Don’t ever connect them to the internet. Period.
If it’s required, buy a different tv. It’s not difficult to look that up beforehand.
I suspect in the near future it will be impossible to buy a TV without spyware/adware. The only option will be to not connect it to the internet and run your own Raspberry PI/SBC based solution.
Monitors aren’t being pumped full of this stuff and so won’t the premium televisions.
The super budget/sold at a loss TVs will absolutely be gutted for spyware.
Premium televisions are already pumped full of this stuff
Yup. I don’t know if it’s all of them, but Louis Rossmann had a video where he ranted about this BS in his high end TV.
Looks at the top of the line Samsung Odessey 49"/54" ultrawide monitor. Looks at specs. Reread this comment.
Uhuh
Monitors aren’t being pumped full of this stuff and so won’t the premium televisions.
I have a feeling premium TVs won’t escape adware/spyware either. They can get their margin on the hardware and earn some more money on spyware; I don’t see what incentive they have to not do both. I hope I am wrong though.
You’re not wrong, there are a number of videos from Louis Rossman (right to repair advocate) on YouTube lambasting LG for doing this very thing on their high-end G-series OLED TVs; including defaulting to opt-in to marketing and providing PIR data after an automatic update.
Monitors aren’t being pumped full of this stuff
I hope this is just marketing then…
Checking before buy buying will be possible for computer and privacy « educated » people only, that leaves almost everyone helpless in the real world, in a store facing TVs all playing the demo video. Maybe some will read Amazon reviews or do actual research… hope.
My current TV is clawing my firewall like squirrel with rabies. I’m sure the next one will too.
I just give smartTVs no network at all
Please enable internet access to setup your new TV, otherwise no TV for you.
Then you turn around and return it. Don’t encourage that behavior by just letting it happen.
If your retailer has a generous enough policy to let you return an opened TV because simply because you don’t like it. I spent $1,200 on a Sony TV with backlight bleed issues that were so bad that half the screen was tinted blue. I tried to return it or get a replacement but was told by both the retailer and Sony support that half the screen being blue was “normal for LED TVs and within acceptable parameters” and to go fuck myself.
That’s what chargebacks are for. You don’t have to rely on shitty retailers return policy.
You’re not going to win a chargeback determination in this case either.
You will be, as I was, shit out of luck.
If your credit card doesn’t let you do a chargeback for defective equipment then you need to get a better card provider.
TVs not working after purchase would qualify as defective in my opinion.
In my Country, you can Return within 1 month if you are not satisfied.
Oh no I live in the U.S. we don’t really do consumer protections.
Yea but here in the United States we have the Freedom™ to be ripped off with no recourse.
Than I only watch my drm free stuff 🤷🏻
I want a TV with NO OS.
Look into Sceptre. 4K with no OS, no ads, doesn’t ask for WiFi - just a TV.
I can find only computer monitors there.
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The walmart link has some TVs, but apparently not the Amazon one, just monitors.
It’s hard but not impossible, as even ‘retail displays’ run an OS in the background to control input switching, image settings etc.
Honestly the best thing to do is buy whatever TV you want (we have a couple of the LG OLEDs in our household), and don’t ever plug them into your network (or WiFi). Otherwise, with updates OS and apps become sluggish, with more ads crammed in.
Instead, use a seperate media player (e.g. Apple TV if you’re already on the iOS ecosystem, Nvidia Shield or similar for Android, HTPC if you’re so inclined etc.) - they’re more powerful, arguably more secure & private, and portable between displays if/when you upgrade.
Unfortunately EtherNet over HDMI exists so your your TV can still access the Internet if the Apple TV or Nvidia Shield has Internet access. To prevent that you have to make sure use older HDMI cable less then HDMI 1.4.
I didn’t think any devices even adopted Ethernet over HDMI
For fuck’s sake.
An ad giant already owns and controls my current TV’s OS
Solution: get a dumb tv
unfortunately,
on some markets they are gone.
“Smart” TVs have squeezed them out.If you manage to have access to AliExpress, you can have it shipped.
When that is not an option, a big computer screen and a tv card.
Aliexprees is great for low buget electronics,
but I’m skeptical about anything larger.
Plus with EU’s hike on tarifs and delivery services quality it’s like playing worst type of gambling.A TV card(and PC obviously) with screen could be for me,
but there is no way my parents would agree to such setup.Amazon ships the exact same fare of electronics. If it serves of any consolation…
If you have a laptop, there are small USB tv tunners available. If not, a smarphone can access a good deal of content. And depending on what country you are, you might have access to your national channels (open signal ones) over the net.
For the rest: Aaaaarrrr, me ladies! May the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster fill our sails and set our course for rich waters!
