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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
(HTM) Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options
duxup wrote 20 hours 19 min ago:
I wish my apple TV could take a bunch of HDMI inputs and basically be
my HDMI switch in the Apple TV interface.
earthnail wrote 21 hours 32 min ago:
It's interesting to read the praise for Apple TV here. I didn't like
mine. My three years old Sony Bravia is really excellent, supports
Chrome Cast, Airplay etc, has a great remote control, and a fast enough
CPU that the apps don't lag. Everything is butter smooth. It's a
thoroughly enjoyable experience.
I had an Apple TV as well, but I don't use it anymore. And I otherwise
only use Apple devices. But the Apple TV I just never got warm with.
mattacular wrote 22 hours 58 min ago:
1. buy any model that meets your specs (i like TCL)
2. setup a one time use wifi network with randomized SSID and password
(hotspot from your phone works well)
3. connect your tv to it and update to latest software
4. delete the wifi config and reset that network (roll to new SSID and
password)
5. connect an apple tv set top box and never use any of the tv features
ever again
MrMember wrote 22 hours 31 min ago:
Smart TVs are so user hostile now that this doesn't work for me
personally anymore. Every TV I've seen recently always tries to get
back to the "home" screen so they can funnel you into more ads and/or
content that makes them money. If I have the TV set to the HDMI
source for my connected HTPC, turn off the TV, and turn it back on
again, it will be back on the TV's home screen. If I switch to an
HDMI source that isn't currently outputting video it will switch back
to the home screen in five seconds. I was at a friend's house over
Thanksgiving and when he tried to navigate away from the home screen
on his Vizio TV to a different HDMI input he got a confirmation
dialog box with an ad embedded in it asking him "are you SURE you
want to change inputs?" It's ridiculous.
For now I spend the extra money for "digital display" TVs that are
just dumb input for HDMI devices but I fear that someday that option
will either disappear or fall significantly behind regular TVs in
display technology.
mattacular wrote 13 hours 33 min ago:
Try TCL. I just got a second one after 6 years with a previous
model of theirs that was showing signs of death. On both this new
(Google-based OS) and old one (Roku-based OS), I have done the
steps I mentioned above. I wouldn't have bothered typing that up if
it didn't work.
Turning a HDMI device on wakes the TV and then it automatically
selects that input. I've never been to the homescreen except by
choice, and even then it is completely stock. Barebones, no ads -
it has no internet to get any.
MrMember wrote 2 hours 7 min ago:
Thanks for the recommendation! I'll check them out.
wappieslurkz wrote 1 day ago:
I just ignore all the smart features and never connect my smart TV to
the internet, and I disconnected the WiFi antennas from the main board.
I use an Apple TV to feed it live TV, series and movies via apps.
DudeOpotomus wrote 1 day ago:
this is the only way. Do not ever connect your new TV to the
internet. Never, ever.
b8 wrote 1 day ago:
Don't connect to the wifi on the tv and just use a Nvidia Shield Pro or
ugoos/Onn.
sllabres wrote 1 day ago:
I am not a HIFI/TV aficionado, but the ACR [1] thing was new to me.
I hope it is not yet important for me as I never allowed a TV access to
my LAN/WLAN. But with smart devices using accessible open WLANs to
transmit who knows. [1] /
(HTM) [1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203
(HTM) [2]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.06203
1970-01-01 wrote 1 day ago:
Want to know the best option? GO USED. You can find a 50-60 inch dumb
TV for a hundred dollars. No, it won't be UHD 4K, but it might be 3D,
and it won't pester you to connect to Wi-Fi every time you use it.
deltaburnt wrote 1 day ago:
Basically locks you out of HDR, high frame rates, VRR, or (more
importantly) new panel technology like OLED.
1970-01-01 wrote 1 day ago:
Nope.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/sony/x850d
mentos wrote 1 day ago:
Donât think it makes sense for Apple but would be cool to see them
sell dumb TV screens to hook up to an Apple TV box.
djoldman wrote 1 day ago:
For the tech-savvy, I'm not too worried about smart TVs. I just do
this:
> If you want premium image quality or sound, youâre better off using
a smart TV offline.
In the future, if they add e-sims, we'll just remove them or de-solder
or whatever.
The real risk is cars: if they start not working without cell network
connections.
lkbm wrote 1 day ago:
> The real risk is cars: if they start not working without cell
network connections.
Given how limited cell service is in a lot of the US, I think we're a
ways off from this.
djoldman wrote 22 hours 17 min ago:
I really hope so!
But also, it's unlikely I'll live long enough where keeping an
older vehicle won't be an option.
RunningDroid wrote 1 day ago:
Not too far off, apparently 5G modems on T-mobile's service can try
using StarLink now
(HTM) [1]: https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/satellite-phone-service
yojo wrote 1 day ago:
I just want a panel. Iâm already doing what the article suggests
(running a Hisense offline with a media box), but my TV still crashes
a few times a month and needs to be power-cycled/takes about a minute
to reboot.
Thereâs just no reason for this. You have one job: Take my signal
and display it. Anything else is just another place for things to go
wrong.
haarolean wrote 1 day ago:
ha good luck. they already aggressively scan and use public wi-fi
networks and have everything shipped on a chonky SoC
orangecat wrote 23 hours 41 min ago:
they already aggressively scan and use public wi-fi networks
This is commonly repeated and but as far as I can tell nobody has
actually demonstrated it.
throwaway94275 wrote 1 day ago:
there hasn't been any open wifi networks around me in over a decade
and i live in a decently populated area. that's not a thing any
more unless you're at a place of business and even then it's rare.
__MatrixMan__ wrote 1 day ago:
> we'll just remove them or de-solder or whatever
If we continue giving money to people who build malware into the
products, the malware will eventually be baked in deeply enough that
the rest of the device will refuse to operate if it can't phone home
to the ministry of truth or wherever.
Arn_Thor wrote 1 day ago:
That is inevitable. Too many people ship only on price and weâll
never reach sufficient mass
sfilmeyer wrote 1 day ago:
I feel like there's a bit of a jump from "tech-savvy" to de-soldering
things on an expensive piece of home electronics. As it stands now,
though, I agree that turning off the smart TV features seems to be
the way to go for most people.
djoldman wrote 22 hours 18 min ago:
Ha, yea it's been awhile since I've done that. Although if I was
annoyed enough I might take one apart.
scosman wrote 1 day ago:
Offline smart TVs are great. As long as they support wake over CEC,
they are close enough to a dumb display connected to an Apple TV.
I let my latest LG TV on the network, but block internet access at
the router. HomeKit integration (Siri turn off tv), Chromecast,
Airplay, and other local services all work, without the ability for
it to phone home.
b-star wrote 1 day ago:
I do this too, works great. Sometimes I cry remembering all the
money I wasted on TVâs âsmartâ features but Iâll take the
small win.
p1dda wrote 1 day ago:
Why not just buy a big monitor and use it to watch 'TV'?
rokoss21 wrote 1 day ago:
The Vizio litigation is encouraging, but hardware-level hacking is
still the most reliable way forward. Been running Linux on an old TV
with HDMI-in for years - basically a dumb display with full control.
For budget-conscious setup: even older plasma/LCD displays that predate
the "smart" era are increasingly available secondhand. Pair with a
Raspberry Pi or similar and you get a system you actually own.
nephihaha wrote 1 day ago:
I don't really watch TV now. Not scheduled TV anyway. Sometimes some
sport in a bar or whatever. I do watch YouTube and some streaming
services but old school TV never.
ZiiS wrote 1 day ago:
The fact they give you a half decent media PC whilst discounting the
monitor in the hope you give them tracking and allow them to be a
market gatekeeper; only needs to be mildly anoying in today's world.
Just plug in whatever you want and ignore it.
grvbck wrote 1 day ago:
For now. I can see a not-so-distant future where internet access is
needed for "cloud AI" to enable full 8K resolution, or where Dolby
Atmos/Eclipsa Audio/Amphi Hi-D has to be unlocked through an online
account, or where "advanced" menu settings like color calibration are
tied to a monthly subscriptionâ¦
Sure, there will probably be some alternatives from
independent/smaller manufacturers but they will inevitably be based
on older tech and/or standards, come with serious tradeoffs and so
on.
bpye wrote 1 day ago:
I have a projector, a BenQ X3000i, in my living room, with a
retractable screen. It has the plus side of not needing a dedicated
wall, but does perform poorly (vs a TV) if the room isn't darkened.
Maybe eventually I'll tie it into my home automation with some smart
curtains.
It has low latency, will do 1080p 240Hz, 4k (pixel shift) 60Hz and HDR.
Can even do 3D content if you really want...
BenQ did include an Android TV stick in the box, but you can just not
hook it up to the projector - problem solved.
JodieBenitez wrote 1 day ago:
> Best ways to find a dumb TV
I did not give my TV network access. Works fine.
idbehold wrote 1 day ago:
Manufacturers know people do this. The TV will attempt to connect to
any open network (neighbors) and I'd be shocked if they haven't at
least considered packaging them with 4G/5G antennas. You're gonna
need a Faraday Cage.
nickthegreek wrote 1 day ago:
Provide any evidence at all that this is happening.
darkwater wrote 1 day ago:
Keeping it practical and not purist, how do new smart TVs (mainly LG,
it's the brand I like the most for the hardware) act with ads in a
PiHole'd network? Does that block ads? Do they notice?
kevin061 wrote 1 day ago:
A while ago I had a discussion with my friends that it is possible that
in the future if 5G is sufficiently cheap, smart tvs come with a 5G SIM
so they can force ads and updates even if you refuse to connect it to
WiFi. I wonder if this will ever be a real thing. Either 5G, 6G or
whatever comes next.
Eggpants wrote 1 hour 58 min ago:
Real 5G canât penetrate walls so I doubt it. AT&T 5G is really 4G
so that could be added to tvâs easily.
throwaway94275 wrote 1 day ago:
I hope this happens, because with the security track record of these
companies it would mean free Internet. These would quickly become web
torrent video portals.
lobsterthief wrote 7 hours 18 min ago:
Wouldnât they just limit the bandwidth per TV based on some
hardware key?
the_mitsuhiko wrote 1 day ago:
I keep being surprised if why that is not a thing yet. Amazon
launched whispernet with ads on the discounted Kindle years ago and I
was totally predicting more companies jump on that.
ssl-3 wrote 20 hours 6 min ago:
Whispernet was a whole different thing, and it dates to the very
first Kindle.
This Kindle did not have things like idle-screen advertising. That
wasn't yet a thing yet.
These first edition devices were available with unlimited data
access (IIRC in the US via AT&T) on cellular networks without a
separate subscription. It was slow (everything was slow back
then), but it would let a person download a book or have a look at
a web page (with the very limited browsing that was possible with
e-ink and a CPU that was meant more to barely sip power than to
render megabytes of CSS and JS).
The expense of the data access was built into the one-time purchase
price, and the hope was that people having the ability to buy books
from "anywhere" would snowball into a thing that was both very
popular and profitable.
It was simple and, functionally at least, it worked very neatly:
Take new Kindle out of the box, switch it on, and download a book
with it. No wifi or PC connection or other tomfoolery needed.
That was back in 2007 -- a time when many people still had
landlines at home if they wanted to make a phone call, or a dumb
phone in their pocket if they wanted to do that on-the-go. Some
folks had Blackberries or connected Palm devices, but those things
were rare.
And the Internet, and indeed Amazon itself, was a very different
place back then. Having an Internet connection that was very
quietly always available on a Whispernet-equipped Kindle was pretty
cool at that time.
---
Sidewalk is a different kind of network. It uses consumer devices
(like Echo Dot speakers) to act as Sidewalk bridges. This
generally works at a low frequency (900MHz-ish), to provide a bit
of relatively slow, relatively long-range wireless network access
for things that are otherwise lacking it.
The present-day operation works like this: Suppose I've got some
Amazon Echo speakers scattered around my house. If a neighbor's
Internet connection is on the fritz, then their Ring doorbell can
use a tiny slice of my Internet bandwidth using Sidewalk via one of
my Echo speakers to keep itself connected to the network and
thereby still function as a doorbell.
Or, maybe their Ring doorbell is out on a post by the gate, where
their wifi coverage sucks. If it can gather up a little slice of
900MHz Internet access from anyone's near-enough Sidewalk bridge,
then they've still got a button for their gate that notifies them
on their pocket supercomputer when some visitor is waiting out
there. They don't even necessarily need to plan it this way in
order for it to Just Work.
Or, what GP was referring to: Your hypothetical new smart TV might
use the neighbors' Sidewalk-enabled device(s) to update or patch
itself, produce new ads to show you, and/or send telemetry back
home to Mother. It might do this even without you ever having
deliberately connected it to any network at all.
---
Either thing (some modern equivalent to Whispernet, or the
already-loose-in-the-wild Sidewalk system) could potentially be
utilized by smart TVs and other devices to get access to the
network and simply sidestep the oft-repeated, well-intended, and
somewhat naive mantra of "It can't have Internet access if you
never connect it!"
itopaloglu83 wrote 1 day ago:
Add a camera and microphone, and you have yourself a utopia that can
control masses.
fainpul wrote 1 day ago:
You mean dystopia, right?
thechao wrote 1 day ago:
No, you mean utopia, friend.
GlumWoodpecker wrote 1 day ago:
Depends on your point of view, whether you are the one watching,
or the one being watched, I guess :)
xg15 wrote 1 day ago:
I fear this won't even required SIM cards. I'm worried that Apple's
Find My and Amazon's Sidewalk networks are the precursors of this:
They're effectively company controlled p2p networks that lets the
company use their customers' internet access points like a commodity.
If one customer refuses to give a device access to the internet, they
could use that network to route it through the access point of
another customer.
Also, personal experience: My own ISP (in Germany) experimented with
some similar stuff a few years ago: They mandated use of their own
home routers where only they had root access. At some point, they
pushed an OTA update that made the router announce a second Wifi
network in addition to the customer's. This was meant as a public
hotspot that people walking down the street could connect to after
installing an app from the ISP and buying a ticket.
The customer that "owned" the router wasn't charged for that traffic
and the hotspot was isolated from the LAN (or at least the ISP
promised that), but it still felt intrusive to just repurpose a
device sitting in my living room as "public" infrastructure.
(The ISP initially wanted to do this on an "opt-out" basis, which
caused a public uproar thankfully. I think eventually they switched
to opt-in and then scrapped the idea entirely.)
clemiclemen wrote 21 hours 56 min ago:
The ISP named Free in France also did this a while ago.
It was fairly well implemented I think: separated from your
network, bandwidth was limited (to avoid impacting the host), you
could opt-out (which meant opting out of using the guest network),
joining the wifi was automatic if you had a cellphone with the same
ISP and it was the same "guest" network for all routers so in big
cities, you could rely only on this to access Internet.
It was stopped a few years ago when they deemed cellular network
was reliable enough to not need the guest network.
mft_ wrote 1 day ago:
> Also, personal experience: My own ISP (in Germany) experimented
with some similar stuff a few years ago: They mandated use of their
own home routers where only they had root access. At some point,
they pushed an OTA update that made the router announce a second
Wifi network in addition to the customer's. This was meant as a
public hotspot that people walking down the street could connect to
after installing an app from the ISP and buying a ticket.
Not sure if you're referring to Vodafone, but Vodafone Germany
definitely does this. You can opt out of allowing public access
via your personal router, but this opts you out of being able to
use other people's routers in the same manner.
gary_0 wrote 1 day ago:
If it had Ethernet ports I'd be tempted to just use my own wifi
router and put the ISP's Trojan horse in a Faraday cage. All
ISP-controlled hardware should be treated as just another untrusted
WAN hop.
Gabrys1 wrote 1 day ago:
These devices usually have detachable antennas, so just unscrew
them
thfuran wrote 1 day ago:
All antennas are detachable. Some can even be reattached.
xg15 wrote 23 hours 30 min ago:
"The right tool for the job"
...is sometimes a boltcutter.
xg15 wrote 1 day ago:
When I signed up with them, they were actually trying to withold
access to the config web UI from customers and then charge extra
just to enable Wifi. My response was exactly that - "fuck that"
and put my own router in front of theirs.
(That was years before the other incident - since then they had
dropped that idea and "generously" given customers access to the
config UI)
burnt-resistor wrote 1 day ago:
And it will require an uncovered camera and microphone, or it won't
display an image. Sony TVs already come with "optional image
optimization" cameras.
JamesAdir wrote 1 day ago:
Source about Sony?
burnt-resistor wrote 25 min ago:
You could've just Googled. [1] A family member's TV came with it.
(HTM) [1]: https://electronics.sony.com/tv-video/televisions/televi...
wiether wrote 1 day ago:
Chuck McGill was a visionary?
