I just finished setting up a custom router with dns ad blocking. Next comes a media player so I can purge this smart TV filth from my household.
Huge shout out to Louis Rossmann and the FUTO communuty contributors, check out the wiki on self-hosted software if you haven’t already.
Return it. If you hold on to it (even if you block the ads and all) it will signal the manufacturer, that this practice is fine.
And then buy a non-smart TV instead. At least one company, Sceptre, still makes them. (I don’t want to make it seem like I’m shilling for a particular brand, but I genuinely don’t know of any other options, aside from commercial signage displays.)
Commercial displays might be the answer, all the smart bullshit goes against their use case so they need a way to go around it in case they still have it, and every brand have them.
Last time I looked into it they were more expensive and had to be bought through an agent but that was a few years ago, thing might have changed.
Again, the brand I mentioned in the previous comment is a consumer-oriented one, that you can simply buy off Amazon etc., that still sells dumb TVs. I’d only suggest resorting to commercial displays if you’re boycotting that brand for some reason.
They don’t seem to be available in Europe.
Ah, that’s unfortunate, and another good reason to consider resorting to a commercial display.
'Course, it’s also possible that a commercial display is so much more expensive/a hassle that it might be worth figuring out how to buy a Sceptre TV in a country where it is sold and then importing it yourself.
The funny thing is that I can find all sort of accessories for those TVs on Amazon but not the TVs.
I bought a new TV last year after my Hisense kicked the bucket and had a similar experience.
Not sure if it applies to your situation, but I just factory reset my TV, never enabled wifi, and hooked up a smart device I had lying around (Nvidia Shield). Now it all works great and if the smart functions upset me I can throw just the smart TV part in the trash and go back to my VCR.
You have to reject smart TVs at the time of purchase, or manufacturers think this shit is okay and will keep escalating until even an Nvidia Shield won’t save you.
For now I have an androidTV but I guess that whent I have time, it will be HDMI only (androidTV is quite buggy on it) and after that, I will look for a dumbTV
Most smart TV OS are Cancer doesn’t matter how much you paid for it
LG TVs, at least three one I have, have a pretty good operating system. I’ve never seen an ad (yet)
My TV has an even better operating system, Linux, because it’s a display panel with an old laptop connected to it. Imagine seeing advertisements on your television screen, couldn’t be me.
LG is one of the worst. Only TVs with ROKU are worse for privacy concerns. ROKU, LG and Samsung make Google look good when it comes to invasion of privacy.
I’ve been against the idea of smart TVs from day one. A good panel will easily have a longer life than whatever smart box they shoe horn into TVs now. That’s reason enough to avoid that trap.
Mark my words on this: on top of the privacy invasion Future smart TVs will be designed to slow down to the point of being unusable well before their panels wear out to force upgrades and prevent third party repairs.
This feels like my Philips. It has gotten so damn slow lately. I thought I had partially cleaned the system and yesterday I did a check and removed 25 apps thanks to adb. 25. I could not remove them from the TV setttings. Most of it was co.uk.freeview shit… was it there on my previous cleanup? Doubt. Did I install that? No.
This might depend on the version the OS is. I have an LG that’s been great for years, then it got a ““fresh new look”” that featured a giant banner for “recommendations.”
I had auto-updates off, too. Thankfully, they still had an option to revert to the previous menu - but who knows how long that’d stay an option? It pissed me off enough to finally setup AdGaurd Home on my home server.
Fun Fact: It’s increased my phone’s battery life by ~48 hours (excluding the rare occasion where its being actively used all day).
Disable all internet functionality, set the time to the 1990s to prevent many timers from going off, attach the tv to another device that doesn’t have ads via your cable of choice. But why was your smart tv 1700? Did it have some special features?
Probably 4k oled
Not disagreeing, but at some point this won’t be enough. Assuming companies aren’t already, “offline” devices will get shipped with the ability to utilize unsecured networks and/or other devices. Better hope any neighbors are privacy conscious too.*
(they’re not)
I’ve been recommending physically snipping radios, but that can cause issues if you don’t understand what you’re doing. Any chance you know whether it’s possible to simply delete drivers and backups on modern smart tvs? Mine is ancient, so I have no clue what they’re doing to y’all, nowadays.
Personally, I don’t have the energy to go to such lengths. My “good enough” has been using AdGaud Home as a network-wide DNS blocker and connect my smart TV to it. It’s been great so far.
Plus, I get the bonus of seeing how much gets blocked.
Have you ever looked at OLED TV prices? This is absolutely a normal price.
Congratulations! So, how does the TV work with the adblocker set up?
It’s absolutely no different! The TV is doing something weird to get around it, or these ads are just cached from earlier. I’m not sure yet. Good news is that the ad blockers definitely works, we’re getting 96/100 on https://adblock-tester.com/
Check for HTTPS traffic as well as the regular let 53. They could be doing DNS over HTTPS to get around the block, or a static IP for a nameserver.
what brand is it? just to know what to avoid
Hisense. Name and shame baby
Google TV is the easiest to get rid of ads on. I have a Sony and a Hisense both no ads.
