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.
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.
Depends on the TV. Some can’t be used unless internet connected. Roku TVs are especially bad about this
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
when i order a screen in asia to germany i pay a lot less taxes than when ordering a tv or smarttv. so buying a smartTV is kinda dumb anyways.
Yeah; it’s always better to buy a display instead of a TV
SmartTV, dumb owner.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If that’s real, then it’s full refund or terrorism upon both the vendor and manufacturer.
orand
I can’t believe this is real. I’ve just bought a relatively cheap Samsung smart TV and it’s got nothing close to this. I would hardly even say it’s got adverts since it’s mostly just recommendations from my apps in the same way they all do now, I don’t think I’ve actually seen it try to sell me anything or get me to watch something that wasn’t free.
Who the fuck would buy a TV like this? If a company was going to introduce on-screen ads like this they’d start really small.
Your Samsung will start pushing ads after the warranty period
Who the fuck would buy a TV like this?
mindless consumers
I didn’t exactly do a lot of research into either of the two TVs I have and neither of them have ads like this.
Ads and bloat are the main reason I still use my 1080p Bravia from 15 yrs ago, which btw still looks great.
Well, that and that I have better uses for 1k usd
I bought a 47" or 49" tv for a few hundred AUD - it was a dumb TV - 1080p from memory. Thing lasted 10 + years, reasonable picture quality and only needed a Chromecast and eventually got a ShieldTV.
That TV since died after 4 moves, two of which were 350km+ but man it was money well spent.
We’ve now got a 60something" Hisense which is a bloated crapware box, it’s not allowed on the network; same with the reverse cycle dryer, or any “smart” home appliance. The volume of traffic these devices send wherever is absurd.
I don’t know if it’s something you want to tackle, but making a separate VLAN on your home LAN and shifting all the IoT/smart devices to that network can keep them from whatever snooping or spying these devices might do on your LAN that you work and live on. Plus you can more easily monitor the unreasonably chatty ones and block them or at least prune off their ad-seeking IP addresses. PiHole for a home LAN can help a lot too, but that’s another discussion.
Oh I do have a VLAN for my reolink cameras and some other home built iOT devices with adguard running on my primary LAN (two adguard instances for redundancy).
But I’d still not want to waste any bandwidth on “smart” devices.
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.
Amazon fire TV requires an Amazon account to use basic features and they intentionally tell you they lock “certain” features
Some of them use wifi for the remote too.
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
Back to the store it goes then
Still, Dark Souls the best.
Dark Souls sucks.
Must be a skill issue
No. It’s a “the game is too grindy to be fun for me”-issue.
Oops, stepped on another $1200 landmine did you? Should have researched where you put your foot. Everyone knows this neighborhood is littered with landmines. No, there’s nothing we can really do about it except hand out these exhaustive charts and navigation tools. Of course they need to constantly get re-updated and are themselves periodically hijacked by the pro-landmine industry to turn into a second-tier grift. But that just means you have to research who you research for your TV research.
Don’t worry, you’ll get it eventually. God gave us two legs for a reason.
Four legs good, two legs BETTER!
So smart TVs are now smartass TVs?
Always have been.
computer monitor + sound bar?
I don’t like sound bars, you can take my old 5.1 Yamaha system out from my cold hands!
This really seems to be the right answer. At least while computer monitors stay dumb.
Get one of those tiny PCs that you can just leave behind the TV, get a wireless mouse and keyboard too.
Nothing on TV isn’t available online anyway. Paying the cable company for anything more than an Internet connection seems like setting money on fire to me. Maybe sports would be difficult, but that can literally be found if you know what you’re doing. Even games you wouldn’t be able to with TV.
Cable TV just seems to me like a boomer’s version of the Internet. It has no place in a world with the Internet, change my mind. The ads on TV are worse than what you find on any popular website/app.
But as usual, capitalism is messing everything up with the marketing. In a world where hi speed Internet is widely available, “TV” just has no use. None. And worse, the commercials are now leaking through your literal screen.
I’m not saying that ads aren’t a problem, but there’s a hell of a lot more you can do about them.
In a perfect world, there would be a place you could go whenever you wanted something and find products and solutions for that thing, and there wouldn’t be ads in anything else at all.
But until there’s an actual argument to say TV technology isn’t totally worthless, my stance is simply “no TVs are necessary or useful”.
You can get little combined keyboard/track pads for $20-30. They’re the same size as a remote, usually rechargeable, and kind of a pain to type on… But perfect for typing in the name of what you’re searching for
Can you link what you’re talking about?
