My rule for modern TVs:
1. Never connect the TV panel itself to the internet. Keep it air-gapped. Treat it solely as a dumb monitor.
2. Use an Apple TV for the "smart" features.
3. Avoid Fire TV, Chromecast, or Roku.
The logic is simple, Google (Chromecast) and Amazon (Fire TV) operate on the same business model as the TV manufacturers subsidized hardware in exchange for user data and ad inventory. Apple is the only mainstream option where the hardware cost covers the experience, rather than your viewing habits subsidizing the device.
That's exactly my own thought process. I don't pretend that Apple is saintly, but their profit model is currently to make money through premium prices on premium products. They have a lot to lose, like several trillion dollars, in betraying that trust.
A large % of their revenue comes from app store/services and they have incentives to lock you into the ecosystem, sell you digital shit and take a cut off of everything.
I saw an ad for apple gaming service in my iphone system settings recently !
That's not to say that Google isn't worse but let's not pretend Apple is some saint here or that their incentives are perfectly aligned with the users. Hardware growth has peaked, they will be forced to milk you on services to keep growing revenue.
Personally I'm looking forward to Steam Deck, if that gets annoying with SteamOS - it's a PC built for Linux, there's going to be something available.
True. The best option currently is to buy an Nvidia Shield TV, unlock the bootloader and install a custom Android ROM. The hardware is great, and if you install a custom ROM, you have more freedom than Apple TV will ever give you.
The comment about the ad wasn't about the ad istelf. It was an apple ad for an apple service, so they didn't make any money at all on the ad. The remark was about the service Apple was pushing, and just how intrusively.
Services are 25% and are the only one growing/they can grow - that means all focus is going to be on expanding that revenue = enshitification.
Hardware is now purely a way to get you on to the app store - which is why iOS is so locked down and iPad has a MacBook level processor with toy OS.
If you stop looking at the marketing speak and look at it from a stock owner perspective all the user hostile moves Apple is double speaking into security and UX actually make a lot more sense.
I don’t see how this really changes the underlying problem of the device pays on you and then they sell that information to the highest bidder? I’m not reaching for a financial report to fix that.
Like another comment mentioned I'm ready to go back to torrenting. Im currently paying for 4 streaming service subscriptions (if you count YouTube premium) where I have super segmented and annoying search UX, and Apple won't even let me pay for their service in my EU county (Croatia). And the DRM story is ridiculous. I'll just setup ARR stack and have a better experience than I can pay for - for free.
> I don't pretend that Apple is saintly, but their profit model is currently to make money through premium prices on premium products
Is this statement based on anything other than Apple marketing materials, perhaps a meaningful qualification from an independent third party? I worry this falsehood is being repeated so much it has become "truth".
For some reason, some people have this inexplicable rose-tinted vision of Apple. Until they release the source code of their products, the only rational stance is to treat their software as malware.
If further evidence is necessary, any Apple device that I have owned pings multiple Apple domains several times per minute, despite disabling every cloud dependency that can be disabled. The roles of the domains are partially documented, but traffic is encrypted and it is impossible to know for sure what information Apple is exfiltrating. It is certainly a lot more than a periodic software update check. It certainly seems that Apple is documenting how people interact with the devices they own very closely. That's an insane amount of oversight over people's lives considering that some (most?) people use their phones as their primary computer.
I just opened Activity Monitor - a process called "dasd" is the 5th largest consumer of CPU time. What does it do? Apple does not want you to know. Apple also will not let you disable it. Apple will not even tell you if this process is legitimate (it is signed by "Software Signing" lmao).
$ man dasd
No manual entry for dasd
There are like two dozen processes like this, half of which open network connections despite me never invoking any Apple services or even built-in apps. macOS has basically become malware.
Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but it certainly rhymes. Is there proof that Apple is monetizing our data with third parties? It's very clear how almost every other major company is, but Apple's been reasonably respectful about it.
Google is also vehemently opposed to selling your data to third parties. That's how they keep themselves as the middleman between advertisers and users. What they do is allow detailed behavioral targeting. Apple prefers to expose contextual targeting data to advertising instead. Apple is also better about not letting advertisers run random scripts.
But frankly the difference between the two companies seems more a matter of degree than kind. It's not like Apple has a strong, principled stance against collecting data. They have a strong principled stance against other ad networks collecting user data, which looks a lot like anticompetitiveness. Their first party software collects identifiable data on you regardless of whether you opt out. They just avoid using that to target you if you opt out.
The reason Apple says their advertising doesn't track you is because they define "tracking" as purchasing third party data, not first party data collection.
What falsehood? That apple's profit mix is much less advertising than its competitors is just a fact about their incentives in the moment. He didn't really go all that far in claiming anything beyond that being better than the alternative of being mostly an advertising company.
My only * to this would be Google Chromecast devices directly if you already have them.
They have an option (buried way under settings) to make the home-screen apps only.
> Turn on Apps only mode
> From the Google TV home screen, select Settings Settings and then Accounts & Sign In.
> Select your profile and then Apps only mode and then Turn on.
It also makes the device significantly more performant.
With a bit of fiddling, Android TV can be as good as Apple TV in terms of privacy. Not out of the box, of course, but ADB can remove advertising/surveillance related APK files from most devices sold in big box stores and there are open-source, alternative clients to YouTube and a few other platforms available due to the popularity on the underlying AOSP platform. The same is possible to varying extents on smart TVs that use Android TV as their OS.
You can even completely replace Google's sponsored-content-feed launcher/homescreen with an open source alternative that is just a grid of big tiles for your installed apps (FLauncher).
For me, SmartTube with both ad-blocking and sponsor block is the killer feature of Android TV as a platform.
If you're into local network media streaming, Jellyfin's Android TV app is also great. Their Apple TV app is limited enough that people recommend using a paid third party client instead. And that's usually inevitably the case with Apple's walled gardens... The annual developer fee means things that people would build for the community on AOSP/Android are locked behind purchases or subscriptions on iOS and Apple TV.
It never occurred to me that that's why all the macOS utilities cost money. (I mean not literally all but way more basic stuff than you'd ever think to pay for on Windows or Android). I did figure Apple encouraged it because of their massive cut off the revenue but i forgot they charge devs to publish in the first place.
MacOS isn't as locked down as iOS or Apple TV (yet) unless you publish via the Mac App Store, but a secondary factor is that Apple customers expect to pay to solve a problem without having to think about it.
The good is that the above norm encourages the creation of high quality software. The bad is that, by the same token, some ideas that would be free/libre community projects on other platforms are instead paid utilities in Apple's walled garden, especially on iOS and Apple TV.
I agree with you except for the Apple TV part. I use a mini-PC running Ubuntu and use a wireless keyboard with integrated touchpad to control it, and it works wonderfully and has a much better user experience than the Chromecast I was using before - a product which has progressively become more and more shitty over the years to the point of being unusable.
An Apple TV is probably also OK, but likely also much more expensive. Also, Apple is a company that is and always has done all they could to lock down their platforms, lock in their users and seek exorbitant fees from developers releasing to their platform.
I like the idea, but these KODI-based devices far too limited, they essentially only serve as media players for local content. For example, streaming Youtube is difficult and a poor experience relative using VacuumTube on desktop Linux. It's even harder to get a browser to work to stream from websites like Pluto and Flixer, especially if you want an adblocker. I haven't found a better option than an upscaled Linux DE on a mini-PC so far (however, see KDE Plasma Bigscreen).
Also, you can buy a more capable used ThinkCenter micro for less money, so the value proposition isn't exactly great.
I wouldn't expect KODI/OSMC to provide an unofficial YT client. However, the "app" availability issue is a big one for devices like this if they are to compete with spyware-ridden Android TV boxes on one hand and Linux HTPCs on the other hand. The Android TV boxes are cheap and support all streaming platforms. The Linux HTPCs are free (as in freedom), typically far more powerful (can double as consoles/emulators) and don't restrict the user in any way.
I'm not any more in the ecosystem than an Apple ID and airpods, and it is just fine. The directional spatial audio with the airpods is cool, but we also use other BT headphones with it. I use the ATV almost exclusively for Jellyfin/Infuse.
I believe HDMI has support for sharing internet since 1.4 and I wouldn't be surprised to see TV makers attempting to leverage this in the future to get around not connecting your TV directly to internet.
