Some TVs require connecting to the network to set it up, and I’m concerned TV manufacturers will get more brazen going forward. If there’s a company that doesn’t do this nonsense, I’d rather reward them for being good instead of working around misfeatures in popular brands.
Any other option will likely degrade to having ads at some point. I could probably get rid of them w/ a PiHole or something, but that could end up being a game of whack-a-mole.
I’ll probably end up w/ a Raspberry Pi or something running Kodi or similar, which is really annoying because that’s yet another thing I have to self-host just to avoid this stupid obsession with ads.
In the future we might have to hack our TV’s to make them ours…like disconnect the camera and the microphone or feed them bullshit data or inject trick hacks… 🤔 Hmm what is this thing? rm -f…copy paste to see what it does! Oh shit! Half the country looses Disney plus for a few days. And it repeats 5 times every month so they stop fucking with us.
The problem is they are showing they’re willing to force firmware updates to use the TV. So even if the setup experience is decent in reviews, that could could absolutely change for the next person (i.e. they could require updates every N months).
If a company pulls that BS, I’m uninterested in buying it. I don’t care if there’s a community workaround, I’m unwilling to support a company that thinks it owns the hardware I bought.
I know this isn’t purely TV-related, but there used to be a secret menu for Roku where you could disable home screen ads. That stopped working for me several months ago. So I recently bought an Onn box (which is basically Android TV, but had as very cluttered UI) and side-loaded one of the open source launchers onto it. It’s been a much better experience than Roku, not least because there’s are no more home screen ads.
I should clarify: the secret menu can still be navigated to and the options there set. But ads now appear regardless. I went back into the menu and verified the options hadn’t changed (they hadn’t). It’s like Roku has gotten wind of the exploit and ‘fixed’ their OS to ignore those options.
Yah, as much as I hear people looking for non-smary TVs for this reason, that’s the correct answer. Mine is connected for convenience, and I’d rather save every mb of space on my xbox, right now there’s occasionally the small ad tucked into the input selection menu, but if it starts showing me full screen ads I’ll deny it internet and install streaming services on Xbox.
I hooked mine up to wifi once to download an update to fix a bug. Then immediately removed the network settings.
The performance on most of these TV apps is terrible anyway. And Samsung has been caught listening to mics before. Baffles me that people would leave these connected.
What about just not connecting it to the network? Then put a video device on it like Roku or Apple tv or whatever.
Some TVs require connecting to the network to set it up, and I’m concerned TV manufacturers will get more brazen going forward. If there’s a company that doesn’t do this nonsense, I’d rather reward them for being good instead of working around misfeatures in popular brands.
Has ads that can be disabled, at least as-of last year. Not sure how long that’ll last…
Apple also seems interested in ads.
Any other option will likely degrade to having ads at some point. I could probably get rid of them w/ a PiHole or something, but that could end up being a game of whack-a-mole.
I’ll probably end up w/ a Raspberry Pi or something running Kodi or similar, which is really annoying because that’s yet another thing I have to self-host just to avoid this stupid obsession with ads.
I hear Sony is a good bet
With the way Sony is treating their gaming customers lately I consider it a dead brand.
Awesome, I’ll check them out. :)
In the future we might have to hack our TV’s to make them ours…like disconnect the camera and the microphone or feed them bullshit data or inject trick hacks… 🤔 Hmm what is this thing? rm -f…copy paste to see what it does! Oh shit! Half the country looses Disney plus for a few days. And it repeats 5 times every month so they stop fucking with us.
Yeah, I’d really rather not bother and just buy a quality product for a fair price.
Change Wi-Fi password, connect to Wi-Fi and complete setup, restore old password.
The problem is they are showing they’re willing to force firmware updates to use the TV. So even if the setup experience is decent in reviews, that could could absolutely change for the next person (i.e. they could require updates every N months).
If a company pulls that BS, I’m uninterested in buying it. I don’t care if there’s a community workaround, I’m unwilling to support a company that thinks it owns the hardware I bought.
I know this isn’t purely TV-related, but there used to be a secret menu for Roku where you could disable home screen ads. That stopped working for me several months ago. So I recently bought an Onn box (which is basically Android TV, but had as very cluttered UI) and side-loaded one of the open source launchers onto it. It’s been a much better experience than Roku, not least because there’s are no more home screen ads.
That’s the first link. If it no longer works, I guess Roku isn’t an option anymore. 😟
I should clarify: the secret menu can still be navigated to and the options there set. But ads now appear regardless. I went back into the menu and verified the options hadn’t changed (they hadn’t). It’s like Roku has gotten wind of the exploit and ‘fixed’ their OS to ignore those options.
Yah, as much as I hear people looking for non-smary TVs for this reason, that’s the correct answer. Mine is connected for convenience, and I’d rather save every mb of space on my xbox, right now there’s occasionally the small ad tucked into the input selection menu, but if it starts showing me full screen ads I’ll deny it internet and install streaming services on Xbox.
I hooked mine up to wifi once to download an update to fix a bug. Then immediately removed the network settings.
The performance on most of these TV apps is terrible anyway. And Samsung has been caught listening to mics before. Baffles me that people would leave these connected.