Amazon Reportedly Close To Launching Its Own TV in the US (cnet.com) 60
Amazon plans to roll out a self-branded TV in the US as early as next month, Business Insider is reporting. From the report: The TVs, expected to be big-screen models in the range of 55 to 75 inches, will include compatibility with the company's Alexa voice assistant, the news outlet said, citing unidentified sources. The US launch has been in the works for nearly two years and involves the company's Amazon Devices and Lab126 divisions, BI said. The TVs are designed and manufactured by third parties, one of which is TCL, Business Insider said, adding that Amazon is also designing another TV in house.
Why? (Score:1)
Why would I want an Amazon branded TV? Is it going to be cheap and still retain the quality of other brands?
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$ why (Score:1)
Re: $ why (Score:2)
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And it will spy on you! Double plus good.
Like most Smart TVs do today.
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until it gets a large enough market share to drive out all other competitors
Do you understand how house brands work?
Amazon is not going to build its own factory. Amazon will contract this out to existing TV manufacturers. So rather than being "driven out", the competition will be making the Amazon TVs.
Also, TVs are made by Samsung, one of the world's largest and most profitable corporations. They aren't going to be "driven out," either. Many TVs are made in China, the world's biggest market, which Amazon can't touch.
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Do you understand how house brands work?
Why do you assume someone does not understand?
Amazon is not going to build its own factory.
And when did I say Amazon would? Never.
Amazon will contract this out to existing TV manufacturers. So rather than being "driven out", the competition will be making the Amazon TVs.
Not entirely true. Pegatron, Wistron, and other contract manufacturers also make TVs especially for brands on the lower end of the market. These manufacturers do not sell their own brands so they would not compete with Amazon. While Amazon can contract Samsung and LG for TVs, they do not have to do so.
Also, TVs are made by Samsung, one of the world's largest and most profitable corporations. They aren't going to be "driven out," either. Many TVs are made in China, the world's biggest market, which Amazon can't touch.
If you have been paying attention to what Amazon does with their own brand, this has been the pattern on their own website,
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Amazon-branded products are usually cheaper but made on the same assembly lines.
Since it has Alexa built-in, you don't need a remote. You can change channels, adjust volume, etc. with voice commands.
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Bet you it comes wtih no 'off' button, either. Just like in 1984.
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You can always give them bad data. Like jacking off while watching teletubbies.
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Great stuff (Score:1)
Re:Great stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Great stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
Mostly agreed; TVs should last nearly 2 decades. Buy a display panel (think lobby information screens and fast food restaurant menus) with HDMI and a few other ports (usually don't have speakers) and use as your "TV display"; don't a buy a "TV". Display panels usually don't have all the spyware and app garbage of the trendy consumer stuff that won't be updated after a couple of years. Even a low end soundbar is better than most TV speakers and the cost is insignificant. Swap out/update whatever content delivery box you need to for years and years.
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So, I'm assuming you still use a 20-year-old computer as your main machine?
If not, why not?
Face it, the tech is changing so fast that even if their TV had a hardware life expectancy of a century, it would still be obsolete within five years.
Which means that designing a computer/tv/whatever with a hardware life-expectancy of more than five years is a waste of time, resources, and money....
Re:Great stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
A display is not (supposed to be) a computer. As El Fantasmo said, you only need to update the device that sends something to the display, not the display itself. It costs less for you and for the environment to just change a small HDMI stick or a small media box.
Would a display from a few years ago have 4K, HDR and 120Hz? Probably not. Do you absolutely need those features? Not at all.
And the more you wait, the more mature these new features become anyway, so by the time you buy a new display, you should have rock-solid support for these features and maybe alpha or beta support at best for the next ones.
For example, if you sit at a proper distance from your display and its size was selected by your viewing distance, it shouldn't really matter much if it's 4K or not.
Sent from my 2010 Mac mini.
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When I was a kid, TV's actually DID last 2 decades. With tubes. Without maintenance.
Now all of slashdot can get off my lawn unless you are in engineering....
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That business model is environmentally awful
Have you looked at the power consumption of a 10-15 year old TV?
It is better for the environment to upgrade. The plastic in the case is less important than the coal to power it.
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Indeed. My old flatscreen generates so much heat I can watch the Yule Log at Christmastime and the experience is indistinguishable from the real deal.
Re: Great stuff (Score:2)
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It's toxic chemicals used in manufacture and which have to be disposed of.
What "toxic chemicals" are used in the manufacture of LCDs?
Like most plastic products, a new TV will emit some VOCs, but that is in milligrams.
That's why we should be 75% reliant on clean nuclear power
Vogtle and Hinkley are WAY over budget and years behind schedule. After those debacles, nobody is going to build new nukes in the West.
For the same energy output, wind is a quarter the price of nukes.
Even China is canceling nukes and ramping up wind turbine installations.
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Have you looked at the power consumption of a 10-15 year old TV?
It is better for the environment to upgrade. The plastic in the case is less important than the coal to power it.
Power consumption hasn't changed substantially over the last decade and isn't likely to move much over the course of the next decade. There was massive savings prior to this up until the early 2010s yet low hanging fruit has been plucked and this is no longer the case.
Newer technologies like HDR and OLED coupled with reduced cost of large screen displays can all easily lead to substantially more power consumption over prior models rather than less.
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Good on them - generally people are upgrading their TVs once every three years or so as technology improves so quality over time doesn't need to be particularly high. I've used tons of AmazonBasics stuff and it's fine, same quality as everything else (probably because it's made by everyone else!)
Except the AmazonBasics USB cables and microwaves and car chargers that catch fire: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10... [cnn.com]
Re:Great stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
I can see why they would do it, but to say 'good on them' is a bit odd.
