21–30 of 316 posts
I use the PCWRT router, and it allows me to block the spying by blacklisting the relevant domains. https://www.pcwrt.com/2018/08/how-to-use-your-router-to-bloc...
I stopped connecting my TVs to the internet when Samsung started pushing notification ads for GameFly on a (at the time) 3k dollar first gen 4K tv - and they lied and said no they’d never do that. They’ve all lost my trust.
I had a very nice Sharp Aquos TV for a long time. One of the first reasonably priced 1080p 65" TVs. It had absolutely no "smart" features, which was perfectly fine with me. I have my TV hooked up to a home theatre system and have my devices (PS4/AppleTV/XB1/Nvidia Shield) hooked up to that. I recently upgraded to a LG 4K OLED TV. It's an absolutely gorgeous TV, but, I absolutely lament the "smart" features of this TV…
I had a very nice Sharp Aquos TV for a long time. One of the first reasonably priced 1080p 65" TVs. It had absolutely no "smart" features, which was perfectly fine with me. I have my TV hooked up to a home theatre system and have my devices (PS4/AppleTV/XB1/Nvidia Shield) hooked up to that. I recently upgraded to a LG 4K OLED TV. It's an absolutely gorgeous TV, but, I absolutely lament the "smart" features of this TV…
Surely this is a non-issue if you don’t connect the TV itself to the internet?
Occasionally the out-of-the-box firmware on TVs can perform poorly on certain input modes, so it's nice to have an option to get the latest patches without opening yourself up to tracking and ads.
That said, the idea of a TV needing patches is thoroughly unappealing.
Surely this is a non-issue if you don’t connect the TV itself to the internet?
I use the PCWRT router, and it allows me to block the spying by blacklisting the relevant domains. https://www.pcwrt.com/2018/08/how-to-use-your-router-to-bloc...
At some point I wonder if we might not just start whitelisting domains instead. I think that it could be possible to design a UX that wouldn't be much of a hindrance to using your computer and phone on the same network. Eg any websites you deliberately visit get added to the whitelist, same with the other services you choose to use. The amount of mostly unintentional (by the user) data transfers is out of hand.
I had a very nice Sharp Aquos TV for a long time. One of the first reasonably priced 1080p 65" TVs. It had absolutely no "smart" features, which was perfectly fine with me. I have my TV hooked up to a home theatre system and have my devices (PS4/AppleTV/XB1/Nvidia Shield) hooked up to that. I recently upgraded to a LG 4K OLED TV. It's an absolutely gorgeous TV, but, I absolutely lament the "smart" features of this TV…
I think we've reached the point where the only safe way of buying a TV is to buy a business conference room display or large screen monitor instead. Seems to be the only way to get something without all the dystopian crap.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any way to build something like this myself, e.g. using Raspberry Pi or DD-WRT supported router?
Google Pi Hole, it's mostly for ads and trackers, but someone probably has a list of "call home" domains, or you can add your own domains/hostnames that you want blocked
Pi-Hole has a nice GUI, but if you already have openwrt, dd-wrt or pfsense, you can likely just install packages.