Your TV set has become a digital billboard. And it’s only getting worse.
2 years ago by moe90 to c/technology
A quick check online says that Samsung--which has about 25% of the global market--sold at least 1M OLED televisions and 8.3M QLED televisions in 2023. So, let's say that they sell 9.5M televisions annually (I'm not sure if the numbers are global or US-only); that's $190M in pure profit from advertising alone. For a billion-dollar plus corporation, that might seem small, but it's certainly enough to get them to take notice.
Samsung is also trying to make its ACR data more valuable for ad targeting, including through a deal signed in December with analytics firm Experian.
This should add to their profits.
Experian has a program where you connect your bank account and they monitor transactions for things that could improve your credit by a couple points. I'm sure they're not also harvesting the rest of your data to use in their analytics, right?
My jaw dropped when I saw that. Not sure how many people are aware if it.
It's even better for them: those $190M are per-year for the lifetime of that TV.
So if for simplification we said they also sold 9.5M TVs in 2021 and again in 2022, in the year of 2024 the will be making $570M from the TVs they sold in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
If Samsung TVs are used in average for 10 years, in 2033 they will still be making money from TVs sold in 2024 and all the years in between. If their rate of sales remains 9.5M per year and how much they generate per quarter in data and advertising revenue from those TVs remains $5 (true, all big simplifications), by 2033 they will be making $1.90 BILLIONS from just this in addition to what they make from selling TVs.
No wonder they're full in on this monetization of users even whilst making user experience significantly worse - they would need to lose a huge number of sales due to this for it to not be worth it for them.
Roku is selling televisions at a loss with the intent on injecting ads based on whats on screen including detecting when you pause a show/game and injecting ads
Patient Pending...
That was the sentence that stuck out to me the most in the whole article as well. Incredible how much is lost for so little. I imagine it's like drug dealers though, maybe $5 for the first seller, then gets chopped up and cut again and sold for less and chopped up again...
My question is, what are the alternatives? Other than finder older TVs without so much junkware and spyware, Are there open OS ROMs that can be loaded? Cracked firmware or debloated ROMs? I was very into Android's launch 15 years ago and rode a train of options away from terrible stock ROMs from various OEMs; eventually privacy and simplicity becomes a selling point for OS after companies get through enshittifying it.
My question is, what are the alternatives? Other than finder older TVs without so much junkware and spyware, Are there open OS ROMs that can be loaded? Cracked firmware or debloated ROMs? I was very into Android’s launch 15 years ago and rode a train of options away from terrible stock ROMs from various OEMs; eventually privacy and simplicity becomes a selling point for OS after companies get through enshittifying it.
I'd like for us all to stop for a moment and appreciate just how thoroughly and comprehensively fucked up it is that Linux, which is what all these TVs are running and which is supposed to be Free Software (which exists for the express purpose of empowering the user's right to control his device), has been subverted so goddamn badly!
They should, but they won't. Between Torvalds' (wrong) opinion and the logistical issues of getting approval from all the other copyright holders, the Linux kernel will remain vulnerable to tivoization in perpetuity.
"commercial display" is a worth while route to explore. They do cover a wider range of image quality and features, so it does take paying close attention to specifications.
Be cautious with the commercial display route. A lot of them come with "management system" software the company is trying to push which can paywall control features or break things on you if they get online for firmware updates.
In general though they do make good displays: they are typically a lot more expensive (and heavy!)
If a company could pay $5 a customer for a competitive edge in customer satisfaction over their competitors, they would. Either they are getting way more than that or there is some cartel/monopoly action going on in the market. Maybe they are playing the long game to introduce an ad free model at a premium.
Still don’t see how nobody is undercutting existing players with ad free, smart tvs.
Why is basic math.
In a made up scenario let's start with a dumb 50"ish TV. That cost them around $100 to build. Add in another $50 for shipping and distribution fees. It's at the store for $150 cost. If they set the price at $400. There is $250 dollars of profit to share between the store and the manufacturer. The manufactuerer likely gets under $100.
Now for a smart TV the revenue stream looks different. First their costs only go up by a few dollars for adding the "smart" chips. So let's say $155 cost. Then they collect revenue from the streaming providers to be supported by their smart TV say $30 per set. Then they collect the $20 per set per year in user data collected. So if they price the smart TV the same as the dumb one they generate $95 from the sale of the set.
So the profit from a dumb TV is $100 at he point of sale.
The profit from a smart TV is $225+ in a constant revenue stream over 5 years.
And this is why we see so much advertising for smart TV's as being the best thing.
I pity the poor fool who sets up their smart TV instead of just grabbing an HDMI cable and plugging in their computer.
Lmao that greentext was literally me before I finally set up arrstack. One of the best investments of my time, it has definitely paid off over many years of just having things automatically download.
My Arr's are unreliable. The trackers they search keep becoming unavailable for some reason. Flaresolver doesn't seem to work with my VPN setup. Sometimes the file it finds to download turns out to be 54GB for a 1080p movie and I can't figure out what the hell is going on there either. I haven't got the time to look into Usenet any time soon. If I try to deploy something and it doesn't work 100% right off the bat then the "wife acceptance factor" drops to zero, so I've got to be damn certain before I start tinkering.