100%. Confirmed by my Firewalla. These and HomePods only access apple.com and icloud.com domains unless you're using apps. No mysterious hard coded IP addresses. Apple TV also has the best hardware, by far.
100% agree and do the same. There's no way I'd let one of those things touch the network. That is insane for a techie and even scarier that normal people live that way.
They generously offer you a free SIM card when going through passport control in Dubai. I can’t think of any other reason to do that, besides pure benevolence.
I read an article a few years ago about someone using a SIM card embedded in a product like this for free internet. The connection was severely limited though.
There already are on Sony TVs. My roommate is always connecting it when I’m away and I have to factory reset it and go through the dark pattern to use it without WiFi.
Prompt for a login or to check for updates on every start or once a week. It wouldn’t be difficult to get the numbers up for the number of online devices.
What would be the monthly cost per unit to LG for servicing those cell modems? Data-only, and I presume they could get some kind of bulk discount as a big manufacturer.
probably a couple of dollars a month, which would be very tough to actually make work. Even facebook only makes a few hundred dollars a year per person in the US.
Amazon had a data deal for Kindles for a long time. If we're assuming nefariousness, the embedded SIM would only be used for analytics/telemetry not for content, so it shouldn't be too much data.
If Neilsen will give me $1 to have a journal of what I watch, they might give Samsung something to have actual logs.
Use a PC for "smart" features. Used PC hardware is cheap and plenty effective. And the Logitech K400 is better than any TV remote.
No spying (unless you run Windows). Easy ad blocking. No reliance on platform-specific app support. Native support for multiple simultaneous content feeds (windows) - even from different services.
And it's not like it's complicated. My parents are as tech-illiterate as they come and they've been happily using an HTPC setup for over well over a decade. Anyone who can operate a "Smart TV" can certainly use a web browser.
I have the same setup and have never looked back. My kids can control the TV now via the browser instead of asking me to fiddle with a smartphone, and I can easily block e.g. YouTube via the hosts file. The ability to have multiple streaming services open in different tabs and reading online reviews all on the same screen is also vastly superior to any UX offered by e.g. Chromecast or similar devices.
> Apple is the only mainstream option where the hardware cost covers the experience, rather than your viewing habits subsidizing the device.
Years ago our refrain was "if you're not paying for the service, you're the product".
Nowadays we all recognize how naive that was; why would these psychopathic megacorporations overlook the possibility of both charging us and selling our privacy to the highest bidder?
In other words, Apple doesn't have a pass here. They're profiting from your data too, in addition to charging you the usual Apple tax. Why wouldn't they? Apple's a psychopathic megacorporation just like all the rest of them, whose only goal is to generate profit at any cost.
This except throw out the spyware that is an apple tv and get an intel n150 based mini pc (aoostar makes a nice one), throw bazzite on it, tell kde to auto login and auto load jellyfin and attach a flirc ir receiver and get a flirc remote for it. If you want to get fancy set a systemd timer to reboot it in the middle of the night.
Not user friendly and required dedicated hardware (TV tuners). Governing bodies also couldn't agree on HTPC standards, like Play4Sure, causing even more confusion. Plex and Sonarr/Radar are gaining some steam though.
For me: I want something that will always work with minimal effort and is easy to use for the family.
I've farted around with every HTPC software from MythTV on and I'm over it. I'll happily pay the premium for an AppleTV that will handle almost everything in hardware.
I would honestly just use an Apple TV. But the killer feature for me (I currently use a Steam Deck/Steam Controller) is just Youtube without ads reliably. Also total control, if Youtube jacked up the prices for Youtube Red, I always have Ublock.
Total control is the name of the game for me. I can load Steam. I can load Brave. I can load VLC. I can watch any streaming, play any game (proton supported), or listen to any music.
It's just really grating to buy a nice screen and then have all the streaming services basically lock you to early-2000s picture quality. It's not that it doesn't work at all, but if I get the big nice modern screen I want to be able to use what I paid for.
They're great but my friends get confused when they're staying and I'm not there. Not having a normal remote throws people. Getting a remote to work perfectly and usefully in Linux isn't all that simple. Plus it's not at all easy for it to manage external inputs -- a smart TV can just switch to the ps5 with a button, how would i do that from my Linux htpc keyboard?
Don't get me wrong, I'm never giving up my ublock-YouTube plus steam plus Plex Linux htpc but there's plenty of reasons they're not super practical.
Also doesn't Netflix still throttle to 720p on PCs?
If these things include WiFi hw it's not so simple.
You'd likely be surprised what proprietary WiFi-enabled consumer products do without your knowledge. Especially in a dense residential environment, there's nothing preventing a neighbor's WiFi AP giving internet access to everything it deems eligible within range. It may be a purely behind the scenes facility, on an otherwise ostensibly secured AP.
I don't have firsthand knowledge of TVs doing this, but other consumer devices with WiFi most definitely do this. If you don't control the software driving the TV, and the TV has WiFi hardware, I would assume it's at the very least in the cards.
It's rationalized by the vendors as a service to the customer. The mobile app needs to be able to configure the device via the cloud, so increasing the ability for said device to reach cloud by whatever means necessary is a customer benefit.
It most certainly is. It's not wifi, but it's definitely a thing. It lives down in the 900MHz world where things tend to be slower, but also travel further.
And of course: If it exists, it can be used.
That said, I haven't seen any evidence that suggests that televisions and streaming boxes are using it.
I’d kinda forgotten about it until someone mentioned open WiFi, and this seems like a use case tailor made for it. If not already, it looks like a near certainty to me.
Available as a one-time extra-cost feature on the first Kindle back in '07, Whispernet provided a bit of slow Internet access over cellular networks -- without additional payments or contracts or computers.
And really, Whispernet was great in that role.
But the world of data is shaped a lot differently these days. Data is a lot more-available and much less-expensive than it was back then, ~18 years ago -- and codecs have improved by leaps-and-bounds in terms of data efficiency.
Radios are also less expensive and more-capable compared to what they were in '07.
This will be sold as a feature: "Now with Amazon Whispernet, your new Amazon Fire TV will let you stream as much ad-supported TV as you want! For free! No home Internet connection or bulky antenna required! Say no to monthly bills and wanky-janky setups, and say yes to Amazon Fire TV!"
The future will be advertising. (Always has been, but always will be, too.)
Amazon Sidewalk is more about things connecting to the neighbor's always-plugged-in Echo Dot speaker than it is about them connecting to people walking down literal sidewalks.
As a thought exercise ask yourself would you notice if any of your closed WiFi-enabled hw scanned for APs and occasionally phoned home, if it didn't go out of its way to inform you of this? What would prevent the vendor from doing so?
These devices actively listen. First gen LG OLED - Went over to buddy's house with a new one. As an experiment I spoke spanish in front of the TV and the next ad to play on YouTube was in spanish language. We're talking two english speakers in a household environment that would have zero use of spanish outside of what I did.
I visited a week later and he had reset the TV because he started getting spanish ads. On my way out the door that time, I randomly said something like "I can't hold it in anymore, I need diapers!" and my friend was like "dude don't do that."
Sure enough, not a day later... It really just Depends.
People keep saying their TV does this. Can anyone recommend some Benn Jordan or Technology Connections style YT videos that conclusively replicate this?
from memory, the logical explanation is that by connecting to the same wifi the new tracked profile is being used. For example, the grand parent could have been learning Spanish, their profile gets picked up.
Another explanation is observation bias. Spanish ads were shown previously, but were ignored. Now you're on the lookout for them, so they're more noticeable.
I thought it was relatively common knowledge within technical circles to never give smart TVs an internet connection, but I suppose not.
Also, it's worth noting that TVs built on Android TV have a massive advantage here in that you can plug them into your laptop and remove the content recognition package using adb (Android Debug Bridge) just like you might with a phone or tablet. This might be possible with Samsung Tizen and LG webOS devices too, but both are going to require more esoteric tooling.
The specs and quality of the panel, backlighting (if applicable), and image processing. These days, the few "dumb" TVs that are still sold are either cheap and bad or are designed for signage use and aren't well suited for TV/movies/games relative to their mass-market smart cousins.
