bro if my tv had ads I’d insta refund
You want custom firmware and piracy? This is how you get it.
First rule of smart TVs: if you really have to buy a smart TV, then never connect it to the internet!
I lobotomized our TV after making the mistake of connecting it to the internet when we first got it.
The ads slowed down the menu to switch sources so much it actually angered me. No more internet for you, you get to be a dumb tv forever now.
I’ve read at some other post that some smart TVs won’t work at all if you don’t connect it to the internet.
Read with caution, I haven’t verified this.
Some of them use wifi for the remote too.
Back to the store it goes then
I’ve also heard people say that they’ll automatically connect to any open wifi networks. People make up a lot of stuff. Just don’t tell your display device how to send any 1s or 0s to any server outside your home, and you’ll be fine
Imagine if they came with default ads prebundled in the firmware.
Amazon fire TV requires an Amazon account to use basic features and they intentionally tell you they lock “certain” features
Gaming on a TV? Wouldn’t like that low refresh rate personally
Its not 1987 anymore.
My gaming PC uses an LG C2 OLED. 120Hz, 4K, HDR, FreeSync. At the time, gaming monitors with competitive specs were all sold out anyway or way more money.
That said, I don’t connect any TV to Wi-Fi directly, hate all that “smart” crap. The smart TV apps usually all suck compared to just casting from other devices to a compatible cast device. For example I just cast from my phone to Chromecast as my primary method of controlling my TV and consuming media on it.
144Hz TVs are a thing and common. I’m using a 65" 144Hz 4K OLED right now.
Modern TVs are excellent gaming monitors, and they’re much cheaper than an equivalent PC monitor. Especially LG OLEDs, since they are built with gaming in mind. Input lag is a thing of the past.
What’s the burn in like on the oled? I have an LG oled as my TV but haven’t dared buy one as a monitor as oled used to be so bad for burn in
Here’s what my LG C1 panel looks like after three years of heavy use (8+ hrs/day), used exclusively as a monitor. Primary tasks include gaming, watching YouTube in a window, and full-screen music production and video editing. (Edit: What you’re seeing on the right side of the screen is glare, cause the TV is right next to a window.)
I’ve disabled the burn-in protection in the service menu (TPC & GSR) because they dim the screen too much and make text difficult to read. I left the remaining features in the user menu enabled, because they’re not as dramatic, so I don’t even notice that they’re on (logo dimming and pixel shifting). The only other preventive measures I take are autohiding the taskbar and setting the wallpaper to randomly cycle every 30 minutes, but I probably don’t even need to do that. I consider burn-in a non issue.
Thanks that’s really helpful, I have to view large technical drawings and been wanting to replace my multi monitor setup with an oled for media too but was concerned having static images on it for hours at a time.
I think I’ll give it a go.
You’re thinking of plasma TVs from like 12 years ago.
Yeah, tried to play Dead By Daylight that way and it basically made skill checks impossible.
Sounds like a skill issue
The game kept checking. No skills found.
So smart TVs are now smartass TVs?
Always have been.
Anybody else have a weird level of fixation on the baseball player and the game character being in the same pose? Like, “maybe it’s watching” kind of fixation?
I’d like to be exactly this high, please
I’ve seen LG getting trashed alongside the other offenders in the industry in smart TV discussions. I have an LG CX65 OLED from 2020, and I’ve always seen the onboard WebOS as pretty serviceable. Have they gotten a lot worse in the last few years? And/or does it vary by product price?
There are definitely some advertising options to turn off in the menus, and with all that taken care of the only UI I use is a row of app icons that pops up. No ads anywhere, and I don’t seem to be logged into the TV with any kind of account. (Though typing this reminded me that the cheap LG LCD in my son’s room does want a login in order to update firmware)
Note I said it was serviceable, not great. The UI could be more responsive on better hardware, but it’s also convenient for my family to just be able to use the Wiimote-like motion pointer built into the remote.
LG sucks in many ways. I have a cx as well. I rooted it and blocked updates and all lg services, which helps a lot
If you update it though lg automatically opts you in to data sharing without your explicit consent, which is bullshit
That said imo compared to all the other smart tv options webos is one of the best options. Especially if it’s rooted (though rooting it is becoming much more difficult these days). Then you can install adfree youtube with sponsorblock, permanently block updates, etc.
