[HN Gopher] Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options
___________________________________________________________________
Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options
Author : fleahunter
Score : 557 points
Date : 2025-12-12 12:51 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| deafpolygon wrote:
| tl;dr: don't connect it to a network, and/or use a computer
| monitor.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| 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.
| eightnoneone wrote:
| I'm in the same camp. The next escalation is defending
| against a TV scanning for, and joining unprotected neighbor
| networks to "phone home." It's a thing.
| jonnrb wrote:
| 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:
| That one I'm starting to lean on getting _closer_ to
| happening because we now have 5G RedCap out there for the
| 'cheaper' moderate-speed IoT data market.
|
| https://about.att.com/blogs/2025/5g-redcap.html
| https://www.t-mobile.com/news/network/5g-redcap-powering-
| sma...
|
| Wouldn't surprise me to see modems and eSIMs and embedded
| PCB antennas some day down the line.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| 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.
| anonym29 wrote:
| 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.
| dr_coffee wrote:
| The article lists several manufacturers of 4k dumb tv's
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| The article also says why they suck:
|
| > Dumb TVs sold today have serious image and sound quality
| tradeoffs, simply because companies don't 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 won't find premium
| panel technologies like OLED. If you want premium image
| quality or sound, you're better off using a smart TV
| offline. Dumb TVs also usually have shorter (one-year)
| warranties.
| cgh wrote:
| 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.
| imp0cat wrote:
| 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).
| jonnrb wrote:
| 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.
| jeremy151 wrote:
| 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.
| aquir wrote:
| Holy shit! I would've done the same! This is pure evil! I
| guess the box never had this info on it
| anonym29 wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| andrewf wrote:
| Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2509967
| (the original source is gone and not in the Wayback
| Machine)
| 15155 wrote:
| 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:
| 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? That's not what this
| particular thread is about.
| 15155 wrote:
| > That's 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:
| 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.
| 15155 wrote:
| > 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.
| anonym29 wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://wonderfulengineering.com/rtx-5080-buyer-opens-
| box-to...
|
| I know I'm sure never shopping there again.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Similarly, I had a workplace dental provider ship me a 'smart
| toothbrush'.
|
| Turns out they track the aggregate of everyone's brushing and
| if every employee brushes their teeth, the plan gets a
| discount.
|
| _"Lower rate based on group 's participation in Beam
| Perks(tm) wellness program and a group aggregate Beam score
| of "A". Based on Beam(r) internal brushing and utilization
| data."_
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| 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:
| Time to turn your house into a giant Faraday cage
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Why not just remove the cell modem?
| _dain_ wrote:
| We shouldn't have to.
| maurits wrote:
| "We, and our 226 partners use cookies and similar methods to
| recognize visitors"
| pandemic_region wrote:
| This
| mrweasel wrote:
| 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?
| deafpolygon wrote:
| It's just a modern-day MLM scam.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Don't bring one into your house?
| wkjagt wrote:
| The article goes into that option.
| teeray wrote:
| TV Manufacturers: "oh no!" *proceeds to remove all dumb TVs
| from the market*
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| There's a second hand market.
| asdff wrote:
| For now. Try getting a good CRT today. Most all the good
| ones were sent to the dump.
| aquir wrote:
| Don't ever connect your TV to the internet?
| M95D wrote:
| They nag.
| anonym29 wrote:
| 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:
| I rented an apartment that had an LG. It showed a FOMO-
| inducing popup every week.
| anonym29 wrote:
| Any information on model number so people can compare,
| learn from your experience, etc?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| guerrilla wrote:
| My Phillips 65" doesn't. I just have it connected to my old
| PC via HDMI. Don't need any smart features.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| I've 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
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Maybe some brands do (feel free to name them). My Samsung
| does not.
| 0x457 wrote:
| 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.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| 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...
| sys_64738 wrote:
| I've not experience that on my TCL.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| 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.
| rationalist wrote:
| Don't ever let anyone else connect your TV to the internet
| either.
| cgh wrote:
| 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.
| nottorp wrote:
| Better be far enough from the neighbor's password less wifi.
| allarm wrote:
| Please provide a specific example of a tv that does that, or
| stop spreading misinformation.
| nottorp wrote:
| 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:
| _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.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| 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").
| flux3125 wrote:
| Funny how the article itself is an ad
| karmakaze wrote:
| AdsTechnica now.
| shlip wrote:
| Yup, from the Apple TV article linked in the article[1]:
|
| > According to its privacy policy, the company gathers usage
| data, such as "data about your activity on and use of" Apple
| offerings, including "app launches within our services...;
| browsing history; search history; [and] product interaction."
| [...] transaction information, account information ("including
| email address, devices registered, account status, and age"),
| 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.
|
| [1]https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/06/all-the-ways-
| apple-t...