Arbortheus wrote 1 day ago:
What a horrid thoughtâ¦
You might be interested to read about the findings by Ruter, the
publicly owned transport company for Oslo. They discovered their
Chinese Yutong electric buses contained SIM cards, likely to allow
the buses to receive OTA updates, but consequentially means they
could be modified at any moment remotely. Thankfully they use
physical SIMs, so some security hardening is possible.
Of course, with eSIMs becoming more widespread, itâs not
inconceivable you could have a SoC containing a 5G modem with no real
way to disable or remove it without destroying the device itself.
(HTM) [1]: https://ruter.no/en/ruter-with-extensive-security-testing-of...
anothernewdude wrote 1 day ago:
Are dumb TVs rare? I've never bought one, just getting TVs when other
people are finished with theirs, but I'm pretty sure every one I've
owned has been a dumb TV. We just connect it to the PS4 and they've all
been the same.
zeristor wrote 1 day ago:
Absurdly although Iâm, currently paying for a BBC TV licence, I use
an Apple TV but they have not, and will not provide UHD content for it
on their streaming app.
Either I can do the stupid thing and connect my LG TV to the network,
or through various means download the UHD content, and therefore have
to manage it, especially the last watched position, or forego it.
Having ADHD, I never really watch to the end, and so rely so much on
the saved position to resume.
jan_nan wrote 1 day ago:
TV devices are a hot mess to support from a streaming perspective,
they each come with their own quirks that mean some perfectly-in-spec
encoding and packaging techniques will result in a failed playback on
some models of TV. Once a TV device _is_ supported, that support has
to be maintained typically for more than a decade until usage of that
model falls so low that dropping it from support can be justified.
It would be prohibitively costly to produce per-device renditions so
instead there is one generic rendition produced for "all smart TVs"
and another one for "UHD capable smart TVs".
Traditional TV manufacturers all work with the BBC to get their
devices certified, which is a requirement for carrying the iPlayer
app and comes with legal agreements that asset that a device _will_
be able to playback BBC content for as long as it's supported.
Because Apple like to Think Differently, they opted not to align with
the entire rest of the TV industry in standardising on MPEG-DASH
spec. They instead require all developers to stream video using the
HLS protocol. As UHD content on iPlayer is geared exclusively for
smart TVs, and all the other smart TVs support MPEG-DASH, the UHD
workflow simply never evolved the ability to target Apple's TV
devices.
reacharavindh wrote 1 day ago:
Am I missing something? I have a LG nano something TV that has many
âsmartâ features, but I never let it connect to my WiFi ever. Since
day 1 it has been hooked up to an AppleTV. Can I not buy any fancy
smart TV in 2025 and use it as a dumb HDMI display for AppleTV?
Liquix wrote 1 day ago:
the issue is that eventually SIM cards will be baked in to deliver
ads and spyware; there will be no alternatives because everyone was
fine with buying smart TVs and not connecting them to wifi.
see: Android's recent transformation into a closed platform which no
longer allows users to control devices they purchase. it's important
to fight against trends like this loudly and vehemently while we
still can.
dewey wrote 1 day ago:
Same. I have not seen the interface of my TV for years (Only the
input switching UI when switching between my Apple TV and Xbox). This
really isp pretty much a "dumb tv" with a setup like this.
cosmic_ape wrote 1 day ago:
Second that.
There were articles a year or two ago about TVs trying to connect to
any open Wi-Fi they can find, without you asking them. But hopefully
LG wouldnât go that far.
ileonichwiesz wrote 1 day ago:
At that point you just open up the back of the TV and drive a
screwdriver into the WiFi chip.
strangegecko wrote 1 day ago:
Goodbye warranty
rock_artist wrote 1 day ago:
The more I think about it I wonder why Chinese TVs using Android based
TV donât have Some GrapheneTV or basic trimmed down Android aimed to
be âdumbâ.
Unlike phones,
- if it should be air gapped then all youâd want is your HDMIs input
and remote control to work.
- nice to have: ADCs/DACs for analog AV input and audio out and any
antenna input if available.
- super nice to have: Bluetooth for passing audio out and maybe network
(Ethernet, WiFi) stack if same.
But assuming the goal is airgapped. There are less security concerns in
general,
You just want the Android TV to be lightweight and fast and donât
care itâs âstuckâ in specific version or use closed blobs.
jeroenhd wrote 1 day ago:
There's a lineageos template for Android TV. I don't think grapheneos
will ever run on something like that (it doesn't even run on phones
with ten times the security capabilities of TV SoCs) but alternative
ROMs are available. There's also KDE Plasma if you want to go the
non-Android route, though you'll struggle to find good support for
that.
One problem with that approach is that you'll lose access to DRM'd
contents, so while the official Netflix/HBO/Prime apps will install
on lineageos, their video quality will be terrible or they will
refuse to work.
There are a bunch of Google TV variants (brands like TCL and Philips)
that will let you turn on "basic TV mode" ( [1] ), disabling pretty
much everything other than displaying content.
As for why the Chinese TVs don't have a dumb mode, I think it's
because the Chinese market is full of devices crammed to the brim
with smart features, so smart TVs are sort of expected these days.
(HTM) [1]: https://support.google.com/googletv/answer/10408998?hl=en
kazinator wrote 1 day ago:
About commercial displays:
> A spokesperson from Panasonic Connect North America told me that
digital signage displays are made to be on for 16 to 24 hours per day
and with high brightness levels to accommodate âretail and public
environments.â
Some TV's err on the side of being too dim for daytime viewing in a
bright room; that could only be a plus.
If it's too bright in a way that can't be turned down, you could always
DIY a tinted shield to put over it for evening viewing. We used to use
things like that over CRT monitors once upon a time.
> Their rugged construction and heat management systems make them
ideal for demanding commercial use, but these same features can result
in higher energy consumption, louder operation, and limited
compatibility with home entertainment systems.
I've never heard a commercial flat screen display make a sound.
> Panasonicâs representative also pointed out that real TVs offer
consumer-friendly features for watching TV, like âhome-optimized
picture tuning, simplified audio integration, and user-friendly menu
interfaces.â
That person doesn't understand how this would be used at all. The user
hooking up their streaming box to the display panel only needs the
panel to do video (e.g. via HDMI cable). The display is not involved in
audio at all.
I use a 1/8" plug stereo cable going straight from the Android box to a
pair of RCA jacks in the speaker system. Bluetooth could be used but
the wire has lower latency, 100% reliability, and not using BT means
that the speakers are available for pairing if someone wants to use
them from a phone. They have a remote control that can switch between
two copper line inputs, and BT. The TV's volume is kept at 1%; it would
make no difference if it had no speakers.
kazinator wrote 1 day ago:
> Westinghouseâs dumb TVs max out at 32 inches and 720p resolution
Then why mention the pitiful shit? That describes a LCD TV I had in
2004, one of the first.
> but some of them also have a built-in DVD player.
Well, that changes everything; I want one now, LOL ...
bradley13 wrote 1 day ago:
I'm a huge fan of projectors. With large TVs, you have a huge black
wall when you aren't watching. With a projector you can have a
pull-down screen that disappears when you don't need it. Or leave it
down - it's white, and a lot less visually intrusive.
globular-toast wrote 1 day ago:
The only problem with projectors is there's not much choice if you're
sensitive to DLP rainbow effect. I haven't tried one of the newer
ones with a faster colour wheel, though. It means I've had to go JVC
DLA projectors, but these are now ridiculously expensive and I can't
see myself ever spending that much on, well, anything.
sod wrote 1 day ago:
Yes, projectors with 3LCD tech is what you are looking for. They
produce all 3 colors at once via 3 distinct lcds inside the chassis
and mix them ahead of time. There are a few to choose from, but
they all cost above 3000.
The reason why projectors don't use a single rgb lcd (like
monitors) to produce the color is the same why all sub 5000$
projectors use pixel shift to fake 4k resolution: Too much light is
blocked by the lcd itself if the individual pixels become too
small.
bpye wrote 1 day ago:
I am somewhat sensitive to the effect and have been okay with an
X3000i. If I scan my eyes across a black screen with white text, I
can still perceive the effect - but it's nowhere near as bad as
some older DLP projectors.
d--b wrote 1 day ago:
says the blog with tens of ads and hundreds of trackers
lanfeust6 wrote 1 day ago:
Is Ars going to install and run ads on your device, and view your
locally stored information? No.
guidedlight wrote 1 day ago:
Iâm fairly certain that Sony TVâs ask you where you want to use it
as a Smart TV or a Dumb TV when setting it up.
asdff wrote 1 day ago:
It isnât even the smart tv prospect that concerns me with new tvs. My
current TV is technically a smart TV but you canât tell. It has never
been connected to the internet.
My concern is the framerate. Some of these TVs, even in the 1080p era,
will turn a cinematic masterpiece into feeling like a cheap soap opera.
Iâm not even sure what to look for to avoid this issue. Limiting
myself to maybe 48hz tvs?
fwip wrote 1 day ago:
You just need to turn it off in the settings.
class3shock wrote 1 day ago:
I'm less bothered by the ever present smart tv and more bothered that
there is no way to just turn on the tv and go straight to input from a
certain port. Would love to know TV's that just do that. My old Samsung
constantly forces me to click through sources and out of smart features
to get to the hdmi from my computer everytime I turn it on.
burlesona wrote 1 day ago:
My recent Sony TV does this.
But also I pretty much never use the TV button to turn it on, I click
a button on one of the connected devices to wake it and the TV turns
itself on with that input selected. Even if itâs already on, if I
want to switch from one device to another I can just wake the other
device and it will switch inputs for me. It works really well, I
almost never have to use the input selector and it just does the
right thing reliably.
Suppafly wrote 1 day ago:
Is the input device on prior to turning the tv on? Some of them will
automatically switch if an input is on or gets switched on.
abdullahkhalids wrote 1 day ago:
I just bought a LG 50" UA7000 [1] that goes straight to HDMI on
turning on. I am using it as a additional screen for my laptop. I am
hoping using one screen two feet away and one screen 6 feet away will
preserve my eyesight a bit longer.
A minor problem is that it displays "Turning on AI voice features"
every time I turn it on, but those features are not actually turned
on. It probably tries to, but since I never connected the TV to the
internet, this fails. Still have to figure out how to get rid of the
message.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/lg-50-ua7000-4k-uhd-hdr...
saint_yossarian wrote 1 day ago:
My Samsung QN90B does that just fine, it's only a few years old. IIRC
there's a setting somewhere in the menu to not boot to the home
screen. It also doesn't nag me about anything, although I only enable
wifi when I want to update.
saint_yossarian wrote 1 day ago:
Just checked now: the setting is General & Privacy -> Start Screen
Options -> Start with Smart Hub Home.
duffyjp wrote 1 day ago:
We have two Hisense TVs that both allow this. One is Roku based and
the other Google TV. Neither is connected to wifi. Iâd recommend
the Google flavor, it has a lot more control over the settings and
will auto suspend in a reasonable period if no input is being sent.
The Rokuâs minimum auto suspend is 4 HOURS.
They were cheap and the picture quality is great. Not OLED level, but
jeeze I had to share a 27â CRT for my SNES as a kidâ
noveltyaccount wrote 1 day ago:
Samsung had a hidden hospitality menu, or hotel mode, search for how
to access it for your model. You can have it go right to an input on
power on.
dizhn wrote 1 day ago:
Getting an hospitality variant tv might be an option too. I have a
Samsung one which does have some smart features but they are mostly
backend related. I think there's only YouTube on the user facing
side. I got it because they are support to be better TVs for the
money but it was such a huge pain to set up that I wouldn't do it
again.
Gigachad wrote 1 day ago:
HDMI CEC should be able to to turn on TVs direct to the input. Sadly
few desktops seem to support it.
pabs3 wrote 1 day ago:
Apparently "almost no PC GPU has hardware support for CEC"
according to Arch. Wonder if that is outdated and modern GPUs do?
(HTM) [1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/HDMI-CEC
aprilnya wrote 1 day ago:
This is still pretty much the case. There are ways to do it (i.e.
adapters that sit between your HDMI cable and GPU) but itâs
wonky.
moltopoco wrote 1 day ago:
The Steam Machine will support CEC, hopefully other PC vendors will
take note and adopt it.
adambb wrote 1 day ago:
LG (UT8000 at least) TVs have an option to default to last used
input, that works reliably.
wmf wrote 1 day ago:
Roku has this feature.
chaostheory wrote 1 day ago:
Will it be smart if you donât connect it to the internet? Am I
missing something?
symbogra wrote 1 day ago:
My wife and I have been wondering about exactly this question and are
on the market for a new TV, and this list of options is really sad.
720p? 32"? Yeesh
djmips wrote 1 day ago:
there was a 55" 4K option but your point stands. Yeesh.
aceazzameen wrote 1 day ago:
We're running a solution that isn't perfect and isn't for everyone. We
have a nice Sony Android TV along with a pihole. But on the TV itself I
installed f-droid and netguard. Netguard's UI sucks on a TV, but it's
workable. I use it to block Internet access to everything including
Google. Only a few streaming apps have internet access. There was some
trial and error with a handful of dependencies too.
If I need to update an app, I temporarily allow Google services access.
All the streaming apps work well, except for HBO Max which takes a few
minutes to load. I suspect it has a long timeout/retry count for
something I'm blocking. But once it loads, it's fine.
I also use a different and basic home launcher so we can open the apps
we want immediately, without having to deal with shifting
algorithm-based icons. But even if we use the Google launcher, it's
mostly empty and free of ads because it can't connect. It does still
capture what I recently watch though.
Overall it's a decent experience, mainly because we're not being
bombarded by more ad algorithms.
pabs3 wrote 1 day ago:
Hopefully this lawsuit will mean people can modify the software on
their smart TVs; replace it with a Linux distro running KDE Bigscreen
or similar.
(HTM) [1]: https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
bitwize wrote 1 day ago:
The cheat code is Sceptre dumb TVs from Wal-Mart's web site. I want
Hackernews to know about this so that Sceptre and Wal-Mart can get
sales and know that there's a substantial market for these devices, not
shrug their shoulders and go "we may as well take these off the market
and sell enshittified crap instead; it's not like our customers know or
care about the difference."
Marsymars wrote 1 day ago:
Iâd be in the market but walmart.ca doesnât list any Sceptre TVs.
(Nor does any other Canadian retailer.)
stockresearcher wrote 1 day ago:
I think they are selling off old stock and exiting the TV business.
Searching various sites in the US shows only a basic 50â 4K TV.
A few years ago, they had a very wide variety of offerings - I
bought a 65â 4K dumb TV from them. Amazon (US) shows a wide
variety of available-to-buy computer monitors, so that is probably
their focus at the moment. Itâs probably a lot more lucrative.
eggsome wrote 1 day ago:
Are there any hobby projects to hack/replace the controller board to
make a new/fancy TV into a dumb tv?
Would be nice to be able to use a new OLED panel like that...
mrandish wrote 1 day ago:
If you already have a "smart TV" of some kind, one strategy is to block
it from having Internet access at your router and then use an Android
TV based streaming box/stick or other external source for all content
(OTA tuner, 4K Blu-Ray player, game console, etc). It's pretty easy to
side load apps like Kodi and SmartTube on Android TV (a YouTube client
with ad blocking, other features and zillion UX improvements).
robmsmt wrote 1 day ago:
Whatâs wrong with never configuring the WiFi for it?
aprilnya wrote 23 hours 20 min ago:
Connecting it to Wifi means you can use Airplay, Chromecast,
Miracast..
Grazester wrote 1 day ago:
...Not a damn thing.
Makes you wonder if people on here connect their smart tv to the
net just to find a complicated solution to make it dumb again.
Someone is going to run in here talking about how smart TV's
randomly connect themselves to wifi, which is absolutely nonsense.
HN things I guess.
gbear605 wrote 1 day ago:
It depends on the manufacturer, but a lot of new ones show pop
ups until you connect to a network
mastazi wrote 1 day ago:
I have the exact setup shown towards the end of the article - HTPC and
K400 keyboard/touchpad. I have tried all "smart" platforms in the past,
and this setup is an order of magnitude better in everything. I used to
have issues where a specific content provider doesn't have an app for
my type of smart TV[1], this is no longer an issue because I just use a
browser to access anything. And I can browse the web when I'm not
watching something[2] (in fact I'm using my HTPC right now as I write
this comment).
The only change I had to make starting from a "standard" Linux UI is
bumping the screen zoom level to 150%. This may vary depending on your
TV size and how far your couch is from your TV.
Building the HTPC was very cheap, I just boughs a horizontal
form-factor case, and used spare "donor" parts coming from our
household PCs after upgrades.
[1][2]For comparison, the only streaming platform that had all apps I
wanted was Apple TV, but that one doesn't have a browser.
athrun wrote 1 day ago:
the big issue with this setup is that most streaming platforms
wonât give you multi-channel audio via the browser on Linux
systems. Some might also limit the video quality.