This comes off the back of a device on my network causing router issues and making Plex unreliable for a couple of weeks. By the time I diagnosed and fixed the issue, the damage was done and wife acceptance factor was lost.
Man that sucks. I must have gotten lucky or something with my setup. I also have trackers go unavailable all the time but I enabled 8 different ones and usually multiple will have the same torrent so it usually has no problem finding something even if 1 or 2 are down. I also don't VPN tracker searches, just my BitTorrent client so flaresolverr seems to work fine for me (I only have it enabled for 2 of my trackers since most of the ones I use don't seem to require it).
If you end up trying it out again I would look into the quality settings and make sure you're not using the remux quality profile (edit: apparently the default 1080p quality profile has the 1080 remux quality enabled so this might have been the problem). By default most of the quality profiles seem to limit at 100MB/min, so a 2 hr movie shouldn't allow anything over like 12GB. Whenever I tweak quality or custom formats I refer to trash guides which has a lot of battle-tested rules you can copy. I have my main quality profile set to only download qualities between hdtv720 and br1080 (which is just below remux) with custom formats copied from trash guides set to prefer hevc with surround sound since I have 5.1.
It seems like way more stuff than I want though
I mean yeah there's a lot of stuff it does, but you can pick and choose what you want to use it for so it depends on what you would find useful - you don't have to use the full automation. I started just by using it as a read-only way to see what movies I had and in what qualities and keep things organized. You can use it as a manual interface to do one-off downloads - basically just as an interface to search 5 torrent sites in 1 place where you are still picking exactly what you want it to download. You can use it only to rename files to a consistent format. So there are a lot of ways to use the various features of sonarr/radarr besides automatic downloads. You're not forced to go all-in and out of the box it doesn't start automatically downloading until you enable that.
I think it's a common misconception that if you use sonarr/radarr you have to use download automation and set up trackers but it's not the case. It's a useful library organization tool even if you don't ever have it download anything.
This is the way to go. I tried pihole using Samsung smart features, but if you block the telemetry eventually your apps stop working and you can't get them working again without doing a factory reset with blocking down. It's prohibitively a pain in the ass, taking hours every time YouTube stops working.
Never had any issues with Roku on pihole.
I believe one reason maybe that the software is so garbage it can’t handle not being able to submit all its logging information when otherwise the system thinks it’s online.
This is the case with Rokus as well. If you also redirect or block the hard coded DNS (Google) from bypassing your local DNS it starts to get extremely sluggish over time... presumably from background processes repeatedly resending requests out.
Depends on your blocklist. It would freak out every so often on me when I was preventing it from bypassing my DNS with its hard coded ones until I added in a forced redirect instead.
Currently trying that for the same reasons you are tempted. Roku was passable and even a good choice years ago and it's on a precipitous race to the bottom now.
Problem for me currently is finding a non windows solution that is navigable from a controller or remote is .. tough. Steam, emulation station, Kodi all have reasonable interfaces but there seems to be a gap in a unified launcher solution (as well as a decent 'app' for accessing YouTube.) I really don't want to spin up a single VM for each activity when they all in theory should play nice together.
My solution to this problem is Jellyfin, fed by usenet-backed sonarr/radar and Tubesync to pull in YouTube channel subscriptions. Those are added to a Jellyfin library which is accessible right next to movies and tv shows.
This is all through the Jellyfin app on a 2019 Nvidia Shield Pro. It's a perfect couch-friendly setup. For just regular YouTube browsing, SmartTube can be installed on the Shield and on your phone. You can then cast to the SmartTube app on the Shield instead of to the YouTube app.
Exactly what I've been looking for too, and have come up wanting. I got excited recently about finding KDE Plasma Big Screen, but then it falls at the last hurdle on the app selection.
That gave me abandoned vibes when I looked into it. Maybe they just didn't update anything on their site but I struggled to find any recent info or reviews on it. A shame honestly. I loved the idea.
Yeh, if I ever see my TV's OS I'm like "fuck off! HDMI4!"
That is my preference, but my wife says she prefers only one step (turning on and using the TV) over multiple (turning on the TV, turning on the secondary system and using multiple controllers) so we go with the simpler setup per her request.
I did put my TVs on a Wi-Fi network separate from my main one so, while they do show ads as much as my pihole allows, at least they're theoretically only spying on each other.
We had a samsung 4k curved tv that has ads on the input menu, and the ad space is filled with a samsung ad if the set has never connected to the internet.
It also harasses you with a pop up about connecting occasionally on startup.
It’s bearable but absurd. We returned it on principle
i for one cannot wait for this future
Have you guys started the new season of oww my balls?
Fun fact: Idiocracy came out the same year Google bought YouTube.
I went to a buddy's house to watch TV and that's how his Xbox Live looks like.
Like they're so oblivious and he's paying for that shit.
With that level of ads, they should get paid to watch it.
Huh? Watching TV on his Xbox live? It definitely didn't look like that
Any TV can have DP if you watch the right videos.
