Pro Tip: Connect your TV to your Wi-Fi so the TV doesn’t bother you constantly, and shut off access outside your network at the router level.
Ummm why even connect it at all…let the dumb thing stay offline
so your TV doesn’t bother you.
Many TVs have a constant “no wifi connection” visual error if it’s not connected.
Take the stupid thing back.
It also bugs me to turn on voice recognition by connecting
LET US LISTEN TO YOU IT WILL BE FINE.
IGNORE ME!
I haven’t bought a TV in several years, but is this something that is in general TVs? I ask because I plan on getting one soon and would very much like to avoid it having a mic
I can’t speak for all TVs of course, but from what I have seen, yes.
i for one cannot wait for this future
Have you guys started the new season of oww my balls?
Fun fact: Idiocracy came out the same year Google bought YouTube.
I went to a buddy’s house to watch TV and that’s how his Xbox Live looks like.
Like they’re so oblivious and he’s paying for that shit.
Huh? Watching TV on his Xbox live? It definitely didn’t look like that
With that level of ads, they should get paid to watch it.
Best we can do is 5 minutes worth of additional in-game currency
Shut up and drink your verification can
Has it got electrolytes?
*Start menu in windows 11
… both Microsoft products … weird.
Jokes on them, my TV can’t connect to the internet anymore because of the the bloat added by Roku in automatic updates.
Any 10 year old computer & LibreELEC.
Nah, my TV is not Internet connected. My router is as blocking. My dns is as blocking. My web browser and phone browser are web blocking. I use the YouTube website on my phone. If someone bypasses all that and pushes adds I just back out of that site.
My TVs are pre-smart TV and only 1080p and I have yet to feel that I was missing anything important.
not if I don’t have a smart tv
My phone is a billboard. My TV is a billboard. My PC is sometimes a billboard.
Like, what hasn’t advertisement infected?
I think it’s about time we just harass marketers back, but not with advertisements, but with other means. Enough so they get the message.
“We estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual’s visual field before inducing seizures.” ~Nolan Sorrento
Ironically the billboards in my town seem to be disappearing due to lack of use.
The billboards are the only thing that aren’t billboards.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if your screens are showing you ads then they aren’t your screens…
I reset my Android TV to stock before the ads, block all updates, and just run Plex and Netflix when I choose.
Probably going to take it further in the future and just use a little android media stick and nuke the SmartTV is entirely because of how badly it lags.
Absolutely insane how badly AndroidTVs perform after a year or so of ownership. If I could revert the core software updates I would.
Also, wifi causes the entire TV to become a laggy unusable mess. Has to be plugged in over ethernet. Absolutely unbelievable.
I am so genuinely surprised that there isnt a bigger movement to hack TVs to replace the OS’s on them with non-invasive open software alternatives.
Especially with shit like this.
Because it’s not actually necessary; leave the TV isolated from the internet and use a set-top box (Apple TV, Shield, game console) as the media player.
While I agree, I think this solution is some nonsense. I bought a “TV” and paid for all the hardware and software that went into it, but I essentially have to use it as a monitor with my own hardware to escape the enshittification.
Which is exactly where you were before smart TVs.
I also agree, but I view it more as ‘I bought a TV, and that’s all I want it to be’.
I don’t care about the built in software features foisted on me because I wanted an OLED panel; simply because they are going to be abandoned within 1-2 years, are powered by some anaemic chipset that is already multiple generations behind what is already available in my TV stand; and will likely end up as an attack vector to my network some period down the road.
The article mentions that TV manufacturers make ~$5 a quarter from selling your data. So those ‘features’ aren’t even free, they come at the expense of your personal information, privacy and likely security as a result.
So to quote a famous Dave Chapelle skit: “fuck ‘em, that’s why!”
simply because they are going to be abandoned within 1-2 years, are powered by some anaemic chipset that is already multiple generations behind what is already available in my TV stand; and will likely end up as an attack vector to my network some period down the road.
You do realize all of that would probably cease being a problem if people were able to hack their TVs to install custom OS’s.
all the spyware bullshit would also be gone with a custom OS.
Literally every one of your gripes would be addressed and fixed by being able to hack your TV
Custom OS isn’t going to address the anaemic hardware, nor do I think relying on open-source custom ROMs for a niche item is the best way to ensure any hardware-level vulnerabilities are covered.
If you already have an Internet-connected device hooked up to your TV (eg. PlayStation); there is no need to connect another, especially when it provides an overall worse experience.
Shit, a basic HTPC is infinitely better - using a Linux-based distribution (which will have a lot more support vs. a niche TV ROM), and it’ll be supported well beyond what the hardware could handle.
