I think the only Premium TVs left are the business TVs that give you meaningful mechanisms to not have intrusive "Smart" features.

Is there a meaningful difference between a Sony TV that harvests data and won't let you opt-out of "smart" features, and a Wal-mart TV that harvests data and won't let you opt-out of "smart" features?

I guess I am blessed to not be an audiophile and not have flawless supervision :)

FWIW, I have:
- a 20 yo 720p dumb 42" plasma
- a 20 yo 1080P dumb 50" plasma
- a 1yo 4k Samsung 65" TheFrame TV

That last one was a splurge I wanted because the "Art Mode" is just too beautiful, and at the time, Samsung really had the only coherent offering. (I guess there are now "off brand" ArtTV attempts from HiSense and others.. i have no experience with them.)

On the ArtTV, we watch youtube or DVDs or XBox on it a little of the time, and all that stuff looks fine to me on the 65" Samsung. But the TV is otherwise displaying pretty artwork almost all of the time, and whatever Samsung has done with the screen, dimming control, bezel, etc, really does work and really is lovely. And you don't need a service or an app to get the experience - just stick a USB full of public domain masterpieces into the TV.

Even so, the Samsung ecosystem is pretty annoying. I can have it show my images in ArtMode, but i cannot have the "real" experience you'd get with a subscription - with Art XML metadata and stuff (artist, date, etc). We don't always remember what a piece is or who painted it when it comes up..

Anyway, AFAIK, the only way to get TVs that aren't enshittified spyware is a business SKU, right?

In my house, we use Steam to play "windows-only" games on:
- Devuan with XFCE
- Devuan with Cinnamon
- Arch with hyprland
- bone stock Ubuntu 24
- ubuntu 25 laptop w/ second GPU

From my POV, there's not much need to port games to Linux. With the heroic efforts of Valve, most Windows games now just work. Win32, DX, D3D, and whatever else windows game devs have been using seems to have become the defacto reference gaming API on Linux.

Steam makes it work on every linux distro we've tried.

In writing this, it occurs to me: The F/OSS ecosystem does a very good job of re-implementing someone else's API/products (WINE, Proton, LibreOffice, etc)

The F/OSS ecosystem does a comparatively poor job at independently developing its own technology and then standardizing/universalizing those choices. E.g. the transition from X11 to Wayland; the systemd "situation(s)", desktop environments... gui greeters, audio muxers...

I think Valve has done the right thing. They made existing games work on Steam; they made Steam work on most linux distros.

Making everyone use a reference linux platform seems to be a total non-starter.

We already have a reference gaming platform: Windows 7 thru 10. And what we learned in 2025 is that Steam on nearly _any_ Linux often implements that windows reference gaming platform better than Windows 11 does.

What you call a "necessary evil" is what we call "capitalism" and some people call "making a living."

Head alignment had nothing to do with Dolby B performance. If your playback head was out of alignment, output was going to be poor regardless.

Getting metal tapes to perform was a challenge. They weren't worth the money unless you had a high end deck. I had JVC and TEAC, and although they claimed to support metal tapes they sounded way better with chrome.

Had to use compression otherwise the hiss would make dynamic range pretty small.

You mean, like Dolby B/C? Yeah, that went with the territory. You got 60 dB S/N on a good deck with Dolby on, maybe 70 if you used chrome tapes. Use high quality TDK, Maxell, or Memorex in a quality deck, and they rarely broke. Couldn't burn to a CD back then. That S/N ratio rivaled vinyl. I bet your PC sucked back then, too. Total garbage, couldn't even do 4K res video at 60 fps!

Maxell XLII-S were the best. Excellent tape and the shells were tanks you could get away with stepping on.

That's like something we had here in the USA when I was growing up: What's worse than...

Q. What's worse than a barrel of dead babies?
A. One still alive at the bottom.
Q. What's worse than that?
A. He has to eat his way out.

And one that only works if you speak North American English:
Q. What's worse than ants in your pants?
A: Uncles in your pants!

Yeah, starving yourself. That sounds like a great plan!

Don't you think it should be up to the PATIENT to decide that?

Whether this is a step toward "death panels" or not, were we to have single payer here in the USA this would be unconstitutional. Everyone should be treated equally under the law.

abortion and gay rights and drugs

One of these is not like the others.

Hmm, I'm surprised I had to read this far down to find the ignorant troll.

$30K for 3 weeks? Sounds like a challenging but satisfying gig. Not sure I'd want more than one like that, though.

Sounds like a great candidate for POTUS.