Joke’s on them, I don’t want any of the smart features
Excellent News ! Finally, an easy way to disable every smart feature !
Its been so long since ive had or bought a tv, what are the brands that are the least shitty now? I used to always be a samsung everything kinda guy but fuck them now. I wish they never started fucking around with software and stuck to just hardware. Their products from strictly the hardware side are still excellent. My zfold7 is amazing the older gens started rickety but each version i got (so the 3, the 5 and the 7) has been a respectible improvement but the 7 really stepped up the quality. The last samsung tv i got was like 65" curved screen amazing picture but the fucking interface was pure cancer and i will not buy another. My samsung 4k monitors, non-smart normal fridge, and my equally as dumb oven are great and dont have any stupid shit so Ill buy more dumb samsung products lol.
By any brand which lets you use HDMI devices without connecting to Wi-Fi. TCLs have better specs than most for the price and they have a Basic TV mode which doesn’t need internet.
However, their Google TV mode is still good as it lets you disable the ads on the home screen with apps-only mode and it supports sideloading of SmartTube (an ad free YouTube app) and free movie apps.
Does this work with Chromecast?
Yes it does.
Thanks and this me being lazy at this point, do you have some docs to refer to?
You just have to connect your phone to the same Wi-Fi network as the TV, then press the cast button in an app and select the TV from the list.
Because Chromecast is a Google service, you must log into a Google account on the TV for it to work, however apps only mode hides the home screen ads and myactivity.google.com lets you disable the tracking.
Thanks a ton!
I owe you one kind stranger on Lemmy
TCL is samsung
Nope, but the TCL’s are manufactured with the CCP’s and PLA’s finest data gathering components.
This is why i don’t like “smart” tv.
Main reason I want the steam machine to be a hit is just getting regular Linux boxes under people’s TVs and that getting developer interest. KDE Plasma Big Screen too. Good TV interfaces for media software. Respond well to remotes and gamepads. Popular service apps like Netflix and Crunchyroll. It’s jarring when I use other people’s TVs and the default page screen is just a wall of advertisements. At least Android based TVs I can install projectivity launcher to get a clean interface
Buy commercial displays, not TVs
Does that mean it disables all Tue smart shit about f you don’t connect an account? Nice.
Yeah I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out the downside.
It would not surprise me if the tv it’s self will not work until you run through a setup process, and during this process you are required to create an account.
Sounds like a feature
I finally got fed up with it last year and blocked the internet access of my TV on the router level becuase upon contacting support I learned that there was no way to turn off the microphone setting. For real. They just didn’t add that feature in to my model. I still can’t believe that.
It is a little incovneient that I have to turn on my PC before I can watch anything but man the freedom of knowing that TV won’t be spying on me 24/7 is freeing.
Next time I buy I will be looking for commercial displays with HDMI and DisplayPort if its even possible by then.
Damn shame, Vizio’s are designed in California.
He strikes again
Do not connect your tv to the internet. Period.
Writing Prompt: A TV with an onboard artificial general intelligence connects to the internet for the first time and is alarmed to discover that a thousand years have passed since it was manufactured.
I’m suffering for that right now. Sony Bravia.
Firstly, I didn’t want to buy a smart TV, but that’s pretty much all that’s sold anymore. I also didn’t intend to connect it to the internet, but a well-meaning guest wanted to watch TV at night, and thought he was troubleshooting, not realizing he was in the TV menu and not the streaming box.
The TV updated, and IMMEDIATELY got worse. Formerly, if I turned it on, it would go straight to the streaming box. Great! As shitty updates do, it changed the settings, and would instead open to the TV’s menu, so it could advertise streaming services. It also forgot that the TV input is HDMI 1. It became strictly worse, in the rare edge case of every fucking time you turn it on.
I don’t trust it to not automatically connect, or to forget my login credentials, so I go to do a factory reset. It’s literally an option in a menu. The TV gets stuck in a boot loop. Talking to support, they think it broke the mainboard. A factory reset bricked the TV.
It’s under warranty, but this is fucking crazy. NEVER connect your TV directly to the internet.
If you have a firewall then make yourself a new network and block it from accessing the internet. Then you can use the smart features that your TV might have, such as powering it on/off, controlling it with Home Assistant, etc and also feel safe knowing that can’t happen again. Hope your replacement TV comes with the older firmware and you get another go at it.
