Qs Laptop
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2018
- Messages
- 4,626
I actually have 5 flat panel HDTV's (with tuners & HDMI) in my home, and not a single one is a Smart TV. When I looked about a year ago, the only HDTVs that were not Smart TV's seemed to be commercial units that cost more.
My concern with the Smart TV is the extra delays waiting for the Smart TV system to load and the additional time going through Smart TV menus to get to a tuned channel or HDMI input with no prompts/indicators staying on the screen more than a couple seconds. Ignoring it or leaving disconnected from the internet wouldn't help if it's causing extra menu steps, delays, or other screen garbage/prompts. I've never used a Smart TV, so I don't know how bad it would be, so it's just a concern. Does anyone know?
If you're not going to use ANY of the smart TV functions, meaning you are either going to use an over-the-air antenna, a cable box, or a DVD/Blu-Ray player to watch content there is absolutely no delay or time needed to load the smart TV menus, switch HDMI inputs, etc.. You simply set your TV to return to the last used input on start up. So if you have a cable box, when you turn on your smart TV (connected or not connected to the internet) it will start up on whatever channel you previously were watching on cable when you turned the TV off last time. No delay.
There isn't any delay with smart TV's connected to the internet to load smart TV menus. There is a slight 2-3 second delay from the time you select your streaming provider, i.e. Netflix, and the time for that channel's home page to appear on the screen.
I can't imagine buying a TV without 4K resolution these days...