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Let's 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.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Every series you've ever watched with the Apple TV -- of
| course, they keep track of what you watched with them!
|
| (/s).
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| It would be a horrible user experience if it didn't keep
| track of the series I've watched and where I was in shows
| so I could pick up and watch where I left off on a
| different device.
|
| This isn't the iPod days where you would sync your watch
| history with iTunes.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
|
| I'm on this thread because I understand technology.
|
| Are you saying that if you are watching something like
| "South Park" you wouldn't want the service that you are
| watching it on to keep track of where you are in its 25
| season run?
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > 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:
| 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:
| 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:
| AppleTV doesn't 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 doesn't 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:
| > AppleTV doesn't 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.
| saltcured wrote:
| 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?
| orwin wrote:
| Browsing history? Search history? Age?
|
| Also 'product interaction' is an euphemism to say "if
| you're sick, we'll sell this information for around 80EUR"
| (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'.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| So exactly how do you suppose they sync your browsing
| history and bookmarks between devices if they don't store
| the information? And your browsing history is e2e
| encrypted by keys on your device. Apple doesn't have
| access to your browsing history.
|
| You can give Apple any age you want to. It's 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..
| chrz wrote:
| why would i want to sync everything
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Why would someone want to sync bookmarks, browsing
| history etc between their phone, their iPad and their
| computer?
|
| Chrome and Firefox do the same.
| snoman wrote:
| Are trying to say it's 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?
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| 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?
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > 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.
| amelius wrote:
| It should not be necessary to be tied to the vendor after
| you have bought the product.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| 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.
| hopelite wrote:
| The only way to have privacy from the matrix is to not
| participate in the matrix. That's 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.
| gear54rus wrote:
| At least we can gather and post an actual solution in the top
| comment.
| ralfd wrote:
| > Obviously they suggest you to instead get an Apple TV
|
| I did the same last year though when I couldn't find a good
| non-smart tv. Even if you don't like the advice it is a
| practical solution for normies.
| drnick1 wrote:
| 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.
| encom wrote:
| There's a microphone in the remote control.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| you can see no privacy differences between an appletv and a
| roku or fire stick?
| hapticmonkey wrote:
| There are no ads in the AppleTV operating system itself.
|
| The only Apple "ads" I ever see are inside the Apple TV+ app
| (yeah, their naming is confusing...) and it's only for TV shows
| they're promoting in their streaming service.
| 0ld wrote:
| 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:
| An alternative is to just turn off the ability to purchase
| anything without entering your password each time in
| settings.
| systemtest wrote:
| 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?
| expensive_news wrote:
| On the Apple TV you get 'ads' 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 won't 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 Amazon's streaming service has
| minute long unskippable ads. Sometimes when you turn it on
| Alexa will just verbally read you ads.
|
| It's truly a dystopian piece of tech.
| hapticmonkey wrote:
| 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.
|
| That's very different from turning on your TV and seeing an
| ad for Mercedes or whatever taking up the screen.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| A box that can't run Kodi would never be my choice.
| simonmales wrote:
| 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.
| valleyer wrote:
| Sceptre is not in fact "a Wal-Mart brand" but rather an
| independent company.
|
| https://www.sceptre.com
|
| Westinghouse TVs are made by a company licensing the brand, not a
| "Pittsburgh-headquartered company".
|
| These seem like easy mistakes to avoid.
| csdreamer7 wrote:
| This is really poor research on their part.
| Animats wrote:
| > "Below are the brands I've 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.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| 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.
| bityard wrote:
| 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.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| 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
| itomato wrote:
| To say nothing of the the ads..
| chihuahua wrote:
| 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.
| Isamu wrote:
| Westinghouse was acquired as a brand under Tsinghua TongFang.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electronics
| shlip wrote:
| Other options than the suggested Apple TV route, include pihole
| (adblock), kodi, openelec (opensource media players).
