Comment on Echelon kills smart home gym equipment offline capabilities with update

• wavebeam@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  i work for a big OEM that makes touch screens usually put in places like hospitals, airports, POS systems, etc. commercial devices not consumer. As part of my (remote) job, i have to validate solutions on all of our products. I get a lot of DHL deliveries of stuff directly from our factories. This includes what the industry called “IDS” monitors: “Interactive Digital Signage”

  Anyway, I’ve got a 55" 4K IDS hanging in my bedroom and use it with an Apple TV 4K and sometimes my Steam Deck for gaming. It’s definitely not good but it’s not that bad either. The response rate isn’t great, and the picture can’t stand up to an OLED, but it’s better than some of the cheaper TVs in the same category for size and resolution. Our newest models have more even backlighting and a better contrast ratio, but those aren’t even mentioned in our spec sheet. That said, It’s also VERY expensive compared to consumer devices. It’s so dumb, which is great! It also was designed to last a decade always-on without failing, also great! But even if you could buy one as a consumer (you can’t) you almost certainly wouldn’t consider the value proposition worth it. $5k for a touchscreen TV with relatively bad picture and response rate? You’d get one of the highest tier consumer TVs for that money… with the tradeoff being that it’s absolutely jacked full of ads and user-tracking malware.

  There really isn’t a “good” solution here. I only use this because I have to have it for my job, but also it was free and works good enough for me relaxing in bed. I play games on a gaming monitor that also isn’t very smart, so it works out for me. If TV OEMs offered an amazon-kindle-style ad-free version for ~20% more i probably would do, but i think they find the tracking and ads more valuable than a one-time purchase with no strings.

  source