Bonus points for buying a smart TV to get the heavily discounted price and never connecting it to the internet.
Some of the brands have been reported to not allow you to do anything until it has an internet connection to do its "initial setup" (or some such excuse).
I hope I can find a list of which ones to avoid when I have to eventually replace my old dumb TV.
I am so genuinely surprised that there isnt a bigger movement to hack TVs to replace the OS's on them with non-invasive open software alternatives.
Especially with shit like this.
Because it’s not actually necessary; leave the TV isolated from the internet and use a set-top box (Apple TV, Shield, game console) as the media player.
While I agree, I think this solution is some nonsense. I bought a "TV" and paid for all the hardware and software that went into it, but I essentially have to use it as a monitor with my own hardware to escape the enshittification.
I also agree, but I view it more as ‘I bought a TV, and that’s all I want it to be’.
I don’t care about the built in software features foisted on me because I wanted an OLED panel; simply because they are going to be abandoned within 1-2 years, are powered by some anaemic chipset that is already multiple generations behind what is already available in my TV stand; and will likely end up as an attack vector to my network some period down the road.
The article mentions that TV manufacturers make ~$5 a quarter from selling your data. So those ‘features’ aren’t even free, they come at the expense of your personal information, privacy and likely security as a result.
So to quote a famous Dave Chapelle skit: “fuck ‘em, that’s why!”
simply because they are going to be abandoned within 1-2 years, are powered by some anaemic chipset that is already multiple generations behind what is already available in my TV stand; and will likely end up as an attack vector to my network some period down the road.
You do realize all of that would probably cease being a problem if people were able to hack their TVs to install custom OS's.
all the spyware bullshit would also be gone with a custom OS.
Literally every one of your gripes would be addressed and fixed by being able to hack your TV
Kind of, I haven't had to buy a new tv to replace my dumb tv from 2014 but my understanding is that these awful smart TVs are at least cheaper because they're subsidised by all the ads. If that's the case, at least you didn't actually fully pay for the hardware and can hopefully afford to put your own on there without being out of pocket by too extreme an amount.
That's not really true because even the high end top of the line Samsung QD-OLED TVs have ads on the home screen if you connect Internet. If you want the latest display technology, your only options are Smart TV with ads, or spending 10x the price for a commercial display that nobody will actually sell you.
The best solution os actually to keep the decoder smarts separate from the actual displaying of image because those two things have different life-cycles and different costs.
A decent TV screen will last you decades and work fine at doing what it does, with the only pressures to upgrade being video connectors - which change maybe once every 2 decades and usually you can use adaptors to give them another 2 decades or so of life - higher resolutions - which make no difference unless you have a very large screen, something which requires a large living room to view at the optimal distance and in which case what really drove you to replace it was not obsolescence - and screen tech advances - which is another of those "every couple of decades it changes but the old ones are generally still fine" kind of thing.
Media Playing, on the other hand, has its life-cycle linked to video encoding and compression which change every 5 years or so and either you have a seriously overpowered generic CPU there (which smart TVs do not) or you have hardware decoding, and in the latter case new video encodings require new hardware with support for them.
So your TV with built-in decoding - i.e. "smart" TV - will need to be replaced more frequently driven by the need to support new digital formats, even though the part that costs the most by far - the screen - is still perfectly good. On the other hand if your media player functionality is separate, all you have to replace with some frequency is the much cheaper media box whilst only replacing the much more expensive screen side once in a blue moon.
Smart TVs are great for manufacturers because they force people to replace the TV much more often hence they sell 2 or 3 times more TVs, but they're in the mid and long term a really bad option for actual buyers who needlessly spend much more on TVs, not to mention Ecologically with all those perfectly good screens ending up in landfills because the $20 worth of "smarts" tied to a $1000 screen is not capable of handling new video encoding formats.
Many of the cheap TVs with Roku built in require you to set up a Roku account before you can even use the HDMI inputs. After setting up your account you can disconnect it from the internet and use it as a normal TV, but I spent a while trying to get around this block. In the end I had to create a Roku account.
That sounds awful; hopefully you were at least able to poison their DB with a fake name and a 10minutemail (or similar) account?
Basically, though I tend to use GMX email aliases for these sorts of useless signups. I don't want some temporary email account to be all that's needed to get control over my TV should I ever connect it to the internet again.
Next time I have to get a new TV I think I'll just get a large computer monitor and stream content via an old mini PC with Linux installed on it. Not an ideal solution, but I'm so tired of this invasive bullshit. At least that will cut out some of its vectors.
After the recent Roku TOS fiasco I'm done with them. If manufacturers won't give us a viable situation we will make one ourselves.
Anyone know a good OS setup for reduced ad streaming? I know about Pi-Holes, but I'm talking about a way of actually streaming content (in addition to blocking ads at our near the router level).
I use my PS5, TBH. I still get ads on Amazon Prime, but I'm not seeing Netflix ads. (I also don't have Hulu, etc.) I pay for a VPN for my desktop--I'm using Win 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC--and with Firefox and uBlockOrigin I see pretty minimal ads online; if you're able to open your streaming service in a browser rather than needing to download their application, then a VPN an uBlockOrigin might be sufficient.