Getting increasingly hard.
I finally learned why those 50" tvs are so cheap, like $200. Buy a dumb TV that’s the same size is easily 5x the price.
Then again, nobody needs a TV and I only bought one during the pandemic, then connected it to my pi hole.
Ehm, it is already like that. Most of smart TVs use Android which is under Google control, a big (if not the biggest) ad company.
Pi hole FTW.
Not good enough. Any OTA updates your TV can get over the web will eventually be trying to circumvent your IP blacklists to shove in any ad-riddled garbage they can.
Literally just blacklist your TV’s MAC address, and use a dedicated set top box of some kind to avoid this shit. My current choice is my NVIDIA Shield Pro 2019, which I installed a 3rd party WOLF launcher (there’s also F-Launcher) and turned off auto-updates so I could avoid NVIDIA and Google doing the same.
At some point, I will probably need to switch to a NUC or other HTPC with some flavor of Linux on it, as eventually the Shield may succumb to this shit as well.
I don’t want an OS on my next TV…
How bout no
Smart TVs are why I’m never getting rid of the old Samsung TV I’m currently using as a monitor for my desktop. It’s not quite flat screen like an actual flat screen, but at least it doesn’t have a camera attached to it (besides the USB camera I keep unplugged unless needed), no microphone, and no ads. Plus, I still have access to all the other types of things I need like AVI and coaxial inputs, besides HDMI. It’s gonna be the saddest day ever when the beauty decides to die on me.
The biggest ad giant in the world already controls my TV’s OS
My video projector is dumb, and that’s the way I like it.
This is the way. 20 years ago, I got rid of an old Sony CRT that literally weighed as much as I did, and have had nothing but projectors since. Lots of complaints from the rest of the family around “it’s not bright enough”, and “it’s too complicated”, but hey ho.
Seeing this just makes me want a tv that is just a monitor, no crap you just plug in your own thing whatever you want.
Look into commercial monitors like the Samsung BET-H series. I bought a 43” one years ago, plugged an Apple TV into it, and haven’t really thought about the screen ever since.
According to the specs it runs Tizen, but I haven’t had to look at a menu since I got the settings dialed in, i.e. years, so I completely forgot. Don’t even know where the OEM remote is, it works with the HDMI-CEC commands sent by the Apple TV.
Done! Take any Smart TV, factory reset it. And never let it connect to the Internet again .
Buy a commercial display, thats what I do.
Anyone know of a reasonably priced OLED/QLED, >60", 4k TV without smart features?
I really don’t want the spyware and adware that come with newer smart TVs, and I’m willing to pay a bit of a premium for it. I’d also be happy with a unicorn smart TV that doesn’t have any of those anti-features.
What about just not connecting it to the network? Then put a video device on it like Roku or Apple tv or whatever.
just not connecting it to the network?
Some TVs require connecting to the network to set it up, and I’m concerned TV manufacturers will get more brazen going forward. If there’s a company that doesn’t do this nonsense, I’d rather reward them for being good instead of working around misfeatures in popular brands.
Roku
Has ads that can be disabled, at least as-of last year. Not sure how long that’ll last…
Apple TV
Apple also seems interested in ads.
Any other option will likely degrade to having ads at some point. I could probably get rid of them w/ a PiHole or something, but that could end up being a game of whack-a-mole.
I’ll probably end up w/ a Raspberry Pi or something running Kodi or similar, which is really annoying because that’s yet another thing I have to self-host just to avoid this stupid obsession with ads.
I know this isn’t purely TV-related, but there used to be a secret menu for Roku where you could disable home screen ads. That stopped working for me several months ago. So I recently bought an Onn box (which is basically Android TV, but had as very cluttered UI) and side-loaded one of the open source launchers onto it. It’s been a much better experience than Roku, not least because there’s are no more home screen ads.
there used to be a secret menu for Roku where you could disable home screen ads
That’s the first link. If it no longer works, I guess Roku isn’t an option anymore. 😟
I should clarify: the secret menu can still be navigated to and the options there set. But ads now appear regardless. I went back into the menu and verified the options hadn’t changed (they hadn’t). It’s like Roku has gotten wind of the exploit and ‘fixed’ their OS to ignore those options.
In the future we might have to hack our TV’s to make them ours…like disconnect the camera and the microphone or feed them bullshit data or inject trick hacks… 🤔 Hmm what is this thing? rm -f…copy paste to see what it does! Oh shit! Half the country looses Disney plus for a few days. And it repeats 5 times every month so they stop fucking with us.
I hear Sony is a good bet
With the way Sony is treating their gaming customers lately I consider it a dead brand.
Awesome, I’ll check them out. :)
