I may be an anomalous IT professional, but despite being a coder and generally a ginormous nerd, I’ve never really understood why people buy “smart” devices. This isn’t a criticism; I honestly just don’t understand why they’re popular. The amount of convenience they provide really doesn’t seem like it’s worth it at all, to me
Being poor makes you make different decisions than when you can afford any option you like. We wanted a big 4k TV and it was the best option for our wallets.
It’s not like an average person would be unable to use their laptop and some media player, regardless of which OS they use; the fact that I use a weird-ass player doesn’t mean it’s the only option available on a laptop. It just seems pointless to get another gadget to do the same thing you can do on a gadget you own (assuming you have a laptop, of course.)
I feel like there’s a misunderstanding here that keeps coming up. The Amazon fire TV isn’t a smart TV, it’s a streaming device (usb stick style) that you plug into your TV. And it’s quite understandable why people want to stream videos on their TV, that’s how they access Netflix, Disney plus etc.
No, the Fire TV Stick is a streaming stick. The Fire TV is a TV with the stick built in and it makes you go through the Amazon Fire UI to do normal TV things as well.
They have TV’s as well as the Fire Sticks, and people buy them because they are cheap. I have Roku TV, but it never gets on the network, I just use Apple TV.
I guess those devices make more sense if you don’t have a laptop. I only have a laptop (well, that and a Steam Deck which counts as mobile Linux I guess) so I just plonk it into the HDMI port
The Lemmy community is probably not the most representative group of people when it comes to consumer electronics. I doubt that most people plug their laptops into their TV every time they want to watch something. But fair enough.
I may be an anomalous IT professional, but despite being a coder and generally a ginormous nerd, I’ve never really understood why people buy “smart” devices. This isn’t a criticism; I honestly just don’t understand why they’re popular. The amount of convenience they provide really doesn’t seem like it’s worth it at all, to me
Being poor makes you make different decisions than when you can afford any option you like. We wanted a big 4k TV and it was the best option for our wallets.
Well what do you use to watch TV?
An old hand-me-down 1080p TV and my laptop
And what do you use on your laptop to watch things?
Generally mpv
Do you think that setup would be preferable for the average person
It’s not like an average person would be unable to use their laptop and some media player, regardless of which OS they use; the fact that I use a weird-ass player doesn’t mean it’s the only option available on a laptop. It just seems pointless to get another gadget to do the same thing you can do on a gadget you own (assuming you have a laptop, of course.)
It’s also a lot mews convinient then just turning s single device on with a remote then using thst remote to choose what you want to watch
I feel like there’s a misunderstanding here that keeps coming up. The Amazon fire TV isn’t a smart TV, it’s a streaming device (usb stick style) that you plug into your TV. And it’s quite understandable why people want to stream videos on their TV, that’s how they access Netflix, Disney plus etc.
Edit: it’s apparently a TV as well.
No, the Fire TV Stick is a streaming stick. The Fire TV is a TV with the stick built in and it makes you go through the Amazon Fire UI to do normal TV things as well.
They have TV’s as well as the Fire Sticks, and people buy them because they are cheap. I have Roku TV, but it never gets on the network, I just use Apple TV.
Fair enough, I wasn’t aware of that. I guess they added those at one point.
I guess those devices make more sense if you don’t have a laptop. I only have a laptop (well, that and a Steam Deck which counts as mobile Linux I guess) so I just plonk it into the HDMI port
The Lemmy community is probably not the most representative group of people when it comes to consumer electronics. I doubt that most people plug their laptops into their TV every time they want to watch something. But fair enough.
for tv stuff “smart” is the only thing that exists now