happypamama Posted December 26, 2014 Share Posted December 26, 2014 we are looking at getting a bigger TV, mostly for movie watching. (We don't get cable and don't watch broadcast TV often; I'm usually the only one who watches any shows on ABC, NBC, etc., and I watch them on my tablet with headphones. This is fine with me; I don't need to see them on a large screen.) So. We have a streaming BluRay player, which does Netflix and Amazon instant video, and probably more that I haven't checked out yet. I need to see if it'll do Amazon Prime streaming and if it'll do Vudu, since we have some digital copies of movies from that. I know it'll run youtube too. Do we want a Smart TV if we have the BluRay? I don't want to pay more money for redundancy. The BluRay would be hooked up to the new TV, for sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KatieJ Posted December 26, 2014 Share Posted December 26, 2014 No you do not need a smart tv. It would just duplicate what you already have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happypamama Posted December 26, 2014 Author Share Posted December 26, 2014 No you do not need a smart tv. It would just duplicate what you already have. Thanks! That's what I thought. :). Passing that along to DH as we research; we can get a better deal if we don't need smart tech. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted December 26, 2014 Share Posted December 26, 2014 I think a smart tv is a horrible idea. Given how expensive they are, I want a tv to last ten, twenty years. Are Hulu, Netflix, Amazon streaming all going to work in ten years on a ten year old TV? I doubt it. Is there going to be some new service that you'll want that won't work on an old TV? I'm sure there will be. Now that we have things like Chrome keys and the like, which cost less than $50, I'd rather buy a new one of those every few years, and plug it into my "dumb tv", than rely on a single, integrated device. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alessandra Posted December 26, 2014 Share Posted December 26, 2014 When I was buying a new TV a few years ago, I was ready to buy a smart TV. Thank goodness, Amazon was sold out of the model I wanted. When I saw the TVs at Costco, the smart models had significantly worse pictures than non smart models from same maker. My thought is that the cost of whatever add-on box you have is less than the cost of a smart TV of quality comparable to a regular TV, kwim. Plus the boxes, roku, whatever, are competitive enough that the content they offer always seems to be improving. The only disadvantage I can see is some extra cabling and yet another remote to keep track of, lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellie Posted December 26, 2014 Share Posted December 26, 2014 Our 52" TV is over 10 years old, and so not a smart TV. We have a computer that is dedicated to the TV, and we stream on NetFlix as well as occasionally going directly to a web site (e.g., NBC.com) to watch something. We do have a BluRay player, but since we have the computer, the BluRay is irrelevant to what we are able to watch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happypamama Posted December 26, 2014 Author Share Posted December 26, 2014 Our 52" TV is over 10 years old, and so not a smart TV. We have a computer that is dedicated to the TV, and we stream on NetFlix as well as occasionally going directly to a web site (e.g., NBC.com) to watch something. We do have a BluRay player, but since we have the computer, the BluRay is irrelevant to what we are able to watch. We won't have a computer dedicated to the TV, but I know what you mean. DH agrees with the PP who says that having it all together is a bad idea. He would rather deal with a few extra cables than have it all integrated because it makes it too hard to change things as needed. So, yeah, doesn't look like we will go with a smart TV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mergath Posted December 26, 2014 Share Posted December 26, 2014 A lot of the better smart tvs are actually fairly versatile, and let you download different apps for things like Netflix, Hulu, etc, similar to a Roku. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DawnM Posted December 26, 2014 Share Posted December 26, 2014 No. The friends I know who have them aren't that thrilled with them as the interface isn't as smooth as a Roku or Apple TV (and we just got a firestick from Amazon that works very well too.) Dawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forget-Me-Not Posted December 26, 2014 Share Posted December 26, 2014 My parents got so frustrated with their smart TV that they gave up and bought a Roku to use with it instead :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susan C. Posted December 26, 2014 Share Posted December 26, 2014 We got the dumb tv and smart blu-ray. All is well except one thing... Ds got a smart tv and he can go on the internet with the tv (nice for watching clips that you can't get on smart, I have to cable the laptop to the tv to watch on our tv). I guess "smart" means different things to different tv's/blu-rays. So make sure you are getting the features you want and don't assume they are there. The upside is that our 50" plasma cost about $500 and we love it. Just get the 1080 (there was one lower than ours). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nemom Posted December 26, 2014 Share Posted December 26, 2014 We have Smart Tvs. Just bought a new one before Christmas. We love them. We tried a Chrome Cast last year and hated it. Our newest tv has the ability to download apps, search the internet and has You Tube, Netflix, Amazon Prime and all the other streaming services. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lispy Posted December 26, 2014 Share Posted December 26, 2014 We have a smart tv in the family room. We bought it a few months ago, and it was our first tv purchase in 20 years (literally). still had the big cube type tv that we had to have a converter box to even use. We love the smart tv. I play pandora on it (because it has the best speakers of anything else we have. I go to facebook on it. We just viewed all our Christmas pictures on it rather than squeezing together to all see the computer or phone screens, etc. I don't know enough about the other devices (Roku and such)..... they may be able to do the exact same thing?? But since it had been such a long time since we had a tv, we went "all the way" on this purchase. We have not been disappointed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pawz4me Posted December 26, 2014 Share Posted December 26, 2014 We have two smart TVs and DH and the boys absolutely love them. Our smart TVs can download all sorts of apps. I do think the picture on them is excellent. I can't imagine anything better, and I haven't noticed any non-smart TVs with a better picture than ours (but I mainly watch news, so take my opinion on that FWIW). But no, if you have a streaming device and don't mind having something else hooked up to the TV, then I don't think you have any big need for a smart TV. At this point I can't imagine that DH will ever go back to a non-smart TV, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tsuga Posted December 26, 2014 Share Posted December 26, 2014 We don't have a Smart TV, Amazon Streaming, Roku, Netflix, or anything and so far, nobody has died, no. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanny Posted December 26, 2014 Share Posted December 26, 2014 My wife and DD came home with a Samsung SMART TV earlier this year. In our house, Samsung is the only brand we will buy, so that makes it much easier when going to the superstore and looking at all of the models they have in stock. This is our first SMART TV. My belief is that at that time, it cost approximately USD$25 to $50 more than a TV that is Dumb. I had no clue as to what a SMART TV can do until they bought this one... Our TV service comes from the phone company and because the 2 TVs take so much bandwidth (about 6 Mbps for each TV) they had to reduce our ADSL Internet speed to 2 Mbps, temporarily, until they can improve the infrastructure in our rural subdivision. Because only 2 Mbps is available for Internet, that caused a problem when trying to start Netflix movies on the SMART TV. Apparently it depends on the Internet bandwidth available and not the bandwidth dedicated to the TV service. So, my wife starts the Netflix movies on her Dell Latitude E6400 laptop and duplicates it on the SMART TV and that solved our problem about Netflix movies. She has also hooked up a USB Keyboard to the SMART TV at times. I suspect for the little cost differential, the SMART TV might be the way to go, but they induce new problems, and things to learn, because of the new technology they have integrated. Not sure if it is necessary with the other stuff you have for TV... GL with your decision and enjoy! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happypamama Posted December 27, 2014 Author Share Posted December 27, 2014 Well, after reading reviews, we checked out a few in person, and the one we thought we'd like, we actually didn't. We ended up with a different one, and after all that, it turns out to be a smart TV after all. LOL! It's setting itself up as I type. I'm glad I didn't go with my first instinct, which was to order the one with good reviews from Amazon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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