from Hacker News

Disappointed with the TVs at CES 2025

by stalfosknight on 1/9/25, 11:20 PM with 272 comments

• by pornel on 1/10/25, 12:04 AM

  It's not the first pointless downgrade of the LG remote: they've already removed the pause button.

  Now pausing and unpausing is done with the general-purpose click-wheel, is up to each app to implement, and is dependent on the UI state.

  If a wrong element is focused (which is not hard to do, because the button is a scroll wheel surrounded by directional buttons), you may end up toggling subtitles or some other option when trying to pause or unpause.

  It used to be a hardware button that always worked, was trivial to find by feel, easy to activate, and worked instantly.

  Now it's "wait, I need to pause! Oops, I moved the scroll wheel button by a notch when pressing it, so it's a mouse cursor now! I fast-forwarded to the second half of the movie and the audio is in French."

• by airstrike on 1/10/25, 12:07 AM

  > “For us, our biggest goal is to create enough value that yes, you would be willing to pay for [Gemini],” Google TV VP and GM Shalini Govil-Pai told the publication.

  > The executive pointed to future capabilities for the Gemini-driven Google Assistant on TVs, including asking it to “suggest a movie like Jurassic Park but suitable for young children” or to show “Bollywood movies that are similar to Mission: Impossible.”

  That seems so incredibly useless it reads like parody. No, I will not be willing to pay for Gemini for that.

  I can’t imagine ever asking questions like those in my life... and even if one day I were drunk, high, and concussed enough to ask, I wouldn’t need to ask my TV—I could just go to claude.ai on my phone instead because I already pay for it.

• by orev on 1/10/25, 12:21 AM

  Switching inputs is by far the thing that causes the most anxiety for a regular person (based on observational evidence). I really believe that it makes or breaks whole lines of service.

  IMO, streaming won in part because once people (i.e. grandma) changed the input to the streaming device, they couldn’t figure out how to get back to the cable box, or at least didn’t want to risk “breaking anything” when trying to do it when their resident tech person wasn’t around.

  Getting rid of the input button is either really bad (making this process even more fraught), or is a sign that the whole idea is just going away. Input switching should be incorporated into the home screens instead of being a separate menu/function. Hopefully this is the direction LG is going.

• by teruakohatu on 1/10/25, 12:06 AM

  > Google is also working toward having people pay a subscription fee to use Gemini on their TVs, PCWorld reported.

  > “For us, our biggest goal is to create enough value that yes, you would be willing to pay for [Gemini],” Google TV VP and GM Shalini Govil-Pai told the publication.

  > The executive pointed to future capabilities for the Gemini-driven Google Assistant on TVs, including asking it to “suggest a movie like Jurassic Park but suitable for young children” or to show “Bollywood movies that are similar to Mission: Impossible.”

  You don't even need LLMs for a recommendation system. Just matrix factorisation is enough for a very good recommendation system. A local transformer model is enough for the Text to Speech part.

  Surely is the product (Google Play TV & Movies, Youtube Premium) is selling you video content, recommending content to spend your money on is just marketing not a user facing subscription service.

  Imagine Spotify wanting to charge you on top of your subscription to get music recommendations.

• by Kim_Bruning on 1/10/25, 1:11 AM

  In his 1948 novel '1984', George Orwell imagined 'telescreens' - devices that enabled two-way surveillance while broadcasting content. In the story, 'The Party' had to mandate their installation, because of course no one would install such an Orwellian device voluntarily!

  Today, we voluntarily install smart TVs, always-listening assistants, and IoT cameras in our homes. Unlike telescreens, which were limited by human monitoring capacity, modern devices can automatically process, store, and analyze surveillance data at scale [1].

  The dystopian technology wasn't just recreated - it was improved upon, then marketed as a convenience.

  (See also: Torment Nexus)

  [1] At the very least the theoretical capability is already there.

• by physhster on 1/10/25, 12:00 AM

  I know there isn't a market for it, but I'd really like a dumb TV that is snappy with an excellent panel. I don't even need speakers, or multiple inputs...

