Didn’t they just recently buy Vizio?
Yup, and Roku is a competitor, so, getting rid of those.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/20/tech/walmart-vizio-tv/index.html
And general snooping on viewing activities. Count how many people are in the room, guess who is watching and what adverts to show them, offer them links to add stuff to the basket using the remote control.
Roku makes software and not the TVs themselves. Onn is already the Walmart store brand, so I doubt this is Walmart dumping product. Much more likely is that Walmart will use Vizio for higher end products and keep onn for their cheap stuff, possibly pivoting the smart tv software to using vivio's in the future.
Vizio I would say is mid range, competing with brands like Toshiba and the lower end Samsung/LG models. Onn competes entirely on price. They sell to the person who walks into the store and simply wants the cheapest 65 inch TV, with no regard for brand reputation. Vizio is more people who think "that's a good deal for a brand I actually recognize".
So I’ve been informed! I don’t really shop at Walmart, I just remembered the article about Vizio. The poster called them Roku tvs, so that confused me.
I’ve honestly never heard of Onn tv’s.
The reason I remember the Vizio sale is because my husband and I were discussing the fact that a few stores that we went to when shopping for a new tv *refused* to carry the Vizio brand. That was a while ago; maybe they have improved. But we were told that the initial Consumer’s rating was for the tv, but didn’t take into consideration problems down the road. They had a lot of complaints and a lot of returns and they just stopped carrying them.
Because that is what we were *going* to buy. We did not.
I used to sell TVs, including the Vizio brand. Always hated the poor quality of that brand and they were the most frequently returned brand of TVs we had. Always tried to avoid selling them to customers whenever possible, only really sold them to the people that wanted a TV as cheap as possible and wouldn't listen to any warnings we had while trying to get them to buy anything else.
Still using a 55p605. Sure it won’t compete with a newer OLED but for a d+/Netflix box and some Plex it does pretty well still. I don’t use the built in OS though, using a Roku ultra.
I have a 50s546 it works pretty well but is too slow for google and I like how I can use Roku without issues with disconnecting from phone functions all the time. I heard the new va Falds are close in blacks and brighter too. So I’m on the fence if I even want an oled.
Walmart basically makes no money on TVs. Iirc the profit margin on them is about 1%, and that's pure "sell price-cost", which wouldn't take into account logistics costs like shipping and handling to the store.
Their business model relies on the low prices on items you *would* go to the store for, to get you in the door, then make you walk *through* everything they actually make money on. So, groceries, televisions, household cleaning supplies, etc, all essentially run at a loss to outcompete other department stores, and you have to go past something like the Apparel Dept, where the markup can be anywhere between 30%-150%, because *you're already there, you might as well do ALL your shopping at once*.
Source: Work at Walmart.
Didn't Vizio also start out as a Walmart exclusive brand? Iirc they used LG panels often but we're lower end too, maybe still do. IDK. I just recall talking shit about them at best buy years ago 07/08 era. Best buy certainly made it a point that their Insignia TVs were a better price point than "Walmart's Vizio"
Also pay attention to recent trends (especially TikTok trends) and you will start to realize that things that don’t normally go in places are conveniently located near other things to do those trends.
I’ll have to go look but once you start noticing it. The last one I saw was pickles and the tajin seasoning. These two items wouldn’t be together in Walmart but they had been placed together. When everyone was making those pickles.
The price of TVs is pretty astonishing though, they’ve fallen more than just about any consumer hood over the last 30 years.
$300 in 1994 would have bought you a lower-end 21-inch CRT screen TV, and that is without considering inflation.
So wild to see. Im starting to feel the new reality that they might start giving these things away for free because its just a vessel to feed you adverts and steal your soul
A low return is a good thing. Your tax return is just a return of overpayment on taxes. If you get a large tax return, it means you gave the government a large free loan of your money for a year.
Wait. Okay. It’s not just me?? I’ve got two Roku sticks and a Roku tv and the Netflix app just straight up will not work (constantly crashing) on my Roku tv.
It works like a boiled asshole. I ditched my Roku TV because of it. I’d have to sit through 2/3 reboots before it finally caught its breath enough to function through me scrolling through the menus.
