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Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options

arstechnica.com

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Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options

#161

Post by drnick1 »

ralfd wrote: post #95
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #18

Spoiler: this is Ars Technica. Obviously they suggest you to instead get an Apple TV so that you send your data to Apple and watch Apple ads instead (with the only argument being that "so far they do less ads").

> Obviously they suggest you to instead get an Apple TV I did the same last year though when I couldn’t find a good non-smart tv. Even if you don’t like the advice it is a practical solution for normies.

The Apple TV box does not have a microphone and a camera, but beyond that there is absolutely no reason to think it's any more private than a "smart" TV.

Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options

#162

Post by drnick1 »

_dan wrote: post #110
JayGuerette wrote: post #96

I'm confused. Every TV is a dumb TV if you don't give it your Wifi password.

Yeah I have a couple of recent Samsung OLEDs and they're fine without an internet connection despite reports that they wouldn't be. If I press one of the annoying streaming service buttons on the remote it'll give me a setup popup which needs to be dismissed, otherwise they work fine, albeit without any built in streaming support. I'd read reports that Q-Symphony (audio from the TV speakers and soundbar simultaneousl…

This OSMC box looks interesting, but does it allow to run arbitrary programs like a plain Linux box? What I have in mind here are things such as VacuumTube (YoutubeTV front end), a Web browser to stream from various online sources, etc. I found KODI (as running on Linux) far too restrictive when it comes to streaming from the Internet, and the add ons to be terrible. (In particular the YouTube add-on requires an API key registered with Google, which makes it a far worse proposition than using VacuumTube anonymously.)

Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options

#163

Post by bitwize »

The cheat code is Sceptre dumb TVs from Wal-Mart's web site. I want Hackernews to know about this so that Sceptre and Wal-Mart can get sales and know that there's a substantial market for these devices, not shrug their shoulders and go "we may as well take these off the market and sell enshittified crap instead; it's not like our customers know or care about the difference."

Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options

#164

Post by drnick1 »

amelius wrote: post #34

Unfortunately cars are becoming like smart TVs in this respect.

You just need to pull the fuse or physically remove the telematics unit. In some cars you need to partially disassemble the dash to do this, but there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube. An independent shop should also be able to do this, although dealers will generally refuse since they are among the ones benefiting from the "telemetry," aka spyware.

Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options

#165

Post by somat »

JayGuerette wrote: post #96

I'm confused. Every TV is a dumb TV if you don't give it your Wifi password.

I think they, or at least samsungs. will happily use open wifi if they can find it.

Source, my open test network and a neighbors tv that keeps trying to phone home with it.

Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options

#166

Post by Isamu »

valleyer wrote: post #19

Sceptre is not in fact "a Wal-Mart brand" but rather an independent company. https://www.sceptre.com Westinghouse TVs are made by a company licensing the brand, not a "Pittsburgh-headquartered company". These seem like easy mistakes to avoid.

Westinghouse was acquired as a brand under Tsinghua TongFang.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electronics

Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options

#168

Post by mr_toad »

tormeh wrote: post #80

What I'd really like is a TV with DisplayPort. How is this not a thing? IIRC you cannot buy a display with DP that's larger than 45 inches, give or take - they just don't exist. I think this is really weird. Like, I'd pay an extra $100 for that port, but I'm just not allowed to have it.

> What I'd really like is a TV with DisplayPort.

Issues with HDCP support maybe?

Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options

#169

Post by pabs3 »

taxmeifyoucan wrote: post #101

For a hacker news article, it misses the crucial option - hacking a smart TV! I have LG OLED jailbroken using rootmy.tv, it was pretty trivial. It's basically a linux computer with a huge screen, you can customize it, SSH into it, map any commands to the remote, etc. Before I only used monitor, simple DP/HDMI input is all I wanted. But being able to take full control of the tv and connect it with other devices in the…

You shouldn't have to hack it, you should have the right to repair the software on your device. Hopefully the Vizio lawsuit will help with that for Linux based devices, signs are looking good though.

https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html

Re: Sick of smart TVs? Here are your best options

#170

Post by aceazzameen »

We're running a solution that isn't perfect and isn't for everyone. We have a nice Sony Android TV along with a pihole. But on the TV itself I installed f-droid and netguard. Netguard's UI sucks on a TV, but it's workable. I use it to block Internet access to everything including Google. Only a few streaming apps have internet access. There was some trial and error with a handful of dependencies too.

If I need to update an app, I temporarily allow Google services access. All the streaming apps work well, except for HBO Max which takes a few minutes to load. I suspect it has a long timeout/retry count for something I'm blocking. But once it loads, it's fine.

I also use a different and basic home launcher so we can open the apps we want immediately, without having to deal with shifting algorithm-based icons. But even if we use the Google launcher, it's mostly empty and free of ads because it can't connect. It does still capture what I recently watch though.

Overall it's a decent experience, mainly because we're not being bombarded by more ad algorithms.

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