A smart TV used as a dumb TV alongside a quality streaming box (Apple TV or Nvidia Shield TV) or console gets you the best overall experience.
To each their own, but the good ones last a long time even if they’re a little pricey. As an example, the original Apple TV 4K which was released in 2017 is still quite serviceable and continues to receive updates even now. A unit purchased in 2017 for $179 will have worked out to $18/year assuming they’re still using it in 2027.
There's a variety of reasons, but many of us don't want any of the "smartness" and all of the stupidity that comes with "Smart TV's" these days, but don't really have comparable "dumb" options at similar or cheaper price points. The Telemetry (ACR), unremovable copilot app getting added to LG TV's, or all the Ad's Samsung are cramming into their "smart" garbage are three prime examples, but certainly not the only reasons I hate smart TV's (or really any device marketed as "smart") these days.
Most importantly though, can you even get non-smart TV's these days that aren't super budget items? To my knowledge that's pretty much not a thing anymore (yes there are presentation displays and large format monitors, but that gets into the weeds fast about feature/panel/spec differences, not to mention price differences)
You get a much cheaper TV. The folks who manufacture the TV expect to make a certain amount of revenue from your data, so they price this into the cost of the TV. This saves you from having to spend more money on a commercial display that often has a worse panel.
One answer is that all you wanted was bright, sixty inch monitor for your living room, into which you could plug your HDMI sources, but all you could get (subject to various other constraints: price, quality, availability, non-smart features you do care about, ...) was a smart TV, whose "smart" features you explicitly don't want.
You don't have to use every feature of something for it to make sense. I have a "dumb" TV. It has built-in speakers, but I don't use those. Volume is set to minimum. My streaming box connects to decent bookshelf speakers.
Several Sony models are also very good, being built with Samsung panels and their own in-house image processing which is some of the best in the industry. Their TVs run Android and support offline firmware updates, too, which is why they're usually what I buy.
I don't use the Smart features and instead use a $30 Amazon Fire TV stick (for streaming services) and a Raspberry Pi (for torrents).
This has the major advantage that if the streaming hardware is ever obsoleted for any reason (ie, Netflix decides my TV is too old to support a compression codec they want to switch to), I only have to buy a new media player for $30 and not a whole new TV.
The point is I don’t want my TV, my refrigerator, my toaster, my dishwasher, or my washing machine to be “smart” or to have any AI or internet connectivity.
These all have a very simple job to do, and there’s absolutely zero value-add to the smart edge software nonsense.
> What’s the point in having smart TV without internet access?
The difficulty in finding an affordable TV without smart functionality alone means that you're most likely buying a smart TV.
I yet again bought a Samsung smart tv (despite having sworn never to do so again..) and I'm never letting it connect to the internet after what happened to the last one.
The ability to own a TV at all, since even the cheaper sets now have this nonsense built right in. Loosely I think the idea is to subsidize the cost of the hardware with the marketing deals, but I don't actually know.
What you do is you should never do is connect your tv to the internet. You connect something you control and can turn off if you don't like it, like say a google youtube tv dongle, or apple tv. You can unplug them if you don't like them.
If you connect your tv to wifi, it can spy on you all the time. It can upload info on what you watch even if you used an external google tv puck to watch tv. It can see what you type on the screen if say you use it for say a monitor. There are reports of people deleting networking info but the tvs occasionally connecting back even though they deleted wifi info. You have to get a new network name to block them.
It's much much better to connect an external device, and if not that then use an ethernet cable to connect, because you can physically remove it.
Because the vast majority of people use whatever their tv came with these days in terms of smart tv connections, they don't set privacy settings. There's every reason for the tv makers to keep spying on you. If you have an external device their is motivation for them to not make you angry - but it's true that they can spy on you.
The sad part of all of this was that the company that does this tried to poach me back in 2013 or 2014, but I was disgusted by the practice, so I refused to even interview.
Since then, I've made sure every single TV I own has this turned off (I go through the menu extensively to disable, and search on Google and reddit if it's not obvious how to disable like the case with Samsung).
I have an LG Smart TV, and just a week or two ago I was going through the settings and found Live Plus enabled, which means either they renamed the setting (and defaulted this to on), or the overrode my original setting.
Either way, I'm super annoyed. I want to switch to firewalling the TV and preventing any updates, but I need a replacement streaming device to connect to it.
Does anyone have recommendations for a streaming device to use (presumably one with HDMI CEC, that supports 4k and HDR)? I use the major streaming services (Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Apple TV) and Jellyfin.
I recently did a lot of looking into this, and sadly most of the previously wide-open loopholes for rooting LG webOS were all patched in the last ~6 months. You can fiddle with dev mode but you can't get proper root.
I basically settled on an (incredibly expensive) Sony commercial Android TV -- beyond the ADB method, their commercial line gives you additional admin controls over which apps are allowed to run and which are allowed on the network. Between the two i felt I'd be pretty content.
Granted i haven't tried it because my new job fell through and a $1400 TV was no longer an option.
it's a feature on LG smart TVs that uses ACR (automatic content recognition)
to analyze what's displayed on your screen. LG then uses that data to offer
"personalized services," including content recommendations
and advertisements.
Interesting, ill go down a rabbit hole on this, ACR to detect commercials and activate mute? Or play some spa music, then back to main audio when commercials are over, that would be pretty cool use of ACR
SCTE-35 might be a better way to get rid of the commercials (normally SCTE-35 is intended for adding commercials rather than removing them), but only if that data is available (in my experience, sometimes it is, but not always). It might be even more better to just avoid recording the commercials (therefore saving disk space, and saing network bandwidth if using internet for downloading them), or to automatically skip past commercials when playing back a recording (instead of replacing them with something else). If using HLS, then you might use the #EXT-X-CUE-OUT command to detect commercial breaks, and avoid downloading them (although there is sometimes problems with audio/video desynchronization when converting to DVD format, and I don't know if that is because the commercial breaks are not recorded or for some other reason).
> To LG's credit, the TV automatically detected all of my devices -- my PC, PS5, Switch 2, and Fire TV Stick 4K Max -- and applied the best settings for each.
So.. they can take the time to do this properly.. but won't bother to ask you privacy preferences out of the box.
This should be illegal. If you collect data from customers then you need to be up front about that and the setting must be opt in. They clearly have the capability to do this. Their products need to be taken off the market if they can't act in a civilized manner.
They do ask. When you set it up it presents 5 agreements to accept, only 2 of which are required. ACR, voice recognition, and a few other questionable this are covered under those optional agreements. I simply didn't accept them and ask those features were disabled.
>> When I first set up my LG TV, my main focus was ensuring the picture quality was perfect.
First things I did when I got a new LG TV:
* Turn off auto-smoothing
* Turn off high dynamic range
* Turn off audio processing
First things I did when I got my Apple TV:
* Turn off auto-smoothing
* Turn off high dynamic range
* Force everything to play at 1080p (delete all other resolutions)
There is a sharp cultural line between people who can't stand UHD/4K/48fps and those who want everything to look like pre-HD cinema, and people who love all the post processing. I'm on the wrong side. Which side are you all on?
I'm fine with ripped DVDs that were purchased 20 years ago, and anything higher resolution than that is a bonus. All displayed on quality panels at neutral/middle settings with those aformentioned effects likewise disabled. Audio preserved as original, hooked up to a killer theater with real component speakers.
It's hard for me to tune in on an overly smoothed, saturated picture with fake surround sound plasticy soundbar audio.
It's gotta be me, or my eyes. I've never watched a film and said, "Oh that transfer looks beautiful," but I have watched many and said, "Damn that transfer sucks." I remember buying some Criterion films in the early 2000's and was thoroughly disappointed (but back then transfers sucked so....)
But take LoTR for example: I have a friend with a 60-something inch TV and watched the 4K DVD and then watched the streaming at home on my 50something inch and I'll be damned if I can tell A from B. Maybe I need to put them side-by-side some day!
My TV is the only device on my network with the privilege of being permanently quarantined by my firewall. I gain zero spying or ads and lose no features I actually care about.
Most people have not been paying much attention, and while I do remember some reporting of this on other tech news sites at the time, it was (understandably) mainly ignored by the mainstream media.
How is it that it's been well known that smart TVs will show ads and spy on you for over 10 years, and yet people are still connecting their TVs to their WiFi rather than get a separate dedicated streaming device?