I'd have to check and see if I can access Netflix from my desktop at work, but my suspicion is that the lower quality has more to do with smaller screens in general. That is, you can get away with a lower bitrate when you're viewing on a screen that's 19", and that's probably a fairly safe maximum size for most people watching on a desk- or laptop directly.
Dumb monitor > smart TV.
“We estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual’s visual field before inducing seizures.” ~Nolan Sorrento
Average users will not have the knowledge or patience for work arounds.
Imo, the larger problem seems to be the majority of users appear to be fine with ads and data collection just to watch a movie or series.
It only works in competition which we don’t have for the most part.
Instead we have the illusion of choice through multiple brand product names. There’s a couple choices, sure, but few enough to function as an effective monopoly.
Yeah that's well put. All this advocacy for adblockers and not accepting the awful state of things fall on deaf ears, most people don't care, they accept the state of things as it is, and technology as magic.
People deserve better and should expect/demand better.
But that's the thing. To play the devil's advocate:
Should expect/demand better
Should they? Says who? Us - who to most people are - "weird computer people" for knowing how to navigate an excel spreadsheet?
We know it sucks. But they're entitled to think it's fine, especially since we've made so much noise about this for the past decade that it's hard to imagine anyone is uneducated still.
"Liberating" the masses in this manner seems like a crusade up the alley of Don Quixote.
Your average user would also never be on lemmy to see this, at least for now.
they don't care and can't be bothered to look for a better way.
This implies they are fine with it by tacit agreement.
and i bet if most users would not put up with that, they would remove hdmi ports.
It's not a movie, it's a documentary. :(
I wish the programming we got was that good
Instead we get reality tv where as soon as someone says they like it. I find them unattractive
My 10 year old TV which I watch 10 year old TV-series via HDMI from? I don't think so.
Tomorrow there's going to be article about how my car spies on me as if that's not 15 years old too. Or something about my office job that I don't have.
I'm becoming irrelevant. Not the target audience for anything.
That has also been my strategy (both for TVs and cars), but that doesn't mean it's reasonable to pretend that it's a solution for the general public or that consumer-protection regulation isn't both abundantly warranted and sorely needed.
It tooke about 6 months to find my truck that didn't have the connectivity link it. I think everything after 2022 on these you're pretty much screwed, but it was an adventure to say the least.
I can barely see the ads whilst sailing the high seas. IP is the fakest of P.
Yar me hearties! There be booty on that there internet!
Disconnected my TV from the Internet. I stream media from a PC on my lan to Kodi running on a fire stick. Setup openwrt to drop all packets to wan from the fire stick. These companies can get fucked and if they ever figure out a way to stop me from owning my devices, I'll just take up some new hobbies and be done with it all.
Yep, same here.
Samsung TV cannot reach the internet. Nvidia Shield is running Flauncher as the default launcher. I watch all my content through Jellyfin and SmarttubeNext.
I have not seen an ad in years.
That's great for you, but people like you vastly underestimate how much hassle people are willing to go through as far as setting up tech goes.
I connected my PC to the TV via HDMI. i use Firefox with ublock.
See, that's more realistic.
I'd need a dedicated computer, because my PC doesn't live in the lounge, but I'm seriously considering doing it. My Chromecast has been pissing me off lately.
You can buy small PCs for cheap now. A lot of them don't even need active cooling
Server to host media. Super easy to set up and can run on a Windows client. Don't even need an independent server to run it on. https://jellyfin.org/
https://kodi.tv/ (or https://libreelec.tv/ for an OS that boots to just Kodi)
Application to watch through Kodi https://github.com/jellyfin/jellycon
Client to run Kodi on: MeLE PCG02 Mini PC Stick https://a.co/d/1EGnekO
If you didn't want to install LibreELEC to the PC and just want to keep Windows, you could run Kodi in Kiosk mode and it would boot directly to it just like LibreELEC.
I have not watched normal TV in years, let alone an ad on my TV. I spoke to my neighbors one day and figured out they were paying ~$60 a month for all their streaming services, and they're STILL getting ads...
Stuff like this is unacceptable, and I refuse to partake in the lunacy and delusion that is modern television.
Also Plex as an alternative to Jellyfin with a way better UI and better app support
Plex. Its been getting shittier for years.
Meanwhile JF has been improving in leaps and bounds.
Since he mentions enshittification, I assume he means Plex.
However I am pretty sure both will have some bugs. I use jellyfin, so I can only speak about that. But one annoyance is that the androidTV app sometimes doesn't have the best subtitle support. However it allows you to open movies in external players, which is a workaround.
I bought a lifetime plex pass once and have no issues since. HW encoding works out of the box, the scanners do their job and I can use their apps on every platform. I had to disable the Plex offered free movies once, the horror. Don't act like Plex is some Google level shit of annoyance or 'enshittification'.
Jellyfin on the other hand has atrocious UI that basically screams the absence of any sort of UI designer into your face, the HW encoding is a mess to set up and the apps are a jungle of different 3rd party apps...
