Until now I haven’t understood the appeal of so-called Smart TVs.

I didn’t want my TV to be networked. I didn’t want it to do tricks. All I wanted was for it to do what it was told, and to display an adequate picture.

Until I had to make some refits to the TV install in our main-floor living room.

A couple of years ago, I took spare 20-inch LCD TV we had lying around, and wall mounted it in the corner of the room, and mounted the cable box behind it, both on the mount arm, for a clean and tidy install.

Well, nothing lasts forever, and that old TV was starting to act up.

At the same time, the family expressed a desired to have a DVD player upstairs in the living room. And since the old 20-inch TV is so old it only had one HDMI input, the way forward was clear.

So I bought a new 32-inch LG LED TV for what I think is a ludicrously cheap price, as well as a Samsung Bluray player.

I bought the LED TV solely because it was the least expensive of its size, and it had enough HDMI ports. It’s a rarity in that, in this day and age, it’s not network-enabled, and doesn’t have Smart TV features.

And that’s mostly okay.

Except that the Bluray player its connected to IS Network enabled. And in addition to Netflix (which is also available on the cable box, go figure) has YouTube on it as well.

My kids love YouTube. Yours probably do to.

My kids would rather watch YouTube than cable TV.

Anyway, my point, and I do have one, is that in order to watch YouTube the kids have to turn the TV on, switch the input to HDMI 2, turn the Bluray player on, hit Menu and access YouTube.

Not a big deal, but it is a lot of extra steps. It would be easier for them if all they had to do was turn the TV on and press Menu to access YouTube.

So, long story short, my stance that “Smart TVs are dumb” is softening.

I’ll keep that in mind when the 11 year old 60-inch plasma TV in the Media Room packs it in.