The approach I’ve taken is to just keep my TV off the internet (never join a WiFi network) and make it smart via an Apple TV, which I personally believe to have the strongest privacy protection of any smart TV device.
Another bonus is my TV UI hasn’t changed despite changing and upgrading TV brands.
Sure but if everyone has WPA2 encryption enabled on their network, such as is the case in my neighbourhood, then there is no network for the TV to connect to anyways.
Underfloor foil insulation works pretty well as a cage. It also adds a nice electrocution risk when installing and is banned in my area for this reason.
Google is telling me that the mesh for a Faraday cage that would block WiFi could have hole sizes up to about 5 mm. Suppose you made your faraday cage (or at least the part that goes in front of the screen) out of 40 gauge wire (0.07874 mm diameter) with the wires spaced 2.25 mm apart.
On a 70" 4K TV a pixel is about 0.4 mm x 0.4 mm. If the mesh were close to the screen I think about 30% of the pixels would have wire in front of them. Of those 30%, 1/6 would both a horizontal and a vertical wire in front (let's not go crazy and talk about orienting the mesh diagonally or anything like that), and 5/6 would only have one wire in front of them. So that's 70% of pixels not interfered with, 25% having one wire in front of them, and 5% having two wires.
The 25% with one wire crossing would have about 20% of the pixel occluded by the wire. The 5% with two wires crossing them would have about 36% occluded.
My guess is that the screen could be seen pretty well through that.
It’s not that simple. The Faraday cage I got from Costco seems to phone home to a server in China. Obviously I returned it and used the money to buy a whole lot of tinfoil.
Anyone who says that "blocking" wifi is easy is someone who hasn't tried. Even very expensive professionally built cages don't "block", they attenuate. And modern wifi equipment is surprisingly good at working just fine with weak signals.
I've seen rumblings that day may be very soon, too. Once devices in the home have embedded prepaid 5G out with your control, all sorts of home networking/firewall challenges are going to arise. We are entering a world in which it will cost very, very little to embed 5G into almost anything with say 1GB of prepaid eSim data for analytics collection, regardless of whether device resides on your LAN or not.
There’s only a fractional amount of people using smart TVs without WiFi. I’m very dubious it’s worth the cost to imbed GSM cards in each TV to reach the fraction that doesn’t allow the TV on WiFi.
I've long wondered about what wifi/cellular looks like on an infinite timescale... it does strike me as unlikely too we will maintain two separate wireless standards forever for IP data. I think embedded cellular or equivelent global wireless access will one day just be as taken for granted as embedded wifi in a lot of devices. Technologies like eSims are all steps in this direction.
I've seen others in this thread argue embedded cellular isnt worth the cost, but this misses the critical point - if it costs almost nothing (we are close to this point already) and is already built into every off the shelf SoC, of course manufacturers will use it. We are talking pennies per unit at scale here in future.
The auto industry has already done this - Ford for example have embedded cellular analytics you can't turn off (or at least its non-obvious to me as an owner) on every single new Ford and has done so for several years now, and you don't pay a penny as the end user, even on their most basic entry level cars.
It wouldn't last five minutes on my car without being disabled. Easy to do, use a portable spectrum analyzer, find the source of the RF and then nuke the antenna.
Same goes for any other appliance that radiates RF signals (IoT, etc.).
You don't stop internet access or do anything to alter the electronics. By blocking the car from transmitting and receiving cell signals it's effectively the same as the car being out of cell range.
If cell access is essential, what happens in a place without cell access, much of Alaska perhaps?
I hate to think of all the lawsuits resulting from drivers who drive into locations where cells are out of range and get stranded.
Similarly, what happens when the cell phone system breaks down? And does that mean I can't buy a car if I live in an area with intermittent, weak or no cell or internet service? Hate to think what the manufacturer's sales department would think of that.
On the matter of reverse engineering, it seems to me we're just on the cusp of that. Hackers as still getting organized and aftermarket manufacturers have still to tool up for complete computer replacement kits. Reckon we're only at the very beginning of whole new industry.
Oh, I nearly forgot, the Right to Repair movement has only just begun to get organized. If manufacturers try to stop us altering something we've paid goid money for then they'll be in for a long political fight.
As I said above, just nuke the antennas (a box cutter through the antenna leads is usually enough. If you're really paranoid, short the lead out at or near the equipment end (as near as to the feed IC as is possible).
I do this on old smartphones that I have no intention of ever using as a phone again (say for testing APS etc.). It's dead easy, a razor blade through the circuit board tracks that connect to the antenna(s) and it's all over—no phone, with or without SIM (i.e.: no emergency service) and no WiFi or Bluetooth.
This already happens with Nespresso coffee machines (they have an SIM that connects to the Internet, whether you want it or not). That day is already yesterday.
Wow, they sure do. Page 29 of the user guide for the Nespresso Zenius says -
This coffee machine is equipped with M2M (Machine to Machine) techology which may be activated in due time with your agreement.
Thanks to a SIM card already integrated in the machine, such network connections will offer new services (subject to further terms and conditions) to its customers and improve the after sales process by automatically communicating machine troubleshooting / diagnostics to our Customer Relationship Centre (depending on country requirements and specificities).
If that's the case then it cannot be used in any place/location where there is no signal.
If so, then there would be hell to pay the first time if happened. If it works sans connection, then do what I've said elsewwhere and that's to cut or short out the antenna lead.
Removing the SIM may be deemed provocative by the manufacturer, if there's no signal reception then that's a different matter (the user can't be blamed).
doubtful. I'm sure it will refuse to work if it can't talk to home base, and that home base will have some sort of certificate pinning so only their servers can authorize it do make the coffee.
What a time to be alive. This should be disclosed on the front page of the manual and not hidden in the smallprint. And it should come with instructions on how to disable it with a physical switch.
I think the most likely next steps is integrating with Amazon Sidewalk instead of 5G. I don't know what the relative availability of 5G signal vs Sidewalk signal is, but I'm pretty sure Amazon has a dashboard tracking the latter.
"…they'll embed 5G chips and do it over cell without involving your consent,"
There'd be hell to pay if they ever did that. Moreover, it'd be impossible to keep the fact quiet if deployed at any reasonable scale.
A much bigger looming threat is the possible closure of terrestrial Free-to-Air TV broadcasting (it was an early agenda item to be discussed at the 2028 WARC/WRC (World Administrative Radio Conference) but was dropped early on.
That it ever got there in the first instance is a very big worry, it shows that people in high places have been or are considering such a move).
No, this appears to be a HN urban legend. It's always asked in these threads and the closest thing that anyone has been able to provide is one person asking one time on the samsung forums why there tv was connected to the neighbour's wifi (openly in the TV's own menu). So either there's a giant conspiracy which literally nobody else in the world has noticed or attempted to reproduce, or her kids/neighbour/whoever just connected it to the first network that'd work.
If “possible” is all that matters then you have to include stuff like “I’m on a special list where if I order a monitor from Amazon, they’ll send me a version with a secret chip on the inside of the case that broadcasts my secret TV viewing habits to the NSA.”
I looked into this last year and couldn’t find much. I found a few forum posts of people claiming their TV connected to a public WiFi but none of them seemed particularly reputable.
Yes. I was looking for this comment before saying the same. This is the biggest selling point of Sidewalk to appliance/product companies. All the usage data, ad data, analytics, even remote control of devices can now happen even if your devices are completely disconnected from your home WiFi. If your neighbor has an Amazon Echo... now its basically connected to the internet. Even if you don't have neighbors, there could be a LoRa gateway a mile away on a cell tower, and its now connected.
The existence of Sidewalk is what prompted me to remove all Amazon devices from my home. I hope the range on that network is less than the distance to my neighbors house (but they're old folks, definitely don't have an Echo).