Android tv is absolute garbage and loaded with more ads than anything. But at least android doesn’t break when you use adblocking; my old Roku tv doesn’t allow you to set custom dns servers and when you set an ad blocking dns server at a router level the TVs apps break. Android still works although googles ad game is so strong that even blocking all their ad networks still allows some ads somehow, even deleting caches. I’m pretty sure android tv just has ads installed in it
Of course the best thing to do is never ever ever connect your smart tv to the internet at all and buy a secondary device to utilize for watching media. I recommend ugoos devices. I use the am6b+ but they have other/newer devices that may fit your use case better. Stripped down android with 0 ads but can still run all streaming apps/dolby vision licensed and you can flash them with Coreelec so they natively boot to kodi
I have an LG, which is…fine.
But what I do like about it is that I basically never have to interact with its OS. 100% of my content is watched through an Apple TV. I turn it on with the ATV remote and it goes immediately to the correct HDMI input.
I have a newer C4 and I don’t think it’s bad. It’s not too obtrusive and there are guides to opt out of everything, but then again I’m not too concerned with data privacy in regard to my television, so I might be biased
I just bought this dumb tv. Couldn’t be happier.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CJV6722
It’s not a good tv, but it’s the biggest one I could fit on my desk and it has absolutely no “smart” features.
Just don’t connect smart TVs to the internet. That’s all you have to (not) do
Many smart TVs have firmware that interfere with your ability to switch sources using the remote for your cable service provider, or causes it to default to a specific source menu or app, or auto-switch between sources when it thinks it’s “detecting” them, even if you were actually using the other one.
And older people don’t know how to navigate the new user interfaces that come pre-installed on these smart TVs, especially if they have several connected devices on different ports. Have you had to walk a customer over the phone through using the Video Input button on their cable service remote, only to discover the TV software doesn’t allow 3rd party remotes to access the video input menu; because only the TV remote they lost is able to access that menu?
Or had to look up an article on a customer’s brand of smart TV, and walk them through disabling specific tv settings buried in their menu that prevent the TV from properly detecting and switching between sources, or having to mess with the TV closed captions, because they’re somehow interfering with the closed captions settings on their cable box.
I have. SmartTV software is occasionally a nightmare to negotiate with when trying to get it to work with a customer’s STB or their wifi, or what have you.
My TCL TV flashes a little ring light constantly if it doesn’t have an internet connection. The best part is the LED is part of the IR receiver, so if you cover it up your remote stops working. I’ve dimmed it as much as possible through the hidden service menus, but the option to remove it was apparently removed in a firmware update at some point.
Jesus fucking christ. This is by design; they knew what they were doing.
Rtings needs a category/filter for design and “smart” features that cause issue.
Open it up and replace it with a resistor, can’t blink if it doesn’t exist.
From what I have heard, this is not true for all brands. Some won’t work without being connected. Shouldn’t be legal, but here we are.
Yes. I’ve heard some brands will search for nearby devices of the same brands that are already connected to the internet so that even if YOU didn’t connect the TV to WiFi, it still calls home/gets ads.
Ok now I know yall are just making shit up.
from what I have heard
Where?
In a different thread here on lemmy.
Is the thread in here with you now?
I don’t know what you’re going through in your life, but I wish you all the best. Just wanted to pass on some information I thought was relevant.
I appreciate the kind words. You’re right, I’m being a dick. It was unnecessary and I’m sorry.
Too much of a gamble. What if someone already did once and it uses the cached ads? What if they have some preloaded?
Better financially support products that never have ads and that way demonstrate demand.
They put barely functional processors in these things. A new smart tv that isn’t connected to the internet is not going to come cached with ads.
I think I saw a review of the Amazon fire TV and they literally lock controls and tell you some basic af features are locked behind an Amazon account registration or login
I have an Amazon fire TV.
It is not connected to anything, and everything works fine. I just hooked up my shield to it and use that, but basic tv functions (settings and whatnot) work just fine without being logged in.
Everything should work without being logged in. Being logged into your TV shouldn’t even be a thing.
That’s fair, just pointing out in my case that I don’t/didn’t need to login to anything and have full functionality of my TV.
The only logins I would need to do would be for streaming service apps, IF I was actually using the TV OS to watch stuff. Otherwise everything works fine.
If that’s real, then it’s full refund or terrorism upon both the vendor and manufacturer.
orand
No way, tell me that isnt real. I remember hearing a patent about being able to deliver ads over hdmi but dont tell me it actually got implemented.
I totally believe this kind of thing could happens, but I’d expect broader outrage if it were.
When I set up my LG tv it wanted to show promoted content on the Home Screen and the screensaver.
I never connect my TV to the internet. People jerk saying they add wireless modems to them but in reality they don’t have to, most prime leave all the telemetry and “AI” features enabled.