A smartphone is the pinnacle of computing technology. It's orders of magnitude more complex and powerful than laptop computers 15 years ago, and have dozens of sensors, and it's all crammed into something the size of a Hershey's bar. A TV is just a big screen with a $15 SBC slapped in for the *smart* part of the Smart TV.
Funny you say that. My whole professional career has been tied to keeping up with technology. I recently pulled off something at work that no one has been able to do since the 90s. All of the people that knew how to set this up initially have retired, died, or both. I was 12 when these engineers set up this equipment. So my paycheck, and hence my quality of life has been dictated by advancements in technology.
I wish I knew COBOL. Some old government agencies rely on old shit, not sure if COBOL specifically, but after what I went through... It was scary, and I had no clue if I was going to be able to pull it off, but I'm 90% of the way. It was an old DOS machine. Now I'm off to try external peripherals; i.e. parallel, and serial ports
If you ever opened one up you would see why. Most TVs are just very large LCD panels which are very cheap to produce. Then there’s these small circuit boards on them that run the TV which are also cheap.
Also, smartphones are actually quite overpriced for what they’re made of and there’s a reason companies like Apple and Samsung put out new models every year.
I generally make a habit of not breaking open my TV's, but I'm sure you're right about that. Still, impressive to someone like me who only remembers the 2-feet thick dinosaur TV's from childhood. At that time, if someone had a big flat screen it was the epitome of wealth.
My daughter just bought a 43 inch Samsung that's a really decent television so at this time it can get you a lot. I'm not sure what televisions are available in the 65 inch range, as shown in the picture.
If the television you have works then that's great. I expect the failure rate isn't 100% but is probably somewhere in the15% after a year, maybe. Maybe less. Comparatively, it'll be worse than high priced name brands in any case. When you don't have a lot of money and need a television then they'll do fine.
The onboard OS is probably great if it's Roku, which is what I think is the case for the television in the picture.
Right!? I sold TVs at Sears in the early-mid 00s and I remember a 42” Sony LED TV was over $2000!
Sadly they’re one of the only things that have gotten cheaper since then, though.
Yeah, but that's still amazing. Even cheap TVs these days are honestly fine, not great, but fine. Plus, if a cheap one is $299 that means a decent one is likely $399 and a great one isn't much more than that.
I paid nearly $400 for our 50 inch TV not all that long ago in the grand scheme of things.
A lot of people don’t want a tv that’s “fine.”
Yea name brand tvs are still decent price. You can get a good one on sale for $400. But, it’s been known (and published in mainstream magazines) that the reason tv prices have remained reasonable compared to everything else over the years is because the companies subsidize the cost for putting their apps on them because they make so much money from the streaming services and the marketing data. And yes, our smart tvs are collecting data and some are listening. That’s not people speculating or being paranoid, I ’s just a fact. We’re all so accustomed to it now that most people don’t care and even the people who claim to care eventually ignore it for the convenience of our favorite apps.
Oh lord, I used to work for a shipping company and before I left they would get tv's like this. If you look very closely on the top of the box, there's little grooves of cardboard that sticks out. It's not very prominent however those little slips or what not will cut the ever loving shit out of you. It's like a brutal papercut.
Anyways, anytime I would have to take one down from that height I would just let it fall if I couldn't grab the handle. Not to mention they're glossed so even with proper PPE it would just slide right out of your hands with any type of momentum.
Triple stacked on the sales floor? Last I worked retail, stacking loose product like that to the point someone would have to reach over their head to get one down was a safety violation even at Walmart.
I use to work an inventory retail position. They would yell at us for stacking anything higher than eye level. We had little warehouse space so we put as much out as we could. Couldn’t imagine how much work it was to do this
I seem to remember an article from a few years back where the US military banned the use of non-issued GPS watches because data breaches had revealed troop movement and strategic locations. You're probably right.
Smart TVs have never been smart. Just because they can run streaming apps doesn't improve them, most of the time it's their worst feature. Now they're just data collection devices with subpar app compatibility.