I have a 3 month old Samsung TV with recent firmware. I am trying to use it as a dumb offline TV connected to an Apple TV (which is, of course, online). Short version is it does not automatically connect to networks without user input, but it prompts people all the time and inevitably ended up back on the network.
It won't forget network passwords without a full reset. So if you connect to download firmware then disable the connection, it is one click away from someone re-enabling it. If there's an unsecured network available, you're only 2-3 clicks away from joining that.
With other people in the house using it, the only way to reliably keep it off the internet is to connect it to a network, allow it to verify the connection works, then block it from making any more outgoing connections at the router level. It seems to be ok with this situation and doesn't complain too much.
My original plan was to setup HDMI CEC and lock away the Samsung Remote to prevent people from getting into trouble. But when the TV is turned on vi HDMI CEC, half the time it wants to immediately run the OLED refresh cycle, and will automatically shut off and start doing that unless you actively prevent it from doing so with the remote. This is annoying because they have a setting to run the OLED refresh at night when not in use. It's almost like they sabotaged this use case on purpose to force people to interact with the Samsung UI.
I should have bought a projector, assuming one can still get projectors that aren't similarly infected.
My Samsung tries to be smart too and ends up wrecking everything. I have a Steam Deck and a Linux laptop that I want to connect via HDMI, but the TV tries to do some sort of detection thing but doesn't wait long enough and does some sort of power cycle on it. The net result is that the laptop will switch from HDMI on to HDMI off and back every few seconds, and the TV will never connect. It's aggravating because it's such a stupid simple bug, but I have zero control over the TV.
My Sony smart tv was great for 3 years because I never connected it to the internet, but ever since I did, it hangs, takes 2 minutes to allow switching inputs, and in general just sucks.
I will not make the mistake of ever connecting one of these to the internet again, and if I have to buy a Giant monitor for 2k, so be it.
I'm 90% sure that the flash drive on the TV wore out and they want me to replace what is otherwise great working hardware for features I don't even want anymore.
Yeah, it is terrible. They have settings to modify resolution/refresh/latency mode, but those settings are always overridden if the TV's auto detection thinks it knows better.
About a third of the time it will insist my Xbox is a 1440p/60Hz input, and I can do nothing about it except reboot all the things.
Ugh, it's so utterly terrible. I really wonder, what kind of engineers are building/designing these things? Do they not even use their own products, or if they do they never plug external devices in?
Yes, this. I bought an LG OLED C2 recently, plugged in an Apple TV, have not connected the TV itself to the internet. Works absolutely fine; bonus is that the apparently annoying voice control option is disabled. You don't need firmware updates unless there's a specific bug that you need fixed, and you can update by USB stick if you do need a fix.
Yep. Extra bonus for LG since it uses webOS ( and that thing is great ). If you are concerned about TV connecting to something it shouldn't, you can setup a honeypot ( I think Unify still supports that ) and see what it tries to do. I never connected mine and didn't notice any attempts ( but it is an older OLED model ).
Bought one recently as well. I connected mine because it's easier for everyone in the house, but I used a trick to hide most of the crapware: change the country to "Other" [1]
I also got a C2 and briefly connected it via WiFi before I had the Apple TV. After hooking up the Apple TV I turned WiFi and thought I was all set, but it keeps turning WiFi on by itself and checking for updates which is really annoying. Might do a factory reset to clear out the WiFi password.
Change your wifi password, give the new password to your TV and make sure it connects, then change the wifi password (either to another new password or to the old one) and don't give the new new password to the TV. They generally don't remember and try previous passwords.
Go into your router and block the MAC address. Even most ISP routers have an option for this, sometimes in the Parental Controls section. Much easier than changing the password or resetting the TV.
I see a lot of people buying the C2. Is this the undisputed winner for a new 4K television? I am vaguely in the TV market but am mildly intimidated by the variety.
I have one (coming from a 32 inch cheap Samsung 1080p from 8 years ago) and it's pretty insane how good it looks. I have to leave it in Filmmaker mode for movies as it's too good at interpolating frames on shows and colour correcting things to make it look like raw acting footage. But have perfect blacks in games is incredible, the amount of times I stopped to just look at the surroundings in shadow of the tomb raider was too many to count. The refresh rate also supports 120fps for shooters so it's buttery smooth in comparison to what I used to have. Putting nextdns as my DNS resolver blocks the ads on it and having the built in Chromecast support for Netflix and YouTube is pretty handy as well.
I'd avoid anything using a QD-OLED panel for now until they've proven they've massively decreased their burn in issues.
Rtings is currently running a huge 2 year burn in test with 100 TVs [1], and have had major burn in issues on both their Sony and Samsung QD-OLEDs (while the LG WOLEDs don't have burn in issues, though their G2 had a column of pixels fail).
The LG G3 seems to compete with the QD-OLED panels in terms of colour and brightness this year with its MLA panel [2], but I'm not sure if it's worth the increased cost for most people compared to buying last year's C2.
Ask 4 people and you’ll get at least 5 answers, I recommend reading rtings reviews and buying whatever they recommend for whatever kind of viewer you are. If you’re asking this kind of question here then that’ll be good enough.
> Another bonus is my TV UI hasn’t changed despite changing and upgrading TV brands.
One of the recent updates to my TV's software introduced bugs to a feature I use a lot. It is very infuriating, and it's one of the reasons I refuse to buy an expensive TV. Even if the hardware is good, I'm one software update away from a piece of garbage.
An "update" to my TV made it so if it's on an input channel with no detected input for 10 seconds it will automatically switch back to the "smart" TV channel. Now if for some reason an input source isn't working correctly and I'm trying to figure out why I have to keep switching back to the correct input channel. Which of course lags for like ten seconds whenever it switches.
I did this with my A80J last year. During initial setup there is the option to disable all of the smart TV features. It's quite nice. Firmware updates can also be applied via USB stick, so it never needs to connect.
My TCL TV bootloops if it goes more than 3 months without downloading fresh ads. If you contact support, they walk you through connecting to the network.
This reminds me of my friend in the 2000's that would say "I don't have email" when stores asked for his email address. Even at the time, quite unusual unless you were over 70 years old.
huh, my TCL is fine disconnected... The only irritating this as a flashing light around the power-button/ir-reciever that comes on when it can't connect to a network, but I've stopped noticing it.
I attempted to do this with a new TCL TV. And continue using Chromecast dongle. But the damn thing freezes. So I'm using the inbuilt Chromecast for now!
Why do you want a not-smart tv? I thought the point was to not have tracking, but you were using a Chromecast dongle and I would expect Google of all companies to keep track of what you watch at least? Is it the security risks that probably show up after the tv software stops updating?
I would guess Google's privacy stuff is still an order of magnitude better than the TV manufacturers. Google actually gives you a decent amount of control over your data. There are definitely better privacy options than a Chromecast, but I don't think it's fair to put Google in the same category as Vizio/Samsung/et al.
1. The old Chromecast dongle is much faster than this new TCL TV.
2. Google already knows everything I do and I trust them more than TCL.
Playing a stream from the dongle just freezes after 30s. I'm pretty sure it's the TCL hdmi implementation, because the dongle has been utterly flawless previously.
Here's another thing that shits me about the TCL. It asks me to sign in when setting up for the first time. You can't skip it. I thought this was related to Google TV, but apparently not. I later found a way to log out of the TCL, and my Google stuff still worked fine. False and intrusive behaviour from TCL.
Also! your average joe would think this is for the Google account and would probably put in their Google password. I found an option to use a link number instead. How many Google passwords have been exposed to TCL?
You're being a dick. If you didn't realize that, that's what is going on here.
