Dumb TVs are called monitors, you can buy them. For large sizes, I guess you can look at the kind of displays they have in shops and meeting rooms.
Today, TVs are by nature not dumb, what make them a TV and not a monitor would be the presence of a tuner, and modern tuners are built-in computers that can at least decode compressed video, which is not a trivial task, especially at 4K.
The reason people don't like smart TVs is not because they have a computer inside of them with internet connectivity. It is because of ads and partnership deals. And of course people don't like it, because as much as manufacturers advertise them as features, they are not made to add value for the customer, they actually lower the value. But here is the thing: they lower the price even more.
Let's say a manufacturer makes a TV intended to be sold for $300, they reach for their sponsors and can get $50 of deals. Now they can chose to sell a "sponsored" TV for $250 or one without the annoyances for $300, and as it turns out, the majority of customers will go for the $250 option. So much that there is no good economic reason to even sell that $300 ad-free TV, the niche is too small. Competitors without sponsorship deals and $300 TVs will be out-competed by that $250 TV and will have to adjust. As a result, we all have the "smart TVs" we hate (but with a price tag we love).
Pros are ready to pay to avoid all that bullshit, but they don't need TVs either, they need monitors, that's why you can find monitors without that bullshit, for a price.
Your model is oversimplified in a way that downplays the value of ads to the manufacturer. They don't reach out to sponsors and get a $50 static offer per TV in deals. They do some math and figure out that they can make at least $X per customer on average over the lifetime of the TV by selling ad slots dynamically.
The subtle difference here is that because the sponsorships can be updated live across TVs that have already been sold, the actual value of each TV sale can be made to go up after the date of purchase by updating software and/or changing the ad deals.
So the manufacturer isn't pricing the TVs at a discount precisely equal to the ad revenue they receive per TV, they have to price the TVs based on a complicated formula that includes both a rough estimate of the minimum value of ad deals and customer willingness to pay (keeping in mind that customers are choosing their willingness to pay based on a landscape that has no ad-free models!). And what's more, the manufacturer is free to alter the deal after the sale is made to try to make a larger profit per-TV than was originally priced in.
You make it sound like it's a reasonable outcome of an efficient market, but the current situation—where one party can and does alter the deal retroactively and unilaterally—does not create an efficient market!
If it was purely competitive pressure, they'd be happy to let you pay extra to not have the ads.
Instead, they seem to make an effort to make sure no such model is available in stores. People have go hunt down display models intended for businesses, or never connect them to the internet, and display media from another device.
I suspect ultimately, they don't want to be manufacturers. They want control of a "platform" they can milk for infinite money, similar to what Facebook, Google, and friends have.
I suspect it's not quite that simple. First, is there actually enough demand for ad-free TVs to make the option worth including? I personally probably wouldn't pay $20 to avoid ads in the home screen since those kind of ads are just a minor nuisance, which makes me question the size of the market for the ad-free option.
Second, what would the pricing be for the option?
If it's $10-20, that'd probably be fine, similar to what Amazon did for Kindle. But if it's more than that, then I bet the negative PR they would get for including the option outweighs the potential benefit to customers. "I would never buy an X, they're extremely greedy and want $50 just not to show ads. Crazy. I'll buy Y brand instead (which has ads but no 'corporate greed' option to not show them)".
They do actually sell screens with no ads for businesses, as mentioned. They just seemingly won't put them in stores where consumers can purchase them easily.
I would look at Google Contributor and similar efforts as a supporting argument. They tried a few times to allow you to pay directly and not see ads, and each time failed reportedly because it was a not loss for publishers. Google is not unbiased here but I suspect that this was a real problem and that it’d be even worse on TVs since most people are used to disruptive ads there.
ahh - this is what I do and why I've never noticed "smart" TVs.
My TV is connected to my desktop and will never ever have an Internet connection or it's own - nor will it ever turn on to show anything other than my desktop.
That doesn't explain why it's impossible to buy, for instance, a 65" OLED without ads. We're talking about a TV with a four-figure price tag, and there's no ad-free option.
They've probably calculated that that the value they get from showing ads on more expensive TVs (read: to a more affluent audience) rises at least as fast as the sale price of the TV, maybe even faster.
Exactly, which totally undoes OP's argument. At the high end the manufacturer can have its cake and eat it too. By pricing the TVs in the high income price bracket and ensuring there are no ad-free versions on the market (easy to do because most consumers don't choose devices based on ads or not, even if they find the ads irritating after the purchase), they get both the profit of selling a luxury item and the recurring ad revenue for selling ads that they can confidently tell advertisers will be seen by affluent people.
OP's argument assumes an efficient market, which over-the-air updates ensure this market cannot be.
On top of that, the dumb TVs could come from the same hardware line and just run different software. It's not like they need to spend millions to retool like they would for an unusual panel size.
TVs and monitors are technologically different. They are constructed to be focused on from different range depths and widths. You can't just buy a TV-sized monitor and use it like a TV.
> So... we get the cheapest TV and just hook a laptop up to it
Exactly, and that's another reason why "ad-free" TVs won't sell. Those who just want to connect their laptop via HDMI will buy the cheapest TV with that feature. They won't pay more to avoid seeing ads in the menu screens they don't use anyways.
Now, it may change if they force ads in the HDMI stream or something equally annoying, but they didn't go that far (yet?).
Agree. I nomad, and about 6 years ago I saw my last TV without an HDMI input. And only once in that time, I came across a DP monitor. I now carry a USB-C to HDMI cable that lets me use my phone as a desktop whenever it's plugged into a TV.
When post above you referred to monitors, they weren’t referring to computer monitors but any screen sold without a tv tuner including all kinds of units large distance viewing screens.
Today, TVs are by nature not dumb, what make them a TV and not a monitor would be the presence of a tuner, and modern tuners are built-in computers that can at least decode compressed video, which is not a trivial task, especially at 4K.
The reason people don't like smart TVs is not because they have a computer inside of them with internet connectivity. It is because of ads and partnership deals. And of course people don't like it, because as much as manufacturers advertise them as features, they are not made to add value for the customer, they actually lower the value. But here is the thing: they lower the price even more.
Let's say a manufacturer makes a TV intended to be sold for $300, they reach for their sponsors and can get $50 of deals. Now they can chose to sell a "sponsored" TV for $250 or one without the annoyances for $300, and as it turns out, the majority of customers will go for the $250 option. So much that there is no good economic reason to even sell that $300 ad-free TV, the niche is too small. Competitors without sponsorship deals and $300 TVs will be out-competed by that $250 TV and will have to adjust. As a result, we all have the "smart TVs" we hate (but with a price tag we love).
Pros are ready to pay to avoid all that bullshit, but they don't need TVs either, they need monitors, that's why you can find monitors without that bullshit, for a price.