The New Luddites

When Dan had had enough of his television, he threw a rock straight through the screen. The offence? His smart TV was downloading its third update in three days. “It drove me crazy with what seemed like daily software updates that never fixed anything and ‘features’ that never seemed to work,” says the 71-year-old from Illinois.

Is Dan a Luddite? Why, no Reader, or rather, he shouldn't be, by rights. 

Some may accuse Dan of being a luddite, but his master’s degree in computer science and decades of experience in telecommunications would suggest otherwise.

So what's his issue then?  

The first smart TVs entered the market in the late 2000s, when companies introduced operating systems, media players and apps to screens that were becoming wider and thinner. In recent years, the luxury status of smart TVs has waned and increasingly affordable options are widely available.

Tom Parsons, TV and audiovisual editor at the electronics magazine What Hi-Fi?, explains that these cheaper models can struggle under more advanced features. “They’re not necessarily super-fast and responsive out of the box,” he says. “And then two, three, four years down the line, they can end up slowing down quite a lot under the weight of all that processing.”

Something they share with all modern tech, I think you'd agree.  So what does Dan do, I wonder, when he has issues with his laptop? Hopefully not tip a cup of tea all over it, as I’ve just done with mine while writing this post!

Dan is just one of a growing number of tech-savvy watchers wishing their TVs weren’t so smart. Erin McQuiston and Matthew Schroyer, a couple from Connecticut, share his smart-screen scepticism.

“I don’t think we’ve ever used [our TV] as anything other than just a giant display,” says McQuiston. “There was a period where we were running it through an Xbox. And that was a constant battle because that was constantly being updated and patched and then you’d have to redownload all the apps for it.” Meanwhile, Schroyer says his job as a software engineer has influenced his decision to “intentionally keep it very dumb” by keeping their TV disconnected from the internet.

That certainly seems dumb to me- now you wont get security updates! 

Instead, the 41-year-old connects his screen to an Apple TV box as a streaming workaround, and cites privacy as well as “highly invasive” advertisements for doing so. “Our living room is not a billboard for sale,” he says.

I don’t get peoples aversion to adverts - yes, some are irritating (more so in the modern era), but not so much that I’d willingly forgo convenience to avoid them. 

For Helen Northmore, a 51-year-old from Wales who works in AI delivery for the UK Health Security Agency, privacy is also a worry. Her grudge against smart screens began four years ago, when her faithful dumb TV broke without warning and she had to quickly find a replacement. “We had already decided that we didn’t want the smart functionality, but it became really clear that it was very hard to find one that didn’t have any,” she says.

Did she try alternatives to Currys? Vinted eBay and the like? I have an old non-smart tv thats going unused, and I bet others are the same. 

More consumers are becoming worried about how their information is being used by manufacturers. “There are increasing privacy concerns around to what degree TVs are essentially scraping your data,” says Parsons. “TVs these days are full of sensors, including microphones, and that can make people nervous.”

In September, the YouTube channel Gamers Nexus released a two-hour investigation into LG Electronics’ smart televisions, saying that the devices record audio – even when they are offline or powered down.

Disclaimer; I have an LG smart TV, and who cares if it's listening in, all it's going to hear is me swearing as I once again hit the wrong button on its absurdly small and cramped remote!