To follow up on GGP(?), if I was going to look into the Apple privacy protection stuff, where would I start? Are there search terms, or specific sites or individuals you can point me to?
I'm being mature, and there is an important distinction though not mutually exclusive.
If OP wanted to know more they could ask, and they didn't so I was right in my initial assessment regardless of how others feel.
I would start with google keywords: "apple telemetry -site:apple.com" are a good place to start.
From memory some of the important highlights were in 2016, there was an issue with the fast-fail network code in macOS and other devices where applications would not launch locally. Apple was forced to briefly disclose the cause of the outage, which amounted to a telemetry server update, a check-in at each application launch and other actions was required and could allow apple to decide what you can and can't run in realtime without your knowledge; there were several news articles about it at the time.
There is the more recent articles about client-side scanning, which they rolled back but they largely by default upload everything to their cloud and do it there. This is good for catching predators, bad if one of those hashes they match against (which are not unique, one hash matches many potential files, an inherent property of modular arithmetic) cause a false positive, or if those hashes match material that is not illegal, but seek to censor. They don't disclose what they match specifically so you'll never know, nor will you be able to dispute or correct any mistakes.
There have been several blog posts by System Administrators about the AppleTV and other Apple devices probing/mapping their internal networks over the years, and sending data up to the cloud. Its largely been encrypted so we don't know what it is they are sending but its a lot according to netflow and wireshark. If one were to find out, and publish what they found, it would serve as proof of violating the DMCA. So it is unlikely this will ever come to light from anyone domestically in the US or its allied countries.
SDR opens a whole new avenue to approach auditing Apple devices that broadcast that data over the em spectrum, its also important since anyone with an antenna can pick that information up.
Additionally, they don't disclose how long or what specific information they do collect about you, who they share it with, and even when you tell them to not collect info, they still do it.
The higher the amount, and time, that you store information, the more likely it is going to be stolen.
> Sad state of affairs really when you get punished for being rational, respectful, and adult.
Do you honestly think your comment was "respectful"?
Hacker News is all about rationality and respect, and a big part of that is backing up your opinions/assertions with evidence. Challenging people for unsubstantiated claims is a staple here. If you want to be able to say something like "You'd also be wrong about Apple's privacy protection," expect to be challenged.
You are correct about Apple's privacy, but it is far from a well-known self-evident fact (in fact to most people it's widely considered that Apple is the darling of privacy), so being challenged on it is (IMHO) reasonable and even expected. Obviously you don't have to back it up, but the result of that is going to be downvotes. Also, any criticism of Apple on HN is risking downvotes too. It's not rational, but it is reality.
> Do you honestly think your comment was "respectful".
Yes, it very much was.
I didn't waste their time, I didn't preach, I didn't lecture on something they did not ask or want to hear. I simply said they were mistaken. It was civil conversation, not disparaging in any way.
If they were receptive to learn more, they would have followed up, and could have asked, and they did not. That was the choice they made.
Any other structure would allow a trap, similar to what's shown in Serenity's The Operative, and I have no time for games.
You really can't be more respectful of their time, attention, or choice.
You are right about challenging with argumentation and building support for persuasion, but that challenge was never accepted. There is an order to these things.
You can't communicate by talking 'at' people, both parties need to engage.
> Apple on HN is risking downvotes too...
Honestly just breathing on HN with an unpopular, but right opinion, risks down-votes. I've already spoken to Daang about the structural issues, not that anything will come of it.
I just plugged a desktop into my big ole TV and then get a wireless mouse and keyboard. Run Linux on that thing and I control all of it, bonus points is that everyone knows how to use it when they come over to my house.
If you use nextdns or pihole you can block those. I do so the home screen has no top 2/3 of TV suggestions, just my installed apps at the bottom and the hi Def paintings from the gallery app showing above them.
I repurpose the old laptops that I seem to accumulate for this. Just about anything made in the last 10 years can handle at least 1080p video, and will have an HDMI output. I add a small wireless keyboard and use my regular desktop environment. But you can add a remote and use one of the open source media centre suites.
I do wish more TVs had a monitor-like sleep mode and accepted the command for it over HDMI. And were actually low power when they sleep. That seems to be pretty spotty.
Good idea for the laptop. You could use a smart plug (one that runs esphome, for instance, athom.tech sells pre-flashed ones) to wake the TV as well. And maybe the computer too.
We do the same and it works well. We prefer a handheld keyboard/mouse to control it. We've tried several and the Lenovo N5902 [1] is our favorite by far.
It's also useful to have the Unified Remote server [2] running on the media computer so you can control it from your phone when you need to.
Thumbs up for the Lenovo keyboard/mouse combo. I preferred the trackball one, but the "trackpad"-y one works well too. It feels good in hand, it's nicely sized, fits easily in the drawer of nightstand table, and works well :).
(not sure if it's discontinued btw; I struggled to find it in Canada last few years; but there are seemingly-identical unbranded alternatives usually available on amazon, e.g. https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B08H8LH7GP/ )
I've been using these for close to a decade now. We have two. They're so good, but very hard to find now. When the time comes, I'll scavenge parts from both to keep one going.
Of course it's not a real keyboard and mouse but it works fine.
I do use an universal remote most of the time though (Harmony 700), but I use the Rii when I exit Kodi and I'm back to my HTPC's Linux environment. The Rii is then enough to open a browser and YouTube, for example.
Same here. I try to find 3-4 year old laptops with decent graphics cards. It has served well as family gaming pc (casual and retro games) and with attached external drive we can watch family videos, photos etc. Not to mention ad-blocking. Every time I'm at someone's house and have to use a phone to stream things on the TV or to use those point-n-click remotes to type things I lose patience now :)
this 100%. When I had my TV installed I explicitly told the geeksquad guys who mounted it on the wall to not connect it to the internet because I'm driving it with an apple TV
I did the same with a projector and an old Mac Mini. Upgraded the internal hard drive to a small SSD and hung an 8TB spinning HD off the back with an attached Blu-Ray drive. Has the benefit that you can do things like rip / play Blu-Ray discs, choose to use Netflix / Amazon Prime / Apple TV / Eurosport / whatever you want. Only downside is that the Mac Mini is so old now (> 10 years) that it doesn't get OS updates. But I'm not sure I care about that too much as long as it works, because I have no personal data on it.
Unfortunately it follows that with "occasionally connect the TV to the internet for a minute to see if it needs any firmware updates" which is pointless if the TV is already working properly.
make it smart via an Apple TV, which I personally believe to have the strongest privacy protection of any smart TV device.
Except that as we saw with the CSAM debacle from a couple years ago, Apple will absolutely be scanning any device they have for anything they deem unsavory. I still can't believe people think Apple is a benign player in all of this
Or perhaps you see what you want to see in that story.
Apple and Google both scan images uploaded to their cloud for CSAM. Apple decided that they had the horsepower to do it on the device instead for only those images that would be uploaded to the cloud with the apparent intention of enabling end-to-end encryption for photos.
I use NextDNS/Adguard to cut out all the telemetry/tracking and have mine on a separate VLAN. I don't use the TV ui often, but this worked for the rare occasion
I’d argue libreelec/Kodi with servarr is the strongest privacy friendly solution as it leaks nothing at all to anyone at all and there is no algorithm to influence what you watch or don’t watch. It even can do YouTube in 1080p with sponsorblock (and no ads of course)
Honestly I don’t want my TV speakers to even attempt to be good. It’s just added cost for a feature I will immediately disable anyway because my external speakers are always going to be better.
I've gone through soundbars, full stereo equipment, etc... Call me a Apple fanboy, but my Airpod Max is amazing for watching movies with 5.1 or Dolby. That and I don't have to wake up the wife or kids.