On Windows, it used to be different, but lately Iâve observed the
sameâex: Netflix seems to limit the streaming quality even with
Edge.
asdff wrote 1 day ago:
If you really care about fidelity youâd skip the streaming and
either have a collection of new and used blurays, rip blu rays from
the library, or pirate bluray rips from other people.
No one offers actual fidelity on the streaming platforms. They
consider cost to them to serve content and assume you donât care
enough to seek alternatives.
tuna74 wrote 2 hours 6 min ago:
Some movies like Avangers End Game are presented in 16X9 Dolby
Vision on Disney+ vs 1X2.35 HDR10 on UHD Blu-ray. You can look up
comparisons on Youtube if you want to.
So it is not always the case that the UHD disk is better in all
aspects.
komali2 wrote 1 day ago:
> Any display or system you end up using needs HDCP 2.2 compliance to
play 4K or HDR content via a streaming service or any other
DRM-protected 4K or HDR media, like a Blu-ray disc.
This plus all the notes below about how various apps won't stream 4k in
various circumstances depending on platform or web browser just lend
further credence to the idea that it's best to say fuck it and deploy a
jellyfin instance and sail the high seas. Or at least rip blu rays.
I mean why would I pay all these streaming services for such subpar
service?
disambiguation wrote 1 day ago:
I'm surprised no one has mentioned that KDE revived the Plasma
Bigscreen project. No idea on the ETA but assuming all goes well I can
see it becoming my daily driver very quickly.
(HTM) [1]: https://plasma-bigscreen.org/get/
IshKebab wrote 1 day ago:
The problem with open source TV solutions like that is that they
never support legal streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney+ and so
on.
baobun wrote 7 hours 25 min ago:
I think you got that backwards.
Acrobatic_Road wrote 1 day ago:
I'm failing to see a problem with that.
Spivak wrote 22 hours 4 min ago:
Live sports / tv is the one you can't really work around when
your device doesn't have DRM support.
simonmales wrote 1 day ago:
Savage, but accurate.
But I argue for these projects to have a long tail, they need
revenue.
A few have tried by selling hardware, but it never lands
mainstream enough.
moltopoco wrote 1 day ago:
SteamOS/Bazzite also makes it pretty easy to integrate flatpaks into
its gamepad-oriented UI. I hope that leads to the development of more
apps that work with a remote control or gamepad, which would then
also work on Plasma Bigscreen.
pabs3 wrote 1 day ago:
Presumably locked bootloaders on smart TVs are a problem that would
block usage of that project?
Dementor430 wrote 1 day ago:
It's a nice starting point. There are other options such as used
Flanders Scientific or Sony Studio Screens. But those are usually
rather expensive. I would recommend to buy them on Ebay if anything.
ynac wrote 1 day ago:
I've been on projectors for 10 years. Never even had to own a smart
TV.
j45 wrote 1 day ago:
It's always best long term to attach your own smarts to a tv.
That can be as simple as an Apple / Android TV, or more.
QuiEgo wrote 1 day ago:
The is the modern version of "ditch your cable company's horrible DVR
for a TiVO". What's old is new again, sadly.
PaulHoule wrote 1 day ago:
As a Plex user I'd recommend a used last-gen game console as a TV
source. In my AV room upstairs I've had an XBOX ONE S for a long time
and more recently I got a PS4 Pro for the spare room downstairs -- both
at Gamestop. I have some games for both of them but I am more likely
to game on Steam, Steam Deck or mobile.
Every Android-based media player I've had tried just plain sucks, the
NVIDIA Shield wasn't too bad but at some point the controller quit
charging. You can still get a game console with a built-in Blu-Ray
player too and it's nice to have one box that does that as well as
being an overpowered for streaming.
I have a HDHomeRun hooked up to a small antenna pointed at Syracuse
which does pretty well except for ABC, sometimes I think about going
up on the roof and pointing the small one at Binghamton and pointing a
large one at Syracuse but I am not watching as much OTA as I used to.
It's nice though being able to watch OTA TV on either TV, any computer,
tablets, phones, as well as the Plex Pass paying for the metadata for
a really good DVR side-by-side with all my other media.
As for TVs I go to the local reuse center and get what catches my eye,
my "monitor" I am using right now is a curved Samsung 55 inch, I just
brought home a plasma that was $45 because I always wanted a plasma. I
went through a long phase where people just kept dropping off cheap TVs
at my home, some of which I really appreciated (a Vizio that was
beautifully value engineered) and some of which sucked. [1]
[1] ... like back in the 1980s everybody was afraid someone would break
into your home and take your TV but for me it is the other way around
neilv wrote 1 day ago:
Seconded. I've been doing a game console with monitor or dumb-TV for
ages (PS2 Slim, PS3 Slim, PS4 Slim, PS4 Pro, PS5 Slim).
I also use this for occasional gaming, or I would've stuck with the
PS3 Slim or PS4 Slim. Both of which would mount pretty nicely, with
a VESA bracket, to the back of a pre-smart formerly top-of-the-line
1080p Sony Bravia TV (like I use currently with the PS5 Slim).
Were I not in minimalism culling mode of personal belongings right
now (in case the current job search moves me cross-country), I'd be
stockpiling a backup or two of this workhorse dumb-TV.
Forgeties79 wrote 1 day ago:
Honestly my Xbox one S might be my favorite console Iâve ever
owned. Certainly my most versatile.
wltr wrote 1 day ago:
Do you mind elaborating on plasmas? I have entirely missed this
technology, and wonder whatâs about it.
bookofjoe wrote 23 hours 46 min ago:
I paid $5,000 in 2007 for the best TV you could buy at the time:
Pioneer Kuro Elite 50â 1080p plasma. Iâm still using it as my
only TV. For the past 5 years Iâve been looking to
upgrade/replace it with a state-of-the-art top-of-the-line 4k
OLED/micro-OLED/quantum dot/etc. â but when I go to look at
current screens, none match the almost 3D depth and beauty of my
plasma display. So, Iâm patiently waiting for my 18-year-old TV
to stop working â but much to my amazement itâs never ever
needed service!
Edit: Smart TVs appeared in 2007-8; mine did not offer this
âfeature.â
PaulHoule wrote 1 day ago:
Deep blacks, smooth motion, wide viewing angle. Most people would
say OLEDs are better, but some still say the motion is smoother on
plasmas.
vitaflo wrote 23 hours 39 min ago:
Motion is 100% better on Plasma because OLED's are just a
stuttering mess at 24p because of instant response time. People
love OLED blacks but the stuttering makes all of them look like
total ass.
wltr wrote 1 day ago:
What about their energy consumption? Arenât they much hungrier?
dpark wrote 1 day ago:
Power hungry and heavy as hell. I had a 55â plasma that
weighed about 150lb with the base.
Marsymars wrote 1 day ago:
What does a last-gen game console offer over an Apple TV if you don't
care about games?
joombaga wrote 1 day ago:
A DVD/Blu-ray/CD player and a digital TV tuner.
PaulHoule wrote 1 day ago:
I think it costs less too, whereas a new or used PS5 costs more
but doesn't add a lot of value -- there are roughly 15 exclusive
games for the PS5 so it's not compelling if you have a gaming PC,
but it is a nice package to sit next to your TV that does a lot
and can stream games from the gaming PC. Personally I like a PS4
controller better than the Apple TV thing.
joombaga wrote 1 day ago:
The PS5 unfortunately doesn't do DVDs or CDs though.
asdff wrote 1 day ago:
The launch edition doesnât? Iâm surprised vendors even
sell a bluray drive that doesnât have that capability. I
guess sony wanted to cut every cent off they couldâ¦
taxmeifyoucan wrote 1 day ago:
For a hacker news article, it misses the crucial option - hacking a
smart TV! I have LG OLED jailbroken using rootmy.tv, it was pretty
trivial. It's basically a linux computer with a huge screen, you can
customize it, SSH into it, map any commands to the remote, etc.
Before I only used monitor, simple DP/HDMI input is all I wanted. But
being able to take full control of the tv and connect it with other
devices in the house I would normally get Rpi for is pretty convenient!
gala8y wrote 5 hours 17 min ago:
Did you know that a not jailbroken smart TV would spy on your HDMI,
if connected to the network? I did not.
(HTM) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45737312
immibis wrote 5 hours 36 min ago:
Unfortunately, this is Hacker (founder of the next AirBNB) News and
not Hacker (one who tinkers with devices) News
port11 wrote 7 hours 22 min ago:
Sadly, modern Samsungs use signed Tizen and there are no roots/hacks
available! Shame.
SilverElfin wrote 16 hours 45 min ago:
Whatâs the difference between that and just using the LG TV without
any of the smart features? Like if you donât connect it to the
internet and only hook up something else through HDMI, isnât it the
same?
gosub100 wrote 23 hours 45 min ago:
I have a no-name brand smart tv and it runs an OS called Tizen, and
with a very little bit of googling, you can enable developer mode and
install 3rd party apps on it. It probably doesn't solve the
"spying-on-you" part, but it is nice to have the option of more apps.
upfrog wrote 23 hours 46 min ago:
Jailbreaking is definitely an option, but there is value in spending
money to provide a market signal instead.
ori_b wrote 1 day ago:
That still gives money to the people producing this garbage.
broof wrote 1 day ago:
I donât know the finances, but I wouldnât be surprised if their
margins are low enough that their profit comes from advertising and
data gathering post sale. So all this bloatware and advertising is
subsidizing a high quality product and if you can strip out the
unwanted stuff youâre probably getting a good deal at the expense
of the company
ori_b wrote 23 hours 20 min ago:
You're showing the company that shoving advertising and data
gathering into products will help them make products that sell.
What you buy is what companies put out into the world.
autoexec wrote 21 hours 48 min ago:
Often what you buy is either all you can afford or all that
that has been made available to you. There are plenty of
companies, industries even, which refuse to give consumers what
they'd prefer simply because it's more profitable for them not
to. Too often consumers are left with choosing the best of
terrible options or just making due with what they can can.
ori_b wrote 20 hours 33 min ago:
Which is why making this trash profitable for them is a
problem.
Teknomadix wrote 1 day ago:
It took a bit of extra effort but `faultmanager-autoroot` script
worked on my LG WebOS Smart Monitor
mikepurvis wrote 1 day ago:
Iâve been pretty happy with the smart apps on my LG OLED; itâs
got the streaming things I want including jellyfin. Really the only
one missing is steam link.
sander1095 wrote 1 day ago:
Have you tried moonlight? An alternative to steam link. You can use
install it on the lg tv by sideloading the app.
Alternatively, you can plug in a Raspberry Pi that runs steam link
:)
steine65 wrote 19 hours 43 min ago:
My LG C2 hardware isn't powerful enough to stream higher than
60hz at 1080p, if I remember correctly. It also needs a LAN cord
for consistency since the tv wifi adapter is not good. Instead I
put moonlight on my steam deck and plugged that into the tv.
mikepurvis wrote 1 day ago:
Oh yeah Iâm aware of various âplug in a thingâ options,
just thinking it wild be nice to have to, particularly if a
single controller paired to the TV itself could operate the outer
shell as well as Xbox and steam streaming.
pxc wrote 1 day ago:
Can you actually replace the firmware with an open-source,
privacy-respecting one? If you're still left running all the same
proprietary background "services" and telemetry, I don't see how this
kind of hack relates to any of the reasons for preferring a dumb TV.
bee_rider wrote 1 day ago:
Agreed.
This âproprietary telemetryâ is basically malware, just, it was
put on the thing at the factory. Once a system is fully rooted by
malware, the least-bad option is to nuke it entirely and install
from scratch.
In this context where the locked-down device probably also
doesnât have a fully open source kernel and drivers, this becomes
a bit tricky. Better just to use a device that doesnât have
malware on it in the first place.
albert_e wrote 1 day ago:
I want the ability to add my own picture-in-picture display or
overlay of text and other dynamic content.
Example: watching a movie but want the live score of a sports match
scraped from a public website to be displayed in a corner.
OR while watching a sports match -- i want a overlay feed of text
from a chat stream for a select web source
Looking forward for some public experiments / open projects in this
space i could leverage. Dont have the skills to attempt it myself
from scratch.
afavour wrote 1 day ago:
Honestly your best bet is going to be buying a mini PC and hooking
it up to any TV of your choice as the only input. Most bespoke
hardware is too locked down to make anything like that possible.
andrepd wrote 1 day ago:
How would you block ads on such a TV? The problem is you still cannot
connect it to the internet without unknown privacy intrusion... Maybe
to the LAN only? But then it's usefulness is still limited.
nolok wrote 1 day ago:
Pi hole is enough for me on a modern Samsung
andrepd wrote 1 day ago:
So, entirely orthogonal to the issue of rooting the TV?
duskdozer wrote 1 day ago:
hosts file block?
andrepd wrote 1 day ago:
Block what? Which domains? How do you know what the TV will
connect to?
dh2022 wrote 23 hours 52 min ago:
Block everything except for what you want. For e.g. block
everything but Netflix.
prmoustache wrote 18 hours 29 min ago:
It can be complicated when streaming companies use same cloud
vendors and thus share same ip ranges as the traffic you want
to protect yourself from.
amelius wrote 1 day ago:
For the real hackers: [1] Global Panel Exchange Center
(HTM) [1]: https://www.panelook.com/
ssl-3 wrote 21 hours 28 min ago:
Holy Toledo.
That's like Alibaba, except for small(ish) quantities of LCDs of
any possible description.
_pdp_ wrote 1 day ago:
I was thinking the same. While it is not for everyone, hacking the TV
to make the dumb is possible.
whatsupdog wrote 1 day ago:
I have 2 LG OLED TVs, different sizes. Rootmytv failed to root both
of them. I forgot which step and which error it was giving, but I
tried everything including factory reset etc. I'm glad it's working
for some people.
scoot wrote 1 day ago:
The first line of the homepage says "RootMyTV (v1/v2) has been
patched for years, and your TV is almost certainly not
vulnerable.", so that's hardly surprising
taxmeifyoucan wrote 1 day ago:
What I didn't mention is that I specifically looked for older TV
on the second hand market to find a hackable model.
I mean, I didn't wanted to buy a brand new one anyway, it's very
expensive and I don't need latest AI features. I found a year old
model with firmware that was listed as supported by the jailbreak
at the time
wltr wrote 1 day ago:
Iâd do exactly as you did. Itâs pity it didnât work for
you. Iâm on the market to buy a TV (not hurrying though), so
Iâm not sure what to do here. Iâd like to have Dolby Vision
(otherwise why would I want a TV if my computer display is good
enough for everything else), so perhaps that worsens things. As
otherwise Iâd just pick any TV, even FullHD (not 4K), and
even not smart (attaching some SBC with Kodi to the back). But
ideally Iâd prefer to jailbreak it and have Kodi installed
without any extra device. Now Iâm puzzled whether these lists
of âcompatibleâ TVs are trustworthy.
jader201 wrote 1 day ago:
> It's basically a linux computer with a huge screen
Why would I want a Linux computer with a huge screen?
I just want a huge screen.
Iâll provide my own connected devices, independent of the screen.
ranguna wrote 1 day ago:
Well, you can make it a PC and then turn it off, I guess. Then let
the rest of us have all the fun.
jader201 wrote 1 day ago:
It sounds like you still want a smart TV, just with control.
Which is fine.
But for many people, we just want a monitor, maybe with speakers
(I personally am fine also separating this).
I prefer separation of concerns â if I want to attach a
computer to my TV, Iâll do that as a search device.
Why have a dependency on the TV hardware, when I can attach
upgradable parts?
ranguna wrote 6 hours 46 min ago:
> But for many people, we just want a monitor,
> you can make it a PC and then turn it off
TV manufactories can get the best of both worlds: The people
that want smart TVs, get a smart TV. The people that don't want
a smart TV, can disable the smart TV features. Manufactors make
one model and sell to both market segments.
Why should your preferences impose on the ones that don't want
what you want?
I guess the preferred way would be for manufactors to have add
a feature where the tv prompts you if you want to enable smart
features when you boot the tv for the first time, but it's a
bit difficult when manufactors get more money when they have
these features enabled by default.
gosub100 wrote 23 hours 41 min ago:
Because if you own a TV manufacturing company, you can sell
more TVs if they have more features. You can get more features
by including a linux SBC and integrating it. In fact, some of
the paid-app makers will even _pay you_ for this "real estate".
You could make a dumb-tv, but you wouldn't sell as many and you
would have to charge more.
pessimizer wrote 1 day ago:
A monitor has a processor in it that is running an OS and
software. These are digital devices. The nit you're picking is
silly.
If you want to buy a bare LCD panel, they're cheap. But you're
going to have to add a processor to it that runs an OS (which
you're free to write yourself, along with the driver) in order
for it to understand any input. All that slapped together is
what we call a monitor, or a television.
