NOT SO SMART

New TV sets aren’t like the old ones, with big picture tubes, a short range of channels and weighing a hundred pounds. Now they’re light weight, there’s 1000 channels, the screens are much larger and they’re SMART. They have High Definition, Blue Ray (whatever that is), connect to the Internet and cell phones and other things.

I shopped for a new TV yesterday on Amazon, Walmart and other online venues with an eye toward getting a Roku set, and in the process learned that there’s a lot I don’t know. Among the various facets of my TV ignorance were the facts that Smart didn’t mean the TV has a computer in it, Smart means it connects to the Internet, and that you don’t have to buy a Roku set to have Roku, neither do you need a Smart TV to have it. All you need to make your TV a Smart one is an Amazon Firestick. Plug it into the back of the set and you’re good to go.

On discovering this, and having a Firestick in my current TV, it was easy to bring up the Roku app and load it. It then gave me a web address and a code to enter on that web page, so I did that on my computer, added a password, email address and user name and that’s that, I now have Roku, no fees, no sweat, no new Roku TV.

Another thing I learned in my online TV enlightenment is that the FBI says that Smart TVs are a Bad Thing, because, being connected to the Internet, they leave the owner open to scams and hacking. People can access your TV, post messages, direct it to scam websites, so forth and etcetera. Apparently this can’t happen if you use a Firestick because while it does connect to the Internet, you can’t use it as a web browser. You only connect directly to the entertainment or news provider that you select. At least that’s my take on it. In this way, your chance of landing on a malicious site is pretty much zero. With web surfing, you take your chances.

Ah, but if your TV is Smart, you can not only connect to all your other Smart appliances, but hackers can too and once they’re in, you’ve got problems.

I can see where having a Smart TV would have advantages for those who are fully immersed in an Online existence and can’t live for 5 minutes without their Smart Phone clutched tightly by their side, but I’m not one of those. When I was heavily into real estate, yeah, I kept my cell phone handy, but these days it sits on top of the dresser, turned off, and it only goes with me on town trips, still off. Just in case some sort of special need to call someone arises. The last thing I want in my life is to be at the beck and call of the world 24 hours a day.

I think that’s pretty smart of me.