Because they claim the not-smart versions aren't worth it. They suggest alternative solutions, some of which commenters here have already echoed. Why the cynicism?
Then provide the reader with the name of the very best crappy one and what features it lacks. That at very least answer's the question that was posed. The writer mention bluetooth connectivity as something they want tv's to have. I consider that feature stupid and wouldnt consider that a negative.
But that's not true since you CAN buy a Spectre brand non-smart TV (which the only qualm listed in this thread is audio quality, not picture importantly) and you can buy commercial TV's meant for Hospitals and Office displays, etc.
One option is cheaper (Spectre) and one option is more expensive (commercial), but you can, in fact, obtain a non-smart TV today and they listed 0 options for them.
You absolutely can, as noted elsewhere in this (and about 25 other HN threads).
In any case, if the question is "recommend a dumb TV to me" the answer should include at least one dumb TV, even if the editor wants to note that they aren't as good as his favorite TV.
This article is like if someone asked for a recommendation on a new bike, and the answer was "cars are faster, buy a car and pretend it's a bike"
Hmm, maybe more like “recommend me a manual transmission vehicle” and the answer you get back is why you really want an automatic, and here are some nice models you can buy that are all automatic.
I don't understand why that's so difficult for people? Just don't connect it to the internet. It's going to magically show you ads or track you without internet.
It is disappointing. Thorin used to work at Lifehacker--he did good work there. The fact that he's only quoted but didn't write it, though, makes it sound like someone just ambushed him in the break room with a question and then wrote an article about it.
Is it just me or does anyone else feel that Wirecutter only considers the upper end of the performance vs. price Pareto curve? Recently I read their review on dehumidifiers, and all 5x recommendations were Frigidaire/Electrolux models that cost twice as much as the Midea unit I ended up purchasing. (Midea is arguably a more reliable brand these days anyway, but I digress)
Wirecutter wants to tell me what is the "best" when I really want to know what is the cheapest product that will satisfice my needs.
From a (cynical?) content and affiliate point of view, I like the style of taking user questions (bonus points if H.B. is a real person) and answering it - rather than just a bland list of products by "expensive but good, less expensive but less good" that wirecutter is.
This lets the authors also recommend extra tangential items ("get a projector!").
On another note, my trust in these types of things have gone down overall (every google search for "best yadda yadda" yields a list with affiliate links now, unless perhaps you append "reddit" to your search).
Wirecutter still has some trust for me. Anyone else?
Web search is useless, yes. Use Wirecutter, Consumer Reports, rtings.com, reddit, not necessarily in that order. You can't trust any one of these sources to have the same priorities as you do, but you can trust that they're giving you useful, original, non-link-farm-SEO-garbage information.
Yeah I think Wirecutter and I sucked it up and signed up for a consumer reports subscription. Anecdotally I thought there was a period (maybe 2017?) where Wirecutter was becoming less trustworthy (maybe it was when I was looking for a mattress) but I feel like the quality has returned since then. I think I especially appreciate them for their more detailed sections below the summaries. Such as unlisted products and how they tested.
Other than Wirecutter and consumer reports I feel all I have is sleuthing Reddit communities and even then it’s hard to tell if the users aren’t undercover salespeople
Wirecutter helped me find a brand of toilet paper that doesn't turn my bathroom into a dusty wasteland, so for that alone I'll always at least entertain their recommendations. Have yet to be led astray by any of their picks.
I thought the answer was terrible. It’s wrong in saying you must buy a smart tv to get a reasonable display panel (this comment section does provide good non-smart options), condescending to the question, needlessly verbose (sounded like early versions of chatGPT to me tbh), and is uncritical in its assumption that opting out of data collection means that you won’t be tracked.
Agree. In my magazine editing days I’d have sent this back to the contributor for a rewrite. The premise of a technical agony aunt column should not be arguing with the reader and telling them “well actually, you do want this”.
A couple years ago, I bought the domain "DumbTV.com" and considered looking to source my own television sets from China to sell at a premium with no added features besides HDMI ports. Should have followed through on that.
You could probably just link that to an amazon search result for "commercial TVs", which generally lack smart features and are mostly only designed for HDMI in
Unfortunately, it looks like I am misremembering. I never had the .com, but had the .io, .app, and a couple others.
The one I did get and keep was DumbTV.org, as I thought that it may be more valuable to promote a basic sense of principals that made a TV a "DumbTV", and promote that as well as work to promote brands who were consumer friendly.
I would discuss giving up that domain if it would be of interest. My email is my username at gmail dot com.
idk why people are against Smart TVs. It's not like the vendors put a 5G modem on it and pay for the ads to be served to you themselves with their own internet.
buy your tv, don't connect to wifi. connect to your device of choice, done.
trying to avoid smart tvs is so silly, as you basically exclude nearly all of the good ones.
I use them for information displays. Our "smart" TVs boot slowly, show dialogs, and then complain that they can't sense the remote near enough to them, requiring a reboot. All in all it's an incredibly frustrating experience for something that should require zero interaction.
So, you say you don’t know why people are upset with these devices, but people are telling you why and you’re just not accepting it. You literally told the other guy that he’s optimizing for the wrong thing, as if his priorities are somehow yours to determine.
It’s totally fine that you have different priorities and values than us, but that doesn’t invalidate ours.
1. Cost. I'd rather not pay for hardware and software I won't use.
2. Environmental impact. Unused and unwanted hardware is waste.
3. Unauthorized users connecting to WiFi. TVs are often in common areas. The settings menus have no authentication. So an unauthorized user might connect the TV to a WiFi network.
4. Automatic WiFi connections. TVs might connect to open or partnered WiFi networks without telling the user. Hard to know without an audit.
5. Accidental WiFi connections. Settings menus might be unintuitive (or deceptive) enough to trick users into joining WiFi networks accidentally.
6. Future data leaks. TVs might be recording data and saving it to internal storage. The next owner of the TV could connect it to a network, and years of stored data would be leaked. Again, hard to know without an audit.
Basically most of your criticism is resolved if you never use the wifi to begin with, and all apply to any hypothetical wifi enabled device you connect to a dumb TV, anyway.
> Cost. I'd rather not pay for hardware and software I won't use.
There is no more a “smart TV tax” than a “Windows tax”. Smart TV manufactures make money via selling user data that more than offsets the $20 BOM for the smart TV components just like computer OEMs make money installing Windows crapware.
> Environmental impact. Unused and unwanted hardware is waste.
What unused hardware? When the built in smarts go obsolete, you buy an external device and connect.
> Unauthorized users connecting to WiFi. TVs are often in common areas. The settings menus have no authentication. So an unauthorized user might connect the TV to a WiFi network
That’s true and it was happening a lot when we first moved into our condotel (condo that’s rented out like a hotel when we aren’t there and we get half the proceeds) and when we stay in hotels. I bought a wifi to wifi bridge to have a private network.
Its because they're garbage. When a CRT from the mid 80's powers on, warms its tube up faster and switches inputs quicker than a modern TV, something is very wrong.
I'm pretty sure the NAND is degrading in my 2015 Sony Bravia, its bordering on unusable with its hangs, jitters and crashes.
I barely trust any manufacturer to produce consumer grade goods that actually do their job properly, the best way to get more stuff working right is to narrow the featureset and hope that they're not completely incompetent.
there are plenty of excellent (smart) tvs. it's funny to see people posting on here talk about how long it takes for their TV to power on. clearly if you're wasting free time on here optimizing seconds isn't on the agenda.
My TV is either off to save energy, or because Android has gone completely insane again and it needs rebooting.
If you do a full hard reset of my particular TV, it can't even run its own OOTB setup smoothly. Sony have got it playing some ambient chimes in the background, but the audio constantly breaks up and glitches.
