Re: Several Friends Bought Smart TV's

Drythe · ‎07-09-2011

@Sooner wrote:
And the irony is none of them can figure out how to use them!

How about you?

I would be in the same situation as your friends.

Perhals some 11 yr old would take pity on me.

"Animals are not my whole world, but they have made my world whole" ~ Roger Caras

Sooner · ‎03-10-2010

@Drythe wrote:
@Sooner wrote:
And the irony is none of them can figure out how to use them!

How about you?
@Sooner

I would be in the same situation as your friends.
Perhals some 11 yr old would take pity on me.

@Drythe Now that's funny! And true!

Nuttmeg · ‎03-09-2010

@Sooner Have your friends looked for help setting up a smart TV on YouTube?

QVCisFun · ‎03-31-2010

@chickenbutt @SilleeMee Best Buy sells some non-smart TVs. Several came up by typing in the BestBuy.com website search field "LED Full HD TV" (include the quote marks).

Also, QVC sells some non-smart TVs, several came up by typing "LED HD TV" (without the quote marks) in the QVC search field.

glb613 · ‎03-09-2010

@QVCisFun wrote:
@chickenbutt @SilleeMee Best Buy sells some non-smart TVs. Several came up by typing in the BestBuy.com website search field "LED Full HD TV" (include the quote marks).

Also, QVC sells some non-smart TVs, several came up by typing "LED HD TV" (without the quote marks) in the QVC search field.

For goodness sake people. You don't have to connect a TV to the internet and stream if you choose not to do so. You act like you are forced to learn something new. SMH.

agb80 · ‎10-16-2020

From everything I've read about smart tv's they can be hacked and the hacker can observe you in your home from its camera and hear what you're saying from the mic. That's all it took for my husband to say no way. We subscribe to cable anyway and all the apps are on their platform such as Prime, Netflix, etc.

Sooner · ‎03-10-2010

@Nuttmeg wrote:
@Sooner Have your friends looked for help setting up a smart TV on YouTube?

@Nuttmeg No. It's easier to call us! LOL!!!

But it's funny that they get "smart" tv's thinking it will all be intuitive and simple. Boy were they wrong.

gardenman · ‎03-09-2010

@Drythe wrote:
@Sooner wrote:
And the irony is none of them can figure out how to use them!

How about you?
@Sooner

I would be in the same situation as your friends.
Perhals some 11 yr old would take pity on me.

By and large, kids are better at figuring electronic stuff out as they're not as afraid of breaking it. They just dive in and hope for the best. Adults are more prone to think, "I just paid $1,000 for this TV. I don't want to mess it up!" If you think like a kid, you'll learn a lot more. Unless you throw something through the screen, it's nearly impossible to truly mess up a smart TV. No matter how badly you screw up there's typically a "Reset to Factory" setting in there somewhere that lets you return it to how it was when you bought it. (Don't unplug it while updating it though. That's the one thing that can kill nearly any modern device and turn it into a large and expensive paperweight.) Once you know and understand that no matter what you do, you can get back to how it was when you bought it, it should liberate you to just play with it a bit more without undue fear.

I'm a "just dive in and see what happens" kind of guy with modern electronics. By and large, I can figure out anything. I was a bit confused why my Recast (over the air DVR) didn't reset when I unplugged it, but a bit of Googling showed that it had to be reset through my Fire TV. (That was different. I'd never seen that before. As a rule, when something goes a bit screwy you just unplug it for a bit, but the Recast doesn't play that way.) There's truly no need to be afraid of your electronics. You're very unlikely to be able to screw them up beyond undoing unless you throw something at them.

Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!

Ainhisg · ‎03-09-2010

All a smart TV does is provide apps. That's it. You can access them or not and need wi-fi if you're going to access them. You can only record "regular" TV if you have a DVR or use an app like Hulu Plus or YouTube TV (or others) that have a recording function, and you do that all through the app. Or you can record if you have Direct TV or DISH and subscribe to the recording service. (I'm not sure if cable has a recording function as we don't have cable.) There may be other ways to record, but I think those are the most common ways.

All that being said, we have two smart TV's, and I wouldn't trade them for love nor money. We don't use our bedroom TV often. For it, I use the Netflix and Amazon Prime Video apps, and then we have a digital antenna hooked to it to get local channels. We don't have a recording device attached to it because we have our main TV to use for that. Talking about TV brands, it is a Vizio, and I dislike it for many reasons. It was our first smart TV and is not intuitive. It's only 4 years old, and since it's not used often, I don't think it will ever die, but if it does, I will get a Samsung!

Which leads to our main TV. It is a Samsung smart TV that we just purchased in September. To say that I love that thing would be an understatement. I spent a lot of time adjusting the picture to get it "just so," and the picture will blow...you...away. The setup was so easy! The prompts on the TV screen told you exactly what to do. The remote is intuitive as is the TV's interface. We have DISH, so we use the DISH remote to turn on the TV and adjust the sound on our sound system, but we use the Samsung remote for the apps. Conveniently, the remote has two buttons designated for Netflix and Prime Video. It has a third button for Hulu. We recently thought we might get rid of DISH and tried YouTube TV. The app was in the app "store" but was easily moved to the tray (as we call it). It worked flawlessly and was no problem to access at all. We just hit home and there it was on which to click. We ultimately renegotiated our contract with DISH and got a cheaper price than YouTube TV so stuck with DISH. But as an aside, if anyone is looking to cut the cord and use a streaming service, I cannot recommend YouTube TV enough! Unlimited recording with recordings saved for 9 months, the most channels of any streaming service, a wonderful interface and guide, local channels including PBS...just loved it.

Mindy D · ‎05-23-2010

@chickenbutt wrote:
@SilleeMee wrote:
I tried to buy a non-smart (a stupid TV) but I couldn't find one. So I had to buy a smart TV and most of the stuff on it doesn't apply to me. I like simple stupid stuff.

Since I, too, have no interest in the 'smart' features, I've been wondering if it's possible to just not have any of that 'turned on' (or whatever) and just operate like any other tv.

I just want it to operate as a tv and plug in my Tivo and the other HDMI streaming devices like what I do now.

@chickenbutt @If you have Directv with a set top box you do not have to ever use the smart features of your smart TVs...unless you want to do so. It's like having two systems.