My point is more that the middle road of history is far less interesting than the extremes we like to imagine, are our TVs spying on our every move so that they can assimilate into our bodies and take over our precious middle class existence or are they just tracking our interests to make the most money off of our lack of impulse control? It’s both much more mundane than we’d like to admit and more of a nuisance than we’d like to deal with
My answer to people griping the government is spying on them through the patriot act is that wasting time on them would be the most boring and useless job in the world.
Couch coup may actually be pretty apt naming. People are pretty compliant if they have cheap entertainment, and a lazy society is far less likely to step out of line.
I have one of those and it’s unusable because of how slow it if.
But you can get an ONN android TV box and disable HDR and then you get decent picture.
Maybe it's like the Superbowl week soda displays, where the majority of the boxes are just empty and fastened together to present well to the customer?
Infinitely less likely that the self-driving radar-bot bumps into this thing than the minimum wage 17 year old that would normally be driving the floor cleaner
how many tvs does one need? i'm thinking after all these years tv market wouldnt be so huge as everyone has one , two , twenty by now with how cheap they are
They are the exact same price as they’ve been for a while too. So it’s not like it’s a deal.
I’d be willing to bet that stack doesn’t have much of a dent by the end of tax season. Food>TV’s.
I have a ten year old TCL Roku tv. The low quality TCL has outlasted a LG and a Samsung. I have an OLED as the main and so far it’s doing good. I keep the TCL just because it’s one of the low quality things that won’t give up.
You can always tell when it is tax time in the US by the amount of extra TVs that are everywhere in Walmart
That's so interesting, I didn't even think about that! Gotta recapture those dollars.
Didn’t they just recently buy Vizio? Yup, and Roku is a competitor, so, getting rid of those. https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/20/tech/walmart-vizio-tv/index.html
Holy crap, 2+ billion on the Vizio acquisition. Sounds like a big part of that move is advertising capabilities.
That was mentioned in the article, yes.
And general snooping on viewing activities. Count how many people are in the room, guess who is watching and what adverts to show them, offer them links to add stuff to the basket using the remote control.
Roku makes software and not the TVs themselves. Onn is already the Walmart store brand, so I doubt this is Walmart dumping product. Much more likely is that Walmart will use Vizio for higher end products and keep onn for their cheap stuff, possibly pivoting the smart tv software to using vivio's in the future.
Vizio does low end too, I have a pretty cheap 4k TV from them I got some years ago.
Vizio I would say is mid range, competing with brands like Toshiba and the lower end Samsung/LG models. Onn competes entirely on price. They sell to the person who walks into the store and simply wants the cheapest 65 inch TV, with no regard for brand reputation. Vizio is more people who think "that's a good deal for a brand I actually recognize".
i remember when vizeo came out and they were considered the low end brand then. i guess they are moving up in the world.
They’re definitely mid
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Isnt Onn a walmart brand though?
So I’ve been informed! I don’t really shop at Walmart, I just remembered the article about Vizio. The poster called them Roku tvs, so that confused me. I’ve honestly never heard of Onn tv’s. The reason I remember the Vizio sale is because my husband and I were discussing the fact that a few stores that we went to when shopping for a new tv *refused* to carry the Vizio brand. That was a while ago; maybe they have improved. But we were told that the initial Consumer’s rating was for the tv, but didn’t take into consideration problems down the road. They had a lot of complaints and a lot of returns and they just stopped carrying them. Because that is what we were *going* to buy. We did not.
I used to sell TVs, including the Vizio brand. Always hated the poor quality of that brand and they were the most frequently returned brand of TVs we had. Always tried to avoid selling them to customers whenever possible, only really sold them to the people that wanted a TV as cheap as possible and wouldn't listen to any warnings we had while trying to get them to buy anything else.
Durabrand, a private label tradename for Walmart, manufactures ONN TV while Element Electronics Company handles all warranty repairs.
I miss those TCL 5/6 series and Roku combo tv. Bang for buck hdr picture and fast light os.
Still using a 55p605. Sure it won’t compete with a newer OLED but for a d+/Netflix box and some Plex it does pretty well still. I don’t use the built in OS though, using a Roku ultra.
