Honey, I shrunk the TV

Honey, I shrunk the TV(cakehonolulu.github.io)

8 points by cakehonolulu 16 hours ago | 18 comments

roughly 6 hours ago |

“Why would Samsung do this?” Because they are a deeply, deeply consumer hostile brand. Do not buy Samsung consumer products, no matter what the feature set and price tag look like. They are not trying to provide you with a good or service in exchange for money, they are trying to take as much of your money as they can.

cakehonolulu 6 hours ago | |

Yeah… fair enough. I’m honestly a noob when it comes to TV/Audio equipment so it doesn’t surprise me that I picked one of the worst brands out of the bunch… hah!

roughly 5 hours ago | | |

I mean, spec sheets and all that, they seem like they'd be good, but they're just insanely predatory as a brand at this point. I learned it the same way you did.

wildzzz 5 hours ago | |

I've regretted nearly every Samsung device I've ever purchased. The only one I've ever been pleased with were the Galaxy Buds Pro (gen 1). I bought the gen 2s after I thought I lost my first pair but found them a month later. Those gen 2 buds have always been flakey. They take a few extra seconds longer to connect, sometimes one doesn't connect until I dock it and try again or if it does connect, it has staticy or garbled audio on just one bud. I also have an awful time getting them to switch to other devices. Connecting them to my steam deck requires telling the deck to forget them and then re-pair. Meanwhile, the gen 1 buds just work. Battery life is not great on them anymore but they last long enough for my typical daily use.

donkeylazy456 5 hours ago | |

which TV vendors you recommend then?

roughly 5 hours ago | | |

I have a Sony Bravia that was ludicrously pricy but seems to have been made by people who genuinely love what they do. It's got rough edges, but it's a very well-behaved product. Among other things, you can basically disable all the Google Home stuff and have it run as a borderline "dumb" TV.

(I'm aware of Sony's history here. Ain't no saints in this business, I'm afraid.)

rawgabbit 4 hours ago | | |

I have two Sony Bravias. They are older LCD with souped up panels. I have been eyeing the micro-leds but can’t justify buying it when the other two are still going strong.

contingencies 5 hours ago | | |

55" is the 'sweet spot' for value. Within that, either (1) just buy whatever and don't EVER connect wifi (if possible, cut the antenna); or (2) if you can find it, get a signage-targeting system which doesn't come 'smart' with Android, this means you can rely on longer use and no surveillance (eg. no microphone) however you may not get the same visual results as a TV-market screen.

Option 2 is a frequent HN recommendation, recently I tried it and bought an ~AUD$400 55" signage screen which would be ~AUD$1000-1200 for a lower-end Android device with surveillance. The visual caliber is not perfect however I can rest easy knowing it's not recording all my household conversations and uploading it to the advertising databases. For the price I can buy something 3 times over before I'm at the same capital outlay, and get upgrades along the way. As my main requirement was 'big' (had to be comfy to watch on a relatively distant couch) this basically checked all the boxes.

deltarholamda 6 hours ago |

I get that running seven different kinds of cables everywhere was a bit of a faff, but honestly I miss those days now that I have to be an electrical engineer, a computer systems analyst and a network engineer just to have my TV play sounds.

(And I still have to turn the subtitles on because I can't quite hear what the people on the TV are saying.)

cakehonolulu 6 hours ago | |

Exactly. I in part, chose this setup to avoid running cables; I figured that technology has come a long way… but here we are unfortunately.

asdfqwertzxcv 6 hours ago |

I went through the cabled vs wireless run around with Q-Symphony as well until I just settled on using wireless.

The main, unsolved issue was getting the Samsung remote to also work as the cable box remote. Spent 2 full days working on that, to no avail. This will be the last Samsung TV I ever buy. It's back to projectors or industry display TVs for me.

cakehonolulu 5 hours ago | |

I actually recall seeing an option on my TV to set up the Samsung remote as a ‘universal’ controller. I haven’t had the need to do so because I have a Philips Sync Box that handles HDMI-CEC for me (So I can basically use the TV’s controller on the devices connected to the Sync Box).

Oddly enough (At least in my model) the ‘trigger’ to setup the universal remote is within the ‘input sources’ menu?

cakehonolulu 16 hours ago |

How I found out I could get a 2026+ TV feature working on a (Year) older one and a few other rants.

issung 4 hours ago |

I finally bit the bullet on building a 5.1 home theatre system this year, and deliberately made the choice of keeping it as dumb as possible.

I went with;

* Denon AVR-X1800H

* Q Acoustics 5000 family (5020s surrounds, 5050s fronts, & 5090 centre)

* RSL Speedwoofer 12S

Now movies, music & games sound great, subtitles are no longer needed, and I don't have to worry about a single app! Just the windows shattering from the massive subwoofer