Custom OS isn’t going to address the anaemic hardware, nor do I think relying on open-source custom ROMs for a niche item is the best way to ensure any hardware-level vulnerabilities are covered.
Not only would it give “anemic” hardware new life, I can point at how its already been done at another in home device. Routers. DDWRT/OpenWRT/Tomato do exactly that for old, otherwise useless routers.
Literally every single argument you make can make against it has been proven wrong, and has in other devices, be addressed with a custom OS/Firmware that is designed for purpose without all the bloat and other BS.
You can adamantly say “Nuh uh!” all you want, but it doesnt change the facts.
You can buy PS5s for every TV in your house if you want to, Not everyone has that money, luxury, or stubborn desire.
Good luck implementing all the display color calibration, pixel refresher, anti-burn in features, etc… on these new TV panels. Personally I’d rather keep my warranty and just use a separate device to run the apps.
That anemic device uses hardware decoding in order to be able to decode the video data fast enough - it is literally unable to handle newer video encodings fast enough because it would have to do software decoding, which is were the anemic part totally kills it.
Routers on the other hand have been entirely done in software for ages (with at most hardware support for the encryption in things like SSL, which hasn’t changed in decades) and don’t have to reliably process 4k of data within 20 ms (for 50Hz) time frames.
Your example is very much an apples and oranges comparison.
Kind of, I haven’t had to buy a new tv to replace my dumb tv from 2014 but my understanding is that these awful smart TVs are at least cheaper because they’re subsidised by all the ads. If that’s the case, at least you didn’t actually fully pay for the hardware and can hopefully afford to put your own on there without being out of pocket by too extreme an amount.
That’s not really true because even the high end top of the line Samsung QD-OLED TVs have ads on the home screen if you connect Internet. If you want the latest display technology, your only options are Smart TV with ads, or spending 10x the price for a commercial display that nobody will actually sell you.
They can’t show you ads if you never connect them to the internet
The best solution os actually to keep the decoder smarts separate from the actual displaying of image because those two things have different life-cycles and different costs.
A decent TV screen will last you decades and work fine at doing what it does, with the only pressures to upgrade being video connectors - which change maybe once every 2 decades and usually you can use adaptors to give them another 2 decades or so of life - higher resolutions - which make no difference unless you have a very large screen, something which requires a large living room to view at the optimal distance and in which case what really drove you to replace it was not obsolescence - and screen tech advances -, which is another of those “every couple of decades it changes but the old ones are generally still fine” kind of thing.
Media Playing, on the other hand, has its life-cycle linked to video encoding and compression which change every 5 years or so and either you have a seriously overpowered generic CPU there (which smart TVs do not) or you have hardware decoding, and in the latter case new video encodings require new hardware with support for them.
So your TV with built-in decoding - i.e. “smart” TV - will need to be replaced more frequently driven by the need to support new digital formats, even though the part that costs the most by far - the screen - is still perfectly good. On the other hand if your media player functionality is separate, all you have to replace with some frequency is the much cheaper media box whilst only replacing the much more expensive screen side once in a blue moon.
Smart TVs are great for manufacturers because they force people to replace the TV much more often hence they sell 2 or 3 times more TVs, but they’re in the mid and long term a really bad option for actual buyers who needlessly spend, much more on TVs, not to mention Ecologically with all those perfectly good screens ending up in landfills because the $20 worth of “smarts” tied to a $1000 screen is not capable of handling new video encoding formats.
Many of the cheap TVs with Roku built in require you to set up a Roku account before you can even use the HDMI inputs. After setting up your account you can disconnect it from the internet and use it as a normal TV, but I spent a while trying to get around this block. In the end I had to create a Roku account.
That sounds awful; hopefully you were at least able to poison their DB with a fake name and a 10minutemail (or similar) account?
Basically, though I tend to use GMX email aliases for these sorts of useless signups. I don’t want some temporary email account to be all that’s needed to get control over my TV should I ever connect it to the internet again.
As opposed to the old days when it was an analog billboard
There were no ads in the UI of the TV though.
Start buying commercial displays. Cost more but will be about as close to a dumb tv. You will have to provide your own smart device for apps …
This is what I did. Works fine for my needs. My older relatives hate it but they rarely come over.
Commercial displays are not tvs. Quite often the refresh rate is terrible and you cannot watch action movies on it, because it was designed to show static billboard ads.
Not to mention if you want an OLED display, any sort of commercial variant of that will be $10000+ and marketed to Hollywood producers and other creative industries that care about color accuracy.
Hospitality TV
Or hear me out… Just don’t give it an internet connection.