I never said Plex is google-level enshittification, don't project words in my mouth. What is a fact though is that it is undergoing enshittification and that it's a buggy mess and video transcoding might work for you, but it's a well known source of pain for others. It could be better on Jellyfin too, but nowhere near as difficult to set up, even on weird/unsupported systems.
UI screams no designer
Idk what you're on about, not even LTT Linus pointed out any issues with the UI and he is no Linux CLI wizard.
If anything it's far simpler to use than Plex because it doesn't have the dark pattern bullshit into it.
You load the app, you hit movies or TV shows, hit your favourite movie or TV show and play. It's not complicated at all, no need to click past the various upsells and no need to buy battle passes just to watch a film.
The only thing this supposed absence of a "UI designer" seems to have brought is the absence of upsells and enshittification/dark patterns.
Not mine. My TV's my absolute digital bitch. It lets me do anything I want AND nothing, unlike Warren Buffet's kids
My TV is a smart TV whose smart features I never, ever use because the first thing it does is switch to the input my Apple TV is on.
Ironic really that the reason I chose an LG is because webOS seems less cunty than Android TV and whatever shit Samsung are offering. But I still never use it.
I was pleasantly surprised that my Sony tv has a basic option so you can use it just as a screen. All smart stuff disabled.
webOS seems less cunty than Android TV
Every time they do an update, things get worse. But my last TV had some dying pixels, so there's no going back.
Start buying commercial displays. Cost more but will be about as close to a dumb tv. You will have to provide your own smart device for apps ...
Commercial displays are not tvs. Quite often the refresh rate is terrible and you cannot watch action movies on it, because it was designed to show static billboard ads.
Not to mention if you want an OLED display, any sort of commercial variant of that will be $10000+ and marketed to Hollywood producers and other creative industries that care about color accuracy.
open the back of the TV, locate the arial on the board and scratch away the traces leading to it.
If it doesn't have the passphrase for wifi, how is it going to connect? I rarely see unsecured wifis around neighborhoods anymore. For copper/fiber, you're not going to hook it up to keep it disocnnected.
It’s not that simple.
Here’s an example: Amazon could outfit all of their delivery vehicles with open wifi networks. Every Alexa device calls home when a truck drives by.
Here’s another: you may have a guest wifi, or your neighbor, or their neighbor. All it needs is one.
Yeah of course there are solutions to faraday cage it away from the world. But all they need is one connection. You have to stop it forever.
If it doesn't have the passphrase for wifi
Open networks have no passphrase. Otherwise they wouldn't be open. And yes they're less common but it doesn't mean you're neighbor can't set one up at any given time.
Cheaper TV's sometimes won't function without one.
This is what I did. Works fine for my needs. My older relatives hate it but they rarely come over.
That's one reason I ditched cable years ago. Why the hell should I pay Comcast for the "privilege" of watching commercials?
Fun fact, Mythbusters episodes have a longer international edit length because America has substantially longer commercial breaks.
I revived the old LCD my grandparents were throwing out because it had good specs and no built in ads. Tossed in a new capacitor and it was good to go, otherwise I would just not own a TV.
I would like a machine that gives me the nice clean 4k resolution without throwing unprompted notifications in my face.
What colour do you want your dragon to be?
Some combination of red, blue, and green
An impossible challenge.
There is a certain unfortunate irony in the realization that one of the easiest ways to avoid this kind of thing is to buy a commercial digital signage panel intended for advertising instead of a consumer TV.
Or just don’t connect it to wifi and use hdmi media players that don’t have ads in the OS.
Since at one point in the near future I'll be shopping for a TV, is there such a thing as a good quality panel TV that is dumb? I intend to hook it up to a PC or a set top box. Alternatively, is there a smart TV that can be easily bootloader unlocked and rooted without consequences (similarly to how a Pixel phone can)? I realise this is even more niche than unlocking/rooting a phone, but still, someone might have ideas.
I just bought a smart TV, updated the software, and disconnected it from the Internet, only allowing it access to our local Plex server. No ads and no stupid suggestions. It's great.
Oh, that's clever! Definitely bookmarking that for future reference.
Anyone have a non-Spez link?
Might be cheaper than a purposedly dumb TV nowadays too, despite the receiver. It's ridicolous.
Get a non-consumer TV if you can. They're more expensive but are actually built to last, have way more features and you can swap in whatever compute board you want so you're not stuck with an underpowered Android TV board.
I'm very interested in this. Any suggestions as far as specific models to look at, or where to source one without needing a fancy business vendor connection? Maybe a trustworthy review site to compare some options?
I've not looked into it much other than seeing it in this video by Jeff Geerling and making a mental note for next time I'm in the market for a TV but it may be of interest to you.
I'm sorry I can't provide more details than that, but it's basically a digital signage TV designed to run 24/7 for years, and as such is actually built without the absolute bargain basement parts that go into consumer units.
Try a Spectre t.v. they're made for digital signage. I got one and hooked it up to a media server.
Ah, my bad. Sorry.