Its got an 8 core processor and it can't even handle audio playback in a bit of the UI which should have had heavy QA.
I get that. the point is that turning a TV on, even if it took 30 seconds, is basically nothing given the amount of time you spend watching it. it's not the right thing to optimize.
do you know how long it takes to turn on an iPhone? you may have a stroke if I tell you.
Turning on a TV is something you usually do everytime you want to use it, and it's just plain annoying to have to wait.
The comparison to an iPhone is bad, because you rarely reboot it. Imagine you had to wait for the iPhone to boot every time you want to read some stuff on the internet or call someone.
Idk, my smart tv takes less than 10 seconds to turn on. If you had a dumb tv you’d turn that on, but how long does a smart dongle take? My Google tv takes about as long as my smart tv
Digital projectors are usually 'not-smart' and some of the short throw projectors can be placed quite close to the screen or wall if space is an issue.
If you are using the built in speakers on any tv, you are losing the game. Additionally a few of my monitors have crappy speakers that turn up as a hdmi output device, often to my dismay.
All smart TVs are dumb if you perform one simple action. When the terms and conditions screen pops up during the TV setup process simply select "No." Congratulations, you have a dumb TV. This is what I do and so far it has worked.
Do you check every setting on your phone/tv/pc after you boot it up? It seems very impractical to me.
As a user, I assume that unless I explicitly changed something, my setup remains the same. I used to be able to trust that manufacturers won't try anything too stupid, but at that time the cost in performance, gear and PR was sufficient and incentive to sell information on you was not as prevalent.
This seems to be a great option. It seems much harder to get reviews and even buying options. Looking for an LG OLED, there seem to be some really cool things from regular screens, to flexible and transparent ones, but I need to "inquire for purchase options" and the regular screen only comes in 65". That's a good size, but more options would be great. It's sad how harder it is to buy something that doesn't spy on you...
I've use a 48 inch LG OLED as a monitor for about two years now.
It's set in PC mode and except for the occasional time I hit the wrong button on the remote, I completely forget it's a Smart TV.
I did connect it to the wifi once to update the firmware. Note that it also took a lot of fiddling with I first got it to get a decent picture setup - although part of that was finding out that I needed a fancy HDMI cable to get 4k@120hz, and another part was figuring out that HDR isn't really viable for daily PC usage (turning on HDR makes the picture darker, because although the dynamic range has gone up, the max brightness of OLED is not that high so it has to make things dimmer for the dynamic range to be available. Plus Windows HDR management sucks). Oh and the gloss finish means it's not suitable for bright environments. But otherwise it's a beautiful screen and would be an awesome TV too with wifi turned off and connected to a TV dongle of some kind.
DIDs are great but there are two main problems with them:
1. They appear to be more expensive than consumer TV’s
2. They might be more difficult to find through usual channels because they are targeted at businesses (but it probably depends on where you are located)
Keep in mind that digital signage is a different use case and products may focus on that, offering different materials and performance (brightness, viewing angles, refresh rate, etc).
I've been using a 55" LG Wallpaper digital signage display as my TV for 5 years – it's amazingly thin on the wall, and has a beautiful bright picture, but:
- it cost $5000 in 2017 and was not easy to order
- it's 1080p, not 4K
- no HDR, although it has great contrast
- no HDMI-CEC, so instead of sleep/wake on input, it shuts down and boots up, taking ~20 seconds
For me it’s less about privacy (I just disconnect it from wifi) but just how slow they are. I bought an Apple TV to get around this but it still takes so long for it to even turn on
My TV remote has a dedicated Netflix button. I don't have a Netflix subscription and never will, but it wastes 30 seconds every time I accidentally push it because the UI is that slow and backing out of this nonfunctional Netflix app takes so many steps.
> “Any TV worth buying is very likely going to ask to connect to your Wi-Fi, and that’s been the case for many years now,” he says. “If you can find one manufactured recently that isn’t smart, I don’t know that I would trust it to be worth what you’re paying for it, because it’ll likely be missing several other salient features that you may actually want, like Bluetooth compatibility, HDR functionality, built-in channel scanning, or the ability to auto-label and optimize devices by HDMI input.”
TLDR: "Even though you're asking for a not-smart TV, we're denying the premise of your question: you don't actually want one after all. Here are a few smart TVs you might like."
I have a 60" Sceptre dumb TV, it's the exact one that comes up in every single thread on this topic. It's 4K, it cost about $400-$450 whenever I bought it — 3 or 4 years ago — and it is great. It cannot connect to the internet, it doesn't know what a Netflix is, and it has all the ports I need.
> it’ll likely be missing several other salient features that you may actually want
I disagree with you; the answer they give is pretty reasonable. Sceptre TVs are recommended everywhere you look if you search for dumb TVs, they're not hard to find. But people looking for a brand new TV often want common modern TV features, like HDR. Heck, I'm holding on to an old plasma set until I can get a decent OLED at a reasonable price. Hopefully where "smart" features are either absent or enthusiasts have worked out how to eliminate any privacy hazards.
A $400 Sceptre is very much not what I am interested in. But I am interested in a dumb, privacy-friendly screen! It's not "denying the premise" of wanting a dumb TV to point out these limitations, as well as offer what is the most practical alternative for most people - just don't connect it to WiFi.
> It's not "denying the premise" of wanting a dumb TV to point out these limitations, as well as offer what is the most practical alternative for most people - just don't connect it to WiFi.
They denied the premise of the question. The question was "Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me?" and the answer wasn't just "no, there are none I can or will recommend", which would be one thing. Instead the answer was "I'm not going to answer that question, because you don't actually want the thing you said you want". Since some people want dumb TVs, and they do exist, it would have been possible for the author to recommend the best example of that product, whatever they felt about it personally, or whatever assumptions they had about what the questioner actually wanted.
> "because you don't actually want the thing you said you want"
I guess I didn't feel, reading the article, that they were saying that. They never said that you don't really want a dumb TV, they said that none of them are good purchases because the vast majority of people are looking for features that the dumb TVs don't have. From the article:
> If you can find one manufactured recently that isn’t smart, I don’t know that I would trust it to be worth what you’re paying for it
It's not that it's a mistake to look for a dumb TV, it's that that none of them are (in the opinion of the author) good buys. So it's not so much denying the question as it is making the assumption that the question-asker is probably looking for more than just the one "feature" of "dumbness".
There's some inherent reviewer bias to these things. They have a financial motive to pretend all these features matter, because what else are they going to write about most of the time?
Are there any open source TV firmware projects? In theory, I don't mind smart TV features, I just don't trust most companies with my data, and getting the interface right is hard.
Vizio TVs run Linux, systemd etc. If Software Freedom Conservancy win their lawsuit against Vizio for GPL violations in their TVs, you will probably be able to install open source Linux distros with Kodi on any Vizio TV and soon afterwards lots of other smart TV vendors will be similar. Maybe there will also be an equivalent of OpenWRT for TVs, a distro focused on improving open source TV support.
This is interesting. Honestly if all it did was provide a simple OSD display for input selection or basic settings like color/contrast I'd flash my TV just to get rid of all the bloatware on it.
but AFAIK due to their complexity and the continuous changes/updates/releases by the TV manufacturers they tend to be outdated or however compatible only with relatively old models.
This only applies to new models, post 2021 I think. I’m considering getting one, and I am having to check which year- model combination has Basic TV support.
Never buying a Sony device ever again. Got one 4,5 years back (3rd one for last 10 years). It had Google TV and I could not pass a screen and use the TV unless I agree a stupid EULA. Had to take it, because ... family, but they made me feel soo stupid.
Pair this with a horrible PS support and Sony is banned for life for me.
