I've seen about 2 TVs with a webcam, and as my family's TV is only a few months old, I've been in TV shops a lot recently.
Also it's not like stripping all the smart features would make the TV cheaper or a better TV. The panels aren't really changing much in manufacture cost, so manufacturers need to make people buy stuff somehow.
If you get one of the few models with a webcam you could always just cover it with a strip of tape if you're really afraid of the government using it to spy on you (this is really really paranoid imo though). If you're afraid of the smart features invading your privacy then just don't use them. In a couple years not getting a smart tv will be equivalent to not getting a tv. They are extremely useful though imo and I see no reason to stop including computers in every day objects just because they might become hackable. If we're really that worried about it then we might as well just stop connecting computers to the internet all together.
Edit:
KazumiZorah Wrote:And no I don't think it's right to list every gimmicky function I don't understand and expect you to answer for me.
But that's exactly what I'm asking you to do...
What I was saying earlier is that I can't/won't tell you which hardware is "good" and "bad". Because any answer I give you would be almost entirely baseless. All I can do is answer questions about specific features or components.
KazumiZorah Wrote:As for Lucid Virtu I had looked at numerous 3rd party sources and while I understood its basic function I have no sense to what extent it's effective.
There are a number of sites that have tested lucids product claims and benchmarked their products. You should use these reviews to determine how effective it really is. You can find them just by googling the name of the product you're looking at.
(03-05-2014, 11:07 AM)AnyOldName3 Wrote: [ -> ]Also it's not like stripping all the smart features would make the TV cheaper or a better TV. The panels aren't really changing much in manufacture cost, so manufacturers need to make people buy stuff somehow.
That I know. 'SMART' is just a feature I do NOT want as opposed to "don't much care for", such as 3D. Correct me here but excluding increasing resolution (4K) have panels been increasing in quality much over the years? I can't help but cringe when I see how they advertise this garbage, never going into any detail how the picture looks any better. Just have one big overly enthusiastic, ethnically-diverse family + grandparents grouped together on a sofa in a big overly white living room, colorful shirts, forced smiles paid to sell us this crud.
BAH! HUMBUG!
(╯`□`）╯彡┻━┻
(03-05-2014, 11:28 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ](this is really really paranoid imo though).
Not quite I'd say. I've been around the paranoid and it's more along the lines of plucking warts and acne believing the government is implanting stuff in your skin. It's mainstream news (partly thanks to snowden) that the NSA has the ability to receive usage data and audio/video feedback if they so desire through backdoors in popular proprietary software and hardware, even when powered off. Officially this is excused for "terrorism" but employees have been caught using it to spy on their wives, for example. HOWEVER the government bit was a joke and it shouldn't effect someone like me but 'SMART'-like remote connectivity has been exploited by tech savvy Joes in numerous ways like controlling garage doors and window shutters in houses, taking remote control of a yacht and spying through a wireless baby monitor. Now like you said if I am worried about this I could give up my pc altogether but really I'm not, at least not enough to give up the functionality of a pc for it. TVs on the other hand are of little use to me so I have no issue giving them and their exploits up.
And please don't get the wrong idea that I'm some amish cursing the sight of technological progress; I like the fact that computers are being implemented in everyday objects, hell I can't wait till my phone's OS is an AI. I'm simply assessing my priorities and weighing the pros and cons.
That said I'll let you know if I have any hardware-related questions I can't wrap my head around. Thanks for the offer man.
KazumiZorah Wrote:Correct me here but excluding increasing resolution (4K) have panels been increasing in quality much over the years?
Yes. Response times, refresh rates, gamma uniformity, viewing angles, color accuracy, gamut support, bit depth, contrast (both static and dynamic), etc. have all improved to some degree over the years. Put an LCD from 2013 up against an LCD from 2003 and turn off all the fancy features and you'll still see a significant difference.
KazumiZorah Wrote:Not quite I'd say. I've been around the paranoid and it's more along the lines of plucking warts and acne believing the government is implanting stuff in your skin. It's mainstream news (partly thanks to snowden) that the NSA has the ability to receive usage data and audio/video feedback if they so desire through backdoors in popular proprietary software and hardware, even when powered off. Officially this is excused for "terrorism" but employees have been caught using it to spy on their wives, for example. HOWEVER the government bit was a joke and it shouldn't effect someone like me but 'SMART'-like remote connectivity has been exploited by tech savvy Joes in numerous ways like controlling garage doors and window shutters in houses, taking remote control of a yacht and spying through a wireless baby monitor. Now like you said if I am worried about this I could give up my pc altogether but really I'm not, at least not enough to give up the functionality of a pc for it. TVs on the other hand are of little use to me so I have no issue giving them and their exploits up.
Nobody cares about you (I mean that in the nicest way possible). Nobody is going to spend the time and effort/money necessary to steal your beloved netflix password. I understand that hackers and the NSA can often get access to this stuff no matter how secure it is but that really shouldn't bother you in the slightest. The government would need to hire millions of people to spy on everyone this way. And there would be no point in doing so because they can't gain anything useful from doing it. They don't care what joe smoe's living room looks like. The same goes for hackers. There is nothing valuable for them to gain from access to a smart tv. This isn't really much of a con. Especially considering the pros. I believe your assessment of the pros and cons of the situation is irrational.
(03-05-2014, 02:00 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]KazumiZorah Wrote:Correct me here but excluding increasing resolution (4K) have panels been increasing in quality much over the years?
Yes. Response times, refresh rates, gamma uniformity, viewing angles, color accuracy, gamut support, bit depth, contrast (both static and dynamic), etc. have all improved to some degree over the years. Put an LCD from 2013 up against an LCD from 2003 and turn off all the fancy features and you'll still see a significant difference.
I was more going off features which you'd be able to notice without actually looking at the screen, such as being HD, or not being the size of an armchair - the kind of things which would be easiest to use to persuade the rest of your household that your current TV wasn't good enough, even if they though it was.
Wait how do you know how big it is or whether or not it's HD without looking at it? You mean box specs? All the stuff I listed will appear on box specs too in addition to being noticeable.
Regarding Lucid MVP, I have a Z68 mobo which supported the first Version of MVP and I can also use the Trial-Version of MVP 2. The first Version was ok but generated some minor graphic bugs in some games (~20% i tested). Some did not work at all. MVP 2 works quite well, but it still does not have 100% compatibility. The only real advantage is power cosumption IMO. I measured the powerdraw of my entire system and noticed an improvement during HD video playback or while playing less demanding games, simply because the IGP was used instead of my nvidia card. If AMDs ZeroCore technology works with it, it might be even better. I decided not to use it later on. It does not help with overall performance and sometimes I had to reconfigure MVP when a game updated or changed somehow. In my opinion it is not a valid argument to prefer a certain board over another. Maybe it works better with modern chipsets but i doubt it.
(03-06-2014, 06:45 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]Wait how do you know how big it is or whether or not it's HD without looking at it? You mean box specs? All the stuff I listed will appear on box specs too in addition to being noticeable.
I'm going for the stuff you can stick on in really big letters that makes it look good to someone who's done no research and isn't intelligent/bothered enough to remember much more than HD and Flatscreen. To a point you can write Deep Blacks, Uniform Gamma and 120 Hz in big letters, but it's unlikely that your average rarely-buys-a-tv person is going to know the figures for their current TV or realise that even though their current TV said Deep Blacks too that the blacks are even deeper on a newer TV labelled as Deep Blacks.
3D is a good thing to put in big letters as people tend to know their current TV doesn't support it, and so's being Smart. These things are easy to sell to people who think they're happy with their current picture quality.