They seem to be consumer grade, but dumb. Does someone here have one? How are the refresh rates? Can I play FPS games with at least 60hz on it?
I have one. It's 4k, which gave me some trouble from an Ubuntu media server, and the refresh rate is ~144, I believe. It cost me something like 300-400 USD.
Awesome, then I'll probably get one. Thank you!
Scepter televisions are a great option, no "smart" features at all. Bought two of them about 6 years ago and no issues.
My LG OLED TV can be configured to load directly into a HDMI input. I keep it disconnected from wifi at all times. I never see the smartTV OS. It’s probably the best option because OLED panels are the best current display technology.
I use an AppleTV as an external media box for all my needs. But the same would apply for an Android box or HTPC setup etc.
Pro Tip: Connect your TV to your Wi-Fi so the TV doesn’t bother you constantly, and shut off access outside your network at the router level.
It also bugs me to turn on voice recognition by connecting
LET US LISTEN TO YOU IT WILL BE FINE.
IGNORE ME!
Take the stupid thing back.
I bought a cheap 55" 4k. The "smartest" functions are menus for color correction, sound and choice of input source. It runs perfectly fine on my desktop as an additional 4k monitor with 60hz. And it doesn't try to phone home.
Problem is getting an 55+" Screen with an OLED panel and support for HDR in a non-smart package
But it will try to start into a crippled user interface ever so often.
My Sony just goes straight to the HDMI that turned it on via CEC
There are commercial displays that don't have any of the bullshit. But you'll have to jump through some extra hoops for the sound.
I have a dedicated sound system anyway
But if your display has no digital output, you may need to plug it into the analog output of the computer you're using to drive the display. That's not optimal.
No, I just plug the video input into my AV-Receiver and let it split it up, and then an HDMI cable from the receiver to the TVs input
Which custom launcher are you using?
Flauncher here, and its great
How did you set it as the launcher? Adb?
Wasn't even needed. Just downloaded the app with another downloaded app and then installed it. Then it props you what launcher you want. Plenty of videos on yt about this.
Do you know of a good tutorial on how to do all that? I'm planning on buying a new TV towards the end of this year and want to have the pi-hole, etc working first
Pi-hole is super easy. Literally just install it, and set your dhcp on your router to push out that IP as your dns server. Configure pi-hole to use an upstream dns server.
There's a bunch of launchers out there. I did mine a while back and used Wolf launcher, but later found out it was a "hacked" version of some other paid launcher. I used launcher manager to "enable" it on boot. Right out of the box, it has all apps and no ads. I suspect any launcher you go with will be similar.
Cool. Thanks!
As opposed to the old days when it was an analog billboard
The only thing close to a UI was TV Guide, which most certainly had ads.
(I kid, but only a little.)
I replaced the TV Box from my ISP as well as the Media Player I already had for local media with a cheap mini-PC running Lubuntu and Kodi and have seen only a handful of adverts on my TV in the last couple of months (which I might see only when I'm watching Live-TV).
(PS: Mind you, there is no way to avoid Product Placement in Movies and TV Series, so I have still probably seen quite a lot of "covert" advertising).
The whole thing is now under my control and hence I don't have to endure that crap.
Granted, I've been a Techie for decades and have for a long time been very aware of how software with Internet access is an agent of the software maker serving their objectives, not of yours serving your interests and how anything you paid for held by somebody else isn't yours until you take them into Court for it and win (so your "bought" movies held in somebody else's system aren't yours) so I never jumped into the Streaming bandwagon and instead kept my eyepatch handy and wooden leg polished, and when I got a TV some years ago - before the enshittification really took off - I very purposefully avoided "smart" ones like the plague.
Frankly even if you're not technically adept just get a Mini-PC and install LibreElec on it (which is purposefully made for non-Technical users to just to use Kodi) and get used to using Kodi. If you're into paying for it you can even subscribe to perfectly legit IPTV subscriptions with hundreds of Live-TV channels and it definitelly integrates with the paid streaming services if you can't do without and don't want to sail the high seas.
(I'm running Lubunto, a more generalistic lightweight Linux distro where I explicitly installed Kodi, rather than LibreElec, because I use it for more things than just watching stuff on my TV).
PPS: Also, get a generic wireless remote of the kind used for Android TV (which works just as well in Kodi under Linux, as all those things do is send key-presses using the same USB protocol as keyboards), not the voice control crap with just a few "app" buttons but the ones which look like normal remotes. They often come with air-mouse functionality and a full mini-keyboard on the back, but one almost never has to use that even with Lubunto which is not really designed to be unobstrucive and will pop-up "update" prompts once in a while (I'm tempted to fix that, just like I fixed the need to explicitly log-in and start Kodi, but so far I can't be arsed because it seldom happens)
How sure are you that the Google software and hardware you're recommending won't be enshittified at some point, especially in light of Google's behaviour in recent years?