| HiroProtagonist wrote:
| Pi-hole
| mr_mitm wrote:
| 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.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| 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.
| lazyeye wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| 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.
| gear54rus wrote:
| > 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.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _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.
| sandbach wrote:
| > 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.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >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.
| koolba wrote:
| > 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.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| > 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:
| I think costco sells a 100" hisense for $1899
|
| seems on the cheaper side and it might work like he said
| silisili wrote:
| > 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.
| amelius wrote:
| Unfortunately cars are becoming like smart TVs in this respect.
| anonym29 wrote:
| 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.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| 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
| wasn't 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
| doesn't 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:
| Only a $9 ride in 2025? What is that 1-2 miles? Just bike.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Yes because it's 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:
| > Yes because it's 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 :(
| wibbily wrote:
| That's worse? I don't want my car to track me, I'm def not
| going to volunteer that information to Uber.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| That's a lost cause between tag readers and if you carry a
| cell phone.
| anonym29 wrote:
| 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.
| anonym29 wrote:
| 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.
| Marsymars wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| Clearly you're not actually interested in a modern
| vehicle regardless of capabilities, so I don't think that
| there's any real point in detailing which of those things
| can be disabled.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| Then you have to carry a phone, which is even worse.
| 00N8 wrote:
| 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.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| 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 "smart" features.
| asdff wrote:
| 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 don't 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:
| It really depends on the situation and the car. I've 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.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| This is the same reason why we haven't bought a new vehicle.
| Our 2013 Toyota is fantastic.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| 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.
| Grazester wrote:
| 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.
| drnick1 wrote:
| 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.
| dartharva wrote:
| Vote with your wallet while there's still a chance
| asdff wrote:
| US government already decided for you, sorry.
| pabs3 wrote:
| Is there a device category that isn't becoming like this?
| DrPhish wrote:
| Just use a commercial signage display
| amundskm wrote:
| 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:
| Yes, the price is higher, maybe partially because it's not
| ad-subsidized. I was happy to pay it, this is what I bought:
| https://www.sharp.eu/sharp-nec-multisync-e868
|
| 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.
| gbear605 wrote:
| How'd you wind up buying it? All the options like that I
| can find start with "Get a Quote".
| amundskm wrote:
| 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.
| lucasRW wrote:
| Aren't private DNS or PiHoles a good enough compromise ?
| MattTheRealOne wrote:
| That can block some trackers, but does not block ads or
| "suggested" content. There are also some devices that have
| hardcoded DNS settings that bypass any local network DNS
| settings.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > 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.
| Simulacra wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| 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:
| The point is what if you DON'T just connect something to
| bypass all the slowness. Maybe in a tech forum everybody
| has done it, but certainly not out in the "real world".
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| 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. That's a horrible experience.
| xnx wrote:
| Terrible article, but a good topic. You can get rid of homescreen
| ads on Google(/Android/Chromecast?) TV with a custom launcher
| like Projectivity:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.pro...
| tormeh wrote:
| 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.
| EnPissant wrote:
| 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.
| willis936 wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46220488
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| 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:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46220488
| no_wizard wrote:
| 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:
| 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?!?!
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://forum.level1techs.com/t/it-is-possible-
| to-4k-120-hdr...
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| 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.
| paholg wrote:
| Some of us would like our expensive hardware to work
| without hacked third party dongles.
| nottorp wrote:
| It's also a piece of shit that will negotiate whatever it
| wants with your non free OS instead of giving you
| unmolested RGB...
| no_wizard wrote:
| 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:
| 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]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Cost
|
| [1]: https://vesa.org/about-vesa/member-companies/
| microbass wrote:
| I saw some giant TV on LTT recently which has a DP port.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| A DisplayPort Port you say?
| gloflo wrote:
| No, they said "DP port", not "DP Port".
|
| DisplayPort is a standard. A DisplayPort port is a port
| that follows the DisplayPort standard.
| jdiff wrote:
| 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.
| lostlogin wrote:
| 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:
| 32" is squarely "PC monitor" territory and there are now many
| good options even w/ OLED. No built-in speakers.
| energy123 wrote:
| 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.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| 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
| energy123 wrote:
| > 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:
| The new LG panels are bright enough. I think they're called
| 4th generation WOLED.
| energy123 wrote:
| 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.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| 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.
