I still have and will continue to purchase TVs for as long as I can. Not smartTVs.
As a side note, I went to Best Buy and asked them about non-smartTVs. They literally said they had 2 models. A small, tiny TV and a larger TV which they did not have a model on the floor. They would have to bring it out or I would have to go the back.
This tech has been in TVs easily for the past ten years.
Did you know this stuff is in most modern cars, too? Fuck. EVERYTHING listens to you now.
I hate to use this phrase, but, back in my day, we used to call this SPYWARE and it was treated as a virus - it was highly unacceptable by people.
This is still your day
Leveraging people’s property to trash their privacy and serve them ads is really a good way to get me to avoid an entire brand for everything.
I agree, but with TVs (or large displays" we’re at the point where there are no good options. Commercial displays are over engineered for the home and lag in technology Vs home TVs. So they’re not an option. Lg and Samsung are the display technology leaders, but their TVs are full of crap— so no. Monitors don’t go large enough for the living room.
Guess I’m stuck with what I have.
Monitors are still bigger than TVs our parents had in our childhood, no way I’m buying such a surveillance machine just for a bigger screen.
For real: I’m using a 38" ultra wide, and if you had told child me that a 38" monitor would be the smallest display in the house I’d have told you that you’re full of shit.
Damn you for making me feel old by realizing my computer monitor is bigger than my childhood CRT TV.
Really. A bigger screen just gives my dog a bigger target when he flails his toys around.
Why would you ever accept this anti consumer bullshit for a slightly better screen? It might not even take a year before the current cutting edge not “the best” anymore with how fast tech cycles. I would absolutely go out of my way to get a device I can deprive of an Internet connection and still use.
Here, take it:
)
Ta
Huh, I’ve heard that commercial displays are the way to go. What do you mean when you say they are over engineered?
They’re designed and built to run 16/7 or similar. If you have TV on 16 hours a day, a commercial display is worth considering.
No, I’m not joking - I’ve seen folk who turn it on at sunrise, and off at bedtime.
They’re industrial boxes with a screen. Not aesthetically what I want in my living room. The displays are chosen for their longevity, not their picture quality. They’re often actively cooled with fans, so adding a noise level to their operation.
Might wanna look around, there are plenty used as wallboards in offices that high def and whisper quiet
This Samsung is out of stock, but there are options. You just need to look for signage displays or hospitality tvs.
Get a projector. Cheaper, bigger display area, less obtrusive.
You can get them now days up to 360hz refresh rate. Gaming projectors and projectors in general have came a long way from the faded blurry shit they were 10 to 15 plus years ago.
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So what im hearing is never buy an LG TV. Got it.
I have an LG TV. Absolutely love it.
However, it’s not connected to the internet so it doesn’t do any of this shit. It’s just a really nice dumb TV that has the potential to spy on me if I ever gave it a chance to be smart, and I still get to take advantage of the various picture improvements that come from having the processing power of a smart TV.
Just need something else to do streaming if that’s what you want. Like an Apple TV, nVidia Shield, Roku, or game console. Some of those will also advertise to you, but I’ve had good experience with my Apple TV.
I wouldnt be surprised if it randomly connects to unsecured/public wifi networks to still send the spy data if it can find any in its area.
Always asume the worst with any (tech) product and any major company, and a lot of times you will be proven right later.
With technology and politics, always assume the worst.
Maybe. If they’re following the rules they need you to agree to their privacy policies, and to do that you have to connect to the internet. I know from the time I did have it connected (before they rolled all this shit out) that they would let you use the TV without those policies accepted. They would just bother you about it constantly. Since I factory reset and didn’t let it connect, it hasn’t asked.
But that’s assuming they follow the rules. I’m not knowledgeable enough to find out if they’re doing this or not.
IF YOU DIDN’T PHONE HOME I WOULDN’T NEED A PRIVACY POLICY
It does have Bluetooth on and you can’t turn it off . But the wifi setting can be turned off
Continue to never buy LG products again?
Gotcha. The advertising works, i guess…maybe not how they wanted to, though lol
Oh, they do have products without all that shit. They offer large screen monitors that are basically their TVs without the “smart” part.
i wager it has all the TV stuff gutted out, including the tuner… Which admittedly is only a problem if you use OTA and not cable.
They have a bunch of display ports and HDMIs. You can buy the tuner you need (SAT, OTA, cable, other streamer), or use a PC&Linux and watch YT add-free.