Because one of the core guidelines in this new setup of mine was exactly to avoid software/hardware stacks from profit-driven companies were the temptation to "make it nice now, enshittify for maximum $$$ once there's a good installed base" is very much present, hence I went all the way to a fully open source solution with an as generic as possible mini-PC (the fully generic PC, a self-made desktop, would not have looked as good in my living room and use way more power, whilst the mini-PC looks like it belongs there and has a 15W TDP).
I mean, my first try at changing my home media setup was actually getting an Android Media Box (which is much cheaper than a mini-PC), but the mini-PC plus Linux gives me total control over the entire software stack and a lot more than an Android Media Box does over the hardware stack (I can actually add more storage, expand the memory and even change the wireless support) without having to jump through the hoops of rooting an Android to get rid of all the crap (and not just he crap from Google - for example I didn't want Netflix on the fancy starting menu of the Android box and yet if I uninstalled it, the pretty picture for it would still be there using space whilst not actually working) which is not exactly non-techie friendly and might not even be possible (I do believe it is possible for the Chromecast, though).
Android is an inferior solution if you want to avoid enshittification and are not all that technically proeficient, though if you don't care about being forced by the software on your own hardware into shit you don't want (such as watching ads) it is the technically simplest option, but then again that scenario is just enduring the kind of abuse that the post is talking about, and my advice is not at all for people who are fine with ads and other "product promotions" (such as pre-installed software supporting services you have to pay for) shoved in front of them even in their own home and their own hardware.
Whilst I didn't go for the fully integrated Linux+Kodu solution which is LibreElec and instead went for a self-made Lubuntu + Kodi solution because I have lots of experience with Linux and wanted to do more with that device than just "media box", my expectation is that a single-purpose packaged solution like LibreElec on top of a mini-PC together with the kind of remote I mentioned above is the simplest "just works" option: so accessible to non-techies and without enshittification or a risk of future enshittification.
Do I trust them? No. In fact I’m blocking software updates under the assumption they’ll fuck something up. But I’m using an alternative start app, and a button remapper for the remote.
It’s stupid simple, and the chances of breaking are slim. It’s also cheap, and relatively easy to upkeep. There’s also the added benefit of it being an all in one consumer product, so the user experience is typically seamless, something I wasn’t able to achieve with a box running Kodi last I attempted it.
I’m not claiming it’s the best choice, but if you’re dealing with normies or a remote situation where you’re mailing off an item? 100% I’d prefer a device like a chromecast.
Well that sucks. I don't particularly want google or amazon hardware on my network in any capacity, nor do I intend to provide network access to a "smart" TV. Guess that leaves AppleTV, maybe a couple other options, or dedicated media PC.
Fair. Added benefit tho; it's not a Google product.
Downside: it's Nvidia and they've gone off the deep end into AI bullshit. Arguably went off the deep end several years ago into Crypto bullshit.
I've got one of these and since in my PC Kodi is running on top pretty much all of the time, it works as well as a dedicated remote on a dedicated media box.
The upsides are that as I said it just works as one expects a remote and whilst it is wireless, it also has an infrared emitter and 5 programmable buttons for it, so I also use it to turn ON/OFF my TV and sound bar.
The downsides are that the little keyboard on the reverse side is a bit awkward to use, especially if you need to type uppercase characters, special characters or numbers and the air mouse is a bit too finicky to use comfortably, both of which are extras beyond the normal remote functionality, so it's no problem unless you expect to replace a keyboard + mouse or remote login once in a while for Linux maintenance tasks. Also this specific remote won't, for who knows what reason (bug? stupid design decision?), work if the remote is slightly tilted, which is a bit of a downside of this model and, of course, it can't actually turn your PC ON because it's wireless with a USB dongle and the PC won't read USB it's not ON (though maybe it can work if one uses hibernate and keyboard wake-up, since the remote just looks like a Keyboard+Mouse device for the PC, but I haven't tried it and since I just have that PC on all the time because it's also a home server, I don't really care)
It's my understanding that when you press a button in the remote these things just send down the pipe a key-press of a letter matching the function of the button (so for example the menu button is 'm') and those letters just so happen to be the Kodi shortcut keys for those functions (I reckon these things are standardized rather than "coincidence").
You can see in the recommendations on that page various other similar models. I reckon that as long as you avoid the "Voice command" stuff (which is tightly tied with Google Android) and go for a wireless remote which looks like it has a many buttons as a normal remote would, you'll be fine. Keep in mind that traditional IR remotes won't work for controlling something like a PC because the PC has no built-in IR receiver or software for support such a remote (normal IR remotes are pretty custom with different codes for different makers and even devices, rather than standardized as this one seems to be) hence the need to use a wireless one with a USB dongle (theoretically Bluetooth should also work).
My cheap projector doesn't have 4k, but it also doesn't have ads
Pihole on your network... And block Internet access to the TV..
Tho.. a while back the wife and I bought a dirt cheap 32 inch TV from bestbuy.. it will literally turn itself on to deliver an advertisement if you power it off while in an app. (Skipping the home page)
Pihole crashes it.
We bought it for watching football outside so it's unplugged for the majority of the year.. but that's still absolutely unacceptable. Imho
it will literally turn itself on to deliver an advertisement if you power it off while in an app.
Name and shame that brand.
