I bought a TV with NO 'Smart' Features...

0:00 Just about everything is more expensive these days.

0:03 Except [snorts] TVs.

0:05 What's the deal with that?

0:07 Modern TVs are bigger, look better,

0:10 and are more capable than ever before, just like me.

0:14 Inside everyone is a full-blown computer, complete with its own app store.

0:18 They even have games and stuff.

0:20 So, how are they cheaper than ever?

0:23 Well, let me tell you.

0:26 Because TV companies don't sell TVs anymore.

0:30 What do I mean by that?

0:31 Story time.

0:33 Before being acquired by Walmart for $2.3 billion in late 2024,

0:39 TV manufacturer Vizio posted some very interesting quarterly results.

0:43 See, Vizio lost money selling TVs,

0:47 and yet they were able [music] to make $109 million in profits.

0:52 How?

0:53 Well, it was all thanks to their Platform Plus advertising platform.

0:59 And if you need any more evidence

1:00 that televisions are now ad-ovisions, look at this.

1:04 Vizio makes not one mention here of electronics manufacturing.

1:08 Then, to really drive the point home,

1:10 Walmart's press release announcing the deal boasts about

1:13 how this new acquisition will enhance our advertising capabilities.

1:18 And it's not just Vizio.

1:21 TCL, Samsung, LG, name a major TV brand,

1:25 and they have found that the real way to make money is to take

1:29 your data and serve you targeted

1:31 advertisements via their smart operating [music] systems.

1:34 Though, I think we can all agree that the word

1:36 smart doesn't really describe the current state of Tizen OS.

1:41 And that's why, in spite of all the recent enhancements,

1:44 consumers now find themselves yearning for the days when turning on their TV

1:49 just brought them directly to the content

1:51 instead of to an ad-infested home screen.

1:56 Seriously, it's the whole thing.

1:59 This is also Disney Plus, SO IS THIS.

2:05 [laughter] IT'S 80% ADS.

2:06 SO, what options are there for folks who just want a display?

2:10 As it turns out, not many outside of commercial

2:14 displays that as you'd expect, cost a lot more.

2:17 But, there is one.

2:19 After some digging, we found that there

2:22 is still a company proudly making untainted, [music] pure display-only TVs.

2:27 Adam, bring it in.

2:30 It's Scepter, the budget monitor guys.

2:36 [laughter] But, this ain't no monitor, guys.

2:37 It's a 75-in TV that they promise delivers resolution at its finest.

2:43 And we're going to see what you get and what it's like

2:45 to use right after we use this segway to our sponsor, Squarespace.

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3:08 Right out of the gate, this is exceeding my expectations.

3:11 I did not think that some random Scepter TV would have HDR support.

3:15 Did you notice it also has 4K support?

3:18 It's true 4K resolution, true 4K input, ultra HD upscaling.

3:23 It's also a 4K UHD series.

3:26 Okay, so it doesn't have a lot going for it.

3:28 But, that's exactly what's going for it.

3:30 Exactly.

3:32 I wouldn't mind if it gave me a little more detail.

3:34 We're talking HDR 10, Dolby Vision.

3:37 But, hey, audio return channel.

3:39 But, wait, there's more.

3:40 It also says here that it supports 4K All right,

3:44 all [laughter] right, we get the bit.

3:46 Um we get three HDMI ports, we get a USB port,

3:50 HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 [music] and a 1-year limited warranty.

3:55 Wait, Adam, we haven't showed the people the best part.

3:57 Turn it around.

3:59 It won an award.

4:02 The Cinema Award.

4:04 The Scepter Cinema.

4:05 Absolute Scepter Cinema.

4:07 In all seriousness though, how much did we pay for this thing?

4:09 About $800.

4:11 Which for 75 in is [music] a pretty good price.

4:14 Yeah, memes aside, I'm genuinely excited to see it.

4:17 Good packaging all things considered.

4:20 They probably can't can't afford the RMAs.

4:23 Still, that's one of the first things you see companies cheap out on.

4:26 But they've got an extremely rigid screen protector on here.

4:29 There's also like some nice soft Styrofoam for the screen as well.

4:32 Though, some hard foam for structural integrity.

4:35 Yeah, this is not great.

4:37 But probably adequate.

4:38 That is That is one of the remotes.

4:41 That's a old school remote.

4:44 I like this picture of the batteries.

4:46 Yeah, this is the most Temu brand remote I've ever seen.

4:50 Along with the most Temu screwdriver.

4:55 Can I interest you in a bagged TV?

4:57 Oh.