I have a 50s546 it works pretty well but is too slow for google and I like how I can use Roku without issues with disconnecting from phone functions all the time. I heard the new va Falds are close in blacks and brighter too. So I’m on the fence if I even want an oled.
Walmart basically makes no money on TVs. Iirc the profit margin on them is about 1%, and that's pure "sell price-cost", which wouldn't take into account logistics costs like shipping and handling to the store. Their business model relies on the low prices on items you *would* go to the store for, to get you in the door, then make you walk *through* everything they actually make money on. So, groceries, televisions, household cleaning supplies, etc, all essentially run at a loss to outcompete other department stores, and you have to go past something like the Apparel Dept, where the markup can be anywhere between 30%-150%, because *you're already there, you might as well do ALL your shopping at once*. Source: Work at Walmart.
Didn't Vizio also start out as a Walmart exclusive brand? Iirc they used LG panels often but we're lower end too, maybe still do. IDK. I just recall talking shit about them at best buy years ago 07/08 era. Best buy certainly made it a point that their Insignia TVs were a better price point than "Walmart's Vizio"
Theyre not really competing directly. This more of a vertical integration move by Walmart than any sort of competition consolidation
Also pay attention to recent trends (especially TikTok trends) and you will start to realize that things that don’t normally go in places are conveniently located near other things to do those trends.
Can you give some examples??
I’ll have to go look but once you start noticing it. The last one I saw was pickles and the tajin seasoning. These two items wouldn’t be together in Walmart but they had been placed together. When everyone was making those pickles.
Any recent trends regarding TV's I should know about?
The price of TVs is pretty astonishing though, they’ve fallen more than just about any consumer hood over the last 30 years. $300 in 1994 would have bought you a lower-end 21-inch CRT screen TV, and that is without considering inflation.
In 1984 I purchased a 19” TV for $400. Thought it was a good deal.
Like $850 in today’s dollars. Wild. It probably was a good deal too
So wild to see. Im starting to feel the new reality that they might start giving these things away for free because its just a vessel to feed you adverts and steal your soul
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But still better than a plasma tv from 10 years ago
fuck it at least I can play Helldivers on a 60" while I fume about my pitiful return.
At least you got one, I owe $500
A low return is a good thing. Your tax return is just a return of overpayment on taxes. If you get a large tax return, it means you gave the government a large free loan of your money for a year.
don't try to make me view this positively damnit lol
Went to a major mall today and it was packed. Tax season, first of the month, payday weekend, nice day. Everyone was out there shopping.
Do you mean people are using there tax refund on tvs or is there more to that?
People use tax refunds on TVs
Walmart also just bought a TV manufacturer, they gotta clear out the Onn stuff
Apart from the Onn. Brand and the overall appearance of the place, the bag of snickers left on top of the tvs really screams walmart lol.
100% on brand for Wally World. Dare I say, "Onn Brand?"
Someone made a choice.
Don’t worry guys, when you boot up Netflix the ones on the bottom crash just as well as the ones on the top.
Wait. Okay. It’s not just me?? I’ve got two Roku sticks and a Roku tv and the Netflix app just straight up will not work (constantly crashing) on my Roku tv.
It works like a boiled asshole. I ditched my Roku TV because of it. I’d have to sit through 2/3 reboots before it finally caught its breath enough to function through me scrolling through the menus.
Mine lets me browse no problem. But I’ll get a couple minutes into anything and it’ll freeze and crash.
Oh well, Mr. Show Off here gets to watch 2 minutes of Daredevil. Must be nice up in Rolex tower Captain Lamborghini
Just don’t get your poor on me
I’m going to bomb your house with cheap packets of ramen and jail broken fire sticks.
Perfect! Thanks, peasant!
Roku TV’s are the equivalent of a chromebook hardware quality wise
Netflix on my 2014 roku3 froze constantly
Yeah the Roku sticks have always been way better than the TVs. The TVs have terrible hardware
This guy Rokus.
Brand, Onn. Safety, Off?