Same but for different reasons, mine was an expensive TV with a single core processor and running Android TV, and it was incredibly slow. I remember connecting via adb and watching the volume indicator applet use 100% CPU when trying to change the volume from the remote control and only showing up 10 seconds after pressing the button.
I know it's offtopic but I knew our leisure viewing was in trouble way back when the first Blu Ray DVD players had fans in them which came on loudly when watching movies.
Since getting pi-hole on my home network, I've been amazed at the amount of phoning home my old (7 years+) smart TVs are trying to do. All of the domains are about content matching, which I'm thinking is no longer happening since getting pi-hole as the domains are never bring resolved for them.
To be fair, blocking can cause more requests than "normal" as they don't always use good back offs. My Nvidia Shield used to spam my DNS with 10s of thousands of requests a day like this after I blocked the domain, but they seem to have fixed it at some point.
Factory reset a TV to older firmware version, get one used from gumtree for 20% of price. There are lots of options: my LG TV has been offline since I bought it in 2018
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 388 ms ] threadAnother bonus is my TV UI hasn’t changed despite changing and upgrading TV brands.
edit: Appears to be an urban legend, with not much substance to back it up!
Mostly theoretical though.
But I think you are right this could potentially let the device connect itself :(
I'm sure someday it'll be impossible because they'll embed 5G chips and do it over cell without involving your consent, but that day isn't here yet.
On a 70" 4K TV a pixel is about 0.4 mm x 0.4 mm. If the mesh were close to the screen I think about 30% of the pixels would have wire in front of them. Of those 30%, 1/6 would both a horizontal and a vertical wire in front (let's not go crazy and talk about orienting the mesh diagonally or anything like that), and 5/6 would only have one wire in front of them. So that's 70% of pixels not interfered with, 25% having one wire in front of them, and 5% having two wires.
The 25% with one wire crossing would have about 20% of the pixel occluded by the wire. The 5% with two wires crossing them would have about 36% occluded.
My guess is that the screen could be seen pretty well through that.
I've seriously considered getting a roll and building a cage.
There's also emf paint that one could use.
Works pretty well for MR at 3T (which is actually more like 2.89T) though - 125Mhz ish.
Then of course there’s a lack of 5G. I certainly don’t have any where I live. Just about have 1 bar of 4g near the window.
WiFi/Cellular convergence as a concept also doesn't seem like the most unlikely future.
So they'll add a $50 LTE/5G modem to the BOM just to save the trouble of entering a password using arrow keys, a process that takes maybe 2-3 minutes?
I've seen others in this thread argue embedded cellular isnt worth the cost, but this misses the critical point - if it costs almost nothing (we are close to this point already) and is already built into every off the shelf SoC, of course manufacturers will use it. We are talking pennies per unit at scale here in future.
The auto industry has already done this - Ford for example have embedded cellular analytics you can't turn off (or at least its non-obvious to me as an owner) on every single new Ford and has done so for several years now, and you don't pay a penny as the end user, even on their most basic entry level cars.
Same goes for any other appliance that radiates RF signals (IoT, etc.).
If cell access is essential, what happens in a place without cell access, much of Alaska perhaps?
I hate to think of all the lawsuits resulting from drivers who drive into locations where cells are out of range and get stranded.
Similarly, what happens when the cell phone system breaks down? And does that mean I can't buy a car if I live in an area with intermittent, weak or no cell or internet service? Hate to think what the manufacturer's sales department would think of that.
On the matter of reverse engineering, it seems to me we're just on the cusp of that. Hackers as still getting organized and aftermarket manufacturers have still to tool up for complete computer replacement kits. Reckon we're only at the very beginning of whole new industry.
Oh, I nearly forgot, the Right to Repair movement has only just begun to get organized. If manufacturers try to stop us altering something we've paid goid money for then they'll be in for a long political fight.
I do this on old smartphones that I have no intention of ever using as a phone again (say for testing APS etc.). It's dead easy, a razor blade through the circuit board tracks that connect to the antenna(s) and it's all over—no phone, with or without SIM (i.e.: no emergency service) and no WiFi or Bluetooth.
Very simple really.
This coffee machine is equipped with M2M (Machine to Machine) techology which may be activated in due time with your agreement. Thanks to a SIM card already integrated in the machine, such network connections will offer new services (subject to further terms and conditions) to its customers and improve the after sales process by automatically communicating machine troubleshooting / diagnostics to our Customer Relationship Centre (depending on country requirements and specificities).
https://www.nespresso.com/shared_res/manuals/zenius/www_Zeni...
And if coffee pods don't come with always-online DRM yet, I'm honestly surprised at Nespresso's lack of dedication to this dystopia.
If so, then there would be hell to pay the first time if happened. If it works sans connection, then do what I've said elsewwhere and that's to cut or short out the antenna lead.
Removing the SIM may be deemed provocative by the manufacturer, if there's no signal reception then that's a different matter (the user can't be blamed).
I wonder if I can use it for mobile data.
All over, done permanently. Never another internet connection.
There'd be hell to pay if they ever did that. Moreover, it'd be impossible to keep the fact quiet if deployed at any reasonable scale.
A much bigger looming threat is the possible closure of terrestrial Free-to-Air TV broadcasting (it was an early agenda item to be discussed at the 2028 WARC/WRC (World Administrative Radio Conference) but was dropped early on.
That it ever got there in the first instance is a very big worry, it shows that people in high places have been or are considering such a move).
The Samsung was very chatty, but didn’t connect to an unsecured wifi network I had setup for testing.
It’s gone now and an equally chatty Sony is in its place - with not network access.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/
It won't forget network passwords without a full reset. So if you connect to download firmware then disable the connection, it is one click away from someone re-enabling it. If there's an unsecured network available, you're only 2-3 clicks away from joining that.
With other people in the house using it, the only way to reliably keep it off the internet is to connect it to a network, allow it to verify the connection works, then block it from making any more outgoing connections at the router level. It seems to be ok with this situation and doesn't complain too much.
My original plan was to setup HDMI CEC and lock away the Samsung Remote to prevent people from getting into trouble. But when the TV is turned on vi HDMI CEC, half the time it wants to immediately run the OLED refresh cycle, and will automatically shut off and start doing that unless you actively prevent it from doing so with the remote. This is annoying because they have a setting to run the OLED refresh at night when not in use. It's almost like they sabotaged this use case on purpose to force people to interact with the Samsung UI.
I should have bought a projector, assuming one can still get projectors that aren't similarly infected.
I will not make the mistake of ever connecting one of these to the internet again, and if I have to buy a Giant monitor for 2k, so be it.
I'm 90% sure that the flash drive on the TV wore out and they want me to replace what is otherwise great working hardware for features I don't even want anymore.
About a third of the time it will insist my Xbox is a 1440p/60Hz input, and I can do nothing about it except reboot all the things.
[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/LGOLED/comments/vhbqru/remove_trend...
https://www.inverse.com/tech/sony-2023-4k-smart-tv-picture-q...
https://www.techradar.com/reviews/sony-a95l
Rtings is currently running a huge 2 year burn in test with 100 TVs [1], and have had major burn in issues on both their Sony and Samsung QD-OLEDs (while the LG WOLEDs don't have burn in issues, though their G2 had a column of pixels fail).
The LG G3 seems to compete with the QD-OLED panels in terms of colour and brightness this year with its MLA panel [2], but I'm not sure if it's worth the increased cost for most people compared to buying last year's C2.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my1lyUE7WVM [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEnChcCQ2Dc
Edit: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/best/tvs-on-the-market
One of the recent updates to my TV's software introduced bugs to a feature I use a lot. It is very infuriating, and it's one of the reasons I refuse to buy an expensive TV. Even if the hardware is good, I'm one software update away from a piece of garbage.