• by CGamesPlay on 1/10/25, 2:44 AM

  I feel like there's some modern version of the Henry Ford quote, "if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." Users say they want all of these features in an integrated package; who would say no to a new feature? But the end result is a jumbled mess and the sacrifices made along the way weren't considered.

  Henry Ford said customer feedback was bad because people actually wanted a transformative product. I feel like the modern version might be that customer feedback is bad because people actually don't want a transformative product, despite surveys all saying "yes" to everything.

• by Newtonip on 1/9/25, 11:43 PM

  Not having an'input' button on a TV remote is really stupid.

• by marcus_holmes on 1/10/25, 1:58 AM

  We gave up on TV completely. We bought a projector and painted a wall white, plugged it into a spare old laptop, and watch everything through that. Works great.

  Bonus: the projector plays on the wall behind our main gaming desk, while the laptop sits between our gaming monitors. So if the wife is watching a show, she can turn her chair to the projector wall and watch the big screen, while I can fiddle around on my desktop and see the laptop screen version of it, too.

• by zzo38computer on 1/10/25, 1:27 AM

  The remote control is terrible. In addition to lacking a pause button and input select button, it also lacks: play, stop, rewind/fast-forward, previous/next track, mute (I may be wrong but I do not see it in the picture), and numbers. If I was designing it, I would get rid of the buttons for Netflix, Disney, etc, and also get rid of the scroll wheel, in order to make room for that other stuff.

  (However, I also think that such video services, etc should be separately and not a part of the display itself, so that all of these functions can be disabled if you are not using it and not take up any more power, or any conditional branches in the software either.)

  I also think to make up a "Movie Decimal" system, like the Dewey Decimal system of classification of books, that can be used for classifying movies and TV shows that you can then easily and quickly enter them on the remote control. When you activate the Movie Decimal mode then it will display what each digit means and you can enter all of them quickly (without having to wait for the next menu), or one at a time in which case the menu will display the subclassifications from that point in case you do not know what the numbers mean, that you can learn.

  (Also, I remember operating a Telus set top box once, that the control has a play/pause button, but it was the remote control that kept track of the play/pause state, which meant that sometimes you have to push it twice in order for it to work. It would have been better to put separate buttons for play and for pause.)

• by daheat on 1/9/25, 11:58 PM

  I miss the times where you could really feel the speed of the remote while you browsed through the channels. Feels like emulated, bloated and slow to interact with TVs nowadays..

• by beala on 1/10/25, 2:50 AM

  Here's an AI feature I actually want: I want a language model to watch the show with me, and when I inevitably get distracted and miss something, I want to be able to ask the TV to explain what is going on. Since the TV is watching with me, it can answer my questions without spoilers.

• by worik on 1/10/25, 1:43 AM

  It is weird how fabulous new technology is wrapped in pointless, AI and not AI, filth

  It has happened to cars (no, I do not want to supply Ford with all my driving data)

  It has been a long standing anti-feature of phones

  Thank Dog (and of course RMS and Linus) for free operating systems otherwise it would be my computer

• by devmor on 1/10/25, 10:02 AM

  I purchased a Samsung TV in 2019. It was my first really big TV (75” compared to my previous 39”) and I was excited to have a “home theater experience”.

  Unfortunately what I got was garbage. Every 4-5 weeks from the day I bought it I have to reset the system to prevent it from becoming so slow that it lags while changing the volume. If I ever connect it to the internet to use its “smart” features, it puts ads into the menu. At this point I have all of it’s functionality other than display delegated to other devices and I pray I never have to change the input source, because that could take over a minute of screwing around and possibly turning it off and on. I paid $2000 for this experience.

  If and when it eventually dies I will go out of my way to purchase a dumb “display” meant for commercial use, because every TV I have evaluated since, from every manufacturer, has similar issues. It’s ridiculous.

• by PaulHoule on 1/10/25, 6:49 PM

  This article cemented my decision to not buy a new TV and spend the money on a top-of-the-line M4 Mac Mini instead to replace the failing Alienware laptop my wife uses to access the internet.

