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Best Dumb TVs

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Re: Best Dumb TVs

#31

Post by tuatoru »

WantonQuantum wrote: post #29
egberts1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you plug the Smart TV to the Internet, the TV will dastardly display ads, sometimes over HDMI, sometimes over composite video, and mostly through the TV apps. Keeping the Internet away from the TV and you should be entirely just fine and ad-free.

You're saying that some TVs will display ads when, for example, I'm using my Switch connected to an HDMI port? What kind of dystopia is this? Do you have an example of this happening?

> What kind of dystopia is this?

I've been asking myself that question for quite a while, now. It's got totalitarian states, theocracies, personality cults, total surveillance, random ostracism, flying killer robots, increasingly unstable weather, increasingly unstable economies, the return of the nuclear threat, bitter internal political divisions, and probably more.

An "all of the above" dystopia?

Re: Best Dumb TVs

#32

Post by fragmede »

WantonQuantum wrote: post #29
egberts1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you plug the Smart TV to the Internet, the TV will dastardly display ads, sometimes over HDMI, sometimes over composite video, and mostly through the TV apps. Keeping the Internet away from the TV and you should be entirely just fine and ad-free.

You're saying that some TVs will display ads when, for example, I'm using my Switch connected to an HDMI port? What kind of dystopia is this? Do you have an example of this happening?

https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/home-and-office/home-entert...

Re: Best Dumb TVs

#33

Post by nightshift1 »

fragmede wrote: post #32
WantonQuantum wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying that some TVs will display ads when, for example, I'm using my Switch connected to an HDMI port? What kind of dystopia is this? Do you have an example of this happening?

https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/home-and-office/home-entert...

In this article, the author is complaining about ads inside the tv's interface and at the end he says that he will continue to use his Apple tv instead. I don't think it means that the tv is showing ads over his Apple tv signal.

Re: Best Dumb TVs

#34

Post by kdtsh »

yellowapple wrote: post #27

Unsurprisingly, every 4K TV on this list is Sceptre.

I have never seen a Sceptre for sale anywhere, they are always out of stock. Are they actually produced anymore or do they just go out of stock as soon as a new batch comes through?

Re: Best Dumb TVs

#35

Post by waste_monk »

WantonQuantum wrote: post #29
egberts1 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you plug the Smart TV to the Internet, the TV will dastardly display ads, sometimes over HDMI, sometimes over composite video, and mostly through the TV apps. Keeping the Internet away from the TV and you should be entirely just fine and ad-free.

You're saying that some TVs will display ads when, for example, I'm using my Switch connected to an HDMI port? What kind of dystopia is this? Do you have an example of this happening?

Not an exact fit but this sort of thing does happen https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/samsung-smart-t... . Basically any ad-tech nightmare you can think of already exists... targeted advertising, telemetry reporting, replacing ads in content with different ones, etc...

Currently smart TV's rely on home internet connectivity, but the current big fear is that they will start using things like Amazon Sidewalk or other 3rd party WiFi providers automatically, or even have manufacturers start embedding 4G LTE or 5G connectivity into the TV's itself so you can't isolate them without taking the thing apart and cutting out the antenna (and hoping there isn't a kill-switch if it can't call home).

This has been going on for a long time - part of the reason "dumb" monitors such as digital signage displays are so much more expensive than smart TV's is that they aren't subsidised by ads and telemetry.

Re: Best Dumb TVs

#36

Post by waste_monk »

pachico wrote: post #11

Interesting concept! My experience is that it doesn't matter how smart a TV is when you buy it, it eventually become dumber than most, mostly because hardware upgrades in TVs is not a concept and lack of software upgrade. For this reason you will most likely buy tiny Android TV boxes, which will be cheap and replaceble.

I would not recommend grabbing a random cheap android box off of eBay or wherever, as they sometimes have spyware pre-installed or run outdated versions of Android and are vulnerable to compromise.

I have a Vero 4K+ which I don't get much use out of (don't seem to find much time these days for movies/tv) but is a reasonably nice ARM64 device running a derivative of Debian Linux with OSMC on top... you can get in under the hood using SSH and mess around if you like, although it may break the warranty. My only complaint is I haven't had much luck using it for Amazon Prime video playback (needs a 3rd party community add-on, and something along the chain is causing weird stuttering issues... suspect a DRM issue), but I haven't spent too much effort on that. For SMB file playback and so on it works quite nicely.

Re: Best Dumb TVs

#37

Post by jtokoph »

cricalix wrote: post #5

What I really want is a dumb panel with no TV receiver; this makes it a monitor, and not subject to Ireland’s TV licensing law. There are commercial panels, but the power draw on the ones I’ve seen is higher than a regular 40 inch TV. Plus, finding one that’s available in Ireland.. well, it’s a smallish island with a population of 5 million, and it’s not a common purchase. I probably need to re-evaluate the pricing o…

Can you buy an American TV that supports 230v, but doesn’t support the European broadcast format?

Re: Best Dumb TVs

#38

Post by cricalix »

vie00001 wrote: post #18
cricalix wrote: post #5

What I really want is a dumb panel with no TV receiver; this makes it a monitor, and not subject to Ireland’s TV licensing law. There are commercial panels, but the power draw on the ones I’ve seen is higher than a regular 40 inch TV. Plus, finding one that’s available in Ireland.. well, it’s a smallish island with a population of 5 million, and it’s not a common purchase. I probably need to re-evaluate the pricing o…

Same law here in Austria. Now we got companies that sell TVs without antennas and receiver. These also dumb TVs. https://nogis.at/

Whoa. Wonder if they’ll ship to Ireland. I can deal with smart -> neutered by not giving it Wi-Fi or Ethernet access..

Re: Best Dumb TVs

#40

Post by cricalix »

deamanto wrote: post #30
super256 wrote: post #21

Not a total "dumb TV", any TV that has Google TV can be set into "basic TV" mode. https://support.google.com/googletv/answer/10408998?hl=en

Last time I looked into this trying to get PiHole working on my TV, I found an article that said some TVs give you the option to override the DNS but on the code side it just completely ignored the manual DNS change.

Depending how much control you have over your network, you can defeat this. I have my OpenWrt router configured to block all port 53 traffic unless it comes from the PiHole or router itself. You could also do redirects with masqing I suppose.

Fails if they’re using DoH, but older gear isn’t going to have that functionality built in yet.

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