If you want an analog television, they'll pay you to haul it
off from wherever you see it, but you're going to have to add
an external computer to it in order to process the digital
information that you want to display into waveforms that you
can push over coaxial cables.
Not wanting a "smart tv" means people don't want a smartphone
for a television, an OS that they don't have any control over.
If you want to make up another definition, you're going to have
to set limits to acceptable RAM, clock speed, number of
processors, and I don't know why you would waste your time
doing that. The number, however, will never be zero for any of
these things.
ssl-3 wrote 21 hours 50 min ago:
It's not necessary for a display to have an operating system.
They make fixed-function chips in factories every day that do
stuff like convert video signals from one format to another
(including formats that LCD panels can deal with).
Like the TFP401. For illustration, here is one on a board,
ready to plug into an LCD panel and use for whatever: [1] It
doesn't run an OS. It's barely even programmable, and the
programmability it does have relates only to configuring
pre-defined hardware functions. It doesn't have an
instruction set. It can't add 1+1.
But it can bridge the gap between a consumer device that
produces video and a fairly bare LCD panel. It's a very much
a single-tasker.
(Do any of the current crop of consumer-oriented televisions
and computer monitors use this kind of simple pathway? Most
assuredly not, which is the complaint that brought us here to
begin with.
But these pathways exist anyway. It's completely possible to
to create an entire video display and house it in a
nice-looking package, put it in a retail box, and sell it on
store shelves without involving an operating system. It's
not a technological limitation.)
(HTM) [1]: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2218
taxmeifyoucan wrote 1 day ago:
I feel you, that's exactly why I was using only monitors before! I
got convinced to go for this as an acceptable compromise with much
more control than some proprietary backend.
zeristor wrote 1 day ago:
Begs the question, how long before smart monitors.
shantara wrote 1 day ago:
Unfortunately, they already exist - the M-series smart
monitors, made by Samsung (who else?). They made a splash a few
months ago when they started showing popups over peopleâs
screen content nagging them to update or register for some
service during the normal monitor-like usage
stravant wrote 1 day ago:
Why wouldn't you want it to be a computer? Then it can be connected
to your devices AND also do the job itself in a situation where
it's awkward to connect to a device.
If already needs a computer in it to drive menus / modern display
protocols. Having that computer be powerful enough to also decode
content is barely an extra cost.
ryandrake wrote 1 day ago:
> Why wouldn't you want it to be a computer?
The same reason I don't want anything else in my life to be a
computer. A computer is one more component that can fail and take
down the whole product. I want my computer to be a computer and
that's it.
lenkite wrote 1 day ago:
> Why wouldn't you want it to be a computer?
Because I can then easily upgrade my computer without upgrading
my TV.
pessimizer wrote 1 day ago:
Do you have to upgrade your computer when you upgrade your
router?
This entire subthread is not computer-literate. Your monitor
contains a computer. A dumb display contains a computer. Your
keyboard contains a computer.
You can strip the software down on them so they do nothing but
take commands and drive whatever electronics you have attached
to them, but it will still be software on a computer. If
there's a lot of RAM and a fat processor, like on a rooted
smart TV, I might (but not necessarily) make it do a little
more than that.
Itoldmyselfso wrote 1 day ago:
How about the abdysmal security Smart TVs either have right of
the shelf or for certain after they are no longer kept
up-to-date? I don't want to worry having my TV act either as
botnet or spying device (many come with microphones and cameras
nowadays). I rather purchase additional device that has decent
security that I can attach to the TV if I need to.
wiether wrote 1 day ago:
For the same reason I don't want a self-heating mug.
michaelsalim wrote 1 day ago:
Why wouldn't you want that? Genuinely curious
ozim wrote 1 day ago:
Most likely it will not be dishwasher safe.
boerseth wrote 1 day ago:
Modularity and separation of concerns can extend into other
domains than software.
For me, it seems so much simpler to keep the two separate.
You won't be forced to wash the heating element every time
you wash the cup. Can't heat a different cup while the other
is in the dishwasher, unless all your cups are self-heating.
Normally, the only way for a cup to break is if it shatters,
but with an inbuilt heater there's electronics that can break
too. And should the cup shatter, now the heater is unusable
too, or vice versa.
thaumasiotes wrote 1 day ago:
The microwave in my house is built into the oven.
This provides absolutely zero advantages to the oven or to
the microwave. It does cause a lot of stupid, easily
foreseeable problems:
- There's only one control panel, and if the oven is
currently active, some of the microwave controls get
disabled.
- The microwave is awful in various ways -- regardless of
whether the oven is active -- which wouldn't ordinarily be
a problem, because microwaves are very cheap. But...
- It's impossible to replace the microwave, a $50 device,
without simultaneously replacing the oven, a $2000 device.
wiether wrote 1 day ago:
Exactly!
I have to have a kettle for other purpose (including
heating water for other mugs than mine), and no
self-heating mug is going to be as efficient as a kettle to
heat water.
Furthermore, I also put cold or room temperature liquids in
my mug. With a self-heating one, I would be carrying the
heating parts for absolutely no reason.
Same goes for a TV.
By keeping things separated, I can decide what I do which
each device and manage their lifecycle separately.
If the device reading video files is included in the TV, I
can't plug it to another TV or a projector or even take it
with me to use it elsewhere.
While I've upgraded three times my video playing device to
follow tech evolution, I've kept the same TV to plug them
in.
MomsAVoxell wrote 1 day ago:
I have a multi-purpose kettle that I can use to boil
water, heat the room, cook a small amount of food, or use
as a sand battery for when its cold in the desert, where
the kettle is designed to operate as long as there is a
handful of material to burn.
It is fair to observe a separation methodology, but I
also have to say, in some cases multi-purpose devices
have their place.
If, say, the self-heating mug involved solar harvesting,
I'd put a couple in my kettle bag, for sure.
saalweachter wrote 1 day ago:
But like, a coffeemaker is a thing.
You can make coffee with a kettle, but if you are making
enough coffee often enough, it does make sense to bundle
a second kettle into a dedicated coffeemaker, even if you
are reducing the functionality of it by doing so.
IanCal wrote 1 day ago:
Arguably the outcome youâd want there is to be able
to add your own kettle to the coffee maker, so you can
have the best value/option for you if you want it. Want
a cheap thing or none? Fine. Want one with remote start
and modded temp controls or whatever? Fill your boots.
Got a new coffee part but like the existing kettle?
Reuse it.
This applies less for some physical items, I know some
people are already preparing to explain why itâd be
harder to make or dangerous or something but that would
miss the point. Computers are incredibly easy to swap
out, we already have so many ways of doing that.
Maybe I want a fast computer. None. Maybe I want to
upgrade later. Maybe in a year thereâs a faster
cheaper one. Maybe mine is just fine right now but I
need a new screen. Why do I need to bundle the two
things together? Thereâs a simplicity for users
unboxing something but thereâs not (I think) an
enormous blocker to having something interchangeable
here.
wiether wrote 1 day ago:
It's a thing and it's convenient as a smart TV is
convenient for people who don't care much.
But as a "power user" of a TV, I want to compose my own
setup.
In the same way, "power users" of coffee don't use a
coffeemaker. They use things like French press.
(I use instant coffee myself in my non-heating mug so
in this comparison I would be the person not owning a
TV and watching everything on their phone?)
kmstout wrote 21 hours 42 min ago:
> In the same way, "power users" of coffee don't use
a coffeemaker. They use things like French press.
As a perpetual intermediate, I find that a pour-over
cone is a great balance of convenience and quality.
fulafel wrote 1 day ago:
A rooted piece of trashy IOT is trashy IOT. It's an acquired
taste, the excitement of putting a black box insecure linux
device on the home network to add to your home infra admin
duties.
pessimizer wrote 1 day ago:
A rooted computer is the opposite of a black box. This makes no
sense.
fulafel wrote 10 hours 36 min ago:
Rooting gets you additional means to reverse engineer the
proprietary software system but doesn't automagically lighten
the box.
It's all relative of course, maybe you view anything you can
Ghidra as not-black-box. (though this is kind of tangential
to rooting - for a many/most devices you can get a hold of
the blobs to reverse engineer without rooting anything)
Underphil wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, I'd absolutely agree here. The article didn't "miss" this
option. It just isn't relevant here.
pabs3 wrote 1 day ago:
You shouldn't have to hack it, you should have the right to repair
the software on your device. Hopefully the Vizio lawsuit will help
with that for Linux based devices, signs are looking good though.
(HTM) [1]: https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
khimaros wrote 1 day ago:
(HTM) [1]: https://fossforce.com/2025/12/judge-signals-win-for-softwa...
godelski wrote 1 day ago:
You're right, but until the laws change we should be telling
everyone how and make these tools better. If we can't change the
laws we can make the cat and mouse game too expensive for them to
continue.
Plus, I'm pretty confident they are already doing illegal things.
On my Samsung TV it wants to force update. There is no decline
option, there is no option to turn off updates, only to take it
completely offline. There's no way in hell these kinds of contracts
would be legal in any other setting. There's no meaningful choice
and contracts that strongarm one party are almost always illegal.
You can't sign a contract where the bank can arbitrary change the
loan on you (they can change interest but they can't arbitrarily
charge how that interest is determined. Such as going from 1% to
1000% without some crazy impossible economic situation).
Someone needs to start a class action. Someone needs to push that
as far as the courts will go
pabs3 wrote 1 day ago:
Agreed. Its not that useful, but I have been collecting exploits
here when I see any that could potentially be useful for
replacing firmware on devices.
(HTM) [1]: https://wiki.debian.org/Exploits
Retr0id wrote 1 day ago:
This is just about GPL compliance though (afaik LG TVs are already
GPL compliant, or at least, I haven't noticed any noncompliance).
The bigger problem here is tivoization. You can build a fresh
kernel from source but you have no way to install it because the
bootloader is locked down.
pabs3 wrote 1 day ago:
The lawsuit is indeed about the GPL, but the right to repair (or
at least replace) software really it needs to be expanded to all
software. The right to repair movement is often about
software-based lockdowns. Hopefully it will eventually result in
those being banned.
pabs3 wrote 1 day ago:
As Conservancy would say, a device with no way to modify isn't
GPLv2 compliant either. [1] [2]
(HTM) [1]: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2...
(HTM) [2]: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-a...
(HTM) [3]: https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/...
darkwater wrote 1 day ago:
We should really be happy that Torvalds decided to license
Linux as GPL software. If it was BSD these discussions would
simply not exist, and corporate power over software would be
even greater. I would dare to say we would probably not even
have an open source scene at all...
paxcoder wrote 1 day ago:
Unfortunately, Torvalds supported tivoization:
(HTM) [1]: https://lkml.org/lkml/2007/6/13/289
teekert wrote 1 day ago:
Which confirms the point actually. The hoops companies have
to jump through are pretty good hoops.
selectnull wrote 1 day ago:
It's not that simple.
In the email you have linked to, he does not support
tivoization. He simply says that he finds the term
offensive (which is really funny coming from him).
Torvalds has also publicly stated that he doesn't think
that tivoization benefits users, but it's not his battle to
fight. More info on that topic can be found in the linked
YT (linked at the precise time he is answering the question
about tivoization, but the whole video is about GPL v2 vs
GPL v3).
YT video:
(HTM) [1]: https://youtu.be/PaKIZ7gJlRU?si=RK5ZHizoidgVA1xO&t...
ninkendo wrote 1 day ago:
Because anti-tivoization doesnât make sense in a software
license.
Imagine you make a smart toaster, and you make it entirely
out of open source software. You release all the changes
you made too, complying fully with the spirit of open
source. People could take your software, buy some parts and
make their own OSS toasters, everythingâs great.
But for safety reasons, since the software controls when
the toaster pops, you decide to check at boot time that the
software hasnât been modified. You could take the
engineering effort to split the software into parts so that
only the âpop on this heat levelâ part is locked down,
but maybe youâre lazy, so you just check the signature of
the whole thing.
This would be a gpl3 tivoization violation even though the
whole thing is open source. You did everything right on the
software end, it just so happens that the hardware you made
doesnât support modifying the software. Why is that a
violation of a software license?
This is what makes no sense to Linus, and TBH it makes no
sense to me either. Would the toaster be a better product
if you could change the software? Of course. But it seems
to be an extreme overreach for the FSF to use their license
(and that âor any later versionâ backdoor clause) to
start pushing their views on the hardware world.
immibis wrote 5 hours 34 min ago:
No, actually anti-tivoization makes perfect sense, even
in your example, and if you make this toaster then you
are simply an evil anti-freedom company.
If you're afraid that modifying the software will make
the toaster overheat, then include a hardware thermal
fuse. You need to anyway, in case the manufacturer
software fails or the processor fails.
atq2119 wrote 17 hours 12 min ago:
> But for safety reasons, since the software controls
when the toaster pops, you decide to check at boot time
that the software hasnât been modified.
As arguments go, this is a pretty weak one considering
how obvious the solution is: Make the manufacturer not be
liable for what happens when you operate the device with
unauthorized software.
ssl-3 wrote 22 hours 52 min ago:
I have a toaster oven in my kitchen. It's a dumb thing
with a bimetallic thermostatic switch, a simple
mechanical timer (with a clockspring and a bell), and a
switch to select different configurations of heating
elements. The power-on indicator is a simple neon lamp.
(It also certainly has some thermal fuses buried inside;
hopefully, in the right places.)
And, you know, it works great. It's simple to operate
and (so far!) has been completely reliable.
I can hack on it in any way that I want to. There's no
aspect of it that seeks to prevent that kind of activity
at all.
What would I hack it to do instead? Who knows, but I can
think of a couple of things. Maybe instead of having
some modes where the elements are in series, I want them
in parallel instead so the combination operates at higher
power. Maybe I want to bypass the thermostat with an SSR
and use my own control logic so I can ramp the
temperature on my own accord and finally achieve the holy
grail of a perfect slice of toast, and make that a
repeatable task.
Whatever it is, it won't stand in my way of doing it --
regardless of how potentially safe or unsafe that hack
may be.
There are countless examples of similar toaster ovens in
the world that anyone else can hack on if they're
motivated to do so, and very similar 3-knob Black &
Decker toaster ovens are still sold in stores today.
And yet despite the profoundly-accessible hackability of
these potentially-dangerous cooking devices (they didn't
even bother to weld the cover on or use pentalobular
screws, much less utilize one-way cryptographic coding!),
they seem fine. They're accepted in the marketplace and
by safety testing facilities like Underwriters
Laboratories, who seem satisfied with where the bar for
safety is placed.
Why would a toaster oven (or indeed, just a pop-up
toaster) that instead used electronic controls need the
bar for safety to be placed at a different height?
ninkendo wrote 22 hours 35 min ago:
> Why would a toaster oven (or indeed, just a pop-up
toaster) that instead used electronic controls need the
bar for safety to be placed at a different height?
It wouldn't. It's a thought experiment. I even said:
> Would the toaster be a better product if you could
change the software? Of course.
The point is, nobody should be compelling you to make
your products hackable. If you don't want to, that's
your prerogative.
The problem is, before GPLv3 existed, the authors that
picked GPLv2 never expressed that they wanted their
software to be part of some anti-locked-bootloader
manifesto... they picked it because GPLv2 represents a
pretty straightforward "you can have the source so long
as you keep it open for any changes you make" license.
That's what the GPL was. But this whole "Or any future
version" clause gave FSF carte blanche to just alter
the deal and suddenly make it so anyone can fork a
project and make it GPLv3. I can perfectly understand
why this would make people (including Linus) very mad.
immibis wrote 5 hours 31 min ago:
The law compelling you to make your products hackable
is called "right to repair". Without this law, if my
toaster breaks, my only option is to buy a new
toaster. But if I'm allowed to change the toaster, I
can fix the toaster.
Products have worked this way since forever. Only
since modern microprocessors and cryptography have
evil companies been able to deliberately add
roadblocks that are impossible to overcome (without
replacing so much hardware that you've made a new
toaster from scratch) in order to maximize revenue.
This is predatory and should be illegal. The only
reason I can see that you'd support this, is it you
work for a company that makes a lot of money selling
new toasters to replace broken ones, and if this is
true, your company deserves to be shut down by the
government.
pabs3 wrote 10 hours 33 min ago:
GPLv2 mandates user-modifiable devices too, according
to Conservancy at least.
immibis wrote 5 hours 30 min ago:
Also according to at least one German court! (AVM
Vs I don't remember. The lawsuit was about home
wireless routers.)
pabs3 wrote 10 hours 34 min ago:
I want the law to compel you to make your products
hackable. The GPL is often irrelevant for devices,
the law is what matters.
ssl-3 wrote 19 hours 27 min ago:
You used the thought experiment as the foundation for
the anti-anti-tivoization sentiment expressed. If
the thought experiment is false, then the sentiment
which might rest upon it is without basis.