Quality also off. There’s a reason these are so cheap
What blows my mind is that such a large item as a flat screen TV (even if it's a budget one) is so much cheaper than a tiny little smartphone.
A smartphone is the pinnacle of computing technology. It's orders of magnitude more complex and powerful than laptop computers 15 years ago, and have dozens of sensors, and it's all crammed into something the size of a Hershey's bar. A TV is just a big screen with a $15 SBC slapped in for the *smart* part of the Smart TV.
It really is amazing how far technology has come in such a short time.
And yet life still sucks.
Luckily, quality of life isn't dictated by advancements in smart phones.
Found Steve Jobs alt account
Funny you say that. My whole professional career has been tied to keeping up with technology. I recently pulled off something at work that no one has been able to do since the 90s. All of the people that knew how to set this up initially have retired, died, or both. I was 12 when these engineers set up this equipment. So my paycheck, and hence my quality of life has been dictated by advancements in technology.
I wanna know what you pulled off? Just interested
That's pretty wild. I stand corrected! Glad you're doing well though, sounds like you're killing it.
COBOL?
I wish I knew COBOL. Some old government agencies rely on old shit, not sure if COBOL specifically, but after what I went through... It was scary, and I had no clue if I was going to be able to pull it off, but I'm 90% of the way. It was an old DOS machine. Now I'm off to try external peripherals; i.e. parallel, and serial ports
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Life expectancy in the U.S has been declining.
If you ever opened one up you would see why. Most TVs are just very large LCD panels which are very cheap to produce. Then there’s these small circuit boards on them that run the TV which are also cheap. Also, smartphones are actually quite overpriced for what they’re made of and there’s a reason companies like Apple and Samsung put out new models every year.
I generally make a habit of not breaking open my TV's, but I'm sure you're right about that. Still, impressive to someone like me who only remembers the 2-feet thick dinosaur TV's from childhood. At that time, if someone had a big flat screen it was the epitome of wealth.
I don't think it's the glass that makes phones expensive
It’s the processor
What's the likelihood that they'll make it to next tax season before failing? I'm guessing not very likely.
Doesn't matter, there will be a new tax refund check in the mailbox next year.
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My daughter just bought a 43 inch Samsung that's a really decent television so at this time it can get you a lot. I'm not sure what televisions are available in the 65 inch range, as shown in the picture. If the television you have works then that's great. I expect the failure rate isn't 100% but is probably somewhere in the15% after a year, maybe. Maybe less. Comparatively, it'll be worse than high priced name brands in any case. When you don't have a lot of money and need a television then they'll do fine. The onboard OS is probably great if it's Roku, which is what I think is the case for the television in the picture.
Hotel? Trivago.
Looks solid.... For now
"Yes, I'd like help getting THAT one from the middle please."
Playing Jenga with tvs. I like it.
So this is where Aang prays to avatar Roku.
65" TV's are under $300 now? Might be time soon to upgrade the 50"....
Right!? I sold TVs at Sears in the early-mid 00s and I remember a 42” Sony LED TV was over $2000! Sadly they’re one of the only things that have gotten cheaper since then, though.
Look at the brand it is…
Yeah, but that's still amazing. Even cheap TVs these days are honestly fine, not great, but fine. Plus, if a cheap one is $299 that means a decent one is likely $399 and a great one isn't much more than that. I paid nearly $400 for our 50 inch TV not all that long ago in the grand scheme of things.
A lot of people don’t want a tv that’s “fine.” Yea name brand tvs are still decent price. You can get a good one on sale for $400. But, it’s been known (and published in mainstream magazines) that the reason tv prices have remained reasonable compared to everything else over the years is because the companies subsidize the cost for putting their apps on them because they make so much money from the streaming services and the marketing data. And yes, our smart tvs are collecting data and some are listening. That’s not people speculating or being paranoid, I ’s just a fact. We’re all so accustomed to it now that most people don’t care and even the people who claim to care eventually ignore it for the convenience of our favorite apps.
☠️☠️☠️☠️ i would be making laps by that daily just in hopes of one falling on me and breaking every bone in my body
Taking it “stack it high, watch it fly” a bit too seriously
High risk, high reward.
