If there is a problem with the smart features (vulnerabilities, spying on the part of manufacturer, etc.) of my Roku or other set top box, I replace it. $50 to $100. If I want to upgrade, more processing power, memory, etc., I replace it.
But the smart features on the TV are fixed. To fix a problem or upgrade, you replace the TV. If it's a software issue, sure, that can be upgraded, but not hardware.
Some people upgrade their TVs every few years, in which case this might not matter, but I expect a TV to last me 10 or 15 years.
There were some available last year. There *may* be some available this year (although if you find a non-smart Samsung this year it's probably old stock.)
I just bought a new Samsung myself. It has an ethernet port *and* built-in wifi. My solution is to not allow either to connect, but it's annoying.
Judging from what I see on Amazon, a "monitor" of a given size and resolution is going to cost quite a bit more than a TV of the same size and resolution. And you don't have a lot of choices.
The trend of most manufacturers seems to be to add smart features. That adds around $100-150 to the price. Take away the tuner, speakers and the smart features? Well, that's going to add another couple of hundred.
Because I would "neglect" to tell it the wifi password. If all they were to do was disable my networking functionality, that would be just fine, since I would have disabled it myself already.
I've got Roku, I've got Kodi, why would I need their networking functionality? If they disable the screen, that would be another matter entirely.
Um. I'm not sure where you've been looking at flat screen TVs, but 1080p has been available on 40" TVs for years. There are even some 4K TVs in that size range, although not very many.
Dumb TVs have been available for some time, but *those* seem to be fading away.
Don't know about the TV, but I have a "smart" BluRay player. As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever seen a "non-smart" one. In any case, it doesn't know my WiFi key, and as long as I don't accidentally trigger its setup mode it works just fine. If I do, switching back to "play" has been no problem.
I don't know if that's going to bite me some day when it wants to check its DRM database with the mother ship.
But you do pay more for the non-optional "option" of having the smart features. On the order of $100+ more, based on side-by-side comparisons of smart and non-smart TVs from the same vendors from previous years.
You're right about projectors being more mobile. And you're agreeing with him on that.
But in the educational case, he's citing that as a disadvantage -- and *I'm* agreeing with him on that. All our projectors are mounted on pedestals on the ceiling, and I'm not aware of any that have actually been taken. But a "bog standard media cart" sounds like a security nightmare and a royal pain to have to actually use.
We've put large screen TVs in a few classrooms, but the projector actually *is* cheaper and has the advantage that it only blocks the whiteboard when you're using it. The screen lifts out of the way when you're not, which is not an option for the TV. And the projected image is still a bit larger than even the largest TV, although since short throw projectors have pretty much gone away you do have to deal with your shadow on the screen if you pass in front.
Except it's getting really hard to find a "dumb TV." Most of the people that *I've* talked to don't want a smart TV, but fewer and fewer companies making TVs are willing to make TVs without including "smart" features.
Paradoxically, if you want a reasonable number of HDMI ports (so you can attach your own devices) you have to get a smart TV.
I suspect that most people would consider ISP=Broadband provider. The others that you list? *Maybe* ISPs in a distant sort of way, but hardly anyone is going to point to them and say "that's my ISP." Anyone who talks about "my ISP" is going to be pointing to whichever company provides their physical access.
For the purposes of this discussion, Cox is the litigant in the story that is being considered an ISP.
If you want to use your own definition of ISP, that's fine, but the rest of us are probably going to ignore you.
You're right, and last I looked you had to specifically switch your phone over to use VoLTE. It's not enabled by default.
It's quite possible that IOS phones are not affected because they don't support the VoLTE functionality. I don't *know* that, but I do seem to recall that the VoLTE capability was added in the last year or two to Android phones, and older ones don't support it.
The first Nook reversed this and had a tiny color screen at the bottom to go with the main e-ink reading surface. All your navigation used the color screen, it could show thumbnails of covers, etc.
They dropped it after one iteration though. I guess it wasn't very popular.
I like to read outside, weather permitting, and e-ink works very well for that. I seldom read comic books (*ahem*, graphic novels) although I have several via Humble Bundle, so the tablets really don't buy me anything that e-ink doesn't do better.
I had to buy another good sized bookcase a couple of years ago and put it into another room, but it's overflowing now. I like having all the physical books, but I don't have any space to put still another bookcase...
I'm a *long* way away from 60. More than two weeks. Ok, not *more* than...:)
Huh. That's news to me -- they must have come out with it since I stopped paying attention. It's awfully pricey though. Most of the drivers of that high cost (still has a touchscreen, is glow-in-the-dark, etc.) are things that I don't want. I don't mean "things I don't want to pay for," but rather "things I want to avoid." I *would* be willing to pay more for the higher resolution, but not double the cost of my existing Kindle.
