Android device (idk what are), or an Apple TV.
JXM | 4 hours ago
So I normally hate Vizio branded stuff, but since Walmart bought them, they've accidentally made it super easy to turn their TVs into an old school dumb TV.
On their newer models, if you simply decline to accept the terms and conditions when it asks you to make a Walmart account, it gives you a big scare warning that none of the smart TV features will work and your TV will just behave like it's supposed to - turn it on and show a picture. None of the smart stuff is even activated.
If you also want an ad free experience, you're basically stuck with an Apple TV. All the other platforms feature ads on the home screen and while you can remove them on some devices, it requires extra work.