4:59 You know, I would love that.

5:01 Okay.

5:01 I don't know if I trust it though.

5:03 Two persons required to prevent injury.

5:05 Lift this display with both hands.

5:07 I don't know if I've ever seen a bag with lift handles for a TV before.

5:11 Me neither.

5:12 Let's see if it's actually good.

5:15 Oh.

5:17 It's stretching a little.

5:18 Yeah.

5:19 a little scary.

5:21 But it it did the trick.

5:23 It's a heavy TV.

5:26 Where's the stand?

5:27 Um Um I It must be in the top foam in there.

5:34 Okay.

5:36 That's the stand?

5:38 Oh, those are dinky.

5:39 The whole lift bag concept might have been more useful if it

5:42 actually lifted it somewhere where we could put the feet on it.

5:45 It's just Yeah.

5:47 That's fine.

5:47 I got an idea.

5:49 Eh.

5:50 It's nice because unlike all of the stupid skinny OLEDs,

5:54 there's structural integrity to this panel.

5:57 That's one way of saying that it's really thick.

6:00 [laughter] Yeah.

6:00 Really?

6:01 You're going to use that when we

6:02 have so much better screwdrivers on lttstore.com?

6:05 I want the true Sceptre experience, okay?

6:08 Oh, this does suck though.

6:09 Do we have a screw Do you have your screwdriver?

6:11 Yeah, I do.

6:12 Do you have I can I can hold it, yeah.

6:13 Okay, give me a sec.

6:14 Hopefully the TV is better than the screwdriver.

6:17 On the subject of things that are better,

6:18 we've got a great look at the IO while we're up here, and this kind of rocks.

6:22 You got your three HDMIs, all that do 4K 60 Hz, one with ARC.

6:27 You got your coax, USB, and then unlike many modern TVs,

6:31 we've actually got component in, composite,

6:34 as well as optical audio, and headphone jack.

6:37 Pretty much everything you need.

6:39 What?

6:39 It's a good You got the headphone jack.

6:41 You know, my my grandpa uses it for his assisted audio headphones.

6:45 And [music] note the absence of an Ethernet port.

6:48 But again, that's a feature, not a bug.

6:50 What are you doing?

6:51 Well, everything else about this thing has been pretty good so far,

6:55 but I noticed that the power cord [music] appears to be hardwired,

6:59 and so I was seeing if maybe

7:00 behind this little cover there's a better situation.

7:02 There is not.

7:03 What's nice is this is giving me a look at the internals.

7:06 Um [music] if you had any hopes that it was

7:08 so thick because it had full array local dimming,

7:10 for instance, you can put those to rest.

7:14 [music]

7:13 You know what?

7:14 I wasn't worried.

7:15 It's all Phillips.

7:16 Uh I mean, yeah, that's unrelated, but good.

7:19 No, but it's like it seems like you could

7:20 like just take apart this TV yourself if you wanted.

7:22 And put full array local dimming on it yourself?

7:24 Yeah, oh, dude.

7:25 No.

7:26 No?

7:27 You don't want to upgrade the upgrade [music] the Sceptre TV?

7:30 Okay.

7:30 All right.

7:31 World's Listen, write in the comments if you

7:33 want to see the world's best dumb TV mod.

7:34 [music] We got the energy guide on here.

7:37 But also, it's for the N75.

7:40 Oh.

7:41 But I thought that this was the U75.

7:44 Here we go.

7:45 1 2 3 hop.

7:47 Oh, you wanted the other way.

7:48 You you Oh, I thought I said this I'm sorry.

7:52 Oh, okay.

7:52 We're going Oh, I see I see I see I see I see I see.

7:54 We got it.

7:54 We got it.

7:55 We made it.

7:55 We made it.

7:56 Okay.

7:57 When you've been working together as long as me and Adam,

7:59 you still have no idea what each other are talking about, but it's funny.

8:05 [laughter] Oh, wow.

8:04 There's so many peels.

8:08 I'm failing.

8:11 Hey!

8:15 Wow!

8:15 It's big and reflective.

8:17 Wow.

8:18 It's very reflective.

8:20 But quite flat.

8:23 Yeah, you get some you get some like some wiggles there?

8:25 Yeah, a little bit at the top.

8:29 I mean every every time I kill you.

8:32 Huge moment.

8:34 Sorry, I I just looked at the remote just now.

8:37 How could they?

8:37 How could they?

8:38 What?

8:39 F Adele?

8:40 We love Adele.

8:41 She is a generational talent.

8:42 Why would they put that on the remote?

8:44 It says F Adele.