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| Aorus/Gigabyte is also making their monitors into smart TVs.
| The next size up is a Google TV.
|
| https://www.aorus.com/en-us/monitors/s55u
| thesandlord wrote:
| 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.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I think it helps with the HDMI 2.1 licensing bullshit.
| helterskelter wrote:
| 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.
| godelski wrote:
| 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
| oynqr wrote:
| 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:
| The cheapest one nowadays is probably the PSVR 2 adapter
| IPTN wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BNX7MS6N
| IPTN wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BNX7MS6N
| godelski wrote:
| Thanks. For some reason when googling and searching
| amazon I only found "unidirectional" ones and going the
| other way. I fucking hate search
| Marsymars wrote:
| There was the 55" Alienware OLED monitor, but unfortunately it
| never received a follow-up after its 2019 release.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > What I'd really like is a TV with DisplayPort.
|
| Issues with HDCP support maybe?
| watermelon0 wrote:
| DisplayPort supports all HDCP versions, so that shouldn't be
| a problem.
| rk06 wrote:
| i would really like a tv with usb c. so, i can directly connect
| my phone/ tablet and cast directly
| t0bia_s wrote:
| 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.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| How far away from the screen do you need to sit though? Isn't
| that too wide? I have kids but I've never seen them almost
| break a TV lol
| baq wrote:
| It's nice but OLED contrast is very hard to beat, and if
| you're one of those folks who insist that 'a white wall is
| good enough' then it's not even the same ballpark of image
| quality.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Different tariff rates for TVs and computer monitors.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Dont buy a TV?
| encom wrote:
| https://theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesn...
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Haha yeah that's a good one, fair
|
| Obligatory David Foster wallce just to add some gen x post
| structuralist nihilism
|
| https://youtu.be/A_ujr9gi3wk
| JayGuerette wrote:
| I'm confused. Every TV is a dumb TV if you don't give it your
| Wifi password.
| dawnerd wrote:
| some will yell at you with a notification until you give in and
| connect it.
| Retric wrote:
| Return it as unfit for service.
| _dan wrote:
| 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 (https://osmc.tv/) 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.
| drnick1 wrote:
| 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.)
| jwrallie wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning VacuumTube, it sounds useful.
|
| I'm 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:
| 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.
| timc3 wrote:
| No, it doesn't 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.
| _dan wrote:
| 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.
| eduction wrote:
| 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.
| lelandfe wrote:
| 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:
| It is technically illegal if that is how it is configured. Go
| get 'em.
|
| 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 you've 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 they've 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
| it's a YC company that now provides a mass surveillance
| network to the government and global government tightening
| its noose around humanity's neck.
| wccrawford wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| i have a vizio which I opened up and removed the WiFi module.
| it never complains about the internet now.
| nullhole wrote:
| "In the land of telescreens, the man with the soldering iron
| is king"
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Did't even require that. It was a standard mini pci-e wifi
| card, just unclipped it and removed it from its slot.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 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.)
| moltopoco wrote:
| 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.
| nottorp wrote:
| What do you use for a remote for the Mac Mini?
| omgmajk wrote:
| 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:
| Yeah the problem with a keyboard and trackpad is you need
| the lights on.
| omgmajk wrote:
| I do not, but I get what you mean :)
| andrewchilds wrote:
| 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.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 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.
| somat wrote:
| 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.
| asdff wrote:
| The TV can happily connect to my neighbors printer WLAN. That
| is the only open wifi around. It isn't 2008 anymore.
| rgovostes wrote:
| 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.
| MrMetric wrote:
| 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.
| systemtest wrote:
| 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.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| My LG TV is pretty dumb since the only button it has is
| "connect to media server" in local network.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| My Vizio wouldn't go past the "connect to internet" screen on
| first boot.
| taxmeifyoucan wrote:
| 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!
| throwaway63467 wrote:
| Is there much you can do with it? Does it still work as before,
| does it still have a GUI? Sounds really cool.
| montymintypie wrote:
| 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.
| rssoconnor wrote:
| I used my rooted TV to root my PS4. I'm not even joking.
|
| https://youtu.be/NzBBfGnAWM0
| taxmeifyoucan wrote:
| 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
| slig wrote:
| > 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:
| 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] https://github.com/throwaway96/dejavuln-autoroot
|
| [1] https://github.com/throwaway96/faultmanager-autoroot
| Retr0id wrote:
| One day I will buy a new TV and develop a new one-click
| method... but for now I'm still rocking my B9.