Why would a TV need to know about addition?
Because of f-ed up autocorrect, that’s why.
My next TV will be either a business/signage monitor or a computer monitor.
At least something without any connection outside. No network, no anything.
At most something like a Chromecast or similar.“I dont want it to have anything, except google, the biggest invader of privacy there is” :p
You can still set up your own HTPC in your living room and configure it yourself.
And there are more solutions like from Apple (but they absolutely fucking track you as well) or other streaming box/stick solutions I am not aware of.
Unsure how good an Nvidia Shield is in regards to privacy. Your best bet for privacy is probably to just build your own solution on Linux.Nvidia is huge on producing AI and is certainly data-hungry. Without actually knowing, I would bet it’s about as bad as anything else. Since all your data is passing directly through their servers it’s trivial for them to do whatever they want with it.
I got a Samsung TV a couple of years ago. I use it with a Roku. It’s not on my network. I’ll keep it until it stops working because I think eventually TVs will refuse to work without an Internet connection.
At that point I’ll just buy a monitor.
Simple solution I use: Fuck television sets, get a computer monitor and basic speakers instead. A display should do only one thing and do it well.
Look at commercial sets
That would certainly be ideal, although there’s great difficulty in finding 50"+ monitors, and they cost a huge amount more
I guess that would beg the question, how much is it worth to you pay extra to not have additional spyware in your home? Or as others have said in this thread, there is at least one brand of television that still sells dumb tvs.
Never connect your tv to WiFi
Don’t buy connected anything
Just buy things that do the thing you want.
No consumer ever asked for a smart tv
For the lower tech people, smart TVs are just OkAy. They allow an end user to use Netflix etc. It’s the fucking cameras mics and sensors illls in my Tv that’s fucked up
If it makes a sound you don’t recognise, use the gun.
The printer lol
Smart TVs are tools of the demiurge
but why
Sad people buy more to try to make themselves happy. Retail therapy.
People who serve ads have a vested interest in knowing when you’re unhappy and what makes you unhappy, so they can capitalise on it.
This is why you block the camera with a little diorama that shows a single white male viewer…frantically masturbating.
Close. This is why I mastubate frantically infront of the cameras. It satifies they kink for surveilance and my kink in exhibitionism.
It’s really an ecosystem, if you think about it
Wait, TVs have cameras now? That sounds super creepy
As if someone published a book featuring this very technology…in 1949.
It was noted with memes when the ToS of one such television suggested not having private conversations in front of or otherwise near the TV screen.
And an array of microphones. But it’s not like they have a clear view of their surroundings. Wait
Good idea, though, this isn’t actually about cameras watching you as the title looks like.
Yep, this is just a standard market segmentation.
I just use a pi-hole to block my LG TV from connecting to any services I have not approved. So it can connect to YouTube but not lg.trackingservices.brainscanner.com. Never seen an ad on my TV.
I just don’t connect the snoopy bastard to my network 😂
I recently bought an LG TV. I didn’t connect it to the Internet, I just use it with my Chromecast or Switch. Works great, no ads, no AI BS.
Coming soon (if not already): TVs with utility cellular connections or corpo network (like Amazon sidewalk) access that your neighbor may have not opted out of.
I find it highly likely that TVs will soon cease to function without an internet connection, complete with some BS explanation about protecting your privacy or security.
I can’t set my dryer to medium heat unless I do so with an app over the internet even though the controls exist to do it on the unit. I bought a window AC unit and the only remote control is an app - thankfully I was able to put that on a subnet with no internet gateway and it still works.
Name them. Bosch does this with some functions too. I bought the model below and didn’t care about delayed start or whatever. I am not loading your app!
I swear we need to start some appliance hacking clubs or something to sidestep this crap.
It’s an LG dryer.
I’d have to go look up the window unit. Its almost certainly a white labeled OEM who’s advertised brand no longer exists, though.
such things should be brought back to the store as defective
Why did you buy those devices?
Neither mentioned a network connection was required. The AC unit didn’t mention it at all, and consumer reports mentioned the dryer had “smart features” and an app but never said basic controls were locked behind a network connection
complete with some BS explanation
“For child safety!!!111”
Broadcast TV is already going that way. ATSC 3 requires an internet connection to get decoding keys. For your protection, of course.