8:46 No, love Adele.

8:47 Did you have to wear a white shirt today?

8:50 I can see you so clearly.

8:52 Whatever, beige boy, okay?

8:54 Hey, at least we both have matching toques from lttstore.com.

8:57 We did not coordinate this today.

8:59 It just happened.

9:00 I got so confused for a second.

9:02 Yeah?

9:02 Cuz I was like, "Oh, hold on.

9:05 How do I get to select the right input

9:07 so I'm on my shield instead of It just went.

9:12 Actually, it was crazy.

9:13 Turn it off again.

9:19 Content.

9:20 That was so quick.

9:21 That is the fastest I've gone from I'd

9:23 like to watch content to watching content in years.

9:26 Yeah, it's like you don't really realize it.

9:28 You have you've gotten so used to like the delay of waiting for your TV to boot.

9:33 Okay, so what is in the menu?

9:36 Okay, picture.

9:38 Picture settings.

9:40 Okay, that's pretty [music] basic.

9:42 What is mild picture mode?

9:44 [laughter] I don't know.

9:47 What I like about it though, is you can see what it's changing.

9:51 Yeah, this is actually a great interface.

9:53 It's like, what what does game mean?

9:56 It means we crank the brightness and the sharpness a little bit

9:59 and we crank the backlight and the contrast is up compared to user.

10:03 And it's crazy cuz the smart TVs could have setting menus like this.

10:06 Like there's no reason that they don't have settings like this.

10:08 They choose not to.

10:09 They choose to have you configure everything and then you

10:11 change inputs and you have to configure it all again.

10:14 And so when we when we're not looking at our content, we just get nothing.

10:19 You get a high piercing blue.

10:21 CEC control on.

10:23 Let's go.

10:25 This is probably the simplest CEC interface that I have ever seen.

10:31 And I'm comparing to devices that in some cases cost 10 times as much.

10:34 I blew bunch of money on that stupid AV receiver for my home

10:37 theater and it has cost me nothing but grief with CEC.

10:41 Uh that was it.

10:44 Now I never need to touch the Temu remote again because theoretically,

10:48 hit the power on the Shield Oh, wait.

10:56 Maybe you do need to use the Temu.

10:57 Turn the Shield back on because the Shield has its own CEC settings.

11:01 There we go.

11:01 There we go.

11:02 Going to reboot.

11:03 Okay, so that was the problem.

11:05 Coming back to our CEC issue,

11:06 we didn't have it enabled on the Shield which to me

11:09 means that from now on we really shouldn't need this again.

11:13 Now that I think about it,

11:13 usually I avoid doing any sleep features on a TV because of how annoying

11:17 the power on cycle is and how long it takes and how confused it gets.

11:20 This thing is actually just going to work.

11:21 Well, maybe.

11:22 Okay, I've got it configured now.

11:24 Big moment.

11:25 Power's off and we power on the Shield.

11:30 TV's on already.

11:31 You can see it.

11:31 Oh my gosh.

11:32 That's awesome.

11:33 you might not like the Nvidia Shield.

11:35 There's, you know, other TV boxes.

11:38 Yeah.

11:38 Plug it into your computer.

11:39 But that's the beauty of this.

11:41 Is that you can use whatever thing you want on it.

11:45 And it doesn't get in your way.

11:46 I never need to look at this ever again.

11:50 This is the one remote I need.

11:51 So convenient.

11:52 Kind of wish I hadn't thrown it at the floor.

11:54 It's like the batteries all came out and everything.

11:56 And it's like underneath the shelf now.

11:58 Okay.

11:58 But we really need to fire up some content

12:00 and see if this thing is even worth having.

12:03 Also, I wanted to know if HDR was working because realistically,

12:07 this is not a full array local dimming backlight.

12:10 So, it's going to be kind of hard to tell.

12:12 It's as simple as pressing the info button.

12:15 Oh my gosh.

12:17 How does every TV not have that?

12:19 Right there.

12:19 Just tell me what mode you're operating in.

12:22 Right there.

12:23 24 hertz?

12:24 That's amazing.

12:24 That's exactly what it's supposed to be for this content right now.

12:28 Oh yeah, you want to Oh you want me to turn it?

12:30 Well, yeah.

12:31 Yeah, the volume is the Scepter logo.

12:34 That's it.

12:35 cute.

12:35 The speakers are bad.

12:37 Hold on.

12:37 Hold on.

12:38 You don't know that yet.

12:39 We haven't heard Crab Rave yet.

12:40 happen.

12:40 That didn't happen.