I just don't get it. How are people still surprised to find their TV is spying and will show ads?
How do you know turning it off really turns off the spying? Maybe it just turns off the overt behaviors like recommendation based on the spying, while continuing to collect data.
You really have to disconnect it from the network, or find out what "phone home" connections it is making and block some of them.
I couldn't read the article because I have ad blocking on. We have a lot of bad patterns in the US economy. Tips instead of paying people a real wage (just eat in a country that doesn't do tips and tell me the US system is somehow better), for profit healthcare and also near the top 'ad' supported anything. These systems are cancers and totally not needed for a healthy economy and society.
TV manufacturers' interests are not perfectly aligned with users'. They may want to wow you with the picture, but definitely would like to monetize the heck out of the access to your viewing habits, and the internet connection you might mistakenly allow them to have.
Same applies to basically anything connected to the internet. Can it collect data useful for advertising, or otherwise legally saleable? If so, deny it access to the internet if you value your privacy. Or, when possible, replace its firmware / software with a reputable open-source version.
Follow the money. Can any money be made inconspicuously off you after a sale of the device? Are you happy with the way it would be done? Do some minimal research, and scratch your head.
Have you turned off this setting too? Just curious if you’ve tried messing with the settings, and whether they actually change the TV’s traffic patterns you see in the DNS sinkhole. Good experiment at the very least
Pro-tip: have your DHCP server auto-issue your PiHole's IP as the DNS address — this makes all IoT and phones use your PiHole (unless secure-DNS or hardcoded). There are methods to make your firewall accomplish something similar (pfsense?) but I don't know how and DHCP is easier, at least for my network users.
My [now disabled] Honeywell thermostat had the most packet-sends (not data, just #packets). Wouldn't have caught it without my network defaulting to PiHole.
You also need to block outgoing UDP traffic to port 53 in your router, in case the IoT devices fall back to a preconfigured resolver. And even that doesn't 100% work because they can use DNS over HTTPS.
You can stop it much earlier than this. At setup time it gives you several policies to agree to. Only two of them are required; the rest are optional. The optional ones include Live Plus and several other systems for monitoring and advertising.
Alternatively block it from the internet at the router, or connect to a LAN-only subnet. Keeps the benefits of local AirPlay, Chromecast, and HomeKit without being able to phone home.
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LG also has a setting for "Wi‑Fi Direct / Wi‑Fi Screen Share". Can the TV connect to LG servers via that route? (Even if LAN and regular Wi-Fi are not configured?)
When I helped a friend set up his LG C2, we plugged it into Ethernet just long enough to update its firmware, then promptly disconnected it, never to even set up WiFi.
Why even do that? I fear every time a device connects it is going to download a new batch of ads to share until it next connects, disable some existing feature, or install copilot/other useless feature that slows down the already anemic CPU. I am going to trust that whatever firmware shipped on the device is capable of display video and leave it at that. I already disable all of the post-processing effects I can find.
It’s not just smart TVs—pretty much every internet-connected device or service today seems to follow the same playbook: wrap a tracking mechanism inside a “convenient” or “personalized” feature. Whether it's TVs, phones, assistants, or even fridges, it’s becoming harder to tell what’s genuinely useful vs what’s just surveillance in disguise. The normalization of this design pattern feels more concerning than any single instance. Anyone else feel like this is just the default architecture of the modern consumer web now?
> Fortunately, once you've toggled Live Plus off, you no longer have to worry about your TV screen constantly being read to see what you're watching and to give you targeted ads.
Eh, I wouldn't be so quick to let my guard down. Even if you trust that that toggle actually turns the functionality completely off, there's no guarantee that it won't be enabled again in the next update.
Just keep your TV offline, as it always should be, and use it as a dumb display for trusted devices.
My rule for modern TVs: 1. Never connect the TV panel itself to the internet. Keep it air-gapped. Treat it solely as a dumb monitor.
2. Use an Apple TV for the "smart" features.
3. Avoid Fire TV, Chromecast, or Roku.
The logic is simple, Google (Chromecast) and Amazon (Fire TV) operate on the same business model as the TV manufacturers subsidized hardware in exchange for user data and ad inventory. Apple is the only mainstream option where the hardware cost covers the experience, rather than your viewing habits subsidizing the device.
[Copied my comment from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46268844#46271740]
That's exactly my own thought process. I don't pretend that Apple is saintly, but their profit model is currently to make money through premium prices on premium products. They have a lot to lose, like several trillion dollars, in betraying that trust.
A large % of their revenue comes from app store/services and they have incentives to lock you into the ecosystem, sell you digital shit and take a cut off of everything.
I saw an ad for apple gaming service in my iphone system settings recently !
That's not to say that Google isn't worse but let's not pretend Apple is some saint here or that their incentives are perfectly aligned with the users. Hardware growth has peaked, they will be forced to milk you on services to keep growing revenue.
Personally I'm looking forward to Steam Deck, if that gets annoying with SteamOS - it's a PC built for Linux, there's going to be something available.
True. The best option currently is to buy an Nvidia Shield TV, unlock the bootloader and install a custom Android ROM. The hardware is great, and if you install a custom ROM, you have more freedom than Apple TV will ever give you.
Ads are only 2-3% of Apple's revenue, while Google is ~75%.
The comment about the ad wasn't about the ad istelf. It was an apple ad for an apple service, so they didn't make any money at all on the ad. The remark was about the service Apple was pushing, and just how intrusively.
Oh but they did achieve a financial good. They saved having to pay another company to place that ad. Therefore, they made more money, eg more profit.
Services are 25% and are the only one growing/they can grow - that means all focus is going to be on expanding that revenue = enshitification.
Hardware is now purely a way to get you on to the app store - which is why iOS is so locked down and iPad has a MacBook level processor with toy OS.
If you stop looking at the marketing speak and look at it from a stock owner perspective all the user hostile moves Apple is double speaking into security and UX actually make a lot more sense.
I don’t see how this really changes the underlying problem of the device pays on you and then they sell that information to the highest bidder? I’m not reaching for a financial report to fix that.
Good luck getting widevine decryption to work without a locked down OS...
Like another comment mentioned I'm ready to go back to torrenting. Im currently paying for 4 streaming service subscriptions (if you count YouTube premium) where I have super segmented and annoying search UX, and Apple won't even let me pay for their service in my EU county (Croatia). And the DRM story is ridiculous. I'll just setup ARR stack and have a better experience than I can pay for - for free.
I'll still keep buying stuff on steam.
It’s worked on Linux for a while, though it is limited to 720p I believe.
Why would torrents use widevine?
> I don't pretend that Apple is saintly, but their profit model is currently to make money through premium prices on premium products
Is this statement based on anything other than Apple marketing materials, perhaps a meaningful qualification from an independent third party? I worry this falsehood is being repeated so much it has become "truth".
For some reason, some people have this inexplicable rose-tinted vision of Apple. Until they release the source code of their products, the only rational stance is to treat their software as malware.
If further evidence is necessary, any Apple device that I have owned pings multiple Apple domains several times per minute, despite disabling every cloud dependency that can be disabled. The roles of the domains are partially documented, but traffic is encrypted and it is impossible to know for sure what information Apple is exfiltrating. It is certainly a lot more than a periodic software update check. It certainly seems that Apple is documenting how people interact with the devices they own very closely. That's an insane amount of oversight over people's lives considering that some (most?) people use their phones as their primary computer.
I just opened Activity Monitor - a process called "dasd" is the 5th largest consumer of CPU time. What does it do? Apple does not want you to know. Apple also will not let you disable it. Apple will not even tell you if this process is legitimate (it is signed by "Software Signing" lmao).
There are like two dozen processes like this, half of which open network connections despite me never invoking any Apple services or even built-in apps. macOS has basically become malware.It schedules low-priority background processes.
https://eclecticlight.co/2023/01/23/scheduled-activities-1-s...
Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but it certainly rhymes. Is there proof that Apple is monetizing our data with third parties? It's very clear how almost every other major company is, but Apple's been reasonably respectful about it.
Google is also vehemently opposed to selling your data to third parties. That's how they keep themselves as the middleman between advertisers and users. What they do is allow detailed behavioral targeting. Apple prefers to expose contextual targeting data to advertising instead. Apple is also better about not letting advertisers run random scripts.