Coming soon: a screwdriver and a soldering iron
I mean, a camera is an easy thing to block, as long as you’re aware of it, understand the implications, and have the desire to block it. Just obstruct the lens. Roll of black electrical tape, put a strip over it, done. Now, most people out there may not actually do so…
Only becomes an issue if other services that you actually want are tied to the camera, or if the TV refuses to operate without a usable picture of the viewer or something.
Pictures are far from the only thing to worry about.
a quick reminder that the 5G standard defined a peer to
pearpeer operating mode for smart devicesPear to pear communication.
that was a good one :) fixed the typo
Luckily my neighbors are way out of WiFi range and there is barely enough cell service here to send a text from inside the house.
How close are you to a starlink constellations orbital path, now that they can be connected to via cellular modems?
That doesn’t support data yet. Data will probably cost a fortune when they enable it. I doubt anyone will be willing to pay that much to serve ads. If they do, then the antenna will be replaced with a dummy load.
this sounds terrible
Some TVs already have the ability to connect to sidewalk. More worrying is that every newer “Smart” TV has the ability to cast to it so if anyone ever does that using an internet connected device like a SmartPhone then bam…your TV just got an internet connection and can now send out stored data and potentially grab a firmware update.
Surprise!
This is the way to do it
I blocked my lg from the Wi-Fi after i got a “Kobe Bryant memorial” ad, while playing on my switch… TF?!
Do you think he thought avoiding all that traffic was worth it as he plummeted?
Okay so fuck rich people destroying the planet with private air travel—however, he was still statistically more likely to die from driving that day. And so was his daughter and the other innocent kids on that flight
He was in a helicopter not a 747.
Hopefully no IBS either.
I’ve heard this line many times from so many people.
So basically just Nintendo and google profit off your personal information? And doesn’t Chromecast serve ads? In the background, but still?
I fully support your decision to not connect your LG TV to the internet. I do the same thing but it’s often just for convenience. I get better performance from my devices rather than from the TV itself for whatever application.
Just was thinking about that recently is all.
HOW EXCITING…
said no one ever.
If they ever make this a standard feature in all TVs and make it where I can’t just disconnect it from the internet, I will be using old TVs for the rest of my life.
My TV is there to display a visual output. It does not and should not do anything else.
Luckily digital signboards will always be an option to replace TVs with if the situation becomes truly dire. The sorts of no-frills displays corporations buy to display whatever media they want in store.
Might not come with sound, but you can pick up a cheap sound bar and it will still be better than whatever cheap speakers commercial TVs try to cram in there.
The future is great!
As long as my 1080p plasma tv works, there’s no need to upgrade. Going 4K would also mean I would have to upgrade my HTPC hardware, because that old APU probably can’t handle resolutions like that.
In the meantime though, I’ll just keep on watching online videos in my living room without ads or interruptions. It’s been great even though all of this hardware is cheap and ancient.
But that’s the thing: televisions are complex and can be very difficult to repair, so what do you do when you can’t buy a dumb replacement anymore? I have the same issue with cars. I would like to replace ours with an EV, but they are a privacy nightmare whereas my car’s peak technology is FM radio.
I was thinking earlier today about how much technology waste there is because old stuff is superseded so quickly. Maybe in future we will treasure the tech we had before it all went to shit.
Kit cars have been around for ages, and Framework offers DIY laptops. I think we should have kit displays as well. Surely, someone has already made something like that with a raspberry or something.
Yeah, hopefully we can just buy cheap panels and put it together how we want. If that also opened up options for hackers to build entirely new display applications, or in new ways, that would be the dream.
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Open up the tv, de soldier the led.
if your router is able to you can set up ACLs to allow the TV access to your network but not the internet.
If you set up your pihole as the DHCP it works. It’s weird that you can’t change the static IP…
but now that Roku has pop up ads for simply moving around the app menu
Huh? I have 3 Roku Ultras, a Roku Stick, and a Roku TV and none of them do that. Have you gone into the Roku settings menu recently and checked your advertising settings?
Nah, they’re doing A/B testing currently for their next several waves of ads. I think (but don’t quote me on this) I read that in the new EULA.
That sucks. If I can’t control the ads with settings, dns fuckery, or firewalling then I guess I’ll leave their ecosystem.
Indeed. I’m saving up for a dumb tv with an HTPC, and hopefully will get it deployed before that nonsense comes my way.