this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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Search for monitors, not televisions. For example, you can get an 48in and 55in OLEDs dumb monitors with multiple HDMI inputs.
This is a really good advice. I will be looking for a new TV soon and it seems like there are no more dumb TVs.
Commercial display TVs are dumb. They are TVs meant for store displays and lack "smart" functionality.
Another good idea. Will keep that in mind when looking for a TV.
Be careful with this as monitors are usually a different aspect ratio to a TV so a you may get a distorted/cropped picture or black bars (depending what you connect to it) which will be noticeable at larger sizes.
What? Aren't like 90% of monitors and 99% of TVs 16:9? There are a few monitors that are 16:10, some extremely rare 5:4 and 4:3 and then there are the ultrawide monitors which are obviously a different aspect ratio but saying that monitors are "usually" a different aspect ratio is factually incorrect. If you're deciding between a 4K TV and 4K monitor, then there's no danger of accidentally buying something of different format.
Nah there are more
5:4, 8:5, 21:9, 64:27. And more.
And these aren't exact. There's fault tolerance, so to speak. You can have slightly different sizes rectangles between several different 16:9 monitors.
I already mentioned 5:4 and 8:5 equals 16:10.
21:9 and 64:27 are just ultrawide formats which I also mentioned and you can't really mistake those for 16:9, can you? Same goes for 5:4 and 4:3 which are rather square-ish (4:3 was typical for old CRT monitors and TVs).
I don't think "fault tolerance" means what you think it means.
Are you telling me that there are monitors that don't have square pixels? Or that the number of (square) pixels doesn't give an exact 16:9 ratio?
Anyway, yes, there are more aspect ratios out there but the important thing is how common they are. I just looked at the biggest local e-shop and if I try to filter parameters by resolution, I get this:
The number in the parenthesis next to the resolution is the number of products. (Note that this is only showing 1609 out of the total 1629 items - if I scroll down, there are 20 other options which all have 1 product each so I took the liberty to ignore those as those are ultra rare items (and some of them aren't even regular monitors but just some specialized displays. Even here, for example the 2200×1024px is an e-ink touch screen)).
I simplified each ratio to the simplest form, so those are exact ratios (but for some added a ratio with X:9 or X:10 in the denominator in parenthesis for easier comparison to those more standard formats). Turns out that 1379 out of 1609 monitors are exactly 16:9, so that's 85.7%. The biggest variety are among the ultrawides which I colored in purple but again, those are pretty much unmistakable. Just like the 5:4 and 4:3 in blue.
So realistically you have to watch out for the red ratios where 1379 out of 1426 are 16:9, that's 96.7%.
So I really wonder how you came to the conclusion that "monitors are usually a different aspect ratio to a TV".
Now of course one e-shop isn't a completely representative sample but I hope we can agree that the numbers will be in the right ballpark. Feel free to make your own statistics from a different source.
1280 x 800 is 16:10
1280 x 768 is also 16:10.
1280 x 720 is 16:9
No, it is not exact. Yes there is a "fault tolerance" built into how we describe aspect ratios, unless you want to get way more specific.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_resolutions
Dude, what the hell you're onto?
That's exact.
Also exact.
In the link you provided, it literally says it's 5:3. It even has its own line in the infographics. And while the article is titled "List of common resolutions", it looks more like an exhaustive list of almost any resolution that has been ever used in any kind of consumer device. It's definitely not limited just to standard computer monitors so that table isn't really that relevant to the topic of the discussion.
Also show me a monitor with the 1280 x 768 resolution that's currently available on sale.
You're picking up some extremely rare cases to make an argument that your initial statement about "usually different aspect ratio" was correct but that's not how it works. That's just moving goalposts.
No I'm looking at the most common cases but you do you.
Just make sure they have audio out too (unless your source can drive a soundbar directly). I just got a new monitor that had built in speakers. They're dog shit, and I didn't plan on using them anyway, but I hadn't appreciated how useful it was having a device that can decode the audio stream from HDMI or DP.
I still have my old usb soundbar for the times I want a loudspeaker, but I can just leave my headphones plugged into the monitors jack and switch the output device on the computer.
And where do you plug in the aerial to watch TV? Or doesn't it work like that where you're from?
You’ll need to buy TV tuner with HDMI to do that.
But honestly, I probably wouldn’t go the monitor route unless you were all in on streaming.
Which most people are or should be tbh. Also, if anyone is searching for a dumb TV it's more or less guaranteed they're tech savvy enough to be running some sort of stream box/pc anyways for the TV.
Antenna TV is still kind of nice in that there is live coverage, it’s free, and it works when the internet is out. I get the appeal.
TV tuners are fairly cheap.
Never heard of them please elaborate a bit, I'm always open to learning new and better stuff.
HDHomeRun is one of the common brands. They have a couple that can even demodulate ATSC 3.0.
I dumped my satellite TV subscription service last year when I realised all we ever watched on it were on-demand services. I hooked one of the dish feeds into the TVs own socket since it was there, but beyond testing it worked it's had no more than an hours use in the last six months.
We just watch stuff on the TVs streaming apps instead of the satellite decoders streaming apps (saving about 100kWh a year).
One of the few times we watched live TV, it was just on in the background and we realised the show that was on seemed interesting, we'd missed the first 10 minutes but there was an option to press a button and open the on-demand app and restart immediately from the beginning.
Hasn't worked like that in the US for a couple decades. I remember early 2000's there was a push to go digital and a lot of people with older TV's that didn't have coax or similar were given dongles by the government so they could make tv signals all digital. No more aerials on TVs.
https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2009/the-switch-from-analog-to-digital-tv/#:~:text=SUMMARY%3A%20On%20June%2012%2C%202009,signals%20must%20be%20transmitted%20digitally.
My new (2023) Philips Roku TV has an antenna input and receives OTA digital channels just fine.
No clue what you're talking about. I've got an SMA connector on the back of my TV. The did government subsidized conversation boxes. It worked about the same as a VCR. Tune the TV to a specific channel and then use the convertor as the tuner. That by no means caused TVs no to longer than SMA connectors. That was due to TV manufacturers also having their fingers in streaming services. Gotta love that vertical integration!