But frankly the difference between the two companies seems more a matter of degree than kind. It's not like Apple has a strong, principled stance against collecting data. They have a strong principled stance against other ad networks collecting user data, which looks a lot like anticompetitiveness. Their first party software collects identifiable data on you regardless of whether you opt out. They just avoid using that to target you if you opt out.
The reason Apple says their advertising doesn't track you is because they define "tracking" as purchasing third party data, not first party data collection.
> Is there proof that Apple is monetizing our data with third parties?
Other than a history replete of cooperation with domestic and foreign state surveillance, which in exchange allow its market position, you mean?
They’re certainly monetizing your data with first parties
What falsehood? That apple's profit mix is much less advertising than its competitors is just a fact about their incentives in the moment. He didn't really go all that far in claiming anything beyond that being better than the alternative of being mostly an advertising company.
its a proprietary black box with a billion dollar marketing budget like all apple devices
Repeating "this falsehood" doesn't make it a falsehood either.
Nothing is false about asking to prove a unicorn exists.
My only * to this would be Google Chromecast devices directly if you already have them.
They have an option (buried way under settings) to make the home-screen apps only.
> Turn on Apps only mode > From the Google TV home screen, select Settings Settings and then Accounts & Sign In. > Select your profile and then Apps only mode and then Turn on.
It also makes the device significantly more performant.
Great tip! I'd been using a custom launcher, but with this, I might not have to.
Apps Only mode still has plenty of ads on the home screen though.
With a bit of fiddling, Android TV can be as good as Apple TV in terms of privacy. Not out of the box, of course, but ADB can remove advertising/surveillance related APK files from most devices sold in big box stores and there are open-source, alternative clients to YouTube and a few other platforms available due to the popularity on the underlying AOSP platform. The same is possible to varying extents on smart TVs that use Android TV as their OS.
You can even completely replace Google's sponsored-content-feed launcher/homescreen with an open source alternative that is just a grid of big tiles for your installed apps (FLauncher).
For me, SmartTube with both ad-blocking and sponsor block is the killer feature of Android TV as a platform.
If you're into local network media streaming, Jellyfin's Android TV app is also great. Their Apple TV app is limited enough that people recommend using a paid third party client instead. And that's usually inevitably the case with Apple's walled gardens... The annual developer fee means things that people would build for the community on AOSP/Android are locked behind purchases or subscriptions on iOS and Apple TV.
It never occurred to me that that's why all the macOS utilities cost money. (I mean not literally all but way more basic stuff than you'd ever think to pay for on Windows or Android). I did figure Apple encouraged it because of their massive cut off the revenue but i forgot they charge devs to publish in the first place.
MacOS isn't as locked down as iOS or Apple TV (yet) unless you publish via the Mac App Store, but a secondary factor is that Apple customers expect to pay to solve a problem without having to think about it.
The good is that the above norm encourages the creation of high quality software. The bad is that, by the same token, some ideas that would be free/libre community projects on other platforms are instead paid utilities in Apple's walled garden, especially on iOS and Apple TV.
I agree with you except for the Apple TV part. I use a mini-PC running Ubuntu and use a wireless keyboard with integrated touchpad to control it, and it works wonderfully and has a much better user experience than the Chromecast I was using before - a product which has progressively become more and more shitty over the years to the point of being unusable.
An Apple TV is probably also OK, but likely also much more expensive. Also, Apple is a company that is and always has done all they could to lock down their platforms, lock in their users and seek exorbitant fees from developers releasing to their platform.
Another safe option I use: Vero V [1], it runs Debian + Kodi, so it is all open source. Great support by Sam, the founder, too.
[1] https://osmc.tv/vero/
I like the idea, but these KODI-based devices far too limited, they essentially only serve as media players for local content. For example, streaming Youtube is difficult and a poor experience relative using VacuumTube on desktop Linux. It's even harder to get a browser to work to stream from websites like Pluto and Flixer, especially if you want an adblocker. I haven't found a better option than an upscaled Linux DE on a mini-PC so far (however, see KDE Plasma Bigscreen).
Also, you can buy a more capable used ThinkCenter micro for less money, so the value proposition isn't exactly great.
> I like the idea, but these KODI-based devices far too limited, they essentially only serve as media players for local content.
This seems to be a side effect of KODI's extreme aversion to being associated with piracy.
I wouldn't expect KODI/OSMC to provide an unofficial YT client. However, the "app" availability issue is a big one for devices like this if they are to compete with spyware-ridden Android TV boxes on one hand and Linux HTPCs on the other hand. The Android TV boxes are cheap and support all streaming platforms. The Linux HTPCs are free (as in freedom), typically far more powerful (can double as consoles/emulators) and don't restrict the user in any way.
How well does apple TV work if you're not part of the apple ecosystem?
It works well. I have a throwaway pseudonym dedicated to my appleTV and we use the login so infrequently that we always have to look it up.
The only time we ever interface with apple is to install a new app on the AppleTV and that is very rare.
The appletv is not connected to any other apple products or services.
I'm not any more in the ecosystem than an Apple ID and airpods, and it is just fine. The directional spatial audio with the airpods is cool, but we also use other BT headphones with it. I use the ATV almost exclusively for Jellyfin/Infuse.
I believe HDMI has support for sharing internet since 1.4 and I wouldn't be surprised to see TV makers attempting to leverage this in the future to get around not connecting your TV directly to internet.
HDMI Ethernet Channel fizzled out and no devices ever supported it.
No. I had a Samsung TV which connects to the internet via the HDMI cable to my Nvidia Shield.
Apple likely captures similar info but it is just they don’t sell the data but use exclusively for themselves.
100%. Confirmed by my Firewalla. These and HomePods only access apple.com and icloud.com domains unless you're using apps. No mysterious hard coded IP addresses. Apple TV also has the best hardware, by far.
What's wrong with Roku?
100% agree and do the same. There's no way I'd let one of those things touch the network. That is insane for a techie and even scarier that normal people live that way.
they'll probably start using that bezos spy doorbell mesh network soon
then the only thing to do will be to rip out the antenna
Once many people start doing this, there will be dark patterns to force you to connect to the internet.
It won't be long before products like this just get cellular modems built in.
Looking forward to free internet courtesy of the surveillance state
They generously offer you a free SIM card when going through passport control in Dubai. I can’t think of any other reason to do that, besides pure benevolence.
I read an article a few years ago about someone using a SIM card embedded in a product like this for free internet. The connection was severely limited though.
There already are on Sony TVs. My roommate is always connecting it when I’m away and I have to factory reset it and go through the dark pattern to use it without WiFi.
how so? describe an example please.
Prompt for a login or to check for updates on every start or once a week. It wouldn’t be difficult to get the numbers up for the number of online devices.
Similar to Windows 11 force you to login with Microsoft Account during install?
ship a cell phone in every TV
What would be the monthly cost per unit to LG for servicing those cell modems? Data-only, and I presume they could get some kind of bulk discount as a big manufacturer.
probably a couple of dollars a month, which would be very tough to actually make work. Even facebook only makes a few hundred dollars a year per person in the US.
Nah, you can get a plan for a couple dollars a year as a one-off https://www.digikey.com/en/resources/iot-resource-center/iot...
Amazon had a data deal for Kindles for a long time. If we're assuming nefariousness, the embedded SIM would only be used for analytics/telemetry not for content, so it shouldn't be too much data.
If Neilsen will give me $1 to have a journal of what I watch, they might give Samsung something to have actual logs.
> Use an Apple TV for the "smart" features.
Use a PC for "smart" features. Used PC hardware is cheap and plenty effective. And the Logitech K400 is better than any TV remote.
No spying (unless you run Windows). Easy ad blocking. No reliance on platform-specific app support. Native support for multiple simultaneous content feeds (windows) - even from different services.
And it's not like it's complicated. My parents are as tech-illiterate as they come and they've been happily using an HTPC setup for over well over a decade. Anyone who can operate a "Smart TV" can certainly use a web browser.
I have the same setup and have never looked back. My kids can control the TV now via the browser instead of asking me to fiddle with a smartphone, and I can easily block e.g. YouTube via the hosts file. The ability to have multiple streaming services open in different tabs and reading online reviews all on the same screen is also vastly superior to any UX offered by e.g. Chromecast or similar devices.