Oh, I'm playing me some Jenga
Oh lord, I used to work for a shipping company and before I left they would get tv's like this. If you look very closely on the top of the box, there's little grooves of cardboard that sticks out. It's not very prominent however those little slips or what not will cut the ever loving shit out of you. It's like a brutal papercut. Anyways, anytime I would have to take one down from that height I would just let it fall if I couldn't grab the handle. Not to mention they're glossed so even with proper PPE it would just slide right out of your hands with any type of momentum.
That’s an insane price compared to 10 years ago.
That doesn’t look stable.
B U M P T E S T
Tax season has begun my friends. Invest wisely & shop smartly.
Student loans, anyone?
Imagine having to Jenga out the TV you want.
You had me at Jenga.
Triple stacked on the sales floor? Last I worked retail, stacking loose product like that to the point someone would have to reach over their head to get one down was a safety violation even at Walmart.
I use to work an inventory retail position. They would yell at us for stacking anything higher than eye level. We had little warehouse space so we put as much out as we could. Couldn’t imagine how much work it was to do this
“Smart” TVs - are we watching them, or are they watching us..
Nah it's ok. The data Samsung gets from my smartwatch is far more invasive than my tv habits.
I seem to remember an article from a few years back where the US military banned the use of non-issued GPS watches because data breaches had revealed troop movement and strategic locations. You're probably right.
I'm just over here watching the shenanigans at Walmart, way better than reality TV.
Smart TVs have never been smart. Just because they can run streaming apps doesn't improve them, most of the time it's their worst feature. Now they're just data collection devices with subpar app compatibility.
Watching us sit on our ass all day? I don’t think the couch coup is taking place any time soon
Reason these smart TVs are so cheap is that they make the money back on years of user data collected for targeted ads, which the tv then shows you.
My point is more that the middle road of history is far less interesting than the extremes we like to imagine, are our TVs spying on our every move so that they can assimilate into our bodies and take over our precious middle class existence or are they just tracking our interests to make the most money off of our lack of impulse control? It’s both much more mundane than we’d like to admit and more of a nuisance than we’d like to deal with
My answer to people griping the government is spying on them through the patriot act is that wasting time on them would be the most boring and useless job in the world.
Couch coup may actually be pretty apt naming. People are pretty compliant if they have cheap entertainment, and a lazy society is far less likely to step out of line.
Yes.
1984’s telescreens…
I have one of those and it’s unusable because of how slow it if. But you can get an ONN android TV box and disable HDR and then you get decent picture.
This looks like a personal injury lawyer's wet dream
Tip them over then ask for a discount
This store also had one of the self-driving floor cleaners. Made me wonder how much of a bump it would take to start the domino effect.
Time to find out
Maybe it's like the Superbowl week soda displays, where the majority of the boxes are just empty and fastened together to present well to the customer?
Nah no way, walmart empolyees arent that smart
Infinitely less likely that the self-driving radar-bot bumps into this thing than the minimum wage 17 year old that would normally be driving the floor cleaner
The CIA definitely has nothing to do with this so don’t even ask
Wake me up when you got a picture of Walmart customers playing Jenga with the stack. Shit post until update.
High stakes Jenga, jumbo edition.
Imagine someone bumps into those and some fall on someone... that sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen
Could also be one heck of a workman's comp claim for an associate.
With all the spyware you need already installed
how many tvs does one need? i'm thinking after all these years tv market wouldnt be so huge as everyone has one , two , twenty by now with how cheap they are
That looks like a great way to smush a toddler by accident.
Nice stack
They are the exact same price as they’ve been for a while too. So it’s not like it’s a deal. I’d be willing to bet that stack doesn’t have much of a dent by the end of tax season. Food>TV’s.
Expensive Jenga
I have a ten year old TCL Roku tv. The low quality TCL has outlasted a LG and a Samsung. I have an OLED as the main and so far it’s doing good. I keep the TCL just because it’s one of the low quality things that won’t give up.
Onn is their brand of garbage electronics. So of course that’s what they’ll get the most of
I have been very happy with Onn. I have had much better luck with Onn than Hisense.