  I've owned a number of Samsungs which do their job (you might buy a Samsung with 2 HDMI ports and they still work 10 years later, a Sony comes with 7 because 4 will be burn out) I've seen progressively get worse over time. I went to Best Buy and didn't see the usual open box deals you'd expect 2 weeks after Christmas and how everything was marketed with anti-features such as "Google TV" (which I want about as much as "Jack-the-ripper TV") sent me home.

  (Now I did see a Sony Bravia for $180 at the reuse center the other day and I'm kicking myself for not getting it... But that's what it's going to be)

• by dehrmann on 1/10/25, 6:31 AM

  This question gets asked all the time, but what's a good setup if I want a real remote and no bloatware? Sometimes people recommend digital signage TVs (does LG make any?) And what's a good device to use for steaming apps?

  In a fantasy world, there'd be something like OpenWrt for TV firmware, but I doubt it exists.

• by nalekberov on 1/10/25, 12:29 AM

  First thing I did when I set up my TV was making sure I won't have to touch any of its 'smart' features by connecting to Apple TV. My Pi-Hole was constantly crying about tremendous amount of requests coming from webOS.

  LG IMO is the best (W)OLED TV in the market, but their software as all other TVs' software is crap.

• by jonahhorowitz on 1/10/25, 12:12 AM

  Honestly, my TV is connected to my AppleTV, and that is connected to the internet. I don't use any of the "smart" functionality of the TV. I don't even use the remote for anything.

• by userbinator on 1/10/25, 2:49 AM

  That "AI remote" sounds like something that'd be satire 20 years ago. It's "intelligent" in that it controls you, not the other way around. As for TVs with cameras and mics, the Soviet Russia jokes just write themselves.

• by thrill on 1/10/25, 4:47 PM

  "Google is also working toward having people pay a subscription fee to use Gemini on their TVs, PCWorld reported."

  Soon enough, you'll pay a subscription fee to not use the TVs' invasive "features".

• by zh3 on 1/10/25, 12:23 PM

  I've noticed various TV's/TV networks dropping pause/rewind etc and even making the off switch hard to access; it feels as if they want more control for them (and less for the consumer). Especially given the financial clout of the advertising business, anything that allows users to pause and fast-forward through ad breaks would be in their crosshairs.

  It reminds me of loopback recording on soundcards disappearing; if I'm not mistaken that was directly due to industry pressure.

• by walterbell on 1/10/25, 3:12 AM

  > But a lot of this week's TV announcements underscore an alarming TV-as-a-platform trend where TV sets are sold as a way to infiltrate people's homes so that apps, AI, and ads can be pushed onto viewers. Even high-end TVs are moving in this direction and amplifying features with questionable usefulness, effectiveness, and privacy considerations.

  They will lose to Apple's 2025 launch of per-room "control panels" with >1M apps, AI, E2EE video conferencing and zero ads.

• by alex_young on 1/10/25, 6:42 AM

  Why connect it to the network or use the ui? Just get an AppleTV / Roku / Chromecast / Shield and use that. The spyware on your tv is optional.

• by recursive on 1/10/25, 2:49 AM

  I turn my TV on and off with a button on the TV. I never use the remote for any purpose, except turning off all the picture "enhancing" garbage.

• by IshKebab on 1/10/25, 2:29 PM

  > But the more immediately frustrating part is that the new remote doesn’t have a dedicated button for switching input modes, as previous remotes from LG and countless other remotes do.

  LG remotes don't even have play/pause/forward/back buttons! It's insane! To pause your video it's literally a random number of button presses - could be 1, 2 or even 3 depending on the app.

  Absolute UX madness.

• by rcarmo on 1/11/25, 8:56 AM

  LG keeps missing the obvious: I want in my next TV is a couple more HDMI ports and dumber software.

  Also, I wonder when the EU is going to wake up to the fact that TV manufacturers à have been baking in major privacy violating features into their software for the past decade.

