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.
The biggest ad giant in the world already controls my TV’s OS
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.
Than I only watch my drm free stuff 🤷🏻
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.
In my Country, you can Return within 1 month if you are not satisfied.
Yea but here in the United States we have the Freedom™ to be ripped off with no recourse.
Oh no I live in the U.S. we don’t really do consumer protections.
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.
I want a TV with NO OS.
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
Never been implemented. It doesn’t exist.
Cables support it but zero devices made it to the consumer market and both devices would need to support it for it to work. It’s a dead standard from another era at this point. WiFi speeds have become so significant that there’s just no reason for the additional costs that would be involved.
I admit if half of the people out there who bought smart TVs started refusing to connect them to the internet and bought streaming boxes instead there might be an incentive for TV makers to try it but no incentive for streaming devices to help them do it and at that point it’s just easier for TV makers to require an internet connection or the TV doesn’t work.
Thank you for the clarification. I was not aware of this.
Look into Sceptre. 4K with no OS, no ads, doesn’t ask for WiFi - just a TV.
I can find only computer monitors there.
You’ll see these marketed as monitors sometimes, from what I’ve seen. Mostly it’s for businesses but if you want a dumb screen to connect things to, it might be called a “monitor” even if it has the form factor of a TV.
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.
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.
Premium televisions are already pumped full of this stuff
Monitors aren’t being pumped full of this stuff
I hope this is just marketing then…
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.
Buy a commercial display, thats what I do.
Done! Take any Smart TV, factory reset it. And never let it connect to the Internet again .
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.
For fuck’s sake.
I don’t want an OS on my next TV…
I have an old 60 inch 1080p TV from the early days of smart tvs. It has a built in app for plex and youtube, a remote that works as a pointer, it’s insanely slow but it has zero ads and I’m never ever getting a newer model.
Up until that TV dies.
I’ll find one on the used market or do whatever it takes to fix it
Same here, one of our “smart” TVs needs Ethernet for networking, the other needs a Wi-Fi dongle. Rest aren’t even smart. All 1080p.
Now all you need is a built-in camera to prove Orwell was right… only off by a few decades, really.
phones and laptops got that covered
How bout no
What’s a TV? Is that like a monitor?
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.
An ad giant already owns and controls my current TV’s OS
FYI for those using DNS-based adblocking: I discovered that my AndroidTV box asks 8.8.8.8 when my local DNS server blocks a request.
I connected an old laptop with linux mint and put the TV always in HDMI mode. Problem solved.
Only if you mean the tv has no web access
I disabled the wifi yes. I deleted the wifi config and cleared the password too.
Dang what an arseholes they are… I wish there was an easy way to flash it or spoof the update server or some shit that allowed us to change all this ill willed software…
What a shower of twats. Don’t block the request in that case, just redirect it to your local server that returns a 1x1 transparent png for all requests.
Block all port 53 traffic from your network outside of your DNS server/pihole itself.
Block all known DoH servers.If you want to get REALLY fancy you can write a NAT rule that will force any outgoing request on port 53 to route to your dns/pihole.
I do all of this. It’s actually funny to see the requests that were hardcoded to go somewhere. Giant fuck you to those companies.
Do DoH requests go though 443?
Yes. But there are lists of well known IPs that are serving DoH. So you can just block those. Obviously blocking 443 is not a good idea.
I always have issues with dns blocking so I tried something sneaky I redirected all DNS requests to 1.1.1.1/1.0.0.1 and it worked brilliantly, for about a month when it stopped working all together, I don’t know if a cache was wiped or google saw what I was doing and made a special exception just for me, obviously I want to believe I’m a special snowflake taking the world’s largest internet company head on in an epic battle of wits and skill but I think the cache thing might be more likely for some reason.
You mean redirecting on your router? How should google stop you from doing that? And why would you redirect to cloudflare lol
It could start using DNS over HTTPS if it had enough failed requests. Those wouldn’t be able to be redirected
Depending on your router you can forward all request on port 53 to your DNS server regardless of the IP they try to use.
EtherNet over HDMI
Then block 8.8.8.8 and use 1.1.1.1 or Quad9
Dang, so you’d have to block Google’s DNS at the router level too?
I wouldn’t mind doing it. I run my own DNS so it wouldn’t affect me, but I figure if they’re already trying 8.8.8.8 they may as well try 8.8.4.4 and perhaps more, so it’d require a bunch of firewall rules.
Now, all of that is moot point cause I hate the whole “smart TV” thing, so they’d never be connected to the internet.
Right. It’s probably easier to give it a whitelist instead of a blocklist.
I set up my firewall to block all outgoing traffic to ports 53 and 853 (except for the upstream traffic from my pihole). I suppose DoH could still sneak through though.
