Having to buy a new Roku is a lot simpler and cheaper than replacing an entire smart TV.
I think I’m very glad my TV was made right before Smart TVs started coming out. Here’s hoping it continues to be reliable, 'cause this sounds pretty damned annoying.
I don’t see this happening unless roads change their composition. It would be pretty hard on asphalt, especially on a hot day.
But they could finally get glowing tires!
Re: vindaloo
The name Colombo, Sri Lanka, has no connection with Christopher Columbus, although it was given its current spelling by the Portuguese in 1505. The name derives fron Sinhala worts meaning “port of the green mango”, and there are many ports in Sri Lanka with names ending with the suffix -ombo.
Here in the UK, my smart(ish) TV gets OTA updates. I know that you guys in the USofA mostly use cable, but can’t the cable companies send updates?
The TV has to be setup to receive/apply them. I know I had to update the Amazon app on my Samsung Smart TV to get Prime to work, and it was a bit of a pain in the ass just to find the instructions. The overall Smart app updates itself at annoyingly often intervals, so hopefully that means it has updated its root certificates at some point.
In my experience, the cable company sends updates for the OS and apps on the cable box, but has nothing to do with updating the OS or apps on my smart TV, game system or any other device connected to the TV.
Cool story. My parents used to be neighbors with her ex Tom Black who worked on satellites for NASA. I only met him once but Jack Black is extremely intelligent as well.
Another animal that has litters of 4 (and 4 only) is the Tasmanian Devil. Being a marsupial, the newborns spend several months in the pouch (rather than an internal womb) permanently attached to a nipple until they develop enough to enter the outside world. However, the adult female actually gives birth to between 20 and 50 young devils, and there is a fierce competition to see which of the newborns will reach the four nipples first. The remainder die.
I don’t understand why anyone would buy a video monitor with any sorts of extraneous add-ons built in. Stuff like a “combo DVD player/TV”, or “smart TV with YouTube and Netflix” or other worthless dinosaurs.
A monitor should be just that. A monitor and nothing else. That way, when it’s time, you can swap out whatever outdated technology is feeding a video signal to the monitor (Cable box, DVD player, LaserDisc, BetaCam, Roku, VHS player, etc.) and upgrade to the newest device.
I make an exception for the vaunted TV-tuner/video monitor combo (i.e. the classic TV set) . That was utterly logical because there were no other video sources to consider at that time. Television broadcasts were all that existed.
Of course at some point you will have to upgrade the monitor itself if for no other reason than because you can no longer hook things up at adequate speeds because the connectors have all changed. At that point you can move it downstairs, and then to the spare room and hook up an old $5 DVD player or an old $9 Roku box to it for your kids or your guests.
[too late to add to my post above–sorry]
This is exactly what I’m talking about in the post above. I’m not digging the entire concept of a “Smart TV”. Makes more sense to combine the individual components yourself instead.
Smart TV’s aren’t.
Difficult to buy something that doesn’t have smart features. No doubt they exist but they are not exactly stocked in the local electronics store, nor will they be particularly cheap. I just bought a TV and am ignoring the features. Although I did nearly buy one which had Roku as it’s operating system.
You can do that, I can (probably) do that. My 91 year old mother, not so much. And other people, capable of doing it don’t have the desire to dig into what components to buy, nor necessarily have the space where the monitor is to put individual components.
Pardon my ignorance. Can I actually buy a 60" or 80" monitor with nil smarts?
I’m not far from a tech refresh and your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
You can buy a smart TV and just use the dumb parts. Not a big deal.
The part I most want to avoid is all the corporate spyware running on the TV. If it has a dumb monitor mode and I can prevent the TV from phoning home despite being on my network and have it still function as a dumb monitor I guess that’ll do.
Why would you need the TV itself on your network at all if you’re just plugging in outboard equipment (a Roku to do streaming, a media box for some movie library)? The outboard stuff is on your network, the TV just gets video and audio signals.
God point. Shoulda thought that through some more.
Tom Scott (of YouTube fame) has taught me that an early use of a microwave was to humanely warm up small critters such as hamsters that had been frozen. Presto, some of them actually came back to life!
Alas, this only works for small creatures but not humans. However, the idea that one could be frozen indefinitely then reanimated became a Sci-Fi staple for many decades that followed, notably in 2001 a Space Odyssey and Alien. Not to mention video games like Halo and Fallout 4.
The new-to-me term for this kind of heating is “diathermy,” for which Tom nicely uses Google to teach us how it is pronounced (at 5:25 in the video link). I love his well-edited videos!