BirdObserver
@BirdObserver@lemmy.world
- Comment on How Did TVs Get So Cheap? - by Brian Potter 1 week ago:
Not an issue I’ve seen with LG at least. Their OS is bad for the reasons I mentioned (apart from perfectly good standard “dumb” TV controls), but the hardware is great.
- Comment on How Did TVs Get So Cheap? - by Brian Potter 1 week ago:
You can use pretty much any smart TV dumbly. The most obvious way to do so is to just not connect it to the internet, but if you want it on the network for certain things (like home automation), just don’t agree to the bullshit when you first power it on, create a login, or enable any of the ad-tracking junk disguised as features like “live TV plus” (which is often hidden across multiple menus). The Home Screen for it will forever look like a generic menu begging you to configure your TV, but if you have other stuff plugged into it you’ll hardly ever have to see it.
To really be sure you can use a raspberry pi running a pi-hole server to see if it’s phoning home at all. My LG does nothing online except when I have it pull an update in the rare instance that one comes out with an improvement I care about.
Using a signboard TV is an interesting suggestion that comes up often, but if you’re a home theater junkie you might have trouble finding one of those at the same level of quality as the best smart TVs at a comparable price. There’s always a trade off to find between what you’re looking for, what you’re willing to deal with, and what you can work around.
- Comment on How Did TVs Get So Cheap? - by Brian Potter 1 week ago:
As gross as the business is, I do appreciate all the people who blindly agree to all the data mining, privacy violating agreements on their shiny new TVs because they’re a lot of the reason why I can get a 77 inch OLED for so cheap. Manufacturers like LG, Sony and Samsung make some great hardware but their software is worse than Bonzi Buddy.
But yeah, I disable every bit of “smart” and AI functionality (replace it with an Apple TV or something that isn’t loaded with ads and constantly phoning home) and set the location to Albania (which also has the benefit of fully blocking some other “features” from even appearing as an option.
- Comment on The osu! Open Source Client, Lazer, Has Been Made the Default Download Option for New Users 1 month ago:
Man, I haven’t imported many games but that game and its sequel were some of the best gaming purchases I ever made.
Really tried to get into Osu (even looked into some of those digital drawing boards artists use, just to try to make it feel like the original) but to me the game just isn’t anywhere near the same without a stylus and a resistive touch screen - two things which are outdated tech now - so I don’t think I’ll ever get something that really recaptures it. I’m glad that the basic gameplay is still being kept alive though, even though what I really want I can never have.
- Comment on [Technology Connections] Some DVD re-releases got cheapened out in a weird way [17:59] 2 months ago:
I HAVE broken discs in similar sets (Mr. Robot, Planet of the Apes) taking them out of those awful cases, and also had them arrived scratched up. Definitely check them closely when they arrive so you don’t realize (like I have) when you get to disc six a month later and realize it won’t play past 40 minutes. So many cheap box sets now have the same horrible packaging that ruins the discs.
When possible with those kinds of cases, I just rip out the horrible center disc holders, put the discs in sleeves and then put those in the case.
- Comment on Lara Croft is a Sociopath 3 months ago:
It’s just making a joke about the game being challenging (he’s only the hero if you win). Game media used to be a lot more playfully antagonistic back when many games weren’t necessarily designed to be won.
(And while I’m here, that manual has other odd stuff in it that predates Nintendo setting global standards. It has multiple uses of the word “kill”, and it has an “ask your parents” bit about the domino effect).
- Comment on Virtual Boy: Nintendo Classics - Announcement Trailer 4 months ago:
Like everyone else here, I’ve got no love for Nintendo’s business practices, but the owner of the software having officially endorsed ways of playing their stuff on modern devices (let alone replications of original hardware, like with their old controller releases) has basically always been a good thing, both for average Joe consumer that’s interested in game history and doesn’t know what a ROM is, and for the emulation community who wouldn’t ever pay for this stuff but can often build off the tech (or educate us on the problems with it). Is any of this the ideal? Of course not, locking ancient games being a subscription is typical megacorp horseshit. But a kid being able to pick up a brand new Switch 2 and play Game Boy Arkanoid and Virtual Boy Teleroboxer on it is something.
Art of all forms shouldn’t be virtually inaccessible to the masses outside of methods of questionable legality (although, make no mistake, I think those methods are good too, and these things can coexist).
Whether or not the games are objectively “good” or popular is totally beside the point. Just because I can easily download a pirated version of some forgotten 80’s b-movie doesn’t mean it’s not a good thing when it finds some form of new life through an overpriced official boutique blu-ray release.
- Comment on Virtual Boy: Nintendo Classics - Announcement Trailer 4 months ago:
Wario Land is still a really great game on it even today that doesn’t deserve to be locked on flawed hardware (the motherboard disconnects one of the lenses over time and it’s a pain to repair), and Red Alert is one of those games in which the limitations actually, probably accidentally, give it a really unique hypnotic style, and the dual gamepad controls (also used to nice effect in Teleroboxer) ensured it didn’t just feel like a regular Nintendo game of the time. I don’t doubt it inspired actual classics like Rez.
I get the hate for the Virtual Boy - most games on it barely feel complete, it was uncomfortable to use, it made your pupils dilate - but it is a fun and important piece of weird gaming history, and Nintendo acknowledging it as such and finally officially allowing people some way to play those games again (knowing full well it’s going to get a lot of hate) is still a good thing overall for classic game preservation.
- Comment on Nintendo Announces Free Switch 1 Games Upgrades for Switch 2 7 months ago:
It would be, if this wasn’t passing off old news from right after the Switch 2’s big reveal trailer as something new: ign.com/…/nintendo-switch-games-free-switch-2-upg…
(The games that weren’t free to upgrade then still aren’t now).
- Comment on Sketchy social media post gives BlackBerry fans hope for the return of the smartphone brand 9 months ago:
I know we hate Reddit here but this site is just taken from and rephrasing this post, which is more informative (which at least they were nice enough to link to): reddit.com/…/a_startup_is_bringing_back_an_update…
- Comment on Kindle Is Making It Harder to Switch to Rival eReader Brands. 10 months ago:
It’ll break saving books you bought from Amazon, but you’ll still be able to send books you got from other places to it from Calibre. Fortunately barely any of my ebooks on my kindle are from Amazon (though my next ereader isn’t going to be a kindle, that’s for sure).
- Comment on LG discontinues all UHD Blu-ray and Blu-ray players 1 year ago:
4K discs are so niche that this just isn’t really true, since they simply don’t bother to add that stuff. Almost every 4K disc I have just loads right into a bland generic menu with only a skippable logo for universal or whatever at the beginning. On top of that, they’re all region free.
Now most of these 4K discs come with a regular (often older) Blu-ray which contains the features from previous releases or whatever, and THAT’S where the bullshit you’re talking about is - lots of trailers (with it being a crapshoot whether you can skip straight to the menu, need to skip one at a time, or have to actually fast forward them), and, worst of all, defunct BD-Live stuff that in some cases you have no way to skip loading at all, even if you completely disable network connectivity in the player.
But yeah, modern 4K discs are mostly great and still absolutely way better video and audio quality than any streaming service I’ve used - the worst thing you usually get is maybe one dumb copyright notice. (LG’s 4K players were terrible anyway though making the experience bad for consumers for a different reason, but that’s for another comment).