Some TVs listen for open networks and use those, so if there is one near you your TV could sneak out either way.
If it doesn’t have the passphrase for wifi, how is it going to connect? I rarely see unsecured wifis around neighborhoods anymore. For copper/fiber, you’re not going to hook it up to keep it disocnnected.
It’s not that simple.
Here’s an example: Amazon could outfit all of their delivery vehicles with open wifi networks. Every Alexa device calls home when a truck drives by.
Here’s another: you may have a guest wifi, or your neighbor, or their neighbor. All it needs is one.
Yeah of course there are solutions to faraday cage it away from the world. But all they need is one connection. You have to stop it forever.
Guest wifi does not mean it is unsecure, it is simply just another logical network. Sure amazon could equip their trucks with wifi I suppose and maybe some TVs would have good connection to update fast enough while a truck is there without a lot of tcp retransmits due to lack of efficient lack of penetration but that’s not going effect all brands and surely it isn’t something that is currently happening in a large effect.
You could talk about hypotheticals in the future sure but they aren’t going to scan for these magical “network ports” that are just hanging around the ether. It needs to have a connection and one that is reasonable in quality and time.
If it doesn’t have the passphrase for wifi
Open networks have no passphrase. Otherwise they wouldn’t be open. And yes they’re less common but it doesn’t mean you’re neighbor can’t set one up at any given time.
open the back of the TV, locate the arial on the board and scratch away the traces leading to it.
Cheaper TV’s sometimes won’t function without one.
And it’s driving up the price of commercial flatscreens.
Since at one point in the near future I’ll be shopping for a TV, is there such a thing as a good as a good quality panel TV that is dumb? I intend to hook it up to a PC or a set top box. Alternatively, is there a smart TV that can be easily bootloader unlocked and rooted without consequences (similarly to how a Pixel phone can)? I realise this is even more niche than unlocking/rooting a phone, but still, someone might have ideas.
My LG OLED TV can be configured to load directly into a HDMI input. I keep it disconnected from wifi at all times. I never see the smartTV OS. It’s probably the best option because OLED panels are the best current display technology.
I use an AppleTV as an external media box for all my needs. But the same would apply for an Android box or HTPC setup etc.
Get a non-consumer TV if you can. They’re more expensive but are actually but to last, have way more features and you can swap in whatever compute board you want so you’re not stuck with an underpowered Android TV board.
I’m very interested in this. Any suggestions as far as specific models to look at, or where to source one without needing a fancy business vendor connection? Maybe a trustworthy review site to compare some options?
I’ve not looked into it much other than seeing it in this video by Jeff Geerling and making a mental note for next time I’m in the market for a TV but it may be of interest to you.
I’m sorry I can’t provide more details than that, but it’s basically a digital signage TV designed to run 24/7 for years, and as such is actually built without the absolute bargain basement parts that go into consumer units.
3000 dollars
Guess I’ll continue to use my old computer and an hdmi connection to a physically Wi-Fi disabled smart tv. I understand why it costs what it does but fuck.
It was maybe 7 years ago now, but I bought a dumb Sceptre TV and it still works great. Was only $300 at the time.
Scepter televisions are a great option, no “smart” features at all. Bought two of them about 6 years ago and no issues.
I just bought a smart TV, updated the software, and disconnected it from the Internet, only allowing it access to our local Plex server. No ads and no stupid suggestions. It’s great.
Might be cheaper than a purposedly dumb TV nowadays too, despite the receiver. It’s ridicolous.
You could also try this, apparently.
Oh, that’s clever! Definitely bookmarking that for future reference.
Anyone have a non-Spez link?
Not available in all markets
Try a Spectre t.v. they’re made for digital signage. I got one and hooked it up to a media server.
Seems promising, but also seems to be an US thing. I should’ve mentioned I’m in the EU.
Ah, my bad. Sorry.
They seem to be consumer grade, but dumb. Does someone here have one? How are the refresh rates? Can I play FPS games with at least 60hz on it?
I have one. It’s 4k, which gave me some trouble from an Ubuntu media server, and the refresh rate is ~144, I believe. It cost me something like 300-400 USD.
Awesome, then I’ll probably get one. Thank you!
It’s also 60", which is absurdly large to me lol. Glad I could help, though.
I revived the old LCD my grandparents were throwing out because it had good specs and no built in ads. Tossed in a new capacitor and it was good to go, otherwise I would just not own a TV.
I would like a machine that gives me the nice clean 4k resolution without throwing unprompted notifications in my face.
What colour do you want your dragon to be?
Some combination of red, blue, and green
An impossible challenge.
