When we were looking for an upgrade to our TV, I specifically wanted a “dumb display.” No internet connection, no built in streaming services, just a display that would connect to a computer and show me the stuff my browser was playing from my Jellyfin server. If you want that kind of device, it seems that “Digital Signage” or “Commercial Display” is the category under which you are wanting to look.
They do often have network ports as they’re designed to be centrally managed (think hotel TV) but there’s zero requirement to give it a connection and it works beautifully without one.
Anyway there you go, hope that helps someone.
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Wow…I didn’t expect this to blow up like it did. I tried to reply to as many people as possible but since some folks had similar comments I’m editing the post so I can centralize my replies:
1. As some folks pointed out, not every commercial display has built in audio which is absolutely true. I didn’t have much trouble finding one that did, but if you’re going that route, make sure yours does.
2. Lots of variations on “Why not just buy a smart tv and not hook it up to the internet?” I had a few reasons for going this route. Firstly, I was finding that LCD TVs that were made a decade or more ago were still going strong but the ones made in the last couple of years were built for planned obsolescence and stopped working after 3-5 years. Meanwhile the display that I bought came with a ten year warranty on it and was designed to be operated 18 hours a day, every day. I also just like that I don’t have to work around features, worry about not hooking it up to the internet, etc.
3. “Commercial displays are super expensive compared to the comparable TVs” Yes and no and it really comes down to the features you’re looking for and the size of the display. My wife and I were very specific in what we were looking for - something larger than the 32 inch monitor we were using but smaller than 52 inches. Ideally we wanted a 48 inch screen. There wasn’t a monitor available at that time that was that size and when I looked at the regular TVs, they were actually more expensive for a TV of that size than the comparable commercial display. As I noted to someone else, if I wanted a 55 or 60 inch screen, that was ironically half the price of the 48 inch display that I wanted. Some features like OLED though? Yeah, 100% that is obscenely expensive in digital signage. I didn’t need anything like that though, I just wanted a 4K display that wasn’t ridiculously big.
4. “This won’t work” I don’t really know what to say about that given that this is literally what I am using right now and it works perfectly. I know other people who have this setup and it works perfectly for them too. So yeah…not sure what to tell you.