| ashirviskas wrote:
| 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 :')
| f001 wrote:
| My tv has never nor will ever touch the internet so
| problem solved re: updates.
| kelnos wrote:
| 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:
| It's totally possible! Check it at
| https://cani.rootmy.tv/. There are multiple exploits,
| search around
| jmward01 wrote:
| 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.
| wolrah wrote:
| Most smart TVs only have 100mbit ethernet, even "high end"
| TVs like LG OLEDs. They'd be terrible routers.
| taxmeifyoucan wrote:
| 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
| cess11 wrote:
| Nice!
| jmward01 wrote:
| 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.
| pabs3 wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
| Retr0id wrote:
| 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:
| As Conservancy would say, a device with no way to modify
| isn't GPLv2 compliant either.
|
| https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/
| https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-
| and-t... https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2017...
| darkwater wrote:
| 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:
| Unfortunately, Torvalds supported tivoization:
| https://lkml.org/lkml/2007/6/13/289
| ninkendo wrote:
| Because anti-tivoization doesn't 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, everything's
| great.
|
| But for safety reasons, since the software controls when
| the toaster pops, you decide to check at boot time that
| the software hasn't been modified. You could take the
| engineering effort to split the software into parts so
| that only the "pop on this heat level" part is locked
| down, but maybe you're 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_ doesn't 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 "or any later version" backdoor clause)
| to start pushing their views on the hardware world.
| paxcoder wrote:
| 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.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| 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.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > But for safety reasons, since the software controls
| when the toaster pops, you decide to check at boot time
| that the software hasn't 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, naive 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.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| > But it seems to be an extreme overreach for the FSF to
| use their license (and that "or any later version"
| 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.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| 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:
| > 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| 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.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| 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: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-
| licenses/gpl-1.0.en.html
|
| > 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.)
| selectnull wrote:
| 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:
| https://youtu.be/PaKIZ7gJlRU?si=RK5ZHizoidgVA1xO&t=288
| teekert wrote:
| Which confirms the point actually. The hoops companies
| have to jump through are pretty good hoops.
| pabs3 wrote:
| 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.
| godelski wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
|
| https://wiki.debian.org/Exploits
| khimaros wrote:
| https://fossforce.com/2025/12/judge-signals-win-for-
| software...
| jader201 wrote:
| _> 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.
|
| I'll provide my own connected devices, independent of the
| screen.
| Underphil wrote:
| Yeah, I'd absolutely agree here. The article didn't "miss"
| this option. It just isn't relevant here.
| stravant wrote:
| 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.
| fulafel wrote:
| 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:
| A rooted computer is the opposite of a black box. This
| makes no sense.
| wiether wrote:
| For the same reason I don't want a self-heating mug.
| michaelsalim wrote:
| Why wouldn't you want that? Genuinely curious
| boerseth wrote:
| 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.
| wiether wrote:
| 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.
| saalweachter wrote:
| 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.
| wiether wrote:
| 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:
| > 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.
| IanCal wrote:
| Arguably the outcome you'd 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 it'd 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 there's 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?
| There's a simplicity for users unboxing something but
| there's not (I think) an enormous blocker to having
| something interchangeable here.
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| 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.
| ozim wrote:
| Most likely it will not be dishwasher safe.
| Itoldmyselfso wrote:
| 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.
| lenkite wrote:
| > Why wouldn't you want it to be a computer?
|
| Because I can then easily upgrade my computer without
| upgrading my TV.
| pessimizer wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > 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.
| taxmeifyoucan wrote:
| 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:
| Begs the question, how long before smart monitors.
| shantara wrote:
| 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
| people's screen content nagging them to update or
| register for some service during the normal monitor-like
| usage
| ranguna wrote:
| 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:
| 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 -- if I want to attach a
| computer to my TV, I'll do that as a search device.
|
| Why have a dependency on the TV hardware, when I can attach
| upgradable parts?
| pessimizer wrote:
| 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:
| 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: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2218
|
| 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.)
| gosub100 wrote:
| 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.