Can you disable the touchscreen so that if my finger brushes across it *nothing* happens? Because my biggest criticism of touchscreen readers is that I want pages to turn *only* when I intend them to. Buttons fulfill that criterion, touchscreens really don't.
I'd also like to ensure that the light comes on only when I have hard evidence that the sun has in fact gone *out*. I have lamps. I don't need my reader to glow at me.
This sounds like a better option than I thought I had, but still not as good as my $99 kindle from a few years ago. I hope it keeps working.
Mmm. Let's assume they can make the lifetime of a book reader 40 years (an assumption I'm *very* skeptical of.) I have 500 books on my reader. I'm carrying around hundreds to thousands of dollars of content which will be gone if I leave it in a restaurant or a taxi? I can't transfer it to another device?
I don't think so. All my ebook content is on my computer in a Calibre data store. I "own" the books I buy, not Amazon (I don't actually buy ebooks from Amazon, only dead tree.)
Your estimate of 1/4 the cost for content is not that credible, at least not according to people involved with the business. The actual paper and ink, and even the physical distribution process is a very small part of the cost of a book.
My dead tree "to-be-read" shelf holds a bit more than 100 books. It's stayed steady at that for several years -- I buy four or five or so new dead tree items a month and finish a similar number. My Kindle has about 5 or 6 hundred unread books on it. I buy half a dozen or so new e-books every month, and again, finish a similar number.
I like both. The Kindle is always with me, and I don't think of it so much as a book but more as a library. If I finish a book, the next one is right there. Some publishers don't offer non-DRM epubs, so I buy paper. (DRMed books don't let me fix bad formatting, so I don't buy them.)
I'm with you. When Amazon discontinued Kindles with buttons, I bought a couple of spares for when the one I'm using dies. I was only using a Kindle in the first place because my older e-readers got broken over time, and Amazon was the only one who still made a reader with buttons. Now there are none.
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If there is a problem with the smart features (vulnerabilities, spying on the part of manufacturer, etc.) of my Roku or other set top box, I replace it. $50 to $100. If I want to upgrade, more processing power, memory, etc., I replace it.
But the smart features on the TV are fixed. To fix a problem or upgrade, you replace the TV. If it's a software issue, sure, that can be upgraded, but not hardware.
Some people upgrade their TVs every few years, in which case this might not matter, but I expect a TV to last me 10 or 15 years.
Don't tell it your SSID or password.
Now if someone tells me that the TV will go searching for an open access point and connect, I give up. Rip it open and disable the antenna. :-)
There were some available last year. There *may* be some available this year (although if you find a non-smart Samsung this year it's probably old stock.)
I just bought a new Samsung myself. It has an ethernet port *and* built-in wifi. My solution is to not allow either to connect, but it's annoying.
Good luck finding one. There may be some used ones still around.
Judging from what I see on Amazon, a "monitor" of a given size and resolution is going to cost quite a bit more than a TV of the same size and resolution. And you don't have a lot of choices.
The trend of most manufacturers seems to be to add smart features. That adds around $100-150 to the price. Take away the tuner, speakers and the smart features? Well, that's going to add another couple of hundred.
Does it still work as a screen?
Because I would "neglect" to tell it the wifi password. If all they were to do was disable my networking functionality, that would be just fine, since I would have disabled it myself already.
I've got Roku, I've got Kodi, why would I need their networking functionality? If they disable the screen, that would be another matter entirely.
Um. I'm not sure where you've been looking at flat screen TVs, but 1080p has been available on 40" TVs for years. There are even some 4K TVs in that size range, although not very many.
Dumb TVs have been available for some time, but *those* seem to be fading away.
Don't know about the TV, but I have a "smart" BluRay player. As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever seen a "non-smart" one. In any case, it doesn't know my WiFi key, and as long as I don't accidentally trigger its setup mode it works just fine. If I do, switching back to "play" has been no problem.
I don't know if that's going to bite me some day when it wants to check its DRM database with the mother ship.
But you do pay more for the non-optional "option" of having the smart features. On the order of $100+ more, based on side-by-side comparisons of smart and non-smart TVs from the same vendors from previous years.
You're right about projectors being more mobile. And you're agreeing with him on that.
But in the educational case, he's citing that as a disadvantage -- and *I'm* agreeing with him on that. All our projectors are mounted on pedestals on the ceiling, and I'm not aware of any that have actually been taken. But a "bog standard media cart" sounds like a security nightmare and a royal pain to have to actually use.
We've put large screen TVs in a few classrooms, but the projector actually *is* cheaper and has the advantage that it only blocks the whiteboard when you're using it. The screen lifts out of the way when you're not, which is not an option for the TV. And the projected image is still a bit larger than even the largest TV, although since short throw projectors have pretty much gone away you do have to deal with your shadow on the screen if you pass in front.