12:41 That didn't happen.

12:41 Okay, here we go.

12:42 408 million views.

12:43 8 million of them are ours.

12:48 They're supposed to be uh Okay, the speakers are bad.

12:55 In their defense, that's true of most TVs.

12:58 Yeah.

12:59 And in their defense, the TVs that that's not true of are so

13:03 expensive that you should probably be getting off-board speakers anyway.

13:07 Yep.

13:07 But image quality.

13:09 Let us fire up some content.

13:10 And a perfect piece of content to evaluate it would

13:13 obviously be the most perfect piece of content of all time.

13:16 The Ozymandias episode of Breaking Bad.

13:18 Mhm.

13:21 It is very dim.

13:22 It is not a bright display by any means.

13:24 No.

13:25 No, it's not.

13:26 However, in fairness, we have a big light over top of it.

13:31 Yep.

13:31 And it's also not bad.

13:33 I mean, this is a dim scene.

13:34 Let's go to a not dim scene.

13:36 Does that look like a matte painted behind them?

13:38 It's still definitely doing a bit of weird sharpening Yeah.

13:41 that is kind of mucking with the film grain.

13:43 Oh, yeah.

13:43 I think if we just completely lose any

13:45 sharpening that this TV is attempting to do,

13:47 we end up with a way more natural image.

13:49 Those clouds are incredibly blue.

13:51 There's a pretty solid blue tint to the display in general.

13:54 There's like loss of details on the colors of like Skyler's shirt here.

13:57 Yeah.

13:58 But like it's gets the job [music] done.

14:00 I think there's a little bit too much magenta

14:02 in Hal's skin tone there out in the desert.

14:04 But these are the kinds of things that only display dorks people who

14:08 review technology for a living are likely to notice or especially care about.

14:13 Speaking of people who review technology for a living, labs tested this display.

14:17 Oh, did they?

14:18 Yes.

14:20 How'd that go?

14:21 Not great.

14:22 When it comes to the lab results, it's pretty not good.

14:25 The [music] TV, not super bright.

14:27 Peak brightness around 361 nits.

14:29 In SDR, delta E's not so bad.

14:31 In HDR, they are literally off the chart.

14:33 You cannot see how bad the bars go on every single color.

14:37 It is [music] not even close.

14:39 In terms of coverage, it also doesn't do very good,

14:41 but it does what is promised on the manufacturer website, so they didn't lie.

14:46 Cool.

14:47 That's pretty much all.

14:47 It's Did you do any motion performance?

14:49 Motion performance?

14:50 Let me see.

14:50 And it's awful.

14:52 And that's input lag.

14:53 And that's even ignoring the fact that the [music]

14:55 pixel transition response time is also horrible, which normally I can't tell in

15:03 [music] just regular content.

15:03 It's the kind of thing that normally I'd need to play games to notice.

15:06 But I don't even need them.

15:07 Yeah, you can see it a lot when you're using interfaces.

15:10 Also, the other thing is that even at $800,

15:13 there's not a lot of TVs that are 75 in at that price.

15:16 Unless you're buying like stuff that's like deeply discounted.

15:19 It's kind of a no man's land.

15:20 And blown away that they even made a 75-in TV.

15:23 But it's nice.

15:24 You get to avoid all of the ad tracking.

15:25 You get to avoid stuff like automatic content recognition where they take

15:28 a scan of what's on your screen and compare it to a database.

15:31 All that weird stuff.

15:31 It's literally not sophisticated enough to do that.

15:34 [music] And it'll It won't slow down.

15:36 Right?

15:37 Like think about how sluggish older smart TVs

15:40 are now because they care so little about

15:42 the uh user experience for an operating system

15:44 cuz they kind of want you to upgrade.

15:46 It's worth noting that this model specifically is kind of on its way out,

15:50 but they have a new 75-in model that is coming in.

15:53 We'll have that link down below.

15:54 [music] Yeah.

15:55 So, in conclusion, it's a pretty bad TV,

15:58 but they're also not charging a lot of money for it,

16:01 and it comes with benefits that I think could be well

16:04 worth the trade-offs for people who value privacy and [music] simplicity.

16:09 Like watch this.

16:10 I don't want to watch this TV anymore.

16:12 I press one button, it's off.

16:15 And watch this.

16:16 You don't want to watch this YouTube video anymore.

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17:13 Thanks for watching this video.

17:14 If you enjoyed this one,

17:15 how about you check out the dumbest TV I've seen in a minute.

17:18 It's the absolutely massive A wall cob like LED wall.

17:21 It's so big it's dumb.