> The point is, nobody should be compelling you to
make your products hackable. If you don't want to,
that's your prerogative.
I agree.
Nobody is compelled to use GPLv3 code in the
appliances that they want locked-down for whatever
reasons (whether good or bad) they may wish to do
that. There's other routes (including writing it
themselves).
They may see a sea of beautiful GPLv3 code and wish
they could use it in any way they desire, like a
child may walk into a candy store and wish to have
all of it for free, but the world isn't like that.
We're all free to wish for whatever we want, but that
doesn't mean that we're going to get it.
> But this whole "Or any future version" clause gave
FSF carte blanche to just alter the deal and suddenly
make it so anyone can fork a project and make it
GPLv3.
This "Or any future version" part isn't part of the
GPL -- of any version.
Let us review GPL v1: [1] > Each version is given a
distinguishing version number. If the Program
specifies a version number of the license which
applies to it and "any
later version", you have the option of following the
terms and conditions
either of that version or of any later version
published by the Free
Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify
a version number of
the license, you may choose any version ever
published by the Free Software
Foundation.
The GPL itself does not in any way mandate licensing
any code under future versions. An author can elect
to allow it -- or not.
If they specify GPL 2, then they get GPL 2. Not 3.
Not 4. Only 2.
Other versions of the GPL are ~the same in this way.
(You know where to find them, right? They're easy
reads.)
(HTM) [1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gp...
kelnos wrote 21 hours 55 min ago:
If an author wants, they can leave out the "or any
future version" verbiage. If the author does not,
then they are explicitly saying that they want their
software to be part of whatever future manifesto the
FSF puts forth, including the anti-locked-bootloader
manifesto present in the GPLv3.
And that's why Torvalds left out "or any future
version" when licensing Linux. So I'm not sure why
he's "very mad" (I doubt he actually is?); his
software remains on GPLv2 like he wanted.
> The point is, nobody should be compelling you to
make your products hackable.
If you want to use my GPLv3 software on your product,
then yes, I am requiring that you make it hackable.
If you don't want to do that, tough shit. Either do
so, or freeload off someone else's software.
MarkusQ wrote 1 day ago:
> But it seems to be an extreme overreach for the FSF to
use their license (and that âor any later versionâ
backdoor clause) to start pushing their views on the
hardware world.
Nothing is stopping the "hardware world" from developing
their own operating system. But as long as they choose
to come as guests to the FSF/GPL party, partake of the
snacks and fill their glasses at the free-refills
fountain, they're expected to abide by the rules. The
doors not locked, they can leave any time.
pessimizer wrote 1 day ago:
> But for safety reasons, since the software controls
when the toaster pops, you decide to check at boot time
that the software hasnât been modified.
"For safety reasons" is every single claim. For safety
reasons, I want to block the manufacturer's software from
doing what it wants. Why do the manufacturer's safety
reasons overrule my safety reasons?
> This would be a gpl3 tivoization violation even though
the whole thing is open source.
Copyleft has nothing to do with open source. You haven't
done everything right on the software end, because the
GPL isn't about helping developers. To do things right on
the software end, you should keep GPL software out of
your locked down device that you are using to restrict
the freedom of its users.
> Would the toaster be a better product if you could
change the software? Of course.
You just said that it would be an unsafe product if you
could change the software. Now you're using the "don't
let the perfect be the enemy of the good" trope to
pretend that you would of course support software freedom
in an ideal, magical, childish, naïve dream world.
> it seems to be an extreme overreach for the FSF to use
their license
People can license their software how they want. Is it an
extreme overreach for Microsoft to not let you take their
Windows code and do whatever they want with it? Why are
you even thinking about GPL code when there's so much
overreach coming from Adobe? They don't let you use their
code under any circumstances!
All of your reasoning is motivated, and I would recommend
that people not buy your toaster.
Brian_K_White wrote 1 day ago:
It makes sense in the context of GPL specifically when
you remember that the GPL itself and the entire GNU stack
and movement started from frustration with a printer, not
a program.
paxcoder wrote 1 day ago:
Modifiability does not imply insecurity (though if it
did, the user should still be given a choice).
A software author has the right to set terms for use of
their software, including requiring that manufacturers
provide end users certain freedoms.
jmward01 wrote 1 day ago:
Seems like there is a big opportunity here for something a router
distro to combine with a tv jailbreak. How good is the hardware? It
would be nice to have my tv serve a couple purposes if it has the
hardware to do it.
taxmeifyoucan wrote 1 day ago:
It's a modest ARM CPU, I wouldn't rely on it for a router but it
can run Rpi Hole! Also Home Assistant integration, I use the TV
remote to control LEDs/lights around the apartment
jmward01 wrote 23 hours 48 min ago:
I totally forgot about the remote. That really opens up
possibilities for home assistant type stuff. I hadn't looked at
this space a lot before. I see some articles on how to jailbreak
various devices but nothing about standardized distros to put on
things out there. Something like dd wrt but for TVs could be
pretty amazing. A project that is designed to give you a good
interface, is privacy aware and hacker friendly (things that
aren't just entertainment like home assistant stuff) would get a
lot of interest. There has to be a reason this isn't a thing. I
am guessing it is 99% a hardware reason. Maybe that is changing
though? Modern devices have to have more capability so I bet the
hardware on newer tvs is getting pretty strong.
cess11 wrote 1 day ago:
Nice!
wolrah wrote 1 day ago:
Most smart TVs only have 100mbit ethernet, even "high end" TVs like
LG OLEDs. They'd be terrible routers.
slig wrote 1 day ago:
> RootMyTV (v1/v2) has been patched for years, and your TV is almost
certainly not vulnerable.
We recommend checking whether your TV is rootable with another
method.
montymintypie wrote 1 day ago:
The one-click method has been patched, but there are other methods
that will work if you haven't been religiously updating your TV:
[0] [1]
(HTM) [1]: https://github.com/throwaway96/dejavuln-autoroot
(HTM) [2]: https://github.com/throwaway96/faultmanager-autoroot
ashirviskas wrote 1 day ago:
Religiously updating my TV? It has been patched since spring,
someone clicking by accident "yes" for the update notice that
appears randomly on the middle of the screen in the past 9 months
would ruin it. I was religously *not* updating my TV and it still
got too new software for the exploit :')
kelnos wrote 21 hours 51 min ago:
My LG TV is a little over a year old now and I refuse to allow
it to connect to the Internet, ever, so I guess RootMyTV would
work fine for me?
taxmeifyoucan wrote 20 hours 49 min ago:
It's totally possible! Check it at [1] . There are multiple
exploits, search around
(HTM) [1]: https://cani.rootmy.tv/
f001 wrote 1 day ago:
My tv has never nor will ever touch the internet so problem
solved re: updates.
Retr0id wrote 1 day ago:
One day I will buy a new TV and develop a new one-click method...
but for now I'm still rocking my B9.
throwaway63467 wrote 1 day ago:
Is there much you can do with it? Does it still work as before, does
it still have a GUI? Sounds really cool.
rssoconnor wrote 1 day ago:
I used my rooted TV to root my PS4. I'm not even joking.
(HTM) [1]: https://youtu.be/NzBBfGnAWM0
taxmeifyoucan wrote 20 hours 42 min ago:
I am doing the same! I have been jailbreaking PS4 for few years
and Modded Warfare is where I learned about the LG TV jailbreak
montymintypie wrote 1 day ago:
I think the parent commenter is perhaps a little over-selling the
LG rooting. It is definitely root, you can write whatever you want
on the filesystem (at your peril), and theoretically do whatever
you want, but the homebrew exploit launches a bit later in the boot
chain than you'd want (so blocking update nags isn't quite
reliable), and a lot of the inner system things are proprietary and
require reverse engineering to extend.
It's the same system software, just with root capacity.
That being said, there's still a bunch of nice homebrew:
- Video screensavers ala Apple TV
- DVD logo screensaver
- Adfree (and sponsorblock-integrated and optional
shorts-disabling) Youtube
- Remote button remapping (Netflix button now opens Plex for me)
- Hyperion (ambilight service that controls an LED strip behind the
TV)
- A nice nvidia shield emulator for game streaming from my PC with
low latency
- VNC server (rarely useful, but invaluable when it is)
Sponsorblock and remote remapping are killer features for me, and
the rest is just really pleasant to have.
JayGuerette wrote 1 day ago:
I'm confused. Every TV is a dumb TV if you don't give it your Wifi
password.
tastyfreeze wrote 1 day ago:
My Vizio wouldn't go past the "connect to internet" screen on first
boot.
ivanjermakov wrote 1 day ago:
My LG TV is pretty dumb since the only button it has is "connect to
media server" in local network.
rgovostes wrote 1 day ago:
A guest logged into Wi-Fi on a Vizio of mine and there was
conveniently no way to disconnect/forget it without a factory reset
back to motion smoothing hell.
systemtest wrote 1 day ago:
You gave me flashbacks to my Samsung washing machine that needed a
factory reset after changing my SSID. Which also reset the service
life of filters and liquids and such which was somewhat of a
hassle. Such a dumb design not being able to change the wireless
network.
MrMetric wrote 1 day ago:
Change your network name. When the TV prompts you to connect, join
the renamed network. Then, rename it back so everything else can
connect again and the TV can't. I can think of a few potential
problems with this, but, it might work?
Or blacklist the TV's MAC address in your router settings. Didn't
think of that first for some reason.
somat wrote 1 day ago:
I think they, or at least samsungs. will happily use open wifi if
they can find it.
Source, my open test network and a neighbors tv that keeps trying to
phone home with it.
baobun wrote 7 hours 18 min ago:
I'm curious about that neighbor TV, do you have a model name or
something if one would like to reproduce?
asdff wrote 1 day ago:
The TV can happily connect to my neighbors printer WLAN. That is
the only open wifi around. It isnât 2008 anymore.
JKCalhoun wrote 1 day ago:
I have a Mac Mini hooked up to my TV. We never use anything mode of
the TV. (Then again, I have zero streaming services, so perhaps I am
not who this article is for.)
nottorp wrote 1 day ago:
What do you use for a remote for the Mac Mini?
JKCalhoun wrote 1 day ago:
Sadly, there's just a keyboard + trackpad sitting on my TV-audio
console (a kind of home made speaker credenza I built years ago).
So no remote. I get up, hit the spacebar to pause/play. The audio
is into a multi-channel receiver though so audio has mute/volume
controls on a remote.
andrewchilds wrote 1 day ago:
Not the parent but my family also has a mac mini to offline TV
setup - just a small bluetooth keyboard/mouse and the tv remote
for volume. Works well.
As far as I know there are no remotes that work with MacOS.
omgmajk wrote 1 day ago:
I have a Lenovo used minipc connected to mine and I just use a
Logitech K400+, it runs Linux with KDE. I will never need a smart
tv, or want one, for that matter.
I get that people would rather have a remote but I personally
actually don't like remotes at all. My TV is basically a screen
only.
nottorp wrote 23 hours 55 min ago:
Yeah the problem with a keyboard and trackpad is you need the
lights on.
omgmajk wrote 22 hours 35 min ago:
I do not, but I get what you mean :)
moltopoco wrote 1 day ago:
Neither do I, but what about YouTube? Not letting your TV
manufacturer sell your watching habits is already a big win, and on
macOS you can further block telemetry. A big chunk of my YouTube
consumption happens through yt-dlp using a VPN provider that
presumably does not cooperate with Google.
SoftTalker wrote 1 day ago:
i have a vizio which I opened up and removed the WiFi module. it
never complains about the internet now.
nullhole wrote 1 day ago:
"In the land of telescreens, the man with the soldering iron is
king"
SoftTalker wrote 1 day ago:
Did't even require that. It was a standard mini pci-e wifi card,
just unclipped it and removed it from its slot.
wccrawford wrote 1 day ago:
My 2 year old LG complained every time I turned it on that I hadn't
hooked it to the internet. No way to disable it.
Now that it's connected, it shows an ad at that time, in the same
way. Can't win.
lelandfe wrote 1 day ago:
My recent TCL TV forces you agree to Google's terms and conditions,
and you aren't even provided the text of what you're agreeing to
unless you connect the TV to the internet.
It felt illegal.
hopelite wrote 1 day ago:
It is technically illegal if that is how it is configured. Go get
âem.
But kidding aside, who are we even really kidding anymore, even if
you were provided the TOS would you simply not use the device of
there were something in the TOS you disagreed with? How about when
youâve been using the device and all the sudden they change the
TOS and force agreement as you are about to start a tv evening with
the family?
The people simply accepted their enslavement, the taking of your
agency, because we all allowed or were overwhelmed with it.
They take our agency through process just like theyâve taken our
freedom and rights in so many different ways, just like through YC
funded Flock, where treasonous mass surveillance cameras just show
up over night and most here seem unaware itâs a YC company that
now provides a mass surveillance network to the government and
global government tightening its noose around humanityâs neck.
eduction wrote 1 day ago:
Yup - my LG (~6 months old) works fine without my ever having given
it a WiFi password.
This is what the article recommends by the way.
_dan wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah I have a couple of recent Samsung OLEDs and they're fine without
an internet connection despite reports that they wouldn't be. If I
press one of the annoying streaming service buttons on the remote
it'll give me a setup popup which needs to be dismissed, otherwise
they work fine, albeit without any built in streaming support.
I'd read reports that Q-Symphony (audio from the TV speakers and
soundbar simultaneously) wouldn't work, but it does.
I stuck an OSMC ( [1] ) box to the back of both of them so they can
play stuff from my NAS. They're not the cheapest solution and I
realise Kodi/XBMC on which they're based isn't everyone's jam (I grew
up with XBMC on an Xbox so it is very much mine) - but they play
everything, have wifi, HDMI-CEC, integrated RF remote, and work out
of the box.
Model numbers if anyone cares: Samsung QE65S95C, Samsung QE77S95F. I
believe S95, S90 and S85 (at least up to F) are all very similar so
they should all work but ofc ymmv.
(HTM) [1]: https://osmc.tv/
tuna74 wrote 2 hours 11 min ago:
Why can't you just run the Kodi app directly on the TV?
drnick1 wrote 1 day ago:
This OSMC box looks interesting, but does it allow to run arbitrary
programs like a plain Linux box? What I have in mind here are
things such as VacuumTube (YoutubeTV front end), a Web browser to
stream from various online sources, etc. I found KODI (as running
on Linux) far too restrictive when it comes to streaming from the
Internet, and the add ons to be terrible. (In particular the
YouTube add-on requires an API key registered with Google, which
makes it a far worse proposition than using VacuumTube
anonymously.)
_dan wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah that OSMC box is just running Debian with their stuff coming
from its own package repo. You can get a root shell. I realise I
could have built something myself (and have in the past) but it's
absolutely worth the money to me to get everything in a tiny
package and working perfectly from day one.
I wouldn't recommend Kodi for streaming, it kinda works but the
experience isn't great. I use it exclusively for playing stuff
from my server full of legally acquired public domain videos
(ahem).
I do watch YouTube videos on it, but I use TubeArchivist
(basically a fancy wrapper for yt-dlp) to pull them onto the
server first, and a script to organise them into nicely-named
directories.
timc3 wrote 1 day ago:
No, it doesnât in the way you are intending. I run various
utilities on them, but nothing that ever shows up in the
interface/TV
I just think of them as the best solution to run Kodi for media
that is on my network.
jwrallie wrote 1 day ago:
Thanks for mentioning VacuumTube, it sounds useful.
Iâm using a Minix Z100 running Gnome and Kodi. I use a simple
Bluetooth keyboard, the interface is clunky but it does the job.
I use Samba to also share files to VNC running on iOS and Android
on the same network.
I tried using fancier solutions but anything that browses content
without involving directories always break for some specific
content in unpredictable ways.
drnick1 wrote 1 day ago:
That has been my experience as well. So far nothing has come
close to the flexibility of Gnome (upscaled) with an airmouse.
I am keeping an eye on the Plasma Bigscreen project however
(10-foot UI for Plasma).
An alternative could be some x86 Android TV build like Lineage,
but I have not seen very convincing demonstrations that this is
truly viable.
dawnerd wrote 1 day ago:
some will yell at you with a notification until you give in and
connect it.
Retric wrote 1 day ago:
Return it as unfit for service.
AndrewKemendo wrote 1 day ago:
Dont buy a TV?
encom wrote 1 day ago:
(HTM) [1]: https://theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesn...
AndrewKemendo wrote 1 day ago:
Haha yeah thatâs a good one, fair
Obligatory David Foster wallce just to add some gen x post
structuralist nihilism
(HTM) [1]: https://youtu.be/A_ujr9gi3wk
tormeh wrote 1 day ago:
What I'd really like is a TV with DisplayPort. How is this not a thing?
