As the 2018 holiday TV and electronics buying season ramped up around Thanksgiving and Christmas, I wondered about the trend of tuner less "TVs" that Vizio started a few years ago. Screens (displays) without tuners used to be called monitors, but things changed along the way. A brief online search revealed that Walmart and Sams Club were still selling "TVs" with no tuners. It looks like other retailers such as Best Buy and Target sell only TVs that are really TVs complete with a tuner.
Who cares if a TV includes a tuner? Anyone who at any time in the future may want to connect an antenna and view free over the air TV broadcasts in high definition and sub channels that may not be on pay TV. Local TV stations are an excellent source of news, weather, sports, and entertainment. Local stations are now included in most cable and satellite TV bundles, but that may change in the future. Pay TV providers constantly complain about the fees that they must pay to local stations. If they were really so concerned about ever increasing rates, they would create cheaper packages that do not include local TV stations. Perhaps they will do so in the future. Viewers who want to save money on their cable bills could then receive local TV using an antenna.
In a couple of years, Next Gen TV is supposed to allow better reception with indoor antennas. People who receive TV stations using an antenna may experience fewer outages than their neighbors who rely on pay TV. Even if your "TV" does not include a built in tuner, there are external tuner options. Similar options will be available in the future for Next Gen television.
The cable industry claims that only 10% of TV viewers receive free TV using an antenna. Other sources say that households with at least one TV connected to an antenna may be as high as 25% and increasing as the cable cutting trend continues.
Here is a list of some of the under $400 no tuner "TVs" I found. Maybe some of those "TVs" actually have tuners even though the specs do not say so;
Walmart:
Sams Club