• by msie on 1/10/25, 4:07 AM

  My dad's old Telus set-top box way worked better than his new Telus box for one reason. It stayed on the same channel even when you turned it off. It didn't show a screen of apps if you left it alone for too long or turned it off and on.

• by voidfunc on 1/10/25, 4:45 AM

  Future is i'm only buying TVs I can drop into dumb-mode and plug an AppleTV into... hate all these different TV OSes so much

• by ksec on 1/10/25, 11:16 PM

  But this year's TV at CES 2025 is also the the most exciting in terms of hardware!

  RGB Mini-LED TV

  116" Commercial Consumer TV.

  163" MicroLED TV

  Samsung Seamless MircoLED TV

  4000nits QD-OLED with no MLA and New Blue OLED Compound.

  QUAD / RGB Tandem OLED

  We learned Image Processing Improvement and controller and how we are limited by processing power.

  First over 95% BT 2020 Colour in Consumer TV. Arguably better 99.999% of off display screen tech out there regardless of consumer or pro level.

  Laser TV

  RGB LED Ultra Short Throw Laser Projector That is so much better than previous iteration.

  Panasonic is back in US although that is not exactly news. But there presence and future roadmap in US gives confidence to the market.

  Just the MicroLED is coming in price and size, the Mini-LED is moving up in size and lower price per inch, OLED is slowly moving up to 83" while improving performance and cost model in the below 75". All while greatly increasing image quality. And we learned there is SO much more to come in the next few years. Just when I thought the tech has gotten so good in the last 2-3 years we may have to slow down and with the law of diminishing returns. No we are not slowing down, we are even accelerating.

  While may be disappointed with the software in TV 2025, the hardware is insanely great! I didn't even mentioned Sony B10, the potential Z series replacement!

• by drweevil on 1/10/25, 1:18 AM

  I absolutely despise this trend. I don't want a "smart" TV, and I don't want a new car. They are objectively awful products.

  I am not your revenue stream.

• by cududa on 1/9/25, 11:51 PM

  The only hardware specific complaint this comes down to is one manufacturer swap g the input button for a long press of the home button.

  I’ve used this TV and remote a lot. It’s not going to be particularly hard to learn that action.

• by charlie0 on 1/10/25, 4:49 AM

  The Samsung recipe AI totally reminds me of the silicon valley jian yang hot dog app episode. Lol

• by maxehmookau on 1/10/25, 11:31 AM

  I want a dumb TV. A TV that I can plug my Apply TV in to and watch TV. I don't want it to be smart, I don't want Roku built in, I don't want it to know what I watch and sell me ads.

  It's really hard to find this.

  > Large language models on TVs

  Stop it. Please.

• by ggm on 1/10/25, 7:25 AM

  I don't want Gemini on my TV.

  I don't want an LLM on my TV.

  I would like android, or as close as possible with an ability to manage 3rd party app installation by myself please.

• by beepbooptheory on 1/10/25, 12:44 AM

  Feel extremely lucky I picked up a brand new Best Buy brand Insignia brand tv recently that was the only product available at my store when you filtered for NOT-smart TV on the website. I also saw this the other day and it blew me away. It is the perfect product, it feels like it comes from an alternate universe where things aren't universally shitty. Why can't we have more things like this?

  https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-am-fm-radio-portable-c...

• by sid57 on 1/10/25, 4:17 PM

  It's not the first pointless downgrade of the LG remote: they've already removed the pause button. Now pausing and unpausing is done with the general-purpose click-wheel, is up to each app to implement, and is dependent on the UI state. If a wrong element is focused (which is not hard to do, because the button is a scroll wheel surrounded by directional buttons), you may end up toggling subtitles or some other option when trying to pause or unpause. It used to be a hardware button that always worked, was trivial to find by feel, easy to activate, and worked instantly. Now it's "wait, I need to pause! Oops, I moved the scroll wheel button by a notch when pressing it, so it's a mouse cursor now! I fast-forwarded to the second half of the movie and the audio is in French."

• by calmbonsai on 1/10/25, 12:01 AM

  This "senior technology reporter" doesn't understand the GOMS fundamentals of a television remote.