Look up Amazon’s “Sidewalk” network. They don’t need your internet. They have your neighbors internet.
Wrap the sides and back in metal net so it becomes a faraday cage in those directions blocking waves (only half joking? idk if this’d work)
WiFi bounces, and can take multiple paths. Won’t work.
Cover the front too then, noballs.
I too, like to buy a brand new 8K OLED TV just to watch it through a microwave door.
If you’re lucky, the mesh interferes with its internal electronics and you’ll have a new grill, too!
picture looks like a 'shop. look at bottom right corner of tv.
but, it’s inevitable. corporate greed knows no limit, knows no boundaries.
Isn’t that just the plant blocking part of the TV?
The plant is also receiving blue/white light from the ad. Pretty sure it’s legit.
It’s a plant blocking the TV. If this is edited it is actually done really well.
I’m not sure the picture is edited, but in either case, it would be a lot easier to paste it onto a screencap of the game and open that full screen on the tv…
Lmao you can tell no one on lemmy is a baseball fan. This is a meme making fun of the most recent World Series coverage where for the first time they started showing this dumb “Shohei Ohtani is up to bat in X batters” graphic as you see there
American sports ads are wild. They will never cease to shock me.
When you get told you got got by an online joke and you just double down your own biases.
Sorry I’ll reiterate, this isn’t an ad. The graphic it’s spoofing is shown during the game and is relevant information to it. It was just a bit silly and pandering to people only watching for this one star player.
I don’t know if you follow any sports but imagine if a soccer game popped up a little graphic saying “this star player everyone loves will be substituted into the game in X minutes!” Thats what’s being made fun of here
That ad is not over HDMI. Its a smart TV it inserts the ad on its own.
Which then travels… over HDMI. I realize that’s not what you meant but technically…
It doesn’t need to travel over HDMI. That to move signals from one device to another. If the hardware that is outputting the display signal itself wants to insert other data into the signal it’s receiving, it can directly. It doesn’t need to send it through another cable. It’s probably modifying an signal received through HDMI (or other cable), but it doesn’t need to send the modified signal again.
I’m just stupid and not thinking.
This sounds like the mental math I did, but I forgot to carry the reality.
Just dont give the thing internet access then…
Easy as
That works unless your neighbor had unsecured WiFi. The TVs will phone home in any way they can.
Seriously? If this is true… That’s insane… I can’t even imagine that…
That’s nothing. Check out the Amazon Sidewalk protocol for some real nightmare fuel.
holy shit that’s horrifying
2019?! How does no one else think this is a bad idea?
I’m flabbergasted…
Setup your own WiFi with the same SSID and block all ports. Bonus points, it will drive your neighbors crazy and maybe get them to up their security stance.
Frankly if it ever comes to a time it’s impossible to prevent internet connection on any TV for whatever reason in my life, I’ll take off the back of the TV and desolder/destroy the transceiver.
Open the TV and unhook the Wifi antenna then
It’s probably only a matter of time before smart TVs are designed to use mobile data. I can easily see companies doing that to ensure you have no way to avoid the ads.
then the tv goes into a faraday cage. simple as
Why would this need “deliver ads over HDMI”. It’s on the telly, ie the HDMI signal has already been transmitted and now the TV itself is overlaying web-derived images in one corner, the same way it will overlay the guide or whatever when you open it.
Not as bad as this, but when I moved to a new town I got a free big TV with my new ISP. I was going with that ISP anyways so a free 4k HDR TV on top was a nice bonus.
I wish I had gotten some other bonus. Viewing angle is atrocious and it is impossible to get rid of the input lag (no there isn’t a gaming mode or similar) so no games with precise timing can be played.
So now we have a big living room TV that is too good to replace with something better but bad enough to be a little bit annoying.
I usually just assume that free shit given away as part of some other sale is going to be bad or shit quality. They probably bought a big batch of them for real cheap because they weren’t selling so great in stores and eventually someone decided to just get rid of that inventory maybe at a loss.
Why not sell it?
Give it to your parents or some other older people who would use it just as a TV and buy yourself a decent TV.
It really doesn’t sound too good to replace? It sounds like you got free junk, and haven’t actually bought a TV yet?
Don’t have the budget anyways. And it’s good enough for the wife and kids, they don’t see any issues. And by now I’m disabled and can’t get into living room anyways.
Trade in for something slightly “worse” then?
I needed a second t.v for the basement and i decided to just not buy one.
I had an old mini projector I repurposed and there a nice tv upstairs/phones for anything else.
Cant wait till “minimal” stuff becomes the trend.
Joke’s on you! Projectors get this “smart” bullshit, too!