> Apple is the only mainstream option where the hardware cost covers the experience, rather than your viewing habits subsidizing the device.
Years ago our refrain was "if you're not paying for the service, you're the product".
Nowadays we all recognize how naive that was; why would these psychopathic megacorporations overlook the possibility of both charging us and selling our privacy to the highest bidder?
In other words, Apple doesn't have a pass here. They're profiting from your data too, in addition to charging you the usual Apple tax. Why wouldn't they? Apple's a psychopathic megacorporation just like all the rest of them, whose only goal is to generate profit at any cost.
This except throw out the spyware that is an apple tv and get an intel n150 based mini pc (aoostar makes a nice one), throw bazzite on it, tell kde to auto login and auto load jellyfin and attach a flirc ir receiver and get a flirc remote for it. If you want to get fancy set a systemd timer to reboot it in the middle of the night.
What happened to having an HTPC?
Not user friendly and required dedicated hardware (TV tuners). Governing bodies also couldn't agree on HTPC standards, like Play4Sure, causing even more confusion. Plex and Sonarr/Radar are gaining some steam though.
For me: I want something that will always work with minimal effort and is easy to use for the family.
I've farted around with every HTPC software from MythTV on and I'm over it. I'll happily pay the premium for an AppleTV that will handle almost everything in hardware.
I solved this with a wireless keyboard and a Kensington trackball mouse running pure Fedora with scaling set to 200% in KDE Plasma.
Who needs a frontend? Just open brave.
I would honestly just use an Apple TV. But the killer feature for me (I currently use a Steam Deck/Steam Controller) is just Youtube without ads reliably. Also total control, if Youtube jacked up the prices for Youtube Red, I always have Ublock.
Total control is the name of the game for me. I can load Steam. I can load Brave. I can load VLC. I can watch any streaming, play any game (proton supported), or listen to any music.
It's just really grating to buy a nice screen and then have all the streaming services basically lock you to early-2000s picture quality. It's not that it doesn't work at all, but if I get the big nice modern screen I want to be able to use what I paid for.
This is ultimately why I'm still sailing the seven seas
Jellyfin is pretty good
Jellyfin + AppleTV w/ Infuse is a dream.
They're great but my friends get confused when they're staying and I'm not there. Not having a normal remote throws people. Getting a remote to work perfectly and usefully in Linux isn't all that simple. Plus it's not at all easy for it to manage external inputs -- a smart TV can just switch to the ps5 with a button, how would i do that from my Linux htpc keyboard?
Don't get me wrong, I'm never giving up my ublock-YouTube plus steam plus Plex Linux htpc but there's plenty of reasons they're not super practical.
Also doesn't Netflix still throttle to 720p on PCs?
If these things include WiFi hw it's not so simple.
You'd likely be surprised what proprietary WiFi-enabled consumer products do without your knowledge. Especially in a dense residential environment, there's nothing preventing a neighbor's WiFi AP giving internet access to everything it deems eligible within range. It may be a purely behind the scenes facility, on an otherwise ostensibly secured AP.
I see this claim posted a lot, and not a single person has ever provided evidence of it happening with any TV brand I've ever heard of.
I don't have firsthand knowledge of TVs doing this, but other consumer devices with WiFi most definitely do this. If you don't control the software driving the TV, and the TV has WiFi hardware, I would assume it's at the very least in the cards.
It's rationalized by the vendors as a service to the customer. The mobile app needs to be able to configure the device via the cloud, so increasing the ability for said device to reach cloud by whatever means necessary is a customer benefit.
I've never seen evidence of a mainstream consumer device doing this either. Got some examples I can look at?
Is Amazon Sidewalk still a thing?
It most certainly is. It's not wifi, but it's definitely a thing. It lives down in the 900MHz world where things tend to be slower, but also travel further.
And of course: If it exists, it can be used.
That said, I haven't seen any evidence that suggests that televisions and streaming boxes are using it.
I’d kinda forgotten about it until someone mentioned open WiFi, and this seems like a use case tailor made for it. If not already, it looks like a near certainty to me.
I also think it is inevitable.
But remember, too: Whispernet.
Available as a one-time extra-cost feature on the first Kindle back in '07, Whispernet provided a bit of slow Internet access over cellular networks -- without additional payments or contracts or computers.
And really, Whispernet was great in that role.
But the world of data is shaped a lot differently these days. Data is a lot more-available and much less-expensive than it was back then, ~18 years ago -- and codecs have improved by leaps-and-bounds in terms of data efficiency.
Radios are also less expensive and more-capable compared to what they were in '07.
This will be sold as a feature: "Now with Amazon Whispernet, your new Amazon Fire TV will let you stream as much ad-supported TV as you want! For free! No home Internet connection or bulky antenna required! Say no to monthly bills and wanky-janky setups, and say yes to Amazon Fire TV!"
The future will be advertising. (Always has been, but always will be, too.)
If you're in SF we should have that conversation over a beer.
If you are paranoid about this, most TV wifi hardware is simple enough to physically disconnect.
You're suggesting that my TV would connect to a random open WiFi, it sounds far fetched
At some point it will potentially connect to people walking by on the street (Amazon Sidewalk). For now they haven't hooked Fire TVs into it.
Amazon Sidewalk is more about things connecting to the neighbor's always-plugged-in Echo Dot speaker than it is about them connecting to people walking down literal sidewalks.
As a thought exercise ask yourself would you notice if any of your closed WiFi-enabled hw scanned for APs and occasionally phoned home, if it didn't go out of its way to inform you of this? What would prevent the vendor from doing so?
These devices actively listen. First gen LG OLED - Went over to buddy's house with a new one. As an experiment I spoke spanish in front of the TV and the next ad to play on YouTube was in spanish language. We're talking two english speakers in a household environment that would have zero use of spanish outside of what I did.
I visited a week later and he had reset the TV because he started getting spanish ads. On my way out the door that time, I randomly said something like "I can't hold it in anymore, I need diapers!" and my friend was like "dude don't do that."
Sure enough, not a day later... It really just Depends.
I've had random Spanish YouTube commercials too. Except no one ever speaks Spanish around my devices.
People keep saying their TV does this. Can anyone recommend some Benn Jordan or Technology Connections style YT videos that conclusively replicate this?
I haven't seen an actual experiment that replicates anecdotal evidence but this discussion comes to mind
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42580659
from memory, the logical explanation is that by connecting to the same wifi the new tracked profile is being used. For example, the grand parent could have been learning Spanish, their profile gets picked up.
Another explanation is observation bias. Spanish ads were shown previously, but were ignored. Now you're on the lookout for them, so they're more noticeable.
I thought it was relatively common knowledge within technical circles to never give smart TVs an internet connection, but I suppose not.
Also, it's worth noting that TVs built on Android TV have a massive advantage here in that you can plug them into your laptop and remove the content recognition package using adb (Android Debug Bridge) just like you might with a phone or tablet. This might be possible with Samsung Tizen and LG webOS devices too, but both are going to require more esoteric tooling.
What’s the point in having smart TV without internet access?
The specs and quality of the panel, backlighting (if applicable), and image processing. These days, the few "dumb" TVs that are still sold are either cheap and bad or are designed for signage use and aren't well suited for TV/movies/games relative to their mass-market smart cousins.
A smart TV used as a dumb TV alongside a quality streaming box (Apple TV or Nvidia Shield TV) or console gets you the best overall experience.
Not for everyone, I guess.
Many people, including myself, don’t want to buy “quality streaming box” just for watching Netflix or YouTube sporadically.
To each their own, but the good ones last a long time even if they’re a little pricey. As an example, the original Apple TV 4K which was released in 2017 is still quite serviceable and continues to receive updates even now. A unit purchased in 2017 for $179 will have worked out to $18/year assuming they’re still using it in 2027.
The cheapest Roku player at this moment is selling for $16, the plush model for $80.
So, you do have to eat that financial hit for the least-bad privacy option.
Right, but the Roku literally monitors what you watch 2x a second. They call it ACR: https://advertising.roku.com/learn/resources/acr-the-future-...
From my experience, TVs are not as ubiquitous as they used to be 10 years earlier.
