Sony, Samsung trade body to push HbbTV to Brits UK trade association Intellect, which represents electronics companies and broadcast technology firms, has detailed how it believes the HbbTV standard should be implemented alongside Freeview - effectively sticking two fingers up at YouView, which launched last week. HbbTV - which stands for Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV - …
Pioneer tried that and look how it turned out.
Just buy one with the picture quality you want and add a box when the features side of the TV doesn't do what you want. They all have HDMI.
Seriously due to the small volumes for a dumb TV it wouldn't be any cheaper but actually dearer! In all but the very entry TVs the cost of the electronics is a really small part compared to the panel and the mechanical and cosmetic construction.
Finally how dumb do you want your screen to be? If you want it to offer any settings it needs to offer a graphics plane and ability to mix that with the video. If it needs to support non-native resolution or framerate inputs it needs scaling hardware. If you want it to support SCART, composite, VGA or component signals it needs analogue to digital converters. If you want it to support any audio you need to confirm all these again. If it is going to be sold as a TV it needs tuner and MPEG decoding (plus in the EU a CI slot if it's over 15"). By the time you have got that far you might as well add Internet services for the hardware cost of an Ethernet socket especially as you won't get Freeview HD approval without it.
Now even if a particular level of dumb screen suits you the next person might have different needs making the market especially niche and no retailer will touch it.
Or you could simply buy a fully loaded TV of the picture quality you require and turn off or ignore what you don't need. Or if you really really wanted buy a professional broadcast monitor for about three times the price.
This is a good point. When I upgrade my PC, I can buy a new hard disk or graphics card, and it's only a small amount of my monthly salary. If I have to buy a whole new PC ~£800, that's a holiday somewhere or something very significant.
If they keep beefing up TVs (even though I do wish they'd integrate BluRay and PVR into a TV), they are going to be very difficult to purchase.
Unlesss.... Sky does to TV what mobile companies do for phones... sell the TV as part of the deal and add the cost to the monthly subscription...
Differnt answer here - partly
Some yes, some no
Humax HDR, I still get confused with the buttons, strangely placed transport ones.
TV pretty good
VCRs (I have some) a couple are excellent if I knew where they are - still have to get my 950 repaired.
Examples of bad
-----------------------
Controls easy to mode change so your TV turns off - I didn't even set that up - how did it guess my TV?
Transport buttons badly layed out - very common
[|<] [>|] [<<] [>>] less logical than [|<] [<<] [>>] [>|]
I find
[||] [>] over [<<][>>] wierd
Worst was some VCRs
standard was [<<] [>] [>>] over [||] [stop] [rec] (AFAIR) one manufacturer reversed it, cannot remember who as I owned none of them, in fact apart from a used Panacronic all of my working VCRs were Beta
[Picks up Logitech Harmony, presses single, clearly labelled and conveniently placed touchscreen "button", watches Panasonic TV, Onkyo AV amplifier, Thomson TiVo, WD media player, XBox 360, Wii, Toshiba BD player, and/or BT Vision box switch on/off, and configure themselves appropriately for task at hand]
Seems pretty good to me :-)
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
