Some features that LG is introducing to high-end TVs this year seem to better serve LG’s business interests than those users' needs. Take the new remote. Formerly known as the Magic Remote, LG is calling the 2025 edition the AI Remote.
The new remote doesn’t have a dedicated button for switching input modes, as previous remotes from LG and countless other remotes do.
By overlooking other obviously helpful controls (play/pause, fast forward/rewind, and numbers) while including buttons dedicated to things like LG's free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels and Amazon Alexa, LG missed an opportunity to update its remote in a way centered on how people frequently use TVs.
LG and Samsung are incorporating Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot into 2025 TVs.
Samsung, which is also adding Copilot to some of its smart monitors, said in its announcement that Copilot will help with “personalized content recommendations.” Samsung has also said that Copilot will help its TVs understand strings of commands, like increasing the volume and changing the channel.
Do you know what’s better than interrupting viewing by talking to an ai to raise the volume? Just pressing the “volume +” button.
AI is so fucking dumb. I’m keeping my tv from 2011 until it dies. It’s smart as a brick and that’s just how I like it.
Yep same with me, got a dumb tv and it's great, you turn it on and it accepts the feeds you send it..it doesn't try to advertise 9 billion things at me.
Yup. Every now and again I’m watching a film on my 32” fossil of a tv and I think “wouldn’t it be nice to have a big swanky 4k uhd display”, but then I remember my tv is almost old enough to drive, it owes me nothing (its a fairly cheap Toshiba to begin with), it has zero way of connecting to the internet so it doesn’t spy on me or try sell me shit, the menus are very simple, the remote doesn’t have a Netflix button, but what the tv does have is: that it works, and it works reliably. So many of my friends have had 5 tvs in the space I’ve had this one. Also it still has a decent picture (especially if the room is darker), the audio isn’t the best but I have proper speakers linked to it for the times I care, the hdmi ports all still work great (as do the hilarious old ports on it scart?!)
It’s perfect. And to be honest - I don’t watch much TV and don’t want to watch more so what would I be spending the money on.
retroRGB would like to know your location
I imagine those folks would rather a CRT tbf
they're not entirely opposed to upscalers (though the upscaler usually has the scart input and outputs something normal like hdmi)