A lot of people asking why quality TVs, that don’t spy on you or force you to watch ads in their interface, aren’t available for those willing to pay more.
But these TVs are available [0] - I’ve recommended them many times on this site. I have one myself and been really happy with it for a few years.
The trouble is finding them for sale - they can no longer be bought anywhere directly here in Sweden, for instance.
That’s due to the biggest problem of all: finding buyers willing to pay more for a TV.
You can check (1) for a swedish conpany selling reasonably cheap TV's without all the smart stuff (they don't even have TV-antenna receiver). They are more or less just monitors with HDMI etc. Perfect for connecting an old linux laptop or something and make it a smart TV on your own terms (btw I'm not affiliated to the company by any means)
Loewe is expensive, I am pretty sure Sony doesn't make over 1k€ for each TV sold, also I have a Sony smart TV that is ~6 years old, it doesn't show any ads.
> That’s due to the biggest problem of all: finding buyers willing to pay more for a TV.
Looking at one dealer's website in the UK, they're selling a 65-inch LG OLED C2 for £1,700 which is on sale marked down from £2,700. The 65-inch Loewe OLED is £3,900 - more than twice the cost. The price differential isn't just a couple hundred more. It's a couple thousand more.
I think specialty items like this become tough because there isn't the same market pressure. With the LG OLEDs, there's pressure from Samsung, Sony, Vizio, and others on the price. Likewise, there's supply chain pressure - if LG and others start making more TVs, there is pressure to lower the price.
I think the issue is that there usually isn't an option for one to pay a small additional fee to opt-out of this garbage. For example, I don't think Roku, LG, or anyone is making £220/year off each customer (assuming a 10-year TV lifespan). That's the up-charge for the Loewe TV: £220/year for 10 years. If it were just an additional £100-300, I think some people would go for it. Instead, it's more than the price of a second TV.
I think the issue is that these TVs are way more than the revenue that spying companies are making off the data. For example, the article says that Roku makes around 83% of its $2.7B in revenue as "platform revenue". That includes both the ads and spying, but it also takes a cut of subscription revenue from services you sign up for. Let's generously say that two-thirds of that 83% is ads/spying. We're talking about $1.5B/year. Roku has 65M active accounts and I'm guessing an average of 2 TVs per account. So they're making maybe $12/year per Roku device. I'm not saying it's insignificant revenue. It's huge revenue when we're talking about all the users.
But there's no option for me to say "I'd rather pay the $12/year and avoid all the ads/spying." Instead, I need to spend 20x that to get away from the ads/spying.
To an extent, Apple fills this niche a bit, but not entirely. It would be great to see Loewe start selling Loewe os7 devices separate from their TVs. I think there could be a market for a $150-200 smart-TV device that wouldn't be so ad-driven - or maybe a $50 smart-TV device with a $15/year fee. It's hard to sell anything without recurring revenue in a world where you need to keep updating and supporting software. Still, $15/year is a tiny amount compared to the £3,900 TV.
Yes, a smart TV could still possibly do content recognition on what is displayed on the screen, but presumably HDCP should prevent that and I don't think a mainstream TV manufacturer would want to draw that amount of ire defeating copy protection. It would also be a lot of work on identifying the content without the ability to act on it. Sure, you now know what someone is watching, but they're using a platform that you don't control and can't serve ads on. If I'm using a Fire TV and they're spying on me, they can use that information to serve me ads, suggest other content someone has paid them to suggest, etc. If I'm using Loewe os7, they can't do the things that would earn them the money.
But these TVs are available [0] - I’ve recommended them many times on this site. I have one myself and been really happy with it for a few years.
The trouble is finding them for sale - they can no longer be bought anywhere directly here in Sweden, for instance.
That’s due to the biggest problem of all: finding buyers willing to pay more for a TV.
[0] https://www.loewe.tv/int