72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

Post by Buttons840 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

boardwaalk wrote: post #304

Bud wrote: post #261

This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart". TVs should be incredibly dumb. They should be screens for displaying stuff. That's it. Nothing else. No network connection of any kind, no apps, no software beyond that necessary to do basic setup of how that screen works: brightness, input selection, etc.

You could get a smart TV and just not connect it to the internet. If you were really paranoid, you could disconnect/snip the wifi antenna. At least my TV still allow firmware updates via USB, so you may not lose that. Not that it'd matter much if you weren't using any smart features, but they do still provide things like improving compatibility with devices (recently HDMI 2.1). I have a bigger issue with VR headsets.…

Post by mataug » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:21 PM UTC

seandoe wrote: post #500

mataug wrote: post #494

This is precisely the reason I do not connect my TV to my home network. I use a AppleTV for streaming content. Once in a while I check the manufacturer's page, and if there's a firmware update, I factory reset my TV to remove any cached info about my usage, and then update the firmware via ethernet, and immediately remove it from the network. A while ago I noticed that my old Insignia TV refused to use the pi-hole co…

Yea, I just use my tv like a monitor for a Linux box I have in the living room. I like the bluetooth keyboard with track pad a lot better than any remote clicker. We use vlc and a browser for all our video entertainment. It's nice to have all sorts of desktop apps as well... Spotify, transmission, etc.

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:24 PM UTC

LeoPanthera wrote: post #176

scarface74 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So which “smart box” would that be? Roku? Where the CEO outright said that they aren’t in the hardware business and they are trying to monetize via ads? Google? Need I say more Amazon Fire devices? See above with Google AppleTV? Sure I have a couple. They aren’t trying to monetize with advertising. But the HN crowd is anti-Apple.

HN not liking something doesn't make it a bad choice. Kodi running on a Pi or some other low power computer is probably HN-friendly, although the usability isn't even close to as good as the Apple TV.

Post by userbinator » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

Bud wrote: post #261

This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart". TVs should be incredibly dumb. They should be screens for displaying stuff. That's it. Nothing else. No network connection of any kind, no apps, no software beyond that necessary to do basic setup of how that screen works: brightness, input selection, etc.

Post by tylergetsay » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #401

oh_sigh wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part is that there isn't just a couple super popular models of TVs that people could develop custom firmwares for, there are thousands of skus for televisions and each of them may behave in a different manner meaning that at their end of life it is unlikely that any group is going to go through the effort to free them from death.

Yeah it's annoying. But at least they still have a normal HDMI input, so I could still buy a smart TV stick to plug into that (or use a laptop). That seems more and more attractive as well since after a recent software update my TV now takes around a minute to boot to its smart OS, I suspect because the old hardware can't keep up with the new software.