| whatsupdog wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| 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:
| I'd do exactly as you did. It's pity it didn't work for
| you. I'm on the market to buy a TV (not hurrying though),
| so I'm not sure what to do here. I'd 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 I'd just pick any TV,
| even FullHD (not 4K), and even not smart (attaching some
| SBC with Kodi to the back). But ideally I'd prefer to
| jailbreak it and have Kodi installed without any extra
| device. Now I'm puzzled whether these lists of
| 'compatible' TVs are trustworthy.
| _pdp_ wrote:
| I was thinking the same. While it is not for everyone, hacking
| the TV to make the dumb is possible.
| amelius wrote:
| For the real hackers:
|
| https://www.panelook.com/
|
| Global Panel Exchange Center
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Holy Toledo.
|
| That's like Alibaba, except for small(ish) quantities of LCDs
| of any possible description.
| andrepd wrote:
| 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.
| duskdozer wrote:
| hosts file block?
| andrepd wrote:
| Block what? Which domains? How do you know what the TV will
| connect to?
| dh2022 wrote:
| Block everything except for what you want. For e.g. block
| everything but Netflix.
| nolok wrote:
| Pi hole is enough for me on a modern Samsung
| andrepd wrote:
| So, entirely orthogonal to the issue of rooting the TV?
| albert_e wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| pxc wrote:
| 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:
| Agreed.
|
| This "proprietary telemetry" 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
| doesn't have a fully open source kernel and drivers, this
| becomes a bit tricky. Better just to use a device that
| doesn't have malware on it in the first place.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I've been pretty happy with the smart apps on my LG OLED; it's
| got the streaming things I want including jellyfin. Really the
| only one missing is steam link.
| sander1095 wrote:
| 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 :)
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Oh yeah I'm aware of various "plug in a thing" 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.
| steine65 wrote:
| 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.
| Teknomadix wrote:
| It took a bit of extra effort but `faultmanager-autoroot`
| script worked on my LG WebOS Smart Monitor
| ori_b wrote:
| That still gives money to the people producing this garbage.
| broof wrote:
| I don't know the finances, but I wouldn't 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 you're
| probably getting a good deal at the expense of the company
| ori_b wrote:
| 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:
| 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:
| Which is why making this trash profitable for them is a
| problem.
| upfrog wrote:
| Jailbreaking is definitely an option, but there is value in
| spending money to provide a market signal instead.
| gosub100 wrote:
| 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.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| 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
| Marsymars wrote:
| What does a last-gen game console offer over an Apple TV if you
| don't care about games?
| joombaga wrote:
| A DVD/Blu-ray/CD player and a digital TV tuner.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| 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:
| The PS5 unfortunately doesn't do DVDs or CDs though.
| asdff wrote:
| The launch edition doesn't? I'm surprised vendors even
| sell a bluray drive that doesn't have that capability. I
| guess sony wanted to cut every cent off they could...
| wltr wrote:
| Do you mind elaborating on plasmas? I have entirely missed this
| technology, and wonder what's about it.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Deep blacks, smooth motion, wide viewing angle. Most people
| would say OLEDs are better, but some still say the motion is
| smoother on plasmas.
| wltr wrote:
| What about their energy consumption? Aren't they much
| hungrier?
| dpark wrote:
| Power hungry and heavy as hell. I had a 55" plasma that
| weighed about 150lb with the base.
| vitaflo wrote:
| 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.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| I paid $5,000 in 2007 for the best TV you could buy at the
| time: Pioneer Kuro Elite 50" 1080p plasma. I'm still using it
| as my only TV. For the past 5 years I've been looking to
| upgrade/replace it with a state-of-the-art top-of-the-line 4k
| OLED/micro-OLED/quantum dot/etc. -- but when I go to look at
| current screens, none match the almost 3D depth and beauty of
| my plasma display. So, I'm patiently waiting for my 18-year-
| old TV to stop working -- but much to my amazement it's never
| ever needed service! Edit: Smart TVs appeared in 2007-8; mine
| did not offer this "feature."