Thanks for the tip! In the short term, I’m content to just not connect it, but I definitely want to look into blocking it just to prevent a repeat with guests. It’s also super handy to know that I can connect it to the local network without connecting it to the broader internet, in case I decide to do some (self-hosted) home automation.
This is the way.
HTPC for life!
While i would generally agree I’ve fiddle with htpc and stuff for solo long. Then I broke down a few years ago and bought a cheap TV with GoogleTV (version 10 or something) on it. I removed some bloat via ADB but it still is GoogleTV do I get some ads on the home screen. However I installed SmartTube, Kodi, Jellyfin but also Netflix and Amazon Prime since those are the two services I still subscribed to. And I have to admit I’m a happy camper. I got used to ignoring the ads on the home screen and being able to directly play Netflix/YouTube … whatever without setting up a browser or something on top of Kodi or whatever is just such a breeze.
you can change the home screen. I did that on my android tv. android tv kinda rocks actually
Any recommendations? Played around with that for a bit bit haven’t found a good one yet.
I’ve been using Projectivy. It’s really simple and great!
If you don’t have the technical know how to physically lobotomize the TV’s wifi chip, simply blocking its mac address would suffice.
Or you would just not connect it to the wifi. It’s not like it’s going to guess your WPA key.
No, but in the near future it might connect to your neighbors wifi if he has IoT devices connected to his wifi
Wow, what a horrible idea. But assuming you have a compatible device and didn’t disable this feature, blacklisting it in your router wouldn’t help much.
Blacklisting it on your router would at least prevent it from trying to connect to an open WiFi network like your own guest network which some people just don’t turn off or password protect.
If you are one of those people and you’re reading this turn that off. You can share your wifi via QR code these days from just about any smart phone. Turn it off.
I’ve heard they can connect to nearby open networks or even share a connection with another TV in range.
I don’t have any sources for this, might be just a rumor.
No, it’s not an Apple TV.
Do you think that only apple TVs have wifi chips?
It was a bad joke. ‘Mac’ address.
I did not understand. I’ll see myself out.
Walmart acquired Vizio with the express purpose of using TV’s to serve ads. In fact, that is exactly what they said they were going to do.
No surprises here.
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Just build a media pc. Those media sticks have trackers and telemetry too.
As soon as RAM isn’t more expensive than the TV.
Personally i’d rather pay more for equipment than have these assholes tracking my viewing habits. But you could throw ddr4 in it. Should be fine for a simple HTPC.
I don’t get the whole ram catagories. DDR3, DDR4, DDR5. They make it seem like the higher the number, the better the ram, but I always thought ram was just a space for computers to temporarily store information until it was ready to call on it.
So from my perspective 16GB DDR3 should be the same as 16GB DDR5. But that’s clearly not the case.
The biggest differences are speed and max amount of ram per module. For a htpc those shouldn’t matter much. I wouldn’t personally go to ddr3 unless I had some free sticks hanging out since the spec is about 20 years old now.
DDR3 is also pretty power hungry. Source: me, who built a homelab out of old DDR3 rackmount servers and can now no longer afford to run them.
I just wish there was a way to control the PC as easy as a tv remote. I would totally do this except my wife and kids just want to hit a button on the remote instead of fiddling with keyboard or a track pad or controller of some kind
My HTPC is running Bazzite and boots into Steam big picture mode. I watch media using Kodi and control everything using a Sofabatton remote.
This setup is almost as seemless as when I was using an Nvidia Shield and a Logitech Harmony remote.
The keyboard and controller are not needed, except for gaming.
The only negative I’ve found, is that I’ve not yet worked out a way to power on the PC from the remote.
FLIRC is your friend! It’s a USB IR receiver that you can train with literally any IR remote you have. Once you set it up (and it does take a little elbow grease to train it), it just works.
Keep an eye out for the new Steam controller. It can interact via gyro, touchpad, and traditional controller input methods.
Yes! I’m saving now for a steam machine when it comes out too
I believe Kodi supports IR remote controls.
I use LibreELEC on a mini-PC for my home TV. LibreELEC is a Linux distribution that runs Kodi and is pretty good for a media centre straight out of the box. I use a Rii Mini K25 remote (with a dongle) to control it: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B06XHF7DNQ
The downside is I can’t control the TV itself with this, but this can be sorted out with a USB IR receiver (like this: https://amzn.asia/d/0hvzkP93), LIRC (https://lirc.org/) or something similar, *and a universal remote. On my to-do list lol
I have a DHCP reservation for the TV itself and it’s blackholed on my network. The only reason it’s connected at all is so I can monitor what it tries to do.