I'm never buying another "smart" TV.
It’s less cringy than ‘oh, it’s <the_store_name@<my_domain>.com’
My Roku one has none of those problems.
https://thehometheaterdiy.com/hdmi-with-ethernet/
It's 1/4 the area, minus all features, AND the same price!? 8-/
It's a great option, for dell shareholders...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#HDMI_Ethernet_and_Audio_R...
It's 1/4 the area, minus all features, AND the same price!? 8-/
It's a great option, for dell shareholders...
2. Google already knows everything I do and I trust them more than TCL.
Playing a stream from the dongle just freezes after 30s. I'm pretty sure it's the TCL hdmi implementation, because the dongle has been utterly flawless previously.
Also! your average joe would think this is for the Google account and would probably put in their Google password. I found an option to use a link number instead. How many Google passwords have been exposed to TCL?
They typically broadcast on 43-33 cm band, (700-900mhz), and 2.4/5 ghz.
You'd also be wrong about Apple's privacy protection.
To follow up on GGP(?), if I was going to look into the Apple privacy protection stuff, where would I start? Are there search terms, or specific sites or individuals you can point me to?
I'm being mature, and there is an important distinction though not mutually exclusive.
If OP wanted to know more they could ask, and they didn't so I was right in my initial assessment regardless of how others feel.
I would start with google keywords: "apple telemetry -site:apple.com" are a good place to start.
From memory some of the important highlights were in 2016, there was an issue with the fast-fail network code in macOS and other devices where applications would not launch locally. Apple was forced to briefly disclose the cause of the outage, which amounted to a telemetry server update, a check-in at each application launch and other actions was required and could allow apple to decide what you can and can't run in realtime without your knowledge; there were several news articles about it at the time.
There is the more recent articles about client-side scanning, which they rolled back but they largely by default upload everything to their cloud and do it there. This is good for catching predators, bad if one of those hashes they match against (which are not unique, one hash matches many potential files, an inherent property of modular arithmetic) cause a false positive, or if those hashes match material that is not illegal, but seek to censor. They don't disclose what they match specifically so you'll never know, nor will you be able to dispute or correct any mistakes.
There have been several blog posts by System Administrators about the AppleTV and other Apple devices probing/mapping their internal networks over the years, and sending data up to the cloud. Its largely been encrypted so we don't know what it is they are sending but its a lot according to netflow and wireshark. If one were to find out, and publish what they found, it would serve as proof of violating the DMCA. So it is unlikely this will ever come to light from anyone domestically in the US or its allied countries.
SDR opens a whole new avenue to approach auditing Apple devices that broadcast that data over the em spectrum, its also important since anyone with an antenna can pick that information up.
Additionally, they don't disclose how long or what specific information they do collect about you, who they share it with, and even when you tell them to not collect info, they still do it.
The higher the amount, and time, that you store information, the more likely it is going to be stolen.
Do you honestly think your comment was "respectful"?
Hacker News is all about rationality and respect, and a big part of that is backing up your opinions/assertions with evidence. Challenging people for unsubstantiated claims is a staple here. If you want to be able to say something like "You'd also be wrong about Apple's privacy protection," expect to be challenged.
You are correct about Apple's privacy, but it is far from a well-known self-evident fact (in fact to most people it's widely considered that Apple is the darling of privacy), so being challenged on it is (IMHO) reasonable and even expected. Obviously you don't have to back it up, but the result of that is going to be downvotes. Also, any criticism of Apple on HN is risking downvotes too. It's not rational, but it is reality.
Yes, it very much was.
I didn't waste their time, I didn't preach, I didn't lecture on something they did not ask or want to hear. I simply said they were mistaken. It was civil conversation, not disparaging in any way.
If they were receptive to learn more, they would have followed up, and could have asked, and they did not. That was the choice they made.
Any other structure would allow a trap, similar to what's shown in Serenity's The Operative, and I have no time for games.
You really can't be more respectful of their time, attention, or choice.
You are right about challenging with argumentation and building support for persuasion, but that challenge was never accepted. There is an order to these things.
You can't communicate by talking 'at' people, both parties need to engage.
> Apple on HN is risking downvotes too...
Honestly just breathing on HN with an unpopular, but right opinion, risks down-votes. I've already spoken to Daang about the structural issues, not that anything will come of it.
I've always found its better to know than not know, since you can only control what you know about.
It spams me with in-screen notifications at least once a week with either Privacy Policy updates or advertising new apps or TV shows.
Great TV but definitely need to leave it unconnected.
I repurpose the old laptops that I seem to accumulate for this. Just about anything made in the last 10 years can handle at least 1080p video, and will have an HDMI output. I add a small wireless keyboard and use my regular desktop environment. But you can add a remote and use one of the open source media centre suites.
I do wish more TVs had a monitor-like sleep mode and accepted the command for it over HDMI. And were actually low power when they sleep. That seems to be pretty spotty.
It's also useful to have the Unified Remote server [2] running on the media computer so you can control it from your phone when you need to.
[1] https://www.newegg.com/p/09N-00A7-00001
[2] https://www.unifiedremote.com/
(not sure if it's discontinued btw; I struggled to find it in Canada last few years; but there are seemingly-identical unbranded alternatives usually available on amazon, e.g. https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B08H8LH7GP/ )
I needed another one for work a while back and ended up buying one of these (at $15, not the current price): https://www.amazon.ca/Computer-Accessories-Wireless-Keyboard...
It's actually relatively good, but not as good as the N5902.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07WJGSXT8
https://www.amazon.ca/Rii-Wireless-Keyboard-Compatible-Raspb...
Of course it's not a real keyboard and mouse but it works fine.
I do use an universal remote most of the time though (Harmony 700), but I use the Rii when I exit Kodi and I'm back to my HTPC's Linux environment. The Rii is then enough to open a browser and YouTube, for example.
Unfortunately it follows that with "occasionally connect the TV to the internet for a minute to see if it needs any firmware updates" which is pointless if the TV is already working properly.
Perflyst and Dandelion Sprout's Smart-TV Blocklist
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/m...
Except that as we saw with the CSAM debacle from a couple years ago, Apple will absolutely be scanning any device they have for anything they deem unsavory. I still can't believe people think Apple is a benign player in all of this
Apple and Google both scan images uploaded to their cloud for CSAM. Apple decided that they had the horsepower to do it on the device instead for only those images that would be uploaded to the cloud with the apparent intention of enabling end-to-end encryption for photos.
Kodi.TV on an ARM board is my preferred way to avoid Apple surveillance.
The journalism quality is outstanding.
What it actually states is this:
"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
One option is cheaper (Spectre) and one option is more expensive (commercial), but you can, in fact, obtain a non-smart TV today and they listed 0 options for them.
In any case, if the question is "recommend a dumb TV to me" the answer should include at least one dumb TV, even if the editor wants to note that they aren't as good as his favorite TV.
This article is like if someone asked for a recommendation on a new bike, and the answer was "cars are faster, buy a car and pretend it's a bike"
Infuriating in either case.
Wirecutter wants to tell me what is the "best" when I really want to know what is the cheapest product that will satisfice my needs.
If you need OLED, use Gigabyte AORUS FO48U (48").
And here is a 55" quantum dot monitor: Gigabyte AORUS S55U.
This lets the authors also recommend extra tangential items ("get a projector!").
On another note, my trust in these types of things have gone down overall (every google search for "best yadda yadda" yields a list with affiliate links now, unless perhaps you append "reddit" to your search).
Wirecutter still has some trust for me. Anyone else?