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Honestly my Xbox one S might be my favorite console I've ever
| owned. Certainly my most versatile.
| neilv wrote:
| 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.
| QuiEgo wrote:
| The is the modern version of "ditch your cable company's horrible
| DVR for a TiVO". What's old is new again, sadly.
| j45 wrote:
| 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.
| ynac wrote:
| I've been on projectors for 10 years. Never even had to own a
| smart TV.
| Dementor430 wrote:
| 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.
| disambiguation wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://plasma-bigscreen.org/get/
| pabs3 wrote:
| Presumably locked bootloaders on smart TVs are a problem that
| would block usage of that project?
| moltopoco wrote:
| 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.
| IshKebab wrote:
| The problem with open source TV solutions like that is that
| they never support legal streaming platforms like Netflix,
| Disney+ and so on.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| I'm failing to see a problem with that.
| simonmales wrote:
| 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.
| Spivak wrote:
| Live sports / tv is the one you can't really work around
| when your device doesn't have DRM support.
| komali2 wrote:
| > 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?
| mastazi wrote:
| 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:
| the big issue with this setup is that most streaming platforms
| won't 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 I've observed
| the same--ex: Netflix seems to limit the streaming quality even
| with Edge.
| asdff wrote:
| If you really care about fidelity you'd 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
| don't care enough to seek alternatives.
| mrandish wrote:
| 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:
| What's wrong with never configuring the WiFi for it?
| Grazester wrote:
| ...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:
| It depends on the manufacturer, but a lot of new ones show
| pop ups until you connect to a network
| aprilnya wrote:
| Connecting it to Wifi means you can use Airplay, Chromecast,
| Miracast..
| eggsome wrote:
| 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...
| bitwize wrote:
| 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:
| I'd be in the market but walmart.ca doesn't list any Sceptre
| TVs. (Nor does any other Canadian retailer.)
| stockresearcher wrote:
| I think they are selling off old stock and exiting the TV
| business. Searching various sites in the US shows only a
| basic 50" 4K TV. A few years ago, they had a very wide
| variety of offerings - I bought a 65" 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. It's
| probably a lot more lucrative.
| pabs3 wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
| aceazzameen wrote:
| 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.
| symbogra wrote:
| 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:
| there was a 55" 4K option but your point stands. Yeesh.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Will it be smart if you don't connect it to the internet? Am I
| missing something?
| class3shock wrote:
| 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.
| wmf wrote:
| Roku has this feature.
| adambb wrote:
| LG (UT8000 at least) TVs have an option to default to last used
| input, that works reliably.
| Gigachad wrote:
| HDMI CEC should be able to to turn on TVs direct to the input.
| Sadly few desktops seem to support it.
| moltopoco wrote:
| The Steam Machine will support CEC, hopefully other PC
| vendors will take note and adopt it.
| pabs3 wrote:
| Apparently "almost no PC GPU has hardware support for CEC"
| according to Arch. Wonder if that is outdated and modern GPUs
| do?
|
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/HDMI-CEC
| aprilnya wrote:
| 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 it's wonky.
| noveltyaccount wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| duffyjp wrote:
| We have two Hisense TVs that both allow this. One is Roku based
| and the other Google TV. Neither is connected to wifi. I'd
| 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 Roku's 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 27" CRT for my SNES as a
| kid--
| saint_yossarian wrote:
| 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:
| Just checked now: the setting is General & Privacy -> Start
| Screen Options -> Start with Smart Hub Home.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/lg-50-ua7000-4k-uhd-
| hdr...
| Suppafly wrote:
| 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.
| burlesona wrote:
| 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 it's
| 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.
| asdff wrote:
| It isn't even the smart tv prospect that concerns me with new
| tvs. My current TV is technically a smart TV but you can't 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. I'm not even sure what to look for to avoid this
| issue. Limiting myself to maybe 48hz tvs?
| fwip wrote:
| You just need to turn it off in the settings.
| guidedlight wrote:
| I'm fairly certain that Sony TV's ask you where you want to use
| it as a Smart TV or a Dumb TV when setting it up.
| d--b wrote:
| says the blog with tens of ads and hundreds of trackers
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| Is Ars going to install and run ads on your device, and view
| your locally stored information? No.
| bradley13 wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| bpye wrote:
| 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.
| sod wrote:
| 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.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _Westinghouse's 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 ...
| kazinator wrote:
| 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
| "retail and public environments."_
|
| 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.
|
| > Panasonic's representative also pointed out that real TVs offer
| consumer-friendly features for watching TV, like "home-optimized
| picture tuning, simplified audio integration, and user-friendly
| menu interfaces."
|
| 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.
| rock_artist wrote:
| The more I think about it I wonder why Chinese TVs using Android
| based TV don't have Some GrapheneTV or basic trimmed down Android
| aimed to be "dumb".