IIRC you cannot buy a display with DP that's larger than 45 inches,
give or take - they just don't exist. I think this is really weird.
Like, I'd pay an extra $100 for that port, but I'm just not allowed to
have it.
MrBuddyCasino wrote 1 day ago:
Different tariff rates for TVs and computer monitors.
t0bia_s wrote 1 day ago:
You can buy projector and have 120 inches screen in 160 inches wide
room. And it is also unbreakable screen, useful especially if you
have kids.
baq wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs nice but OLED contrast is very hard to beat, and if youâre
one of those folks who insist that âa white wall is good
enoughâ then itâs not even the same ballpark of image quality.
Dumblydorr wrote 1 day ago:
How far away from the screen do you need to sit though? Isnât
that too wide? I have kids but Iâve never seen them almost break
a TV lol
rk06 wrote 1 day ago:
i would really like a tv with usb c. so, i can directly connect my
phone/ tablet and cast directly
mr_toad wrote 1 day ago:
> What I'd really like is a TV with DisplayPort.
Issues with HDCP support maybe?
watermelon0 wrote 1 day ago:
DisplayPort supports all HDCP versions, so that shouldn't be a
problem.
Marsymars wrote 1 day ago:
There was the 55" Alienware OLED monitor, but unfortunately it never
received a follow-up after its 2019 release.
thesandlord wrote 1 day ago:
New Hisense TVs have USB-C DisplayPort support. Pretty cool, but
realistically I don't see how it's different from HDMI from a
usefulness standpoint.
Edit: It is cool I can plug my phone or laptop into the TV with one
cable, no adapters, and get some power as well. For some reason it
didn't work with my Steam Deck which was strange.
godelski wrote 1 day ago:
And annoyingly you can do USB-C to DP but not the other direction.
I can't be the only one that hooks up my computer, with a graphics
card, to my TV
IPTN wrote 1 day ago:
(HTM) [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BNX7MS6N
godelski wrote 21 hours 45 min ago:
Thanks. For some reason when googling and searching amazon I
only found "unidirectional" ones and going the other way. I
fucking hate search
oynqr wrote 1 day ago:
There absolutely are ways to do this, some motherboards have a
DP-In connector that is routed to the USB4 ports. One example
would be the ProArt X670E.
ThatPlayer wrote 1 day ago:
The cheapest one nowadays is probably the PSVR 2 adapter
IPTN wrote 1 day ago:
(HTM) [1]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BNX7MS6N
PaulHoule wrote 1 day ago:
I think it helps with the HDMI 2.1 licensing bullshit.
helterskelter wrote 1 day ago:
This. I was reading about some of the ugly hacks Valve has had to
get around to use 2.1 on the steam machine. They (HDMI
consortium, whatever its called) won't let you use 2.1 if your
video drivers are FOSS. Since SM has open drivers for the AMD
card it's leading to subobtimal video output at certain
resolution/framerate combos (4K@120fps? Something like that), and
they can't legally advertise support for HDMI2.1.
ProllyInfamous wrote 1 day ago:
I absolutely love my Aorus 48" OLED-type display (w/ DisplayPort).
I tried a 48" TFT-type television (attempting use as a computer
display) and the refresh rate just wasn't there, along with typical
backlight splotching (but it cost a fifth as much, so...).
My only caution is OLED can experience burn-in (unlike the smaller
Aorus 45" using a VA-type panel), but it is otherwise a much better
experience
aesh2Xa1 wrote 1 day ago:
Aorus/Gigabyte is also making their monitors into smart TVs. The
next size up is a Google TV.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.aorus.com/en-us/monitors/s55u
heresie-dabord wrote 1 day ago:
Dell offers a 43" display with speakers and DP, HDMI, and USB. It
costs three times as much as a TV, but it is highly-rated kit if
you can afford it.
I would rather have a quality large display with speakers and DP
than a TV. The only argument in favour of buying a large TV for
coding is cost.
energy123 wrote 1 day ago:
> My only caution is OLED can experience burn-in
The other limitation is lower brightness than miniLED monitors,
around 30-60% of the nits in SDR. Whether that matters obviously
depends on the ambient light or reflective surfaces near you.
For me, because I'm next to a big window and already squinting at
my 400 nits IPS monitor, a < 300 nits OLED is a non-starter, but a
600 nits in SDR, IPS miniLED, is ideal.
This limitation should be temporary however because there are some
high nit OLED TVs coming on the market in 2025 so bright OLED
27-43" monitors will likely follow.
andhuman wrote 1 day ago:
The new LG panels are bright enough. I think theyâre called 4th
generation WOLED.
energy123 wrote 1 day ago:
330 nits in SDR is good relative to other OLED monitors and
good enough for most indoor environments but not good enough
for my indoor environment. Windows are too big and not tinted,
just too much ambient light for anything below 500 nits.
lostlogin wrote 1 day ago:
I tried to buy a good 32 inch tv. This is also hard. I need up going
a little matter and even then, the utterly trash built in speakers
frustrate the hell out of me.
drnick1 wrote 1 day ago:
32" is squarely "PC monitor" territory and there are now many good
options even w/ OLED. No built-in speakers.
energy123 wrote 1 day ago:
A 32" 4k 240hz OLED computer monitor + smart TV HDMI dongle +
external speakers should work fine. Only point I would check is
if the remote that comes with the dongle can turn on the monitor.
microbass wrote 1 day ago:
I saw some giant TV on LTT recently which has a DP port.
kjkjadksj wrote 1 day ago:
A DisplayPort Port you say?
jdiff wrote 1 day ago:
As opposed to the DisplayPort cable, DisplayPort standard, or
DisplayPort encoding that's sent over the wire, yes. This isn't a
PIN number situation despite the stutter.
gloflo wrote 1 day ago:
No, they said "DP port", not "DP Port".
DisplayPort is a standard. A DisplayPort port is a port that
follows the DisplayPort standard.
no_wizard wrote 1 day ago:
As far as I am aware, after having done exhaustive research on this,
its licensing costs and popularity. Display port simply isn't popular
enough. The vast majority of TV manufacturers (not brands mind you,
many white label their manufacturing to different brands) also make
monitors, and adoption of HDMI across both tvs and monitors not only
was much higher, it was overall cheaper in cost since you could share
the same components across lines. This being driven by cheaper
licensing costs for accessory manufacturers (like blu ray players).
Its also easier to implement, if I recall correctly
This is the essential core of it, as I have come to understand it
anyway.
pityJuke wrote 1 day ago:
Wanting to know what I'm missing r/e: licensing costs.
Wikipedia [0] states:
> VESA, the creators of the DisplayPort standard, state that the
standard is royalty-free to implement.
And VESA's website [1] lists Samsung, Sony and LG as being members
already, so they've already paid. What am I missing here?
[0]: [1]:
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Cost
(HTM) [2]: https://vesa.org/about-vesa/member-companies/
EnPissant wrote 1 day ago:
Why would you want such a thing? HDMI 2.1 does HDR 4k @ 120hz without
compression. The entire TV ecosystem uses HDMI. If you want to
connect a PC to a TV they always have at least 1 HDMI out, and some
have a couple.
MarsIronPI wrote 1 day ago:
Because HDMI 2.1 uses a proprietary protocol that's not implemented
in any free OS[0]. If you want to use HDMI 2.1 features right now,
your only option is to use a non-free OS like Windows or MacOS.
[0]: This came up recently with Valve:
(HTM) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46220488
nottorp wrote 1 day ago:
It's also a piece of shit that will negotiate whatever it wants
with your non free OS instead of giving you unmolested RGB...
MegaDeKay wrote 1 day ago:
Not really. That same link talks about how Intel and nvidia
drivers can provide HDMI 2.1 on Linux but it is via their
non-free firmware blob.
AMD doesn't (can't? won't?) do the same but there is a
workaround: a DisplayPort to HDMI adapter using a particular chip
running hacked firmware. That'll get you 4K 120 Hz with working
FreeSync VRR.
(HTM) [1]: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/it-is-possible-to-4k-120...
paholg wrote 1 day ago:
Some of us would like our expensive hardware to work without
hacked third party dongles.
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote 1 day ago:
I don't remember where,but somebody explained that the adapters
also have some kind of limitation. I can't remember what but
they went into deep details and the whole thing is revolting.
Governments should protect open source.
no_wizard wrote 1 day ago:
from a purely technical point of view i do wish HDMI 2.1 was able
to gain traction. On a couple of things I own that do actually
use it, its an actual noticeable improvement and I feel does a
better job than DisplayPort.
Granted, I suspect quite strongly the next wave of consolidation
is going to continue the trend of being around USB-C, since the
spec should have the bandwidth to handle any video / audio
protocols for quite some time. Matter of time until that happens
IMO.
It also lets you have a single cord that could theoretically be
your power cord and your A/V cord.
rethinkhdmi wrote 1 day ago:
From a purely technical standpoint display port is a better
standard. HDMI couldn't get their shit together to do anything
with USBC and thus all USBC to HDMI converter cables run
display port internally.
Display port already allows multiple video streams,
ausiostreams ... Why do we need a closed standard to also do
this?!?!
willis936 wrote 1 day ago:
Oh, I know this one. It was recently on the HN front page. Open
source software stacks are locked out of high end pixel clocks.
(HTM) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46220488
xnx wrote 2 days ago:
Terrible article, but a good topic. You can get rid of homescreen ads
on Google(/Android/Chromecast?) TV with a custom launcher like
Projectivity:
(HTM) [1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.proje...
Simulacra wrote 2 days ago:
I gave up on televisions about 10 years ago, they were all slow as
molasses in January, underpowered, with atrocious interfaces. Nothing
fluid or positive about any of them. I've got a 30 inch iMac in the
bedroom that we watch everything on, much better than a television. I
would be interested in purchasing a 52 inch iMac, hang on the wall, has
all the media sharing and everything that televisions fail so much at.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 2 days ago:
Buy a Roku TV, never connect it to the internet, set it to come on on
the HDMI channel your AppleTV is connected to and you get a fast
fluid user experience.
jrm4 wrote 1 day ago:
Right - I'm wondering why this article is so important and maybe I
haven't seen enough intrusive "smart" TV's -- but is it not the
case that for the vast majority of smart TVs, you can still just
connect whatever to the HDMI (e.g. a computer) and keep it on that?
Mine are Roku's, but I feel like the Samsungs et al are the same?
fn-mote wrote 1 day ago:
The point is what if you DONâT just connect something to bypass
all the slowness. Maybe in a tech forum everybody has done it,
but certainly not out in the âreal worldâ.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 1 day ago:
Your choices are
1. Spend money. AppleTV and the Nvidia Shield have the best
hardware followed by high end Roku devices.
2. Use a computer. Thatâs a horrible experience.
lucasRW wrote 2 days ago:
Aren't private DNS or PiHoles a good enough compromise ?
MattTheRealOne wrote 1 day ago:
That can block some trackers, but does not block ads or
âsuggestedâ content. There are also some devices that have
hardcoded DNS settings that bypass any local network DNS settings.
Marsymars wrote 1 day ago:
> There are also some devices that have hardcoded DNS settings that
bypass any local network DNS settings.
You can intercept those as long as they're not using DoH/DoT.
amundskm wrote 2 days ago:
I have had an old PC hooked up to the hdmi port of an old TV for years
and it works exactly as I want. I have full control and don't have to
deal with smart tv ads.
DrPhish wrote 2 days ago:
Just use a commercial signage display
amundskm wrote 2 days ago:
I looked into this. If I am remembering correctly the price was
higher. It is just easier to connect a mini PC to an hdmi port and
bypass all of the built in TV functionality.
sn wrote 1 day ago:
Yes, the price is higher, maybe partially because it's not
ad-subsidized. I was happy to pay it, this is what I bought: [1]
There's historical speculation that a smart TV could connect to an
open wireless access point, or more realistically, that it refuses
to operate without internet access, perhaps after a certain number
of power on hours.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.sharp.eu/sharp-nec-multisync-e868
gbear605 wrote 1 day ago:
How'd you wind up buying it? All the options like that I can find
start with "Get a Quote".
amelius wrote 2 days ago:
Unfortunately cars are becoming like smart TVs in this respect.
pabs3 wrote 1 day ago:
Is there a device category that isn't becoming like this?
dartharva wrote 1 day ago:
Vote with your wallet while there's still a chance
asdff wrote 1 day ago:
US government already decided for you, sorry.
drnick1 wrote 1 day ago:
You just need to pull the fuse or physically remove the telematics
unit. In some cars you need to partially disassemble the dash to do
this, but there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube. An independent
shop should also be able to do this, although dealers will generally
refuse since they are among the ones benefiting from the "telemetry,"
aka spyware.
00N8 wrote 1 day ago:
I'll never buy a car manufactured after about 2014 for this reason.
I'm planning to just keep getting repairs & upgrades done on my model
year 2006 for at least the next 10-20 years. By then perhaps I will
want to switch to electric, but I'll do it by electrifying something
older.
Cars from around 1998-2014 usually have side curtain airbags &
adequate rollover durability. The only improvements since then that
I'd even want at all are better EV batteries & marginal efficiency
gains for IC engines, but those can be retrofitted &/or aren't worth
the anti features they also added IMO.
If car companies want my business they'll have to remove the
telemetry & automatic updates.
I don't care if I end up paying more to drive an old car eventually,
but this approach has also been saving me money so far.
Grazester wrote 1 day ago:
I have a car from 2017 that is perfectly dumb. It had been a rehash
of a car being produced since 2010 though.
All other models of the same year by the manufacturer had
telemetry, mobile app start etc. All those models are now dumb
though since for those earlier years they used 3G wireless which is
now a dead spectrum.
aceazzameen wrote 1 day ago:
This is the same reason why we haven't bought a new vehicle. Our
2013 Toyota is fantastic.
epiccoleman wrote 1 day ago:
I've got a 2013 Honda Fit that I love. It's just worked nearly
perfectly with only routine maintenance since we bought it used
in 2016.
zeroonetwothree wrote 1 day ago:
ESC is pretty good for safety. I would not want a car without that.
Cars from 2014 do have it of course but not those much older.
FWIW I have two 2018 models with zero âsmartâ features.
asdff wrote 1 day ago:
No thank you. I will take predictable handling and a steering
wheel that responds to my inputs. Loss of traction situations are
exactly where I donât want any systems helping. I need to
countersteer and feel the car. Speaking as someone who was
raised in winter driving and encouraged to find the limits of
handling in snow and ice covered parking lots.
Of course if you are one of those drivers who removes their hands
from the wheel in a stressful situation (there are many), these
systems will help somewhat.
timc3 wrote 1 day ago:
It really depends on the situation and the car. Iâve had it
really help and not take over too much (very modern Porsche in
the mountains), and systems where it was actively making the
situation much worse by alternately locking the brakes on
individual wheels. That was down a long hill which turned icy a
third of the way down in a borrowed 2013 BMW F30, and I still
consider it luck that I kept it on the road and nothing was
coming the other way.
anonym29 wrote 2 days ago:
It's not feasible for everyone, but between grocery delivery
services, telehealth, etc - if you work remotely anyway, it may be
surprisingly feasible to get rid of your car altogether and only
Uber/Lyft as needed, at least until robotaxis expand into your area
at a fraction of the price of traditional ride-hailing apps.
Acrobatic_Road wrote 1 day ago:
Then you have to carry a phone, which is even worse.
wibbily wrote 2 days ago:
That's worse? I don't want my car to track me, I'm def not going to
volunteer that information to Uber.
anonym29 wrote 2 days ago:
Your car is tracking much more than rideshare apps even can.
Uber, Lyft, whoever gets point to point trip information, maybe
audio recording in the car. Modern personally owned automobiles
are getting everything, all the time. It knows when you're home,
when you're not, many record all audio all the time, some are
recording video, some are tracking your sexual activity in the
car.
At this point, I treat rideshare like public transit: I assume
I'm being watched, but I get to skip the permanent always-on
tracking for the other 99% of the time that I'm not in the car.
Also, if you own a car, the state knows where you're going and
when, per ALPR systems. With Uber or Lyft or a robotaxi, there's
a layer between my personal information and the state. It's not
an insurmountable layer, as rideshare / robotaxi services can
always be subpoena'd, but adding a layer of extra work for the
state is a net gain to my privacy.
Marsymars wrote 1 day ago:
There are still 2025 model cars where you can just pull the
fuse for the modem and telematics module with no real ill
effects.
asdff wrote 1 day ago:
Can you pull the fuse for the stability control? For the
radar brake that gives false positives? For the damn steer by
wire and throttle by wire?
