So Sony is now the new RCA. This is a new low for the company. I can’t believe that they are gone just like that.
Well, their TV brand is gone. Their headphones are still the top tier of consumer stuff and price-performance king for studio headphones
I had a TCL phone for a bit about 10 years ago and it was the hottest piece of garbage I had ever touched in my life
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They’ve really worked to turn that around with their TVs. They’re entry level still sure, but for the price it’s hard to beat and their quality control on them has taken a big step up.
Make a dumb tv and I’ll be a buyer
I just want one DP input and I’ll decide how to split my inputs with an outside box. The TV should only decide how to show the picture. I don’t need your YouTube app
Look for “commercial display panels.” They’re 3-4 times the price of a smart TV, but they are just basic TVs. If you find a bank, hospital, clinic, or any other privacy focused business that’s going out of business you can generally pick those used displays up pretty cheap.
However, the image quality of those displays is usually worse compared to home displays. This is from a technical who works with these products.
Can’t you just use any modem TV and not hook it up to the interwebs?
I believe more and more TVs require network connection for setup.
They will still have those garbage “smart” menus.
What are garbage smart menus that can’t be avoided?
I’m not being funny. I’m still on a Panasonic last gen thin plasma FHD but thinking of upgrading to a LG C5 OLED when they are on final sale when this year models are rolling out. I’m only watching movies through the box connected to it.
I usually do this but would still prefer a dumb TV, mainly to reduce the possible points of failure
Non-paywalled link: https://archive.ph/noqtk
Thanks.
I don’t really know why it is so hard for people to post things like this in the beginning. It’s just a way to annoy us because they should know we all don’t intend to pay some subscription to read news.
Because it’s even easier to just set up the right filters in uBO and never have to think about it again
The verge is a garbage paywall site now
That’s a shame. I’ve had very good experiences with Sony upper mid range/lower high end TVs. Their image processing is second to none IMO, they seem to use more powerful CPUs than a lot of other android TV makers, and their use of AndroidTV means I can trivially customise my TV in a way that I can’t with lots of other brands (strip out ads, basically).
Shit, my oldest daughter moved into a flat with friends when she started uni not long ago, and took my old 2007 42" 1080p Bravia that I bought all those years ago. She hadn’t even been born yet, and it still looks shockingly good.
This is sad news.
It’s like when IBM left its PC manufacturing to Lenovo. And, probably a ton of other examples I’ve never paid any attention to.
It’s starting to feel like only old people look at a screen bigger than six inches. That, combined with displays becoming a commodity item, leads to the manufacturing being abandoned to commodity manufacturers. If Sony could bring anything of value that would justify the cost of holding on to this, they would. Sony’s name hasn’t been synonymous with quality for decades now, that’s partly their own doing through poor choices, but also the quality of cheap displays is perfectly adequate for most people.
Dafuq are you on about, Sony’s image processing and colour reproduction is one of if not the best in the entire display industry.
They were getting squeezed by Samsung and LG display for their OLED products so they just decided to engage in a joint venture with TCL that results in less costly manufacturing while leveraging the brand recognition and existing distribution channels. Basically TCL becomes an OEM. It’s not ideal but if this was to be avoided, we should have detached from the US based order in the 80s when it became obvious the US doesn’t like to compete and sniped the entire Japanese economy.
Sony’s main tech was in manufacturing. TCL will be getting a HUGE upgrade.
I remember when Sony was THE brand, not? Meh
Besides the paywall.
It doesn’t sound to me that this is making Sony go away from a market, it just sounds like they’ll still be involved.
Indeed, article makes it sound like both brands are putting their TV business into a new joint venture. Hardly the same as exiting the market.
Absolutly nothing Sony, TCL or any of that garbage will ever be in my home. Or any of the advertising supported TV’s. Nope.
What brand do you use of you don’t mind sharing?
Right? That leaves no TVs. I can’t really think of any TVs that are ad-free, or are guaranteed to be ad free in future.
Personally I’ve been getting android TV boxes and installing a custom (and free) launcher on it, and using SmartTube for ad-free YouTube.
So… on the customer market only PlayStation needs to flop and Sony is gone forever
Its funny because all these grand Japanese OEMs like Sony and Panasonic got undercut by Korean rivals like LG and Samsung in the 2000s, which forced Sony to move further into exclusively high priced devices and for many other OEMs to leave the US or global market.
Now TCL and HiSense are undercutting the grand Korean OEMs, which is slowly forcing them out of the low-middle end market.
I upgraded from a 20+ year old Phillips LCD to TCL’s QM8K, and the display technology for being a QLED panel is astounding. It looks 95% like a high quality OLED for a fraction of the cost.
Only downside is Google TV (Junk Android that you have to debloat a bit) and for some reason the TV can’t passthrough Dolby Atmos from app players like Kodi, even though it can do DTS-X just fine. I’m pretty sure the second issue is just a software bug, but TCL has been taking ages to respond. Pass through from an external source works perfectly fine though.
If you’re in the market, I highly recommend seeing it in person at a hardware/electronics store. The side by side comparison is insane.
My TCL has been going strong for 8 years now. I’ll stand behind supporting That Cheap Life.
Dammit. I’ve had an LG plasma for the last 15, and it looks like I’ll have to get that Sony well before I’m ready for it.
Where I live, it’s mostly the Korean brands on top and middle-tier, but for the working class they have an insane number of choices from Chinese makers, despite the quality.
