To refuse a smart TV despite my kids' pleas.

Well, this is a fun thread for a Sunday morning isn't it? OP is sounding more unhinged with every update!

You're going to alienate your children by being like this.

You may not want this but they do. They will resent you for it, trust me

Smart TVs are so shit and slow, that people are beginning to actually seek out non smart TVs.

Whatever.

You sound completely batshit right now!

Quite. It's like saying I refuse to buy from Tesco, their awful company. I will only ever shop at Asda.... But there's a really nice jumper that's only sold in Tesco, I'll steal it.

Because it's a known fact that all British companies are morally incorruptible and definitely don't want people's data

Well if something isn't available on the only platform you will watch it on then you should accept that that is your choice not to watch it.

Your boundary is not subscribing to these streaming services, your right to the content ends there if it isn't available in other forms that you will use legally.

You seem very self righteous about this whole issue but are teaching your kids its ok to steal if something they want to watch isn't available. Then justify it with "its ok cos they are billionaires and it's their own fault..."

You can do all those things AND let your child watch TV you know....

Yep. The inclusion of the DVD player makes this a solid 🎣 8/10.

This whole thread reads as a weird attempt at reverse snobbery.

It reminds me of how my auntie refused to buy a TomTom (I bet you do too OP!) as she felt ‘they were ridiculous modern crap’ so instead spent every car journey pulled over tearing her hair out at a map. She was late for everything as she had no sense of direction. Tutted at us using our TomTom. But whatever, she’d won the race of purposely inflicted micro-hardships.

So, yeah, I guess ‘Well Done’, OP?

Of course they would, and such a happy medium does exist thankfully!
My kids had crazy things such as outdoor activities (scouts/horse riding), necessary lessons not taught at school ie swimming. They had days out at the weekend and other less exciting tasks such as walking the dogs daily.
They did however have the tech to catch up with a few shows that they and all of their friends were watching so when all of the school chatter was about Stranger Things (or whichever show was popular at the time) they could join in with the conversation.

My best friend grew up without a tv. I envied her because her dm was present and taught her so many other things in life, helped her with school work, made her beautiful clothes, encouraged her to carry on with guides and help out at charities.
Many dc would benefit from not sitting in front of a box every night.

If you're going to pirate the files at least stop wasting physical media and play directly from a drive storage. It's a waste of plastic.

Are you really that interesting that everyone is after your data? What are they going to find out that isn't fairly readily available? That your favourite program is Coronation Street or you watch BBC news not Sky?

Great parenting!

If this is real all I can say is I feel deeply sorry for your kids.
I am pretty much a neanderthal when it comes to techy things but I made a conscious effort to make sure my kids could use and enjoy the same things as their peers growing up. I was the child of parents that didn't believe fitting in mattered (so my peers all had CD players in their room and we had a record player in the lounge, Magic radio played hits of the 60s, 70s & 80s from the kitchen.....not great as a teenager in the 90s! ).
You are deliberately creating a barrier between your children and their peers, it is a miserable way to live.
To you it's 'just a TV' to your kids it's a way of keeping up with the world around them and fitting into that world.

They still sell TVs with built in DVDs?!

Get yourself the latest Victorian magic lantern.
Your children will be astounded and mesmerised.

It warms my heart to think there's two children out there that when they leave home will go out and buy 85" TVs and have Alexa in every room knowing that mum is blowing a gasket about Jeff Bezos having some information

A Cello (?) with a what? 😵‍💫🤣

@BeSunnyRaven get with the times! At least for the sake of your children.

Carry on like that and they’ll hate you by the time they’re 18. Which will be a massive shame having spent the best part of 2 decades bringing them up!

You are definitely not being unreasonable to instruct your minor children to break the law by illegally downloading copyrighted material. Go for it.

Ok so my very good smart TV has an App section with iPlayer, 4OD, 5ive, ITV etc. Just because it has Netflix and other apps doesn't mean you have to use them.

I have some sympathy with this view, though I don't pirate.

It used to be possible to get more things on DVD and that seems to be disappearing as an option.

There is a series we love (Slow Horses) but you can only get it on Apple TV. If it was possible to buy it as a DVD box set we would. We end up subscribing to Apple for a month, struggling with their crappy interface, watch latest series, look at the rest of Apples offering and deciding we are not interested and cancel the subscription. Then rinse and repeat when the next series is released.

We don't have a smart TV so we do streaming through our laptop but connected to TV. Well apart from bloody Apple which doesn't seem to work that way so we just end up watching on the laptop.