Marsymars wrote 1 day ago:
Clearly youâre not actually interested in a modern
vehicle regardless of capabilities, so I donât think that
thereâs any real point in detailing which of those things
can be disabled.
anonym29 wrote 1 day ago:
Also, for what it's worth, you don't have to use same service
on each leg of your trip, you don't need to have it pick you up
at your front door, and you don't need to have it drop you off
at your exact destination. While for some people, these are
admittedly imperfect improvements (you can't really effectively
conceal your destination as easily if it's, say, an airport,
there's also absolutely nothing stopping you from calculating
the cost of your full trip with an equidistant destination,
ordering a short trip (not to your final destination), and
offering your driver a reasonable amount of cash to take you
the rest of the way. Uber/lyft themselves are con artists
charging riders WAY more than they pay drivers anyway. You can
get away with paying a fraction of what the app would charge
you, paying the driver way more than they would otherwise
receive, and cutting the parasite (the multi-billion-dollar
corporation providing zero value after connecting you with a
driver) out of the middle.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 2 days ago:
Thatâs a lost cause between tag readers and if you carry a cell
phone.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 2 days ago:
I work remotely, my gym is downstairs as well as a convenience
store with some fresh (overpriced) items, a bar and an (overpriced)
restaurant.
My barber and grocery store is a $9 Uber Ride each way. So I could
get away with a car easily where I live now. My wife and I have
been down to one car since Covid.
But when I was in the burbs if metro Atlanta where everything
wasnât so close, it would have been over $100 easy going from one
side to the other or basically anywhere besides the grocery store.
My car insurance is only $176 a month for my wife and I. It
doesnât make sense not to have a car, even if you include the
minor maintenance on a car that would be hardly ever driven. Even
at a theoretical $400 car payment + $176 in insurance, it still
easy to come out ahead.
asdff wrote 1 day ago:
Only a $9 ride in 2025? What is that 1-2 miles? Just bike.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 1 day ago:
Yes because itâs completely safe to bike everywhere and how
would I bring the groceries back?
I live in a tourist area where there are a lot of drivers
causing the prices to be low. I noticed it in Las Vegas too.
The only reason I know is I use Uber to run errands close by
when my wife has the car on the weekends.
globular-toast wrote 1 day ago:
> Yes because itâs completely safe to bike everywhere and
how would I bring the groceries back?
Pannier bags. I did this for years. Before I got panniers I
filled a big camping rucksack and cycled, but I wouldn't
recommend that. Use a small backpack in addition to panniers
if you have to, but having just the panniers feels the best.
However, in terms of safety you are unfortunately right. I
didn't have a car so I went everywhere by bike but I was
essentially a third class citizen in many places. Felt like I
could just get wiped out and nobody would even care. There
were no people around, only cars. I hate cars, so I had to
get a car too :(
jqpabc123 wrote 2 days ago:
How I break free from Smart TVs ("smart" for the manufacturer but very
dumb for the user).
Buy a cheap smart TV and run it in "store mode".
Brightness and saturation will probably be maxed out but with a cheap
TV, it looks more like "normal" on a more expensive model. Hint: The
main difference between cheap and expensive in some cases --- the color
adjustment range is limited by software on the cheaper models.
Currently using a Hisense 4k model from Costco connected to a small
mini PC --- Windows or Linux, your preference. The TV functions as
nothing but a dumb display.
Use a small "air mouse" for control. On screen keyboard as needed.
Use a Hauppauge USB tuner for local digital broadcasts.
I use software called DVB Viewer to view local channels and IPTV. A
browser with VPN for streaming in some cases.
In every case, I maintain full control of my data and the ability to
block ads as I see fit.
silisili wrote 1 day ago:
> Brightness and saturation will probably be maxed out but with a
cheap TV, it looks more like "normal" on a more expensive model.
That probably mimics Samsung TVs, which are popular for that reason
but look like crap.
The actual best TVs, picture wise, are among the LG C series, which
are surprisingly dim and unsaturated. That said, mine has held up
terribly so I won't buy another. My $200 Onn looks good enough to my
eyes and lasted longer.
ssl-3 wrote 1 day ago:
> Buy a cheap smart TV and run it in "store mode".
They aren't "cheap," but just last week I unboxed and tested 5
different Samsung S95F televisions of 4 different sizes.
One of the functions that each of them promised to perform when set
to "retail mode" was to reset the picture settings every 5 minutes.
That makes retail mode a non-starter for anyone who seeks any
resemblance of accuracy in their video system, at least on these
particular televisions.
m463 wrote 1 day ago:
I think costco sells a 100" hisense for $1899
seems on the cheaper side and it might work like he said
gear54rus wrote 2 days ago:
> Buy a cheap smart TV
Why does it have to be cheap? What if I want a killer panel without
all the bs?
> Use a small "air mouse" for control
An alternative is something like 'unified remote' on it, then you can
even type from your phone without any pain.
> A browser with VPN for streaming in some cases.
There is a missing piece for me here. A magic 'send my PC browser tab
to this other PC connected to the TV' button. Not sure if something
like this exists. It would be ideal to send all the browser context
with cookies etc so that you are logged in too and can just start
playing whatever you found on PC.
Any for of cast is not an option, rendering has to happen on the TV
PC box.
koolba wrote 1 day ago:
> There is a missing piece for me here. A magic 'send my PC browser
tab to this other PC connected to the TV' button. Not sure if
something like this exists.
Chromecast does exactly this and has existed since ~2010.
StanislavPetrov wrote 1 day ago:
>There is a missing piece for me here. A magic 'send my PC browser
tab to this other PC connected to the TV' button.
I use an NVIDIA shield on a dumb TV with firefox sideloaded (ad
blockers, ect) for 95% of my streaming. You can import your
cookies or other preferences or simply browse for content directly.
sandbach wrote 2 days ago:
> A magic 'send my PC browser tab to this other PC connected to the
TV' button
You can send a tab to another device on Firefox. It doesn't come
with all the browser context, but it's pretty handy.
jqpabc123 wrote 2 days ago:
Why does it have to be cheap?
It doesn't have to be --- but you may be wasting your money if you
run in "store mode".
As noted above, "store mode" will usually max out the brightness,
saturation and contrast while removing user control. This looks
pretty "normal" with cheaper models. More expensive ones can
become overbearing.
It appears to me that in some cases, the difference between cheap
and more expensive is mainly the color adjustments.
In order to take advantage of economies of scale, they may use the
exact same screen panel on multiple different models but limit the
cheaper ones in software so it doesn't look as "bright" and "eye
catching" in the store as their more expensive "killer" model.
HiroProtagonist wrote 2 days ago:
Pi-hole
lazyeye wrote 1 day ago:
Often devices will have the DNS server hard-coded and never connect
to the pihole DNS server. This is not just to avoid ad-blocking but
to make the DNS more reliable and avoiding having lots of potential
support issues around faulty DNS.
encom wrote 1 day ago:
I've never used pihole, but on any decent router you can intercept
outgoing udp to port 53, and redirect it to a destination of your
choosing. DNS-over-HTTP ruined that however.
ProllyInfamous wrote 2 days ago:
This is a great suggestion. I've run two on my local network for
about five years:
pi#1) My personal DNS resolver, which I manually configure on each
device.
pi#2) The much less restrictive DNS resolver which my DHCP server
automatically issues to all other network clients, including all
phones and IoT [0]
Individual hosts can then manually configure their DNS to resolve to
the local network router (or third-party DNS), which effectively
bypasses both PiHoles (for that device, only).
[0] There is a method to use a firewall to capture all outbound DNS
and force routing through PiHole (ifsense? I don't know), which may
be necessary for hard-coded DNS-IPs. I do not know how to do this but
it's not necessary on my network.
mr_mitm wrote 2 days ago:
I have a fire tv and run adguard, which does the same thing as
pihole, and I can barely tell it's on. It may block some tracking,
but I get an increasing amount of ads in the fire tv GUI, not to
speak of YouTube ads.
Sometimes I wonder if the people recommending pihole actually tried
it. You get much better value out of ublock, smarttube, and so on.
shlip wrote 2 days ago:
Other options than the suggested Apple TV route, include pihole
(adblock), kodi, openelec (opensource media players).
valleyer wrote 2 days ago:
Sceptre is not in fact "a Wal-Mart brand" but rather an independent
company. [1] Westinghouse TVs are made by a company licensing the
brand, not a "Pittsburgh-headquartered company".
These seem like easy mistakes to avoid.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.sceptre.com
Isamu wrote 1 day ago:
Westinghouse was acquired as a brand under Tsinghua TongFang.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electronics
bityard wrote 2 days ago:
And Emerson has for a LONG time been just an American brand on the
cheapest Chinese electronics your money can buy.
The whole article is pretty terrible.
chihuahua wrote 1 day ago:
While reading the article, I was pretty suspicious about Emerson
and Westinghouse, because they sound just like Polaroid - once a
solid American manufacturer, but run into the ground and then the
name is licensed to bottom-of-the-barrel cheap electronics
marketers. It seems strange that the article went out of its way to
mention they are headquartered in Pittsburg and founded in the
1940s, like it's some respected brand with a long tradition.
itomato wrote 1 day ago:
To say nothing of the the ads..
hypercube33 wrote 1 day ago:
That said my Dynex TV from like 2008 won't die so my agreement with
my wife to replace it can't kick in for a 75" OLED TV...someday.
Thing has a decent panel FHD and 120hz and you can turn the
smoothing crap off and it's definitely a dumb TV
csdreamer7 wrote 2 days ago:
This is really poor research on their part.
1970-01-01 wrote 1 day ago:
It's a failed article IMHO. It's to the point that the article
should be pulled and corrected. None, as in zero TVs are made in
the USA. They haven't been made in the USA for many decades. I HATE
to say it, but an LLM would have given a better researched article.
Animats wrote 1 day ago:
> "Below are the brands Iâve identified as most likely to have
dumb TVs available for purchase online as of this writing."
That just has to be an LLM at work.
AshamedCaptain wrote 2 days ago:
Spoiler: this is Ars Technica. Obviously they suggest you to instead
get an Apple TV so that you send your data to Apple and watch Apple ads
instead (with the only argument being that "so far they do less ads").
ThatMedicIsASpy wrote 1 day ago:
A box that can't run Kodi would never be my choice.
simonmales wrote 1 day ago:
Started on this with OpenELEC. Nowadays LibreELEC.
Just feels the best that it's not a commercial product, rather a
project built by cool people.
hapticmonkey wrote 1 day ago:
There are no ads in the AppleTV operating system itself.
The only Apple âadsâ I ever see are inside the Apple TV+ app
(yeah, their naming is confusingâ¦) and itâs only for TV shows
theyâre promoting in their streaming service.
systemtest wrote 1 day ago:
I installed an AppleTV recently, so I don't have much experience.
But the first thing I saw after the initial setup was one/third of
the display advertising a TV-show on a subscription service I had
to purchase. Would that count as an ad?
hapticmonkey wrote 20 hours 24 min ago:
Apps placed in the top row of the app grid get to display content
at the top area, when that app is selected. Most apps use it for
things like continue watching or show recommendations.
Thatâs very different from turning on your TV and seeing an ad
for Mercedes or whatever taking up the screen.
expensive_news wrote 1 day ago:
On the Apple TV you get âadsâ for the apps you have in your
top row, with different levels of interactivity. Some are just
logos of that streaming service, some show recently watched. The
Apple TV app has full-blown ads for Apple TV+ originals.
They wonât actually let you delete the Apple TV app, but if you
move it out of the top row you will never see the ads.
My parents have an Amazon Fire TV and when I go to their house
and have to use it it drives me insane. Carousels of adds large
at the top, banner ads as you scroll, full rows of sponsored
apps. Full screen ads for random Amazon products when you pause
any show you are watching. Everything you watch on Amazonâs
streaming service has minute long unskippable ads. Sometimes when
you turn it on Alexa will just verbally read you ads.
Itâs truly a dystopian piece of tech.
0ld wrote 1 day ago:
Apple TV is a huge Apple TV+ ad in itself. I shelved my device when
my 2yo had "subscribed" to Apple TV+ by just randomly clicking
around
hx833001 wrote 1 day ago:
An alternative is to just turn off the ability to purchase
anything without entering your password each time in settings.
ralfd wrote 1 day ago:
> Obviously they suggest you to instead get an Apple TV
I did the same last year though when I couldnât find a good
non-smart tv. Even if you donât like the advice it is a practical
solution for normies.
drnick1 wrote 1 day ago:
The Apple TV box does not have a microphone and a camera, but
beyond that there is absolutely no reason to think it's any more
private than a "smart" TV.
nickthegreek wrote 1 day ago:
you can see no privacy differences between an appletv and a roku
or fire stick?
encom wrote 1 day ago:
There's a microphone in the remote control.
gear54rus wrote 2 days ago:
At least we can gather and post an actual solution in the top
comment.
shlip wrote 2 days ago:
Yup, from the Apple TV article linked in the article[1]:
> According to its privacy policy, the company gathers usage data,
such as âdata about your activity on and use ofâ Apple offerings,
including âapp launches within our servicesâ¦; browsing history;
search history; [and] product interaction.â [...] transaction
information, account information (âincluding email address, devices
registered, account status, and ageâ), device information
(including serial number and browser type), contact information
(including physical address and phone number), and payment
information (including bank details).
Yeah, sure, that's privacy, Ars.
(HTM) [1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/06/all-the-ways-apple-t...
hopelite wrote 1 day ago:
The only way to have privacy from the matrix is to not participate
in the matrix. Thatâs in fact your best option. Does one have to
consume the drug of movies/tv? I realize that just suggesting
something coming in between the addict and their drug causes
consternation, but that also makes the point more salient.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 2 days ago:
Letâs see where to start?
1. Email address - you have to use an email address to have an
Apple account. How are they not going to have your email?
2. Devices registered - you mean when you log into your device,
they keep track of your logged in devices!
3. Transaction history - they keep track of what you bought from
them!
Must I continue? Every single piece of data that you named is
required to do business with them.
amelius wrote 1 day ago:
It should not be necessary to be tied to the vendor after you
have bought the product.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 1 day ago:
What are you going to do with an iPhone without Apple? Yes you
can use an Android without Google. But the percentage of
people who do so outside of China is meaningless.
orwin wrote 2 days ago:
Browsing history? Search history? Age?
Also 'product interaction' is an euphemism to say "if you're
sick, we'll sell this information for around 80â¬" (I think it's
close to 200$ for Americans but I don't have any contact in this
industry overseas). If you have a cancer and suddenly you see an
increase in ads for pseudo-medicine and other scams whose only
goal is to extract all the money you have left, and if lucky,
your famil's money too, that's from 'product interaction'.
jdminhbg wrote 1 day ago:
> Browsing history? Search history?
They want to show you things you have recently watched or
looked at when you log in, rather than just random TV shows.
> Age?
You can give your kids an age-restricted account so what they
watch is limited.
0cf8612b2e1e wrote 1 day ago:
I am so curious to learn more about this. Are there any
extensive write ups of the mechanics of identification, price
points, whatever? Or is it all insider baseball because it is
distasteful?
Many tens to hundreds of dollars for that single datapoint is
incredible. I have naively assumed we were just packaged up in
aggregate and never thought more deeply than that.
What are the most valuable data? Pregnant? Wedding? Divorce?
Illness? Home purchase?
raw_anon_1111 wrote 2 days ago:
So exactly how do you suppose they sync your browsing history
and bookmarks between devices if they donât store the
information? And your browsing history is e2e encrypted by keys
on your device. Apple doesnât have access to your browsing
history.
You can give Apple any age you want to. Itâs not like it
checks.
And I have no idea about the other topics you are going off on
and what they have to do with Apple..
snoman wrote 22 hours 50 min ago:
Are trying to say itâs not possible to write terms that
give them the ability to sync your history without also
letting them mine and sell all the insights from it?
chrz wrote 1 day ago:
why would i want to sync everything
raw_anon_1111 wrote 1 day ago:
Why would someone want to sync bookmarks, browsing history
etc between their phone, their iPad and their computer?
Chrome and Firefox do the same.
AshamedCaptain wrote 2 days ago:
Every series you've ever watched with the Apple TV -- of course,
they keep track of what you watched with them!
(/s).
saltcured wrote 1 day ago:
Man, how I wish there was a Netflix setting "omit things I've
already watched", since I know they already know this.
I can't help wonder if they are just afraid of the offering
looking more bare, or is this really such an uncommon desire to
want to see "new to me" stuff and not repeat things?
raw_anon_1111 wrote 2 days ago:
It would be a horrible user experience if it didnât keep
track of the series Iâve watched and where I was in shows so
I could pick up and watch where I left off on a different
device.
This isnât the iPod days where you would sync your watch
history with iTunes.
AshamedCaptain wrote 1 day ago:
The entire point of the remark is that you can throw these
pseudo-justifications for any and all forms of tracking,
since "tracking all the shows you watch" is precisely the
issue that motivates TFA.