Except it's getting really hard to find a "dumb TV." Most of the people that *I've* talked to don't want a smart TV, but fewer and fewer companies making TVs are willing to make TVs without including "smart" features.
Paradoxically, if you want a reasonable number of HDMI ports (so you can attach your own devices) you have to get a smart TV.
That's a pretty narrow definition of ISP.
I suspect that most people would consider ISP=Broadband provider. The others that you list? *Maybe* ISPs in a distant sort of way, but hardly anyone is going to point to them and say "that's my ISP." Anyone who talks about "my ISP" is going to be pointing to whichever company provides their physical access.
For the purposes of this discussion, Cox is the litigant in the story that is being considered an ISP.
If you want to use your own definition of ISP, that's fine, but the rest of us are probably going to ignore you.
Um. Who is this, and what did they do with Cox?
Did you happen to look at /usr/bin/passwd ?
Argh. Got that right. After about ten seconds of "Loading your community website" I decided they didn't have anything I cared to see.
Haven't looked at Emby, but I have Plex Media Server running with the Roku Plex Classic client at the playing end. No problems with streaming.
You're right, and last I looked you had to specifically switch your phone over to use VoLTE. It's not enabled by default.
It's quite possible that IOS phones are not affected because they don't support the VoLTE functionality. I don't *know* that, but I do seem to recall that the VoLTE capability was added in the last year or two to Android phones, and older ones don't support it.
Yup. Just around the corner.
Nuclear fusion is 30 years away. It has been 30 years away for about 50 years.
I'd expect color e-ink to be just around the corner for quite some time.
Qualcomm's Mirasol was sounding like the answer, but it seemed to drop into a black hole quite some time ago.
I only buy epub for my Kindle. :)
Me and Calibre strip out the right-justification and covert it to a format the Kindle can read.
The first Nook reversed this and had a tiny color screen at the bottom to go with the main e-ink reading surface. All your navigation used the color screen, it could show thumbnails of covers, etc.
They dropped it after one iteration though. I guess it wasn't very popular.
I like to read outside, weather permitting, and e-ink works very well for that. I seldom read comic books (*ahem*, graphic novels) although I have several via Humble Bundle, so the tablets really don't buy me anything that e-ink doesn't do better.
I had to buy another good sized bookcase a couple of years ago and put it into another room, but it's overflowing now. I like having all the physical books, but I don't have any space to put still another bookcase...
I'm a *long* way away from 60. More than two weeks. Ok, not *more* than... :)
Huh. That's news to me -- they must have come out with it since I stopped paying attention. It's awfully pricey though. Most of the drivers of that high cost (still has a touchscreen, is glow-in-the-dark, etc.) are things that I don't want. I don't mean "things I don't want to pay for," but rather "things I want to avoid." I *would* be willing to pay more for the higher resolution, but not double the cost of my existing Kindle.
Can you disable the touchscreen so that if my finger brushes across it *nothing* happens? Because my biggest criticism of touchscreen readers is that I want pages to turn *only* when I intend them to. Buttons fulfill that criterion, touchscreens really don't.
I'd also like to ensure that the light comes on only when I have hard evidence that the sun has in fact gone *out*. I have lamps. I don't need my reader to glow at me.
This sounds like a better option than I thought I had, but still not as good as my $99 kindle from a few years ago. I hope it keeps working.
Mmm. Let's assume they can make the lifetime of a book reader 40 years (an assumption I'm *very* skeptical of.) I have 500 books on my reader. I'm carrying around hundreds to thousands of dollars of content which will be gone if I leave it in a restaurant or a taxi? I can't transfer it to another device?
I don't think so. All my ebook content is on my computer in a Calibre data store. I "own" the books I buy, not Amazon (I don't actually buy ebooks from Amazon, only dead tree.)
Your estimate of 1/4 the cost for content is not that credible, at least not according to people involved with the business. The actual paper and ink, and even the physical distribution process is a very small part of the cost of a book.
My dead tree "to-be-read" shelf holds a bit more than 100 books. It's stayed steady at that for several years -- I buy four or five or so new dead tree items a month and finish a similar number. My Kindle has about 5 or 6 hundred unread books on it. I buy half a dozen or so new e-books every month, and again, finish a similar number.
I like both. The Kindle is always with me, and I don't think of it so much as a book but more as a library. If I finish a book, the next one is right there. Some publishers don't offer non-DRM epubs, so I buy paper. (DRMed books don't let me fix bad formatting, so I don't buy them.)
I'm with you. When Amazon discontinued Kindles with buttons, I bought a couple of spares for when the one I'm using dies. I was only using a Kindle in the first place because my older e-readers got broken over time, and Amazon was the only one who still made a reader with buttons. Now there are none.