Other than Wirecutter and consumer reports I feel all I have is sleuthing Reddit communities and even then it’s hard to tell if the users aren’t undercover salespeople
The one I did get and keep was DumbTV.org, as I thought that it may be more valuable to promote a basic sense of principals that made a TV a "DumbTV", and promote that as well as work to promote brands who were consumer friendly.
I would discuss giving up that domain if it would be of interest. My email is my username at gmail dot com.
buy your tv, don't connect to wifi. connect to your device of choice, done.
trying to avoid smart tvs is so silly, as you basically exclude nearly all of the good ones.
It’s totally fine that you have different priorities and values than us, but that doesn’t invalidate ours.
1. Cost. I'd rather not pay for hardware and software I won't use.
2. Environmental impact. Unused and unwanted hardware is waste.
3. Unauthorized users connecting to WiFi. TVs are often in common areas. The settings menus have no authentication. So an unauthorized user might connect the TV to a WiFi network.
4. Automatic WiFi connections. TVs might connect to open or partnered WiFi networks without telling the user. Hard to know without an audit.
5. Accidental WiFi connections. Settings menus might be unintuitive (or deceptive) enough to trick users into joining WiFi networks accidentally.
6. Future data leaks. TVs might be recording data and saving it to internal storage. The next owner of the TV could connect it to a network, and years of stored data would be leaked. Again, hard to know without an audit.
2. Indeed
3. You can disable this
5. Disable
6. Disable
Basically most of your criticism is resolved if you never use the wifi to begin with, and all apply to any hypothetical wifi enabled device you connect to a dumb TV, anyway.
There is no more a “smart TV tax” than a “Windows tax”. Smart TV manufactures make money via selling user data that more than offsets the $20 BOM for the smart TV components just like computer OEMs make money installing Windows crapware.
> Environmental impact. Unused and unwanted hardware is waste.
What unused hardware? When the built in smarts go obsolete, you buy an external device and connect.
> Unauthorized users connecting to WiFi. TVs are often in common areas. The settings menus have no authentication. So an unauthorized user might connect the TV to a WiFi network
That’s true and it was happening a lot when we first moved into our condotel (condo that’s rented out like a hotel when we aren’t there and we get half the proceeds) and when we stay in hotels. I bought a wifi to wifi bridge to have a private network.
I'm pretty sure the NAND is degrading in my 2015 Sony Bravia, its bordering on unusable with its hangs, jitters and crashes.
I barely trust any manufacturer to produce consumer grade goods that actually do their job properly, the best way to get more stuff working right is to narrow the featureset and hope that they're not completely incompetent.
If you do a full hard reset of my particular TV, it can't even run its own OOTB setup smoothly. Sony have got it playing some ambient chimes in the background, but the audio constantly breaks up and glitches.
Its got an 8 core processor and it can't even handle audio playback in a bit of the UI which should have had heavy QA.
do you know how long it takes to turn on an iPhone? you may have a stroke if I tell you.
Maybe it's a little more complicated if you still have cable or something, but unless you're watching live sports, there's not much value there.
Monitors won't have an over-the-air tuner, so, you'd need to use an external device to watch broadcast TV.
HMDI from a computer to a monitor or a projector would work fine.
1. It will be honored 2. It will not be changed to default during update
Do you check every setting on your phone/tv/pc after you boot it up? It seems very impractical to me.
As a user, I assume that unless I explicitly changed something, my setup remains the same. I used to be able to trust that manufacturers won't try anything too stupid, but at that time the cost in performance, gear and PR was sufficient and incentive to sell information on you was not as prevalent.
I bet the more tech-minded consumers can open it up and physically disconnect the wifi module pretty easily as well.
Samsung 4k https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/4k-uhd/qb-serie...
It's more expensive then the subsidized ones, but right in the description:
QB65B--N * Direct-Lit 4K Crystal UHD LED Display for Business Without Embedded Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
As others have suggested as well, possibly a monitor, but I'm not aware of many 65" 4k monitors (But they may exist)
I did connect it to the wifi once to update the firmware. Note that it also took a lot of fiddling with I first got it to get a decent picture setup - although part of that was finding out that I needed a fancy HDMI cable to get 4k@120hz, and another part was figuring out that HDR isn't really viable for daily PC usage (turning on HDR makes the picture darker, because although the dynamic range has gone up, the max brightness of OLED is not that high so it has to make things dimmer for the dynamic range to be available. Plus Windows HDR management sucks). Oh and the gloss finish means it's not suitable for bright environments. But otherwise it's a beautiful screen and would be an awesome TV too with wifi turned off and connected to a TV dongle of some kind.
1. They appear to be more expensive than consumer TV’s
2. They might be more difficult to find through usual channels because they are targeted at businesses (but it probably depends on where you are located)
- it cost $5000 in 2017 and was not easy to order
- it's 1080p, not 4K
- no HDR, although it has great contrast
- no HDMI-CEC, so instead of sleep/wake on input, it shuts down and boots up, taking ~20 seconds
I still love it though ツ
TLDR: "Even though you're asking for a not-smart TV, we're denying the premise of your question: you don't actually want one after all. Here are a few smart TVs you might like."
I have a 60" Sceptre dumb TV, it's the exact one that comes up in every single thread on this topic. It's 4K, it cost about $400-$450 whenever I bought it — 3 or 4 years ago — and it is great. It cannot connect to the internet, it doesn't know what a Netflix is, and it has all the ports I need.
I disagree with you; the answer they give is pretty reasonable. Sceptre TVs are recommended everywhere you look if you search for dumb TVs, they're not hard to find. But people looking for a brand new TV often want common modern TV features, like HDR. Heck, I'm holding on to an old plasma set until I can get a decent OLED at a reasonable price. Hopefully where "smart" features are either absent or enthusiasts have worked out how to eliminate any privacy hazards.
A $400 Sceptre is very much not what I am interested in. But I am interested in a dumb, privacy-friendly screen! It's not "denying the premise" of wanting a dumb TV to point out these limitations, as well as offer what is the most practical alternative for most people - just don't connect it to WiFi.
Many of the Sceptre 4K models have HDR. MEMC as well. Likely the $400 price point is blown at that point, but who buys 1080p and cares about HDR?
They denied the premise of the question. The question was "Can You Recommend a Not-Smart TV for Me?" and the answer wasn't just "no, there are none I can or will recommend", which would be one thing. Instead the answer was "I'm not going to answer that question, because you don't actually want the thing you said you want". Since some people want dumb TVs, and they do exist, it would have been possible for the author to recommend the best example of that product, whatever they felt about it personally, or whatever assumptions they had about what the questioner actually wanted.
I guess I didn't feel, reading the article, that they were saying that. They never said that you don't really want a dumb TV, they said that none of them are good purchases because the vast majority of people are looking for features that the dumb TVs don't have. From the article:
> If you can find one manufactured recently that isn’t smart, I don’t know that I would trust it to be worth what you’re paying for it
It's not that it's a mistake to look for a dumb TV, it's that that none of them are (in the opinion of the author) good buys. So it's not so much denying the question as it is making the assumption that the question-asker is probably looking for more than just the one "feature" of "dumbness".
It's 1/4 the area, minus all features, AND the same price!? 8-/
It's a great option, for dell shareholders...
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html
https://www.samygo.tv/
and openlgtv:
https://openlgtv.github.io/
but AFAIK due to their complexity and the continuous changes/updates/releases by the TV manufacturers they tend to be outdated or however compatible only with relatively old models.
https://support.google.com/googletv/answer/10408998?hl=en#zi...
If you don't want to connect to the internet, you can select Basic TV at setup and get the equivalent of a dumb TV.
Pair this with a horrible PS support and Sony is banned for life for me.
https://imgur.com/VJVmDd3
This is from 2 days when there was literally nobody using anything in the house because I was out of town.