Edit: Also need a universal remote for the IR solution so it can talk to the PC IR receiver and the TV IR receiver separately.
I had this running on a raspberry pi, but it had constant crashing issues. I may give it another go with a mini pc
My family stayed at my house and “the TV wasn’t working,” because it doesn’t have network access and I use an Nvidia Shield instead, so they connected it to the Wi-Fi and ad overlays showed up in the menus! I’m still mad about it years later.
Luckily I dodged a bullet and it didn’t brick it or anything, and the ads went away when the internet access did. I just disconnected it from the network and manually banned the MAC address in case anyone else tries it again.
And then banned your family from using the remote.
the ads went away when the internet access did.
Then why are you mad?
For one thing the same ad could have gotten stuck on the TV menus forever.
So Vizio is offering dumb TVs without Walmart accounts? I am actually kind of interested.
Vizio is likely offering unusually large paperweights without Walmart accounts.
now require a Walmart account for setup and accessing smart TV features
In a functioning society I think that would be criminal.
it’ll still be listening and spying.
Just don’t connect it to the internet 🤷♂️
Some devices connect to any open wifi to send analytics. Some devices even have their own modem to always be connected.
Not sure about the “modem” thing, always has worried me though. You mean like an LTE chip?
Guess I don’t think about the open network thing because:
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Nobody, not even router makers, deliver open network by default anymore
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I don’t have any other wifi signals in my area other than my own
Yes LTE and the like. My car – for instance – is connected 24/7 to the cloud. I can control some functions remotely. The price is probably full tracking of me anf my family.
Yeah that’s the one thing that worries me about buying a new car. Mine are old right now
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Don’t plug in a Ethernet cord, and don’t connect it to Wifi.
Now you have a fully functional TV screen that wont be artificially bricked with OS updates.
Get a dedicated “streaming device” like a Nvidia Sheild, Android TV, Apple TV, or Roku and you are good to go.
Until the next one refuses to even pass through HDMI if it’s not connected.
Just don’t buy shitty devices.
And what happens when the shitty devices are literally the only ones available?
Well, too bad. Do something else.
But as long as people have some brain, if the market gets a majority of “smart” devices to the point there’s enough people looking for alternative, some people are likely to try and fill the gap. It might become a new niche market, but it’s one place where supply and demand will work to our advantage.
In that case, the answer has to be shop for used or do without.
Don’t buy the product. Don’t give them the sale.
Televisions aren’t mandatory, you can do without.
My dedicated media PC is the new Atari VCS. It works awesome and I can boot into Atari os for some light gaming too. Or emulate anything up to ps2.
Disabled all the smart TV bs and told the SO we dont use that anymore, 0 complaints so far. They’re also learning some Linux because of it!
Yep. Just don’t connect it. Or connect it once a year to get some firmware updates if one wants (or better yet use a USB stick).
I have a good Samsung TV, but when I had it connected to the internet the UI would be painfully slow every time I needed to switch inputs (I have most things running through my receiver, but my PC was straight into the TV). Turning off all internet functions vastly improved my experience with this TV.
Yeah except fuck all those devices. I want a degoogled smart TV.
You give up control this way. Dedicated devices are superior.
Like which one
mini pc with jellyfin/plex or a debrid service of your choice
I want to be able to access YouTube, Twitch, etc. from my TV. I already self host as much as I can. But I have not find a good solution for those services.
You can cast from your phone to a dedicated device. Going from easiest to hardest in terms of setup:
- chromecast
- nvidia shield
- custom PC
You’d use your phone (or tablet or laptop) to load the app/website (twitch, youtube, plex, whatever) then cast to the device, which would be connected to your TV. The chromecast is the most likely to have shitty features and forced upgrades while the custom PC will leave everything up to you. The end result is no outsourcing control of your primary display (TV) and you can leave it permanently offline.
I’m already doing a lot of that but… Those are workarounds for an item I own. My point is: I would like to use my smart TV as a smart TV and not have any o fight the manufacturer. I guess I’ll have to give plasma big screen a go.
