Buying My First TV - NON-Smart TV Recommendations

[Calico Morgan]

Well I'm finally in the process of moving to my dream town- West End Vancouver BC. I'm a Canadian returning home from the US where I currently live in a shoe box with my wonderful wife. We are very excited for our new place because it will be comparatively MUCH larger than where we live. We are dually excited to purchase our first TV together! 

I'm thinking 4k OLED. The Lord of the Rings 4k is what comes to mind as the first thing I want to watch on my new TV. I absolutely do NOT, however, want to deal with a "smart" TV, for reasons I won't go into now.

Are there any good non-smart 4k OLED TVs out there? I really don't have a size or price in mind at this point, so pretty much any recommendation would be very helpful right now! I'm just in the research phase at this point and have plenty of time to settle on a specific model. 

Things that come to mind which I will potentially connect to the TV are: 
-Definitely a Nintendo Switch

-Definitely a laptop

-Possibly a Raspberry Pi
-Possibly a Chrome Cast device

-Possibly a PS5

Thanks in advance for any responses!

[Sorenson]

I don’t think you can even buy a TV without smart tv functionality built in. You can always just not connect it to the internet and disable a lot of the functions. The best value for 4k OLED is the LG BX series. 

[Calico Morgan]

Just now, Sorenson said:

I don’t think you can even buy a TV without smart tv functionality built in. You can always just not connect it to the internet and disable a lot of the functions. The best value for 4k OLED is the LG BX series. 

I've heard that some smart TVs lose basic functionality when not connected to an internet connection, or have issues when doing so. 

I will look into the LG BX series. I am a fan of LG displays in general. Thanks for the tip!

[Sorenson]

2 minutes ago, Calico Morgan said:

I've heard that some smart TVs lose basic functionality when not connected to an internet connection, or have issues when doing so. 

I will look into the LG BX series. I am a fan of LG displays in general. Thanks for the tip!

The only thing I could think of would be firmware updates and the smart functions. You will still get the same picture quality and picture adjustments. Also, you can usually update firmware with a usb stick. Or, just plug in ethernet only when you want to update the firmware. 

[Calico Morgan]

8 minutes ago, Sorenson said:

The only thing I could think of would be firmware updates and the smart functions. You will still get the same picture quality and picture adjustments. Also, you can usually update firmware with a usb stick. Or, just plug in ethernet only when you want to update the firmware. 

Looking at a detailed review of the LG OLED55BXPUA, they mention that the home screen displays ads and that there "is no way around this". Do you know if having no internet connectivity to the device would prevent this?

[Sorenson]

Just now, Calico Morgan said:

Looking at a detailed review of the LG OLED55BXPUA, they mention that the home screen displays ads and that there "is no way around this". Do you know if having no internet connectivity to the device would prevent this?

Not sure. My samsung tv does the same thing, but its only on the home screen. I have it set to turn right onto my PS5 so I never see them unless I change the input. 

[Calico Morgan]

Just now, Sorenson said:

Not sure. My samsung tv does the same thing, but its only on the home screen. I have it set to turn right onto my PS5 so I never see them unless I change the input. 

Interesting. I'll look into this. It's possible PiHole will work on certain smart tvs, too.

[Exidor]

LG CX owner here those adds can get annoying.... Some of the are full audio for fuck sake. This should be illegal.......

They got so annoying that I got a Raspberry pi just to install and run PiHole. I was planing to get a good addblocker for a while and decided to go the extra mile. Highly recommended.

I knew that Samsung was doing that shit. But really disappointed that all TV makers started doing this.

I know that if you want to use Google OS on the TV you have to but LG has its own OS.

I would recommend getting the C series not the B series the better chip for picture quality upscaling and gaming features is worth it.

 

The only way to get a "dumb" screen is to buy a reference screen. Those are ungodly expensive.

 

 

PS. If you are in the EU then there is a setting that turns off adds. Well mostly it kills off 95% of them.