At the end of the day, they could be taking screenshots of
everything you do with your TV and argue it's because of some
AI system that will allow you to more easily launch whatever
it is you normally do at that time of the day. If you do
not see any issue with that, why would you be on this thread?
raw_anon_1111 wrote 1 day ago:
No the justification for the article is TVs that track your
watching no matter what you watching and selling it to
advertisers.
Apple tracks what you are watching on AppleTV only.
Iâm on this thread because I understand technology.
Are you saying that if you are watching something like
âSouth Parkâ you wouldnât want the service that you
are watching it on to keep track of where you are in its 25
season run?
AshamedCaptain wrote 1 day ago:
> Apple tracks what you are watching on AppleTV only.
So the solution they propose to TVs that track what
you're watching is to switch to AppleTV where Apple will
track what you're watching? And you still justify this
somehow?
raw_anon_1111 wrote 1 day ago:
Names are confusing no sarcasm intended. I meant Apple
tracks what you watch when watching AppleTV+ (the
streaming service) on the AppleTV box.
How else are there going to mark what you watched and
whdfd you are in a TV series?
AshamedCaptain wrote 1 day ago:
So you are justifying it. For the record it's not
just what you watch with the streaming service, it is
everything you watch through their TV program.
You still do not get it: you can find a
pseudo-justification for _every_ type of tracking
they do to you. But none of these are really true
justifications. You can do _everything_ without any
type of tracking -- even the very basic premise: it
shouldn't even be true that you need an account _at
all_ to use an Apple TV.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 1 day ago:
AppleTV doesnât record everything you watch on
your TV like the smart TVs. A smart TV can track
what you watch no matter which input source you are
using.
How could an AppleTV or any device connected to an
HDMI port know what you are watching on other input
sources?
The AppleTV device doesnât track what you watch
at all. The AppleTV+ service knows what you watch
on their service.
Their is no justification for the TV to know
anything. There is obviously a reason for each
service to know what you watch on their service.
What exactly are you arguing? That you should be
able to use the AppleTV+ service anonymously?
AshamedCaptain wrote 19 hours 20 min ago:
> AppleTV doesnât record everything you watch
on your TV like the smart TVs.
Obviously it only records what you watch through
it.
> A smart TV can track what you watch no matter
which input source you are using. How could an
AppleTV or any device connected to an HDMI port
know what you are watching on other input
sources?
I thought the entire point was to _use_ the Apple
TV. If you buy the Apple TV, but still use the
other HDMI ports for your viewing .... why did
you buy the Apple TV in the first place?
> The AppleTV+ service knows what you watch on
their service.
And if you use the Apple TV, what you watch
through Apple TV's TV program.
> Their is no justification for the TV to know
anything.
Of course there is. They will claim this way it
remembers your favorite channel, or that then
they can send you spam^W updates in the schedule
of your favorite programs, or whatever other crap
people like you eventually end up thinking as an
indispensable feature for which they happily
accept tracking for.
> There is obviously a reason for each service
to know what you watch on their service. What
exactly are you arguing? That you should be able
to use the AppleTV+ service anonymously?
That _there is_ a way to do broadcast TV
anonymously. You do not need accounts, sync
between multiple devices, or anything; and even
if you need them, there are alternatives. That
you are in error when you think that your
pseudo-justifications are worth anything more
than the ones Samsung will provide. The fact
that that you immediately jump from "I need this"
to "Therefore service provider must be able to
track everything I do" is telling.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 3 hours 37 min ago:
> And if you use the Apple TV, what you watch
through Apple TV's TV program.
Thatâs completely not true. Are you claiming
that Apple intercepts what other apps are doing
when you run them?
AshamedCaptain wrote 2 hours 55 min ago:
Apple TV's TV program (a.k.a. Apple TV's TV
app) (and this is just the what I can easily
see with my own eyes -- who knows what else).
flux3125 wrote 2 days ago:
Funny how the article itself is an ad
karmakaze wrote 2 days ago:
AdsTechnica now.
aquir wrote 2 days ago:
Donât ever connect your TV to the internet?
nottorp wrote 1 day ago:
Better be far enough from the neighbor's password less wifi.
allarm wrote 1 day ago:
Please provide a
specific example of a tv that does that, or stop spreading
misinformation.
nottorp wrote 1 day ago:
I was just extrapolating. Why wouldn't a "smart" device connect
to any wifi it has credentials for, and why wouldn't the
implementation consider "has credentials" to include "it doesn't
need any"?
But now I wonder why your aggressivity sounds so defensive.
orangecat wrote 23 hours 20 min ago:
Why wouldn't a "smart" device connect to any wifi it has
credentials for, and why wouldn't the implementation consider
"has credentials" to include "it doesn't need any"?
Practically because lots of "open" wifi networks have captive
portals that don't actually get you Internet access without
further action, and legally because using random networks
without user confirmation is rather dodgy.
But now I wonder why your aggressivity sounds so defensive.
It's an urban legend that people keep repeating, and nobody can
ever point to a specific case of it happening. It would be
extremely easy to demonstrate: set up an open network, take a
new or factory-reset TV, and wait.
cgh wrote 1 day ago:
There are still annoyances. Our TV finds every opportunity to send
you to its home screen of apps, requiring me to reset the input to
the PS5 that we use for Netflix etc. And regardless, I don't want to
pay for a lousy customised Android with a bunch of crappy apps
preinstalled.
rationalist wrote 1 day ago:
Don't ever let anyone else connect your TV to the internet either.
sys_64738 wrote 1 day ago:
I'm expecting that later ones will contain methods to get out however
they can, whether that's connecting to xfinity free wifi, connecting
to a satellite, or having a cheap cell connection that is always on.
They want your data and will do their damnedest to get it
with/without your permission. Geolocation will be found. I'd expect
they'll scan your local wifi SSIDs and send those too and ethernet
MAC address to figure out who you are. There must be methods of using
this info to wrangle your identity for marketing purposes.
M95D wrote 2 days ago:
They nag.
sys_64738 wrote 1 day ago:
I've not experience that on my TCL.
dfxm12 wrote 2 days ago:
Some brands are better than others. I bought a Sony Bravia TV less
than a year ago. The nags are infrequent (maybe every fifth time I
turn it on) and unobtrusive (a toast notification pops up in the
upper right corner of the screen for a few seconds; it's gone by
the time the Fire Stick UI comes up).
Getting rid of ads on the streaming stick and various streaming
services is an interesting challenge though...
nickthegreek wrote 2 days ago:
Maybe some brands do (feel free to name them). My Samsung does not.
0x457 wrote 1 day ago:
However, if you do connect, then Samsung pushes so many updates
(more ads) than anyone else. My ancient samsung tv in the garage
was getting weekly updates for some reason.
raw_anon_1111 wrote 2 days ago:
Iâve had plenty of RokuTVs and my previous home had wired gig e
Internet in every room. I plugged the TV to the Ethernet to get
software updates, unplugged it, set the TV to always switch to the
HDMI port with my AppleTV connected and never thought about the
Roku again.
The AppleTV supports CEC and controls the power and the volume.
No nagging
guerrilla wrote 2 days ago:
My Phillips 65" doesn't. I just have it connected to my old PC via
HDMI. Don't need any smart features.
anonym29 wrote 2 days ago:
This must be a very new or not universal feature. I have an Element
E4AA70R 70" 4K UHD HDR10 Roku TV I picked up in mid-2023 for well
below $1000. It has never once been connected to the internet, and
it doesn't nag me.
M95D wrote 2 days ago:
I rented an apartment that had an LG. It showed a FOMO-inducing
popup every week.
matheusmoreira wrote 2 days ago:
Might still be possible to jailbreak LG TVs. Not sure what the
quality of the homebrew TV firmware situation is like though.
Maybe not stable enough for family use.
RajT88 wrote 2 days ago:
I have an LG C3. The old jailbreak no longer works.
I keep avoiding the upgrade to keep the possibility open. At
some point they force upgrade your firmware.
anonym29 wrote 2 days ago:
Any information on model number so people can compare, learn
from your experience, etc?
AlecSchueler wrote 2 days ago:
Don't bring one into your house?
teeray wrote 2 days ago:
TV Manufacturers: âoh no!â *proceeds to remove all dumb TVs from
the market*
AlecSchueler wrote 1 day ago:
There's a second hand market.
asdff wrote 1 day ago:
For now. Try getting a good CRT today. Most all the good ones
were sent to the dump.
wkjagt wrote 2 days ago:
The article goes into that option.
maurits wrote 2 days ago:
"We, and our 226 partners use cookies and similar methods to recognize
visitors"
deafpolygon wrote 2 days ago:
Itâs just a modern-day MLM scam.
mrweasel wrote 2 days ago:
How can you as a publisher not look at that an not go: "Seems a bit
much".
Fine that you need to run ads and maybe partner with someone to sell
those ads, but 226 of them?
pandemic_region wrote 2 days ago:
This
deafpolygon wrote 2 days ago:
tl;dr: donât connect it to a network, and/or use a computer monitor.
jeremy151 wrote 2 days ago:
My work health insurance recently offered a free scale and blood
pressure monitor, I thought that's a nice perk, I'll use that, so I
ordered with the intent of never using their app, just using it for
my own tracking. The first time I used it, I got an email from my
insurance company congratulating me and giving me suggestions. Both
devices have a cellular modem in them, and arrived paired to my
identity.
I destroyed them and threw them in a dumpster like that Ron Swanson
gif.
All to say, little cellular modems and a small data plan are likely
getting cheap enough it's worth being extra diligent about the
devices we let into our homes. Probably not yet to the point of that
being the case on a tv, but I could certainly see it getting to that
point soon enough.
sidewndr46 wrote 1 day ago:
Why not just remove the cell modem?
_dain_ wrote 1 day ago:
We shouldn't have to.
kotaKat wrote 2 days ago:
Similarly, I had a workplace dental provider ship me a âsmart
toothbrushâ.
Turns out they track the aggregate of everyoneâs brushing and if
every employee brushes their teeth, the plan gets a discount.
âLower rate based on group's participation in Beam Perksâ¢
wellness program and a group aggregate Beam score of "A". Based on
Beam® internal brushing and utilization data.â
matheusmoreira wrote 2 days ago:
Technology is starting to become genuinely terrifying. Computers
used to sit on desks in full visibility, and we used to be in
control. Now they're anywhere and everywhere, invisible, always
connected, always sensing, doing god knows what, serving unknown
masters, exploiting us in unfathomable ways. Absolutely
horrifying.
morgan814 wrote 1 day ago:
Time to turn your house into a giant Faraday cage
anonym29 wrote 2 days ago:
I'd have tried to disassemble it, locate the SIM card or cellular
modem, and see if it could be used for other traffic. A wireguard
tunnel fixes the privacy problem, and I can always use more IP
addresses and bandwidth.
Until people start abusing these "features", they will not go away.
tzs wrote 1 day ago:
Be very very careful if you do that.
The data plans on some embedded modems are quite different from
consumer plans. They are specifically designed for customers who
have a large number of devices but only need a small amount of
bandwidth on each device.
These plans might have a very low fixed monthly cost but only
include a small data allowance, say 100 KB/month. That's plenty
for something like a blood pressure monitor that uploads your
results to your doctor or insurance company.
If you are lucky that's a hard cap and the data plan cuts off for
the rest of the month when you hit it.
If you are unlucky that plan includes additional data that is
very expensive. I've heard numbers like $10 for each additional
100 KB.
I definitely recall reading news articles about people who have
repurposed a SIM from some device and using it for their internet
access, figuring that company would not notice, and using it to
watch movies and download large files.
Then the company gets their bill from their wireless service
provider, and it turns out that on the long list of line items
showing the cost for each modem, a single say $35 000 item really
stands out when all the others are $1.
If you are lucky the company merely asks you to pay that, and if
you refuse they take you to civil court where you will lose.
(That's what happened in the articles I remember reading, which
is how they came to the public's attention).
If you unlucky what you did also falls under your jurisdiction's
"theft of services" criminal law. Worse, the amount is likely
above the maximum for misdemeanor theft of services so it would
be felony theft of services.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
Through what technical or legal mechanism is the company
identifying or locating you - assuming you never logged in or
associated the product with your identity?
fn-mote wrote 1 day ago:
They shipped it to you. They associated a machine UUID with
you at that time, as well as the SIM card.
Now maybe you mean the TV? Thatâs not what this particular
thread is about.
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> Thatâs not what this particular thread is about
This thread is about removing the SIM from a TV.
If I bought that TV in cash (or even credit card, sans
subpoena) at a Best Buy and removed the SIM, how is any
corporation identifying me?
abdullahkhalids wrote 1 day ago:
What law is preventing Best Buy from telling
TVManufacturer that a credit card with these last 4
digits bought the TV with this exact serial number?
And once the SIM connects near your house, what is
preventing the phone company from telling TVManufacturer
the rough location of the SIM, especially after that SIM
is found to have used too much data?
Then use some commercially available ad database to
figure out that the person typically near this location
with these last four digits is 15155.
That's just a guess, but there is enough fingerprinting
that they will know with pretty high certainty it is you.
Whether all this is admissible in civil court, idk.
anonym29 wrote 1 day ago:
Anecdotally, you may want to avoid Best Buy either way.
There's a chance the TV box contains just rocks, no TV,
and that they refuse to refund your purchase. [1] I
know I'm sure never shopping there again.
(HTM) [1]: https://wonderfulengineering.com/rtx-5080-buye...
15155 wrote 1 day ago:
> What law is preventing Best Buy from telling
TVManufacturer
No law: reality and PCI standards prevent this. And of
course, the manufacturer could get a subpoena after
enough process. This also assumes the TV was purchased
with a credit card and not cash.
> And once the SIM connects near your house
> what is preventing the phone company from telling
Again: reality and the fact that corporations aren't
cooperative. A rough location doesn't help identify
someone in any urban environment. Corporations are not
the FBI or FCC on a fox hunt.
Can you cite a single case where this has happened on
behalf of a corporation? These are public record, of
course.
andrewf wrote 1 day ago:
Example: [1] (the original source is gone and not in the
Wayback Machine)
(HTM) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2509967
aquir wrote 2 days ago:
Holy shit! I wouldâve done the same! This is pure evil! I guess
the box never had this info on it
jonnrb wrote 2 days ago:
Someone should start a blog where it's all clickbait titles and the
articles are all once sentence with the obvious resolution to the
bait.
ToucanLoucan wrote 2 days ago:
Yup. Works great. All things equal I'd prefer just not buying a damn
Smart TV to begin with, but absent that as a realistic option (every
4K TV I've ever seen is smart) I'll happily settle with them never
seeing one byte of Internet.
dr_coffee wrote 2 days ago:
The article lists several manufacturers of 4k dumb tvâs
imp0cat wrote 2 days ago:
Some of the advice is a bit weird though. Get a 4k HDR TV and
then connect it to an antenna? I mean, why do you even need a 4k
HDR TV in that case?
Not to mention disabling the smart/ad features is an option on
some smart tvs (ie. Sony).
ToucanLoucan wrote 2 days ago:
The article also says why they suck:
> Dumb TVs sold today have serious image and sound quality
tradeoffs, simply because companies donât make dumb versions of
their high-end models. On the image side, you can expect lower
resolutions, sizes, and brightness levels and poorer viewing
angles. You also wonât find premium panel technologies like
OLED. If you want premium image quality or sound, youâre better
off using a smart TV offline. Dumb TVs also usually have shorter
(one-year) warranties.
cgh wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, Sceptre's site shows a bunch of dumb TVs that max out at
HDMI 2.0, 4K/60Hz. Basically, they are ten years out of date.
eightnoneone wrote 2 days ago:
Iâm in the same camp. The next escalation is defending against a
TV scanning for, and joining unprotected neighbor networks to
âphone home.â Itâs a thing.
anonym29 wrote 2 days ago:
Bet this is easy to fool with a fake/honeypot open network with a
high rssi that blocks all traffic except the initial captive
portal / connectivity check.
jonnrb wrote 2 days ago:
I mean yeah or they include a 5G modem because the ads are so
lucrative. But then we can start discussing how to cut the red
wire to disarm your spy rectangle.
kotaKat wrote 2 days ago:
That one Iâm starting to lean on getting closer to happening
because we now have 5G RedCap out there for the âcheaperâ
moderate-speed IoT data market. [1] [2] Wouldnât surprise me
to see modems and eSIMs and embedded PCB antennas some day down
the line.
(HTM) [1]: https://about.att.com/blogs/2025/5g-redcap.html
(HTM) [2]: https://www.t-mobile.com/news/network/5g-redcap-poweri...
ToucanLoucan wrote 2 days ago:
Imagine if we could put this kind of innovation to work to
solve actual problems and not find ways to bypass people
attempting to not have capitalism screaming at them 24/7 to
buy things.
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