I AM PISSED. i am truly TRULY pissed my dear reader. why? the ENSHITTIFICATION IS UPON US, as we all know consumer electornics is coming out with an expire date, and let me be clear. Smart TV overall are good, there is nothing wrong in putting a pc to your tv, and having it able to do some stuff already by "stock" and not having to plug anything extra, the issue comes as for how much power they get to shittify your experience with updates that the TV does randomly, OR to how low budget shit they can put inside so that you have to buy a new one. outside of the whole marketing terms like "HD READY" and that whole shit ass world that just tricks you to buy terrible tv sold as good. this all has started from a story i got in my household.
my mother had a TV from toshiba, it's a very normal 24' with an HD panel... yes. HD, no not FullHD... just HD. you know what i mean, but ok, it was bought with rush because of the change in the television signal and shit like that, fine,it was sold as a 200 euro tv (fucking robbing money for the tv they sold us) but we did get it a lil cheaper, but ok, why am i talking about this? we bought this tv in July of 2022, CURRENTLY at the very beginning of June 2026 it has completely broke itself. the pc inside most likely completely enpooped itself and it stopped working, where if i turn it on, a yellow cast starts appearing from the sides, it wouldn't listen to the remote most of the times, and so, clearly, that was a sign that it was done. less than 4 years (also yes i did try unplugging and replugging in it, it actually worked for 2 extra days, then it died and never got back again) SO i decided to do something i did see in the past and thought "hey this seems useful and cool" that is, converting my smart tv removing all the shit and using the panel inside for a new purpose! or even, old purpose, but less smart.
yes i am buying a fully set controller board for my tv panel that allows me to have the tuner for the antenna, hdmi, dvi, vga, usb and audio out, aswell as a support for a remote, the speakers and 7 physical buttons to use to navigate the tv if in moments of remote missing... (i worded this terribly, but you got the point right? right.) but it wasn't as easy as i thought since i didn't do any extra research at the moment for what i had to look for. my first thougth has been "let's open this and free it from it's stupidly smart guts" and so i took it apart... small note if you ever end up doing so, if you did remove all the screws and feel it's not budging at all, check 2 things, hidden screws behind labels of any kind (don't worry they won't say a thing, you're changing it's guts either way so don't worry about it) AND some models like mine uses a fuck ton of plastic like.... claws or stuff that really puts it tight inside, which is good!.. uintil you have to open it. either way go with some good strenght and use some tools to help you out in case, BE CAREFUL OF COURSE to not break the panel, it shouldn't be easy but always good to remind that. if the panel breaks you are done and it's all useless lol.
with that done, i started unscrewing every thing and removed all the things i thought were unecessary, as they actually were ofc, then time to check for the model number of the panel... BE AWARE AND NOT BE LIKE ME, there might be more than one model on your panel (OR in the board at the bottom of the panel, each panel has a board where the ribbon cable connects to, follow that and if you find the board FOR SURE you can find engraved on the pcb the model number of the panel... i was giving away the model number of the whole assed of Vested or however it's spelled that company) when you did the research, you have 2 options, or make it a monitor with a conversion kit that is smaller and a bit easier to set (i think, i am still waiting for mine, and i will update on the blog for that because yes. the project is not over but i'm very highly confident) OR buy a tv conversion kit, you can find many different stores on aliexpress (yes, for this go with aliexpress, it's a website that allows very easily to send messages to the store itself and ask questions... amazon is shit, if you want to avoid aliexpress use ebay i guess, i didn't check there) and with that you should be able to make it kiiind of easily, the reason why i am still so mad, is that you have a fully working TV that is being blocked and damned as broken because they use very cheap parts for the Smart tv section, the tv always felt very unresponsive, the antenna was shit for wifi and it just always sucked bad. the plan? mine is to convert that into a fully working TV but with no smart features inside and make like a raspberry pi or some other stuff to use as a smart tv, there are many ways you can do so, even with a chromecast if you are not considering google your enemy (fuck you google, xearSMG and DeGoog for the win.) but still, if you ever end up with a broken tv, or i mean, by all means a broken monitor for the connectors and such, you can do exactly this to make it work again! it might won't restore the original capabilities, mostly for high refresh rate monitors i have no clue how it works, but for cheap stuff, listen i'm saving a TV that did cost 180 euros ish with 25 euro.
what really pissed me off tho was another bit. my mother went with her fiance to buy a new tv now, they got a philips... 32' so quite good size, a very big upgrade from the previous one... and it had barely any bezel, it looked suuuper modern... guess what. FUCKING HD READY, 720 OR LIKE THAT FRICKING 736P RESOLUTION, YOU CAN COUNT THE PIXELS THERE, WHY ARE MANIFACTURERS EVEN DOING THOSE TV, i mean of course, to scam people but like FUCK. this annoyed me so much, i am not someone that seeks 4k, fullHD with a good pixel density is all i ask. but there is no deny that for a 32' tv 1280x720p is rought from most if not all distances, worse if you sit close to it kinda as we do in the kitchen, but bleh. ok, i rambled enough, i'm going to do a new post so this is just part 1, but dear reader, do not throw away stuff that easily if it's not really broken, if you are even so slightly keen to repair, give it a shot, with that said, take care dear reader and thank you to dedicate your time to my rambles.
Brubo