Look up and use the Projectivy Launcher.
You’ll also want to sideload an app that forces the default launcher to Projectivy (can’t recall the name) because they don’t allow changing it through the stock OS. Projectivy tries to use accessibility settings to take over on its own, but it breaks some other features so I don’t use them.
DNS calls are definitely cached. You’ll have to wait a few days until your TV refreshes DNS entries.
Sorry, I’m confused. You should easily be able to block these home screen ads ads with pihole or router dns blocking. I know because I do it with my smart tvs. Are you saying that that isn’t working?
I figure the ads are just cached from earlier. I took this picture a few hours after I finished setting up my pfBlockerNG feeds and changing my DNS to AdGuard’s public one.
If nothing else, this ad certainly reaffirmed my decision to update our network.
I would recommend hard power cycling the TV and re-evaluating. For example, on both my TCL Roku and LG WebOS TVs, home screen ads are completely eliminated with pihole dns blocking. Additionally, I got rid of home screen ads on my Nvidia shield and other devices.
Make sure that you’re blocking the right domains.
Edit: before anyone says “but why even connect the TV to the Internet at all?” - the reason is because you’re likely to get the best HDR quality (especially Dolby Vision) from the TV’s native streaming apps. Dolby vision is an absolute fucking disaster on external devices and barely works at all on Windows (if at all.)
Oh, and if anyone knows why pfBlockerNG might fail to update some DNSBL AND IPv4 feeds during cron events, I’d be forever grateful. I’m getting tired of my router crashing every hour.
A cheap computer/laptop. HDMI cable. Ublock origin (sprinkle some sponserblock and privacy badger in there). A TV that is never connected to the internet. Voila. No ads. None. Zilch. Zero. Ad free.
Streaming platforms that have gone to ad supported formats make me laugh because it’s just a 3-5 second black screen, not the ad, and it’s back to the content. Been doing it for decades. Don’t sit there and get reamed by their bullshit.
What do we do when they come with 5G modems built in?
Razor blade to specific pcb traces?
Detailed instructions for things like this will need to documented. It starts with ads… does it evolve into 1984? Who knows, but it seems more likely in light of recent events.
I agree. I could see manufacturers add anti tamper features that could brick the device if opened if people started doing this anyway.
That’s unlikely, the additional R&D cost probably won’t weigh up to the costs incurred by the small minority that removes it.
Don’t buy a TV anymore. Seriously though with the direction things have been going in the “tech world” for the last couple years (maybe even decade) it is probably better to start adjusting to some level of digital minimalism. For some of us it will become a necessity for financial reasons anyway…
AFAIK this will only get you 720p to 1080p depending on the streaming service. No 4K, no HDR.
Plenty of 4k with HDR on Real Debrid. Or even better quality and bitrate ripped from BRs, in the open waters.
HDMI 2.1 can support 4k. Find a ship that doesn’t sink. Voila. No ads. Zilch. Zero. Nada. No HDR? Better than a single second of an ad.
Buy a smart TV box like Apple TV or Nvidia Shield. You can get full quality streaming with some ads but not nearly as bad as the software that’s built into some of these TVs.
I know, I was just letting people know that this guys solution comes with downsides.
It’s come full circle.
Back in the early 00s, I invited my buddy over to watch the super bowl commercials. Neither one of us gave a damn whatsoever about football, put the commercials were always lit.
I have a Philips GoogleTV. I installed a different app launcher on it, now I don’t get any ads anywhere anymore.
Which one?
I use Projectivy at the moment. Pretty close to stock visually, just without the ads or apps you can’t hide. Enough for me to make it tolerable.
Thanks.
Tangentally related, FUTO put a bad taste in my mouth when they were harassing the graphene is team https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/113443396794247106
It will be a dark day indeed when I allow my TV to connect to the internet. These things are glorified monitors.
You’re right, we should start putting ads on all monitors
Somewhere, an ad exec just stiff.
Is American football not merely a vehicle through which advertising can be pumped? You’d think the entire sport had been designed from the ground up for such a purpose.
Four seconds of action, six minutes of commercials….3.6 seconds of action, 47 replays, five minutes of commercials.
P.S. Smart TVs can eat shit and die.
I went to a game for the first time a few years ago. I recall the moment where everyone was sitting around and not doing anything because they were waiting for the commercials to finish. It felt like watching actors drop their characters the moment they step out of the spotlight.
This (and the ridiculous, eye gouging price) is why I’d never go to a UFC event. It’s bad enough when I’m home and I have to go clean the kitchen or fold my laundry for 30 minutes if a fight finishes even slightly early, but having to stand around waiting for ads to finish on a PPV card would turn me into Ted Kaczynski
People who don’t have the tech chops for self-hosting can also check the market for shop displays (like you’d see above the counter in a fast food joint). Those are “dumb” displays, no ads bs built-in because they aren’t expected to be used outside of a commercial environment.
They cost more than smart tvs because the ads subsidize consumer models. Rather, they cost as much as tvs this size really cost (after markup). $1700 is not realistic for a huge screen if it didn’t have ads. Also, fuck ads.