However, one must acknowledge that you can now watch "TV" on almost all your devices.
There's a variety of reasons, but many of us don't want any of the "smartness" and all of the stupidity that comes with "Smart TV's" these days, but don't really have comparable "dumb" options at similar or cheaper price points. The Telemetry (ACR), unremovable copilot app getting added to LG TV's, or all the Ad's Samsung are cramming into their "smart" garbage are three prime examples, but certainly not the only reasons I hate smart TV's (or really any device marketed as "smart") these days.
Most importantly though, can you even get non-smart TV's these days that aren't super budget items? To my knowledge that's pretty much not a thing anymore (yes there are presentation displays and large format monitors, but that gets into the weeds fast about feature/panel/spec differences, not to mention price differences)
You get a much cheaper TV. The folks who manufacture the TV expect to make a certain amount of revenue from your data, so they price this into the cost of the TV. This saves you from having to spend more money on a commercial display that often has a worse panel.
One answer is that all you wanted was bright, sixty inch monitor for your living room, into which you could plug your HDMI sources, but all you could get (subject to various other constraints: price, quality, availability, non-smart features you do care about, ...) was a smart TV, whose "smart" features you explicitly don't want.
You don't have to use every feature of something for it to make sense. I have a "dumb" TV. It has built-in speakers, but I don't use those. Volume is set to minimum. My streaming box connects to decent bookshelf speakers.
The best (in terms of image quality) consumer displays on the market right now are OLED TVs from LG and Samsung. But they’re also “Smart” TVs.
I keep mine disconnected and use an external media box (AppleTV 4K).
Several Sony models are also very good, being built with Samsung panels and their own in-house image processing which is some of the best in the industry. Their TVs run Android and support offline firmware updates, too, which is why they're usually what I buy.
I don't use the Smart features and instead use a $30 Amazon Fire TV stick (for streaming services) and a Raspberry Pi (for torrents).
This has the major advantage that if the streaming hardware is ever obsoleted for any reason (ie, Netflix decides my TV is too old to support a compression codec they want to switch to), I only have to buy a new media player for $30 and not a whole new TV.
The point is I don’t want my TV, my refrigerator, my toaster, my dishwasher, or my washing machine to be “smart” or to have any AI or internet connectivity.
These all have a very simple job to do, and there’s absolutely zero value-add to the smart edge software nonsense.
I may want sometimes to use my TV for watching something (I know, sounds wild), and I don’t want to buy additional piece of hardware for that.
Then go ahead? Not sure why you're so surprised that some of us don't like running spyware on our devices.
> What’s the point in having smart TV without internet access?
The difficulty in finding an affordable TV without smart functionality alone means that you're most likely buying a smart TV.
I yet again bought a Samsung smart tv (despite having sworn never to do so again..) and I'm never letting it connect to the internet after what happened to the last one.
The ability to own a TV at all, since even the cheaper sets now have this nonsense built right in. Loosely I think the idea is to subsidize the cost of the hardware with the marketing deals, but I don't actually know.
Mine's in the living room hooked up to a gaming PC, and I don't watch TV/movies.
Well, there's little choice for TVs without smart features these days. Especially if you're wanting certain quality and other features.
What you do is you should never do is connect your tv to the internet. You connect something you control and can turn off if you don't like it, like say a google youtube tv dongle, or apple tv. You can unplug them if you don't like them.
If you connect your tv to wifi, it can spy on you all the time. It can upload info on what you watch even if you used an external google tv puck to watch tv. It can see what you type on the screen if say you use it for say a monitor. There are reports of people deleting networking info but the tvs occasionally connecting back even though they deleted wifi info. You have to get a new network name to block them.
It's much much better to connect an external device, and if not that then use an ethernet cable to connect, because you can physically remove it.
Because the vast majority of people use whatever their tv came with these days in terms of smart tv connections, they don't set privacy settings. There's every reason for the tv makers to keep spying on you. If you have an external device their is motivation for them to not make you angry - but it's true that they can spy on you.
The sad part of all of this was that the company that does this tried to poach me back in 2013 or 2014, but I was disgusted by the practice, so I refused to even interview.
Since then, I've made sure every single TV I own has this turned off (I go through the menu extensively to disable, and search on Google and reddit if it's not obvious how to disable like the case with Samsung).
I have an LG Smart TV, and just a week or two ago I was going through the settings and found Live Plus enabled, which means either they renamed the setting (and defaulted this to on), or the overrode my original setting.
Either way, I'm super annoyed. I want to switch to firewalling the TV and preventing any updates, but I need a replacement streaming device to connect to it.
Does anyone have recommendations for a streaming device to use (presumably one with HDMI CEC, that supports 4k and HDR)? I use the major streaming services (Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Apple TV) and Jellyfin.
An Apple TV 4k: https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-4k/
It will just work. You will maybe get an ad or two from Apple, rarely, about Apple services, but it's very rare and easy to ignore.
Otherwise you only get ads if your service(Netflix, etc) delivers ads.
Apple won't share your data with anyone, and generally does a fairly decent job(compared to other giant tech companies) of not collecting much.
My main peeve with the Apple TV (device) is that the home button keeps sending me into Apple TV (App) instead of to the main screen.
I have to click it twice to get back to the home screen.
The only acceptable number of ads is zero.
I recently did a lot of looking into this, and sadly most of the previously wide-open loopholes for rooting LG webOS were all patched in the last ~6 months. You can fiddle with dev mode but you can't get proper root.
I basically settled on an (incredibly expensive) Sony commercial Android TV -- beyond the ADB method, their commercial line gives you additional admin controls over which apps are allowed to run and which are allowed on the network. Between the two i felt I'd be pretty content.
Granted i haven't tried it because my new job fell through and a $1400 TV was no longer an option.
i hardly consider this post to be within a technical circle, this is normie-stream
i expected someone to be diving deep into the software within a TV, not some guy who finally decided to check the settings tab
even if you turn that off it's definitely still spying on you
Related - it's a lot of the brands: Hisense, LG, Samsung, Sony, TCL
Texas is suing all of the big TV makers for spying on what you watch (1258 points, 7 days ago, 641 points) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46294456
"This setting" is called Live Plus.
Interesting, ill go down a rabbit hole on this, ACR to detect commercials and activate mute? Or play some spa music, then back to main audio when commercials are over, that would be pretty cool use of ACR
SCTE-35 might be a better way to get rid of the commercials (normally SCTE-35 is intended for adding commercials rather than removing them), but only if that data is available (in my experience, sometimes it is, but not always). It might be even more better to just avoid recording the commercials (therefore saving disk space, and saing network bandwidth if using internet for downloading them), or to automatically skip past commercials when playing back a recording (instead of replacing them with something else). If using HLS, then you might use the #EXT-X-CUE-OUT command to detect commercial breaks, and avoid downloading them (although there is sometimes problems with audio/video desynchronization when converting to DVD format, and I don't know if that is because the commercial breaks are not recorded or for some other reason).
hulu's live tv feature uses commercial detection to stop you from from fast-forwarding through commercials in recordings
> To LG's credit, the TV automatically detected all of my devices -- my PC, PS5, Switch 2, and Fire TV Stick 4K Max -- and applied the best settings for each.
So.. they can take the time to do this properly.. but won't bother to ask you privacy preferences out of the box.
This should be illegal. If you collect data from customers then you need to be up front about that and the setting must be opt in. They clearly have the capability to do this. Their products need to be taken off the market if they can't act in a civilized manner.
They do ask. When you set it up it presents 5 agreements to accept, only 2 of which are required. ACR, voice recognition, and a few other questionable this are covered under those optional agreements. I simply didn't accept them and ask those features were disabled.
"I think my TV is spying on me."
1990s: "You should talk to a psychiatrist."
2013: "You should talk to my cousin Ernie, he's an IT whiz."
(via @kennwhite on twitter, 2013, now deleted)
Sceptre makes some decent dumb TVs with large screen sizes https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm...
>> When I first set up my LG TV, my main focus was ensuring the picture quality was perfect.