Get a commercial projector, monitor, or display to skip that intolerable bullshit.
Not one from 2014
Is there an open-source version of Google TV and similar smart TV software? I feel like i read about one quite recently.
Connecting a Raspberry pi or a Linux computer into the HDMI port. And not connecting the TV to WiFi.
Smart TV’s can be used as dumb TV’s by not connecting them to the internet. Likewise the HDMI port can connect your own device for the smart functionality.
Yeah but is there an OS or a Linux distro specifically geared for use with a “surrogate SmartTV”?
It could also be used by connecting the device to a large monitor, as those are cheaper than SmartTVs. No point paying a premium for features you don’t intend to use.
On a related point, what would you do for a remote control in such a setup?
I’ve been trying to solve this problem for a while. I’ve not yet found a really good solution, but I can summarize what I’ve learned, partly for your information but mostly in the hope that Cunningham’s law will finally put me out of my misery. Here are suggestions I’ve seen, organized roughly along some axis of easiest/most popular to hardest/least popular:
- Get an NVIDIA Shield TV. This isn’t really what you asked for. It’s just a commercial smart TV box, but it’s generally considered the least annoying and highest quality of the lot. The unfortunate fact is that when dealing with DRM controlled media, having a big company like NVIDIA behind the product goes a long towards simplifying things.
- Install Kodi. Kodi (formerly XBMC) is the elder statesman of the FOSS smart TV world. You can run it on just about any hardware, including a SBC like a Raspberry Pi. You can even get it pre-bundled with a Linux OS like LibreELEC. It’s got a clean interface and good community support, BUT it’s primarily oriented towards viewing media from your own collection. If you’re a person who consumes content via streaming services then you’re gonna have a rough time. Apps (mostly unofficial / community made) do exist for many popular services, but installing them can be a pain, and you may have trouble streaming in high quality (DRM issues).
- KDE Plasma Bigscreen. Great concept, not maintained any more. See my comment here for all the gory details.
- Clean build of Android TV. I’m not aware of any major independent android distributions (Lineage, Graphene) providing official builds of the android TV operating system, but this site seems to provide relatively consistent lineage OS based releases. You can run them on a Raspberry Pi. I haven’t done this yet, but it will probably be the next thing I try.
- EarlGrey TV. This one is a deep cut. EarlGrey TV mad a very small splash in the FOSS news cycle a couple of months ago. The concept is simple: install your favorite Linux distro and configure it to boot directly into a browser displaying a static webpage with links to your favorite streaming services and/or local media folders. The implementation is extremely basic, but the upside is that it’s easy to tinker with if you’re so-inclined.
As for remotes, there are some decent options on Amazon that connect via bluetooth or a USB dongle and basically act like a mouse and/or keyboard packaged in a remote control form factor. I bought this one a while ago and it’s been fine. Nothing special, but fine. The play/pause/volume buttons on the front read on the receiving end like the media buttons on a keyboard. The air-mouse functionality isn’t for everyone, but this model is one of the few with a little track pad on the back if you prefer using that. Honestly just get anything with a full keyboard. So much easier than using the arrow keys to click-click-click your way through an onscreen keyboard.
Yea I always hear people say just hook up a PC or Pi but I don’t want a keyboard and mouse in my livingroom. The value of these Apple TV / Roku / Google TV setups is you have a little remote and a UI that is designed around it with big visual elements you can see across the room. I’m surprised there seems to be so little movement on something like this.
I guess one issue is apps. The likes of Netflix wouldn’t support it.
“I don’t want to use a keyboard,” was what my wife said at first too. Then she realized that saving hundred of dollars and never seeing another advertisement was worth it.
I used to have the PC setup. Ended up going for an Apple TV 4k. Yea it was $200 but it was a one time purchase 7 years ago and there’s no ads. Just serve up everything though Plex and Infuse
Apple TV still has a ton of privacy concerns and most people who are against having to use a keyboard probably aren’t going to be setting up a Plex server.
Depends on the TV. Some can’t be used unless internet connected. Roku TVs are especially bad about this
My two TCL Roku TVs work without an Internet connection. This isn’t in defense of Roku TVs to be clear- I regret my purchase, but at least for now they do work offline.
Instead of buying a TV, look for a digital signage display. It’s a TV, but with none of the “smart” crap on it.
Alternatively, just don’t hook your device up to the internet.
