TVs are screens or privacy nightmares. You get to choose as the consumer.
Roku is every bit as bad. They bricked all customer’s previously purchased TVs by implementing a new user agreement through their UI without warning that could not be bypassed. Opting out required first opting in, agreeing to those new terms and then mailing a letter within a very short window with explicit, detailed requirements.
My next TV won’t be connected to the Internet and definitely won’t be a Roku or Visio product.
My decade old TV is starting to show its age with a couple of dead pixel columns.
I’m a bit stressed about trying to find a new one that has none of this kind of enshittification.
I just want something with a couple of HDMI inputs and an antenna connector.
I absolutely do not want any ad servers or mandatory account bullshit injecting itself where it isn’t wanted.
Youll have to go with a monitor or business display. Its just a large screen with inputs but no tuner or speakers.
I use a Pi to drive my display.
My “big” TV is a dumb 55" Toshiba I bought in 2012. It works just fine plugged into my computer to display VLC. I don’t need anything else. I don’t bother with Jellyfin anymore, because all I do is “acquire” the content, watch it immediately, and delete it. I don’t keep anything apart from a few old movies, because I don’t rewatch anything.
Tonight I’m watching the next episode of Survivors, a BBC series from 1975.
The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.
– George Orwell
And if I don’t want to use their smart features?
this seems like it might be a win
I have a Vizio TV I bought in the mid-teens that only lets you change the source and turn the volume/channel up and down with the remote. Everything else…the display/audio settings, naming the inputs, setting the channel names…requires the Vizio app on your phone. Literally no other way to access them. If I’d have known at the time I would have returned it immediately, but unfortunately I didn’t discover this for a couple weeks as it was on sale and I was leaving for vacation, so I bought it, dropped it at home, and didn’t actually touch it until it was past the point where I’d have been charged restocking fees so I kept it.
I guess my point is…I wouldn’t necessarily bank on that. They can easily just make the TV not fucking work without the account, just like some of the other brands I’ve interacted with that will not even let you bypass the initial screen when you power it on for the first time without entering an email address or else it gets locked in it’s demo mode.
Even if 50% of them get returned they’ll likely still be making money.
My mini pc or laptop connected via HDMI to a projector setup makes me more happy every day when I see crap like this. Bonus is you can move it to the patio for outside movie night and it’s a whopping five pounds. Same goes for moving apartments because I’ve always moved too often.
My CRTs make me happy in the same way. Except when i have to move them !! Oh well, all the more reason to get swol
Make sure to lift this bad boy 20 times a day.
Like the pig from holes
I have an extremely expensive smart TV that probably cost around £4,000 (I didn’t buy it so I don’t know what the actual price tag was) and it’s UI is awful because of stuff like this and it’s all stupid. It has an app, it’s a TV, I already have a method of controlling it why do I need an app?
As a result it’s purely a media streaming platform I don’t use any of its smart features. It’s just hoocked up to a mini PC and it’s just been a display.
good. maybe people will stop buying them then.
WTF? And Walmart of all things. Fuuuuuck them.
This is how you get me to never buy a Vizio TV.
What, you prefer to give your data to Sony, LG, Samsung, or amazon? Like they’re not selling it to anyone with a buck as well? Never connect a TV to the internet, period. After that it doesn’t matter what you buy.
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.
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!
Don’t buy the product. Don’t give them the sale.
Televisions aren’t mandatory, you can do without.
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?
In that case, the answer has to be shop for used or do without.
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.
I use a TV for my monitor - last job I worked I really needed the screen real estate for excel.
I hate hate hate when I shut the computer off or power goes off and when the TV comes back on, it auto-plays some “free” streaming channel, which is ALWAYS fascist propaganda. I rush to turn that shit off just as quickly as I can. Fuck that shit.
so don’t make an account and it’s a normal tv?
Do not connect your tv to the internet. Period.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
This is the way.
HTPC for life!
