Been out of the market too long. How is it possible to produce them that cheaply?
A somewhat distorted / misused phrase, but I'll mention it here anyway: “If you’re not paying for a product, then you are the product."
It's a question I've been thinking about recently as I've contemplated upgrading the monitor I use for work. How is it that reputable brands like Vizio and TCL can make high-quality 40-inch 4K TVs -- with great picture quality, a large number of features, lots of ports, etc. -- for, say $300 while a nice 27-inch 4K
monitor costs $400+?
The answer I came up with: companies like HP and Dell that sell monitors don't bundle in an OS with the monitor. TCL bundles in Roku, and I'm sure Vizio has their own OS or embeds a 3rd party OS. The point being: the TV manufacturers or OS companies like Roku collect your viewing data via the OS and re-sell it. So TVs are the gateway and therefore are sold at cost-ish; the real -- and ongoing -- money is in selling your viewing data. It's the same business model as inkjet printers: sell the printers for a loss, make massive profits on ink cartridges.
I'm not saying I'm correct; just my theory. But I can say from experience that when I installed
Pi-hole on my home network I was able to see how often Roku on my TCL TV was phoning home, ostensibly to report my activity. It was scary. I quickly disconnected my TV from the LAN after seeing that.