They cost like 5x more because they’re marketed toward businesses. https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/pro-tv/bh-series/65-bht-series-qled-4k-uhd-hdr-pro-tv-terrace-edition-lh65bhtelgfxgo/
Alternatively, Sceptre are mostly sub-$1k
Sceptre is the GOAT. I’ve got a 4k dumb panel for cheap during Black Friday a year or two back. It’s fantastic. No WiFi on it (because it is a dumb TV) but a streaming device like nVidia Shield is perfect.
My understanding is that TV prices are subsidized by bloatware. No bloatware, no subsidy.
If they were, they should be free. Yet there’s still triple and quad digit prices on these things that probably cost like 8% of that to build (because of slave labor probably), and the subsidy on top should mean they’re literally paying us monthly to have their screen.
Plus side there though… Like most devices marketed towards enterprise, once they hit the used market, the price drops dramatically. You can get a pretty good deal on a used one.
They are also capable of running 24/7 without ever overheating, no matter the location. And have extra software specialized for signage.
It isn’t just a marketing gimmick.
Yeah sounds perfect for my living room. I’ll definitely pay an extra $3k for those features.
Recommending digital signage for personal TVs is still a bad recommendation.
There’s other business oriented tvs that aren’t just for signage. It’s more for conference rooms.
This is good advice, but I really wish we lived in a world where consumers could bond together and get laws passed that make this type of crap illegal so that buying TV’s (or any type of appliance for that matter) didn’t involve having to do research on weird non-consumer hardware just to have a nice experience.
We can you idiots just keep voting Republican
This kind of fucking attitude is why Dems always have sand in their potato salad. "This wouldn’t happen if democrats never lost an election :( " Miss me with that shit. Trump is talking about using military force to annex Panama and Greenland and making Canada the 51st state and you’ve got online Democrats sitting in the corner timidly and indirectly suggesting that maybe ads wouldn’t be so bad under them. The Democratic party deserves to get bullied until they grow a spine and start giving people a real reason to vote for them besides “republicans bad”. Call me when we get AOC hopped up on barely sub-lethal amounts of cocaine and she bites Gavin Newsom’s head off like a praying mantis.
Are you sure. Maybe if we lean in a little further right these “moderates” who are considering authoritarian rule might just change their mind.
Consumer rights is a bipartisan issue, Dems fuck us over too.
Also commas
Just look at the printer situation. It’s gonna get worse. Much worse.
As long as brother b&w laser printers are still not enshittified, everything’s right in the printer world.
In other words, you wish we lived in a democracy instead of a plutocracy. 'Cause that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work. This thread is squarely about the FTC failing to do its goddamn job, because this should not be legal.
We do have that in other countries (so in this world), and you’re going to laugh, but the Dutch one is literally called the Consumentenbond.
The smart stuff isn’t the issue. It is all the connected shit.
There are plenty of smart TVs that you just don’t have to connect to the internet. Then it can’t download ads, be laggy or reboot because of updates, send all your data to the manufacturer, …
Just connect a small PC over HDMI like you would a dumb TV, and other than a slow boot it will work the same.
I can recommend TLC as a TV that doesn’t require an internet connection. But I would steer clear of ever connecting it to a network, the remotes have microphones in them.
Take a crayon, jam it in the pinhole for the mic, then scrape the excess off the surface. Problem solved.
There are plenty of smart TVs that you just don’t have to connect to the internet
AFAIK many of them will continue to nag you to connect them to the Internet if you don’t do it. Those nags can be just as bad as ads.
Yes, just don’t buy those brands.
TVs are a minefield, but one that can be navigated.
My Samsung tv also has microphones for voice control.
Yes, that is most likely what they were designed for.
But I wouldn’t trust these brands to not misuse them for other things.
Or just don’t buy Samsung. Never had this kind of trouble with any other brand except Samsung. Because of this, I’ll never ever buy another Samsung product.
I’ve seen this advice over and over and I have to ask: does it really compare? Gaming for me is all about frame rate, and no I’m not a competitive gamer or anything. What’s the response time on those “digital signage” models designed to show static food menus 24/7 for a decade. I’m sure they don’t have a “game mode”, but what’s the refresh rate? If you’re going to literally pay more for a display sold to corporations, these factors need to be considered. Personally, I got a good consumer TV and just never connected it to the Internet…
I’m getting from context that this is a smart tv displaying an advertisement, but what the fuck is it even advertising here? A baseball game? Why is the countdown to-the-hour? Why does the player look like a drawing instead of a photo? Why is it specifically that player and not just 'dodgers game tomorrow!"…? It almost looks as if it’s an in-game notification for an MLB-Manager game.
If it were a burger-king commercial I’d be upset, but the inscrutability of this as an ad at all actually infuriates me.
