131–140 of 327 posts
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Its terrible Apple is spying on you. But the alternative is to have someone spying on you and forcing ads on you. Sophie's choice.
Mini PC with Linux + Jellyfin + web browser.
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You can absolutely jailbreak them and install whatever
*If you have one that hasn't updated itself since last year.
Smart TVs are maybe the dumbest product innovation of my lifetime. Ruining a perfectly good appliance with the addition of software. In 2025 it's literally a luxury experience to deal with computer bs less.
A modern TV has a lifetime of 15 - 20 years I think. E.g. my in-laws have a Sony TV, from around 2012 - 2013. It's not 4K obviously, but the picture is beautiful, the sound perfectly fills their small living room, it's a great TV. Even considering that Sony did skimp on the compute in that TV from the start, there's no way that they could have put in hardware that would future proof it until 2030 or beyond. Nor could they reasonably charge enough to cover software updates for that long. It makes much more sense to have a replaceable external unit.
I have an LG TV purchased about 3 years ago. It had a bunch of "AI" features from day one, but mostly related to improving the picture quality dynamically based on what's on the screen. I disabled all of that stuff, so I guess I'll be disabling this too. The LG software is horrible on this TV. Great picture quality, but I would never recommend an LG TV just because of the software.
I'd love for someone to mention a single TV manufacturer who provides a good, not amazing, just good, smart TV experience.
My rule for modern TVs: 1. Never connect the TV panel itself to the internet. Keep it air-gapped. Treat it solely as a dumb monitor. 2. Use an Apple TV for the "smart" features. 3. Avoid Fire TV, Chromecast, or Roku. The logic is simple, Google (Chromecast) and Amazon (Fire TV) operate on the same business model as the TV manufacturers subsidized hardware in exchange for user data and ad inventory. Apple is the only…
My rule for modern TVs: 1. Never connect the TV panel itself to the internet. Keep it air-gapped. Treat it solely as a dumb monitor. 2. Use an Apple TV for the "smart" features. 3. Avoid Fire TV, Chromecast, or Roku. The logic is simple, Google (Chromecast) and Amazon (Fire TV) operate on the same business model as the TV manufacturers subsidized hardware in exchange for user data and ad inventory. Apple is the only…
I'd pay triple for an LG "dumb" TV. This is outrageous.
My rule for modern TVs: 1. Never connect the TV panel itself to the internet. Keep it air-gapped. Treat it solely as a dumb monitor. 2. Use an Apple TV for the "smart" features. 3. Avoid Fire TV, Chromecast, or Roku. The logic is simple, Google (Chromecast) and Amazon (Fire TV) operate on the same business model as the TV manufacturers subsidized hardware in exchange for user data and ad inventory. Apple is the only…
> 1. Never connect the TV panel itself to the internet. Keep it air-gapped. Treat it solely as a dumb monitor.
A sensible rule, indeed. Next level of dystopia: cellular modems becoming so cheap that every TV, fridge and washing machine comes with one that connects it to the Internet whether you like it or not. And then when we Faraday cage those, the device refuses to function.
Laws need to keep up and ban this shit outright. It sounds exactly like something that the EU could help with.
I don’t think Microsoft realizes that this is not a positive for their brand.