First things I did when I got a new LG TV:
* Turn off auto-smoothing
* Turn off high dynamic range
* Turn off audio processing
First things I did when I got my Apple TV:
* Turn off auto-smoothing
* Turn off high dynamic range
* Force everything to play at 1080p (delete all other resolutions)
There is a sharp cultural line between people who can't stand UHD/4K/48fps and those who want everything to look like pre-HD cinema, and people who love all the post processing. I'm on the wrong side. Which side are you all on?
Personally I want the originally intended framerate and dynamic range, whatever that may be.
But what I can't figure out is why you would actively dislike 4K. What makes you want exactly 1080p, no more, no less?
Every 4K film I watch seems glossy and slick... it looks more plastic-y than in the cinema. I find it very distracting and unnatural.
Definitely not on the "everything looks like an 80s soap" side.
It's weird that all this "new" tech feels so backwards to some of us.
Thanks, if at least one other person agrees I can say I'm not going crazy around here.
I'm fine with ripped DVDs that were purchased 20 years ago, and anything higher resolution than that is a bonus. All displayed on quality panels at neutral/middle settings with those aformentioned effects likewise disabled. Audio preserved as original, hooked up to a killer theater with real component speakers.
It's hard for me to tune in on an overly smoothed, saturated picture with fake surround sound plasticy soundbar audio.
Auto smoothing sucks and some modern 4k remasters do too, but a good 4K remaster of a quality film source is sublime.
35mm could easily resolve above 1080p. A good 4K transfer is in theory much closer to the actual image seen in a cinema.
It's gotta be me, or my eyes. I've never watched a film and said, "Oh that transfer looks beautiful," but I have watched many and said, "Damn that transfer sucks." I remember buying some Criterion films in the early 2000's and was thoroughly disappointed (but back then transfers sucked so....)
But take LoTR for example: I have a friend with a 60-something inch TV and watched the 4K DVD and then watched the streaming at home on my 50something inch and I'll be damned if I can tell A from B. Maybe I need to put them side-by-side some day!
So I'm gonna go with, "I'm old, Bob."
I didn't realize Apple TVs apply motion smoothing. How do you disable it?
they don’t by default. If you turn on “Match Content” it will make the refresh rate match the video FPS
I too am on the "wrong" side. I just hope that the choice to be on that side continues.
My TV is the only device on my network with the privilege of being permanently quarantined by my firewall. I gain zero spying or ads and lose no features I actually care about.
”Valnet and our 346 technology partners ask you to consent…”
Oh, the irony.
12 years ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6759426
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6778397
12 years? I guess the complaining on HN didn't help much.
Most people have not been paying much attention, and while I do remember some reporting of this on other tech news sites at the time, it was (understandably) mainly ignored by the mainstream media.
> ignored by the mainstream media
They make money from advertising. I imagine their hundred million dollar contracts have things that they are not allowed to report on.
I don't expect the manufacturers to change.
I do expect people to change though.
How is it that it's been well known that smart TVs will show ads and spy on you for over 10 years, and yet people are still connecting their TVs to their WiFi rather than get a separate dedicated streaming device?
I just don't get it. How are people still surprised to find their TV is spying and will show ads?
Most people just don't care. It doesn't matter to them that their TV sends reports back to Mother.
How do you know turning it off really turns off the spying? Maybe it just turns off the overt behaviors like recommendation based on the spying, while continuing to collect data.
You really have to disconnect it from the network, or find out what "phone home" connections it is making and block some of them.
I couldn't read the article because I have ad blocking on. We have a lot of bad patterns in the US economy. Tips instead of paying people a real wage (just eat in a country that doesn't do tips and tell me the US system is somehow better), for profit healthcare and also near the top 'ad' supported anything. These systems are cancers and totally not needed for a healthy economy and society.
TV manufacturers' interests are not perfectly aligned with users'. They may want to wow you with the picture, but definitely would like to monetize the heck out of the access to your viewing habits, and the internet connection you might mistakenly allow them to have.
Same applies to basically anything connected to the internet. Can it collect data useful for advertising, or otherwise legally saleable? If so, deny it access to the internet if you value your privacy. Or, when possible, replace its firmware / software with a reputable open-source version.
Follow the money. Can any money be made inconspicuously off you after a sale of the device? Are you happy with the way it would be done? Do some minimal research, and scratch your head.
I have an LG at home and I seem to remember it being the top device that appears in my pihole client list by number of blocked requests.
Have you turned off this setting too? Just curious if you’ve tried messing with the settings, and whether they actually change the TV’s traffic patterns you see in the DNS sinkhole. Good experiment at the very least
Pro-tip: have your DHCP server auto-issue your PiHole's IP as the DNS address — this makes all IoT and phones use your PiHole (unless secure-DNS or hardcoded). There are methods to make your firewall accomplish something similar (pfsense?) but I don't know how and DHCP is easier, at least for my network users.
My [now disabled] Honeywell thermostat had the most packet-sends (not data, just #packets). Wouldn't have caught it without my network defaulting to PiHole.
You also need to block outgoing UDP traffic to port 53 in your router, in case the IoT devices fall back to a preconfigured resolver. And even that doesn't 100% work because they can use DNS over HTTPS.
Best to just airgap the device.
You can stop it much earlier than this. At setup time it gives you several policies to agree to. Only two of them are required; the rest are optional. The optional ones include Live Plus and several other systems for monitoring and advertising.
Your TV will siphon your viewing habits and other data the minute it goes online.
Trying to fight it is way too much work unless you have a super configurable firewall, and even then you're playing whack a mole with ALLOW lists.
Connecting my TVs to my home network; not even once.
Just keep the tv offline.
Alternatively block it from the internet at the router, or connect to a LAN-only subnet. Keeps the benefits of local AirPlay, Chromecast, and HomeKit without being able to phone home.
Click the link.
“Valnet and our 346 technology partners ask you to consent to the use of cookies to store/access and process personal data on your device. This can include the use of unique identifiers and information about your browsing patterns to create the best possible user experience on this website. The following description outlines how your data may be used by us, or by our partners.”
Yeah, tell be ‘bout privacy
Ironic that this article has quite so many intrusive ads (which, if clicked, all report which article I was on to the advertiser!)
> If you've never heard of Live Plus before, it's a feature [...]
Is it really?
Re: keeping it off the network
LG also has a setting for "Wi‑Fi Direct / Wi‑Fi Screen Share". Can the TV connect to LG servers via that route? (Even if LAN and regular Wi-Fi are not configured?)
When I helped a friend set up his LG C2, we plugged it into Ethernet just long enough to update its firmware, then promptly disconnected it, never to even set up WiFi.
Why even do that? I fear every time a device connects it is going to download a new batch of ads to share until it next connects, disable some existing feature, or install copilot/other useless feature that slows down the already anemic CPU. I am going to trust that whatever firmware shipped on the device is capable of display video and leave it at that. I already disable all of the post-processing effects I can find.
It’s not just smart TVs—pretty much every internet-connected device or service today seems to follow the same playbook: wrap a tracking mechanism inside a “convenient” or “personalized” feature. Whether it's TVs, phones, assistants, or even fridges, it’s becoming harder to tell what’s genuinely useful vs what’s just surveillance in disguise. The normalization of this design pattern feels more concerning than any single instance. Anyone else feel like this is just the default architecture of the modern consumer web now?
He is relieved because he found a option that disables the feature.
It baffles me how even programmers who code for a living can fall for this.
Thanks for sharing this, I had it on on mine. What does it mean? I use it every day as my PC monitor.
> Fortunately, once you've toggled Live Plus off, you no longer have to worry about your TV screen constantly being read to see what you're watching and to give you targeted ads.
Eh, I wouldn't be so quick to let my guard down. Even if you trust that that toggle actually turns the functionality completely off, there's no guarantee that it won't be enabled again in the next update.
Just keep your TV offline, as it always should be, and use it as a dumb display for trusted devices.
What's a trusted device to stream with?
Your computer? I use a small HTPC with Linux, but whatever works for you. LibreELEC might be a good choice depending on the content you're streaming.
Apple TV
>While it's frustrating that a setting like this exists in the first place
I think it's a good thing that consumers are given a choice on whether they want it or not.
It's not a choice if it's an underhanded default opt-in without knowledge, understanding or explicit consent
And it used to reset to "on" after random firmware updates.
Would you prefer there to be no setting os disable it?
I would prefer that the setting not exist because the functionality doesn't exist.