The display portion of the technology isn't improving that dramatically. 1080p is still commonly considered adequate and flat TVs of substantial size have had that resolution for over a decade. 4K panels are now pretty common, though in many viewing circumstances the angular resolution at normal seating distance isn't significantly different.
Anyone leaning on the 'smart' portion of a TV however, may feel compelled to upgrade as their 5 year old integrated SOC may not be supported by the vendor and streaming services anymore, whether it can technically decode the streams or not (maybe because they move to a newer codec that can't be supported, or just because they don't want to invest the developer effort in an 'old' platform). This is pretty atrocious from a waste perspective. It's still bad to be cycling out little standalone streaming players, but better than a crappy integrated system taking the gigantic panel with it.
HDMI-CEC has provided a streaming device everything it needs to fully provide a 'smart' experience with a relatively dumb panel (turn it on, turn it off, etc). There's no reason for this 'integrated smart' nonsense when adding a Fire stick or a ChromeCast or a Rokup or some cheap androidtv box can do the same more efficiently.
Re:Great stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing in the chain that gets replaced every 3 years or so is the remote. Sadly Logitech have stopped making the Harmony ones, and the market for similar remotes seems to be dead.
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I'm using a Panasonic flat plasma 1080p screen from the mid-late 2000s that still looks better and has a higher refresh rate and contrast ratio's than most equivalent LCD/Flat panels produced today. I also have a cheap roku TV and an OK ish 42" LCD flat screen from the mid-late 2010's and they look like crap compared to it. Also the tv with the built in roku just feels slow and old, even though it's the newest of the bunch.
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Not because I doubt the industry's ability to produce 8K screens - they're there now, although yields still look to be very low. Rather, I think that screen quality/image performance is now reaching parity with 20:20 vision among the buying audience. You might be lucky and possess eyesight sharp enough to warrant an upgrade to 8K, or maybe you
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Every three years? We bought two flat screens back before they went ultra-thin and we'll probably stick with those for another ten years at this point. Improved technology or not, it seems incredibly wasteful to me to only use new products for a few years and then toss them aside.
And their private surveillance network .... (Score:2)
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The Amazon 1984 Telescreen!
Well except 1984's world didn't data-mine you for profit.
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Orwell didn't go into much detail about what was happening in the rest of the world.
Whatever the in book equivalent of the American Empire was probably data mined it's citizens for great profit as well as just plain control of the masses
At least... (Score:2)
I was misled! (Score:2)
Monitor (Score:5, Insightful)
Just buy a TV that is a monitor. Built-in "software" is rarely updated, full of bugs, very limited, then abandoned way before the TV is obsolete. For example, my HIGH END Samsung 75" TV was abandoned by Samsung less than 5 years after I bought it, and really only had meaningful updates in the first two years.
Sound is usually a similar situation- stereo only, small speakers, crappy sound. Invest in a decent sound system that will work with anything and outlive whatever you connect it to.
As for "smart TV's", just ignore those features and buy something to connect to it that does what you want. A computer, TiVo, Roku, StreamStick, AppleTV, whatever. They have far more interest in keeping those up-to-date, have more features, are easily replaceable, and are often pretty cheap. Plus, they usually use little power and are quite small.
You get a massive discount (Score:2)
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I have an LG TV that updates software automatically. So far I'm OK with it because it's never bricked itself.
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LG regularly updates software.
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Hard pass for me... (Score:2)
I own a Fire TV stick, and the amount of screen space that's wasted promoting Amazon Prime shows is aggravating. Seriously, the ads take up almost the entire top half of the screen now, and continue to be peppered in through the menus as you scroll down through the channel listings!
If THAT is what Amazon's TV interface is going to be like, I want no part of it. The only way I'd buy one is if Amazon gave me one for free as part of a Prime subscription, and even then I would probably only use it as a "backup"
Compatibility with the company's Alexa (Score:2)
With the always-on mics the ads that you don't like now will get targeted and personal too!
This Old Adage (Score:1)
will not turn on unless connected to Internet (Score:2)
Alexa has solved the remote problem (Score:2)
It can be surprisingly complicated to set up a living room TV + sound. Plus the remote(s) always get lost.
If Amazon can make this better by removing the remotes (via alexa) and getting everything to automagically work together (via integration), then more power to them.
Even for me ARC and CEC work great when I'm watching TV. But when I airplay to my receiver my TV turns on, which isn't really a great outcome.
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It's one thing to walk into an empty room and say "play [whatever]" to Alexa to watch that show. But it would be highly annoying to use voice commands to do things like scrolling through menus looking for something to watch, especially for other people in the room doing their own thing.
Don't get rid of the remote
Can you get a not-smart TV these days? (Score:2)
It's been a while since I looked at the options available - a few years.
I have yet to find just a standard TV sized monitor, dedicated to that medium, that doesn't cost a small fortune.
So, sure, I'm typing this in front of a fairly large 32" PC monitor - but it would never really suit TV viewing - and for me and my partner - and the size of our small house - 43" is about right.
We've got a "smart tv" - a phillips one - that we NEVER use as a smart TV, everything we need is connected externally - pretty much
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If you have to do it, create a temporary SSID on a separate VLAN, connect it once, let it finish authorizing, and then kill that SSID.
How About No. (Score:2)
I have one of these (Score:2)
It was launched in India in January. The panel is nothing to write home about. The blacks are okay. Thereâ(TM)s some light bleed on the lower bezel. Build quality is okay, itâ(TM)s light and wobbly on the provided table top stand so itâ(TM)s better off on the wall.
The remote is the usual Firestick remote with an extra button for TV tuner selection.
The UI was exactly the same as the Fire stick on launch. I donâ(TM)t have that anymore, so I donâ(TM)t know if the latest UI update on th
Sears... (Score:1)