When Dan had had enough of his television, he threw a rock straight through the screen. His smart TV was downloading its third update in three days. In recent years, the luxury status of smart TVs has waned and increasingly affordable options are widely available.
Tom Parsons, TV and audiovisual editor at the electronics magazine What Hi-Fi?, explains that these cheaper models can struggle under more advanced features. Erin McQuiston and Matthew Schroyer, a couple from Connecticut, share his smart-screen scepticism. And that was a constant battle because that was constantly being updated and patched and then you’d have to redownload all the apps for it.” Meanwhile, Schroyer says his job as a software engineer has influenced his decision to “intentionally keep it very dumb” by keeping their TV disconnected from the internet.
When asked how the couple might cope in a future where TVs may have mandatory internet, McQuiston says her husband is “handy enough to break every terms of service known to man and get in there and unsolder something to manually disconnect it”. For Helen Northmore, a 51-year-old from Wales who works in AI delivery for the UK Health Security Agency, privacy is also a worry. Her grudge against smart screens began four years ago, when her faithful dumb TV broke without warning and she had to quickly find a replacement.
Northmore, whose partner works in cybersecurity, says the couple wanted to “keep control” over their devices, which cost them a premium. One of the boundaries in how we live our lives is we want to minimise the smart element. We don’t have smart speakers.
We don’t enable or connect to the internet.” Today, she watches entertainment through a Sky box connected to her dumb TV, and dreads that when her current telly breaks there won’t be any option but to get a smart model and offer up her data. More consumers are becoming worried about how their information is being used by manufacturers. The result is that the dumb TV market is almost nonexistent.
What I found is that they do not exist any more.” After much searching, Paul discovered a single 40-inch TV without any smart functionality in the back of a shop. Naturally, we fell instantly in love.” “My friends all laugh at it when they come over,” he admits, “but secretly I know the joke is on them. My little telly doesn’t spy on me, and has a DVD player built in.” The punchline may eventually land on Paul, however.
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