So Sony is now the new RCA. This is a new low for the company. I can't believe that they are gone just like that.
Well, their TV brand is gone. Their headphones are still the top tier of consumer stuff and price-performance king for studio headphones
Being the best doesn’t mean they’re selling well… I assume you’re meaning 7506s? So yeah they’re awesome yet dirt cheap, I highly doubt they will keep Sony floating in the long term.
Make a dumb tv and I’ll be a buyer
Yeah, a dream: dumb TV with awesome modern panel and range of connectivity ports like HDMI, DP, DP over USB-C, composite, scart
I just want one DP input and I'll decide how to split my inputs with an outside box. The TV should only decide how to show the picture. I don't need your YouTube app
Look for "commercial display panels." They're 3-4 times the price of a smart TV, but they are just basic TVs. If you find a bank, hospital, clinic, or any other privacy focused business that's going out of business you can generally pick those used displays up pretty cheap.
However, the image quality of those displays is usually worse compared to home displays. This is from a technical who works with these products.
I used to have a TCL soundbar.
In addition to being extremely mediocre, it promised to integrate with my WiFi so that music could be airplayed through it. After adding it to my WiFi, it still broadcast the open ‘setup’ WiFi network.
If you joined the setup network, you could SSH into the soundbar as root without a password and dump the dhcp.conf file, which would give anyone access to my home WiFi network. Other TCL models also allowed for root via SSH, but used 12345678 as the password. A skilled hacker could just bot these via wardriving and turn them into network listeners.
It may have still broadcast the setup network because I blocked the device from accessing the internet. I only ever went poking around on it because I noticed that the setup network kept getting set to the same channels as my home network and it was causing interference. I eventually just factory reset the device so it had no information on it at all.
After the umpteenth time of not being found by my TV, a hard reset killed it. Just got stuck booting and never recovered.
Anyway - crap brand. Sad day for Sony TV fans.
Sony’s modern OLEDs are sick. There are a few between my family, and they have the best processing I’ve seen, they decode massive bluray rips no problem, and native options for a clean ad-free UI.
Why TF aren’t people buying them?
Probably because they're quite expensive
I went from Sony, Samsung, and LG to now buying TCL. At under $1000 for a 65", they're the best option.
Anything under $1500 I'd bet on TCL. Keep in mind TCL manufacturers a great chunk of the worlds LCDs that aren't just for TCL. Pretty sure they bought LGs LCD plants. Maybe Samsung too.
Their TVs have a lot of dimming zones. Sony I don't think makes LCDs or OLED panels themselves. At least one line of their TVs use TCL panels already. They buy from others
Here's a review for the model that came out last year. At this point where's it's regularly on "sale" for $1000. TVs are MSRP for like half a year and then the discounts always seem to me to be happening
https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/tcl/qm8k
1,680 dimming zones in the 65" model and from what I've read, the global models are usually one year behind China. So in 2025 China had TCL TVs with even more dimming zones. 8 years ago sub $1000 65" with array LED backlight zones were like 100-200 zones. OLED were incredibly better and would kill off LCDs when prices came down. The density of dimming zones I think progressed faster than people expected
So TCL has solid image processing while Sony has great image processing but not so much better for me to think it's worth it. Same with the $1000-2000 mini-led backlit LCDs vs OLED. Yes OLED looks better. Don't feel like it's large enough for me to go much higher than a $1000 TV. That's a reality for home theater brands today. TVs, speakers, receivers/amplifiers, headphones, mics, etc - there's good stuff at low prices.
Everyone's competing on value now. There used to always be rumors about a Apple TV (actual TV) and Apple EVs. Never hear about rumors for those anymore. Don't think the quality difference possibility and profit margins exist to make those appealing anymore for Apple. Sony like Apple is increasingly a services/media company.
Samsung - Tizen sucks. I don't recall how LG and WebOS looks, but to me Tizen is leagues above Android and Roku in making your TV into a loud billboard. At least Android you can install a different launcher.
Crazy. I have a Sony XBR 46” lcd that’s almost 20 years old. It still looks great for what it is (1080p and all). It was a top of the line tv back in the day that’s held its own for a very long time. It’s sad to see great companies/products fail.
20 years ago is when LCD’s got good enough compared to CRTs and plasma.
Not as good but I still have my $1k 40” Sony tv. It’s good enough I don’t think about how much better my OLED is when watching it.
In 2010 the pioneer and Panasonic plasmas had no rival in the tv space. LEDs were far from comparable. LEDs were cheaper mostly, which helped their adoption.
I didn't say comparable. I said good enough.
I had a TCL phone for a bit about 10 years ago and it was the hottest piece of garbage I had ever touched in my life
They've really worked to turn that around with their TVs. They're entry level still sure, but for the price it's hard to beat and their quality control on them has taken a big step up.
Their tvs are cheap because of all the ad and Spyware.
You mean the stuff every TV has these days? I also never hook mine to the internet so not really a problem. I haven't seen a single ad in the year I've had mine
You can still get dumb tvs.
Edit: Yall. They are not hard to find. Please do a search of them. They can even be delivered right to your doorstep.
If you have a link or can tell me what store to walk in and get a dumb TV with even half the quality of my current TV I will take it. I could only find business displays which were all stuck at 60hz or had a color spectrum and contrast so bad my ten year old laptop IPS screen beat them.
Well I suspect the quality is not going to be up to your standard, but this is the one I have in my living room, and I think it's perfectly fine. But if you just can't live without 120hz or whatever, then I guess you're stuck.
Walmart used to have a variety of these, now they're down to one. All my TVs are either 10+ years old or Sceptre and therefore are all dumb. But I don't have a purist bone in my body when it comes to AV stuff.
It's not a bad TV. And if it was just watching movies or something I definitely wouldn't care about 120hz, but it's just so much better for gaming.
I'm not a purist, like I said I'm rocking a TCL which is low end, but I've come to appreciate some level of specs I can't go back on.
TCL TVs are fine for the price, but you use a TV with more processing power than whatever hamster wheel TCL uses and you get real lusty real fast. Painfully slow, unresponsive UI.
Where I live, it's mostly the Korean brands on top and middle-tier, but for the working class they have an insane number of choices from Chinese makers, despite the quality.
The only negative thing about my TCL tv is that it's running Google tv launcher. I replaced that with Projectivy.
The verge is a garbage paywall site now
This is good news as far as I’m concerned. I was burned by an expensive Bravia TV with a lack of promised feature support, poor quality control, zero customer support, and unfixable hardware design flaws that made several prominent features permanently unusable.
TCL on the other hand might have always been a budget brand, but their TVs are very well made considering their price point. They are much more competently made TVs with a level of quality control that blows Sony out of the water. If they commit to making the Bravia series at its current price point, as opposed to just turning the Bravia line into budget TVs, I’m reasonably confident they can deliver.
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