|
| Unlike phones,
|
| - if it should be air gapped then all you'd 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 don't care it's "stuck" in specific
| version or use closed blobs.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| 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"
| (https://support.google.com/googletv/answer/10408998?hl=en),
| 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.
| reacharavindh wrote:
| Am I missing something? I have a LG nano something TV that has
| many "smart" 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?
| cosmic_ape wrote:
| 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 wouldn't go that far.
| ileonichwiesz wrote:
| At that point you just open up the back of the TV and drive a
| screwdriver into the WiFi chip.
| strangegecko wrote:
| Goodbye warranty
| dewey wrote:
| 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.
| Liquix wrote:
| 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.
| zeristor wrote:
| Absurdly although I'm, 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:
| 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.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| 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.
| kevin061 wrote:
| 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.
| Arbortheus wrote:
| What a horrid thought...
|
| 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, it's 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.
|
| [1] https://ruter.no/en/ruter-with-extensive-security-testing-
| of...
| wiether wrote:
| Chuck McGill was a visionary?
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| 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:
| Source about Sony?
| xg15 wrote:
| 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.)
| gary_0 wrote:
| 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.
| xg15 wrote:
| 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)
| Gabrys1 wrote:
| These devices usually have detachable antennas, so just
| unscrew them
| thfuran wrote:
| All antennas are detachable. Some can even be reattached.
| xg15 wrote:
| "The right tool for the job"
|
| ...is sometimes a boltcutter.
| mft_ wrote:
| > 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.
| clemiclemen wrote:
| 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.
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| Add a camera and microphone, and you have yourself a utopia
| that can control masses.
| fainpul wrote:
| You mean dystopia, right?
| GlumWoodpecker wrote:
| Depends on your point of view, whether you are the one
| watching, or the one being watched, I guess :)
| thechao wrote:
| No, you mean _utopia_ , friend.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| 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:
| 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!"
| throwaway94275 wrote:
| 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.
| darkwater wrote:
| 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?
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| > Best ways to find a dumb TV
|
| I did not give my TV network access. Works fine.
| idbehold wrote:
| 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:
| Provide any evidence at all that this is happening.
| bpye wrote:
| 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.
| ZiiS wrote:
| 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:
| 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
| subscription...
|
| 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.
| nephihaha wrote:
| 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.
| rokoss21 wrote:
| 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.
| p1dda wrote:
| Why not just buy a big monitor and use it to watch 'TV'?
| djoldman wrote:
| For the tech-savvy, I'm not too worried about smart TVs. I just
| do this:
|
| > If you want premium image quality or sound, you're 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.
| scosman wrote:
| 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:
| I do this too, works great. Sometimes I cry remembering all
| the money I wasted on TV's "smart" features but I'll take the
| small win.
| sfilmeyer wrote:
| 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:
| Ha, yea it's been awhile since I've done that. Although if I
| was annoyed enough I might take one apart.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| > 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:
| That is inevitable. Too many people ship only on price and
| we'll never reach sufficient mass
| haarolean wrote:
| ha good luck. they already aggressively scan and use public wi-
| fi networks and have everything shipped on a chonky SoC
| throwaway94275 wrote:
| 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.
| orangecat wrote:
| _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.
| yojo wrote:
| I just want a panel. I'm 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.
|
| There's 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.
| lkbm wrote:
| > 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.
| RunningDroid wrote:
| Not too far off, apparently 5G modems on T-mobile's service
| can try using StarLink now
|
| https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/satellite-phone-service
| djoldman wrote:
| I really hope so!
|
| But also, it's unlikely I'll live long enough where keeping
| an older vehicle won't be an option.
| mentos wrote:
| Don't 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.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| 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:
| Basically locks you out of HDR, high frame rates, VRR, or (more
| importantly) new panel technology like OLED.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Nope. https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/sony/x850d
| sllabres wrote:
| 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] https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203 /
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.06203
| b8 wrote:
| Don't connect to the wifi on the tv and just use a Nvidia Shield
| Pro or ugoos/Onn.
| wappieslurkz wrote:
| 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:
| this is the only way. Do not ever connect your new TV to the
| internet. Never, ever.
| mattacular wrote:
| 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:
| 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.
| earthnail wrote:
| 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.
| duxup wrote:
| I wish my apple TV could take a bunch of HDMI inputs and
| basically be my HDMI switch in the Apple TV interface.
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