The more the word is spread about who the worse offenders are, the more people can effectively vote with their wallet.
That's why I love projectors, they almost never have "smart" features built in. A Raspberry Pi can serve as a great HTPC running FOSS software like Kodi, connecting to a local, self-hosted Jellyfin server full of pirated content.
Problem with projectors is they don't work very well in bright spaces
My tv hasn't seen an ad since i plugged it in.
Yet another justification for piracy
My TVs are pre-smart TV and only 1080p and I have yet to feel that I was missing anything important.
My best purchase in the last couple of years was a 4k Sceptre TV from Walmart. Super cheap, good enough video quality and is dumb, just turns on to 4hdmi ports. That way I can just plug in whatever I want, or get a $30 roku and replace it whenever they update it to the point where it lags on basic menu navigation like my previous tvs.
Fuck all that bloatware, ad infested crap.
GO AWAY!! BAITIN'!
When our last TV which was 'smart' died, we just bought a big lcd monitor at the pawn shop. We already were only using Kodi on an Android box, so a monitor with external speaker is fine. (Seemed spyware free last time I checked, but beware no-name android media boxes on=from eBay etc., use a tiny or old spare PC instead if you wish).
One must 'sail the high seas' tovget content, of course...
Nah, my TV is not Internet connected. My router is as blocking. My dns is as blocking. My web browser and phone browser are web blocking. I use the YouTube website on my phone. If someone bypasses all that and pushes adds I just back out of that site.
I don't have a TV. I have a beamer as a screen for my PC, playing media with Kodi from my NAS, which runs Radarr (for movies) and Sonarr (for series) to download using usenet. I don't have to give consent for the stupid agreements from streaming services, I'm not limited by them either, I don't have to pay 10 different services to see everything I want. I pay for usenet, VPN and indexers. My VPN (Proton) blocks ads, trackers and malware. I watch YouTube using the Grayjay app (including sponsor block). I live ad free. I have more rights, freedom and access by piracy then I would have by paying those fucked up companies.
I don't want to pirate, I want an honest transaction where I pay just money so I would own the content I bought. Instead I have to pay money, agree to have no rights, give all my personal information which they are free to sell, all for limited access to watch content I do not own. Fuck that. Piracy it is.
Whenever I see an honest company providing a decent service, I gladly give them my money. Even if it's kind of expensive. They deserve to exist. I gladly pay for quality. Like Proton for example. Larian studios, I wish I could give them more money. They deserve every penny I payed for baldur's gate 3, I even bought the useless deluxe pack just because they deserve it. It Takes Two is a game I pirated. It is so good, I wanted to purchase it to support the devs. It was on sale, so I waited for the sale to end before purchasing it. Sadly it's not on GoG so I still do not own it, because with Steam you just pay for access to a game you do not own.
I only pirate to avoid asshole companies and ads. I do not wish to pirate, I feel forced to do so.
I'm okay with ads (just like on broadcast TV), but only if I'm not paying for the streaming/VOD service (just like on broadcast TV). Like, I'm okay with ads on a YouTube video, but I got rid of Netflix when they cancelled a series I liked and, now that they've started talking about adding ads, I'll probably not go back.
Have an Insignia tv and having to click out of a full screen ad after boot up will never not annoy me
And it's driving up the price of commercial flatscreens.
My HiSense Vidaa OS TV shows ads for newer TV’s from their online store.
Is an Apple TV box a good platform choice to avoid this?
That’s what I’m planning to do and curious if Apple TV box is a good option. Fire stick is riddled with ads. Not sure about Roku and Apple TV.
Roku is chocked full of ads too, and regularly sets the default for the "Select" button to open those ad sites or apps. Roku used to be great. It has now been completely enshittified.
I mean, it could be worse. It could not work at all when put behind a pihole. I keep all my Roku devices in their own group and haven't seen ads on them
No matter how you feel about Apple in general, Apple TV boxes are really the only way to go these days. Everything else is designed to aggressive sell to you whether you like it or not.
It's either that or use something like a Raspberry Pi and settle for websites, which also have a habit of streaming you lower-quality content.
I don’t see any ads in my Apple TV interface aside from some shown in the streaming apps themselves. We’ve been very happy with ours, keeping in mind the whole family already had iPhones.
If you have other Apple devices the Apple TV is the best option.
Plex makes an app for it, and infuse makes a fantastic media server client.
Also enables all kinds of useful home automation integration, and FaceTime via your television(this is a game changer).
AppleTV is the media box to use if you hate ads and value your privacy. Its Home Screen is just a grid of apps. No ads. None. It’s also way faster (CPU speed) compared to the competition.
Replacing a smart TV OS with a device made by Google or Amazon defeats the purpose. You’re still going to get ads plastered all over your Home Screen. And they still lag and stutter unless you pay a premium price for an 5 year old Nvidia shield. Either use an AppleTV or build your own HTPC.
I reset my Android TV to stock before the ads, block all updates, and just run Plex and Netflix when I choose.
Probably going to take it further in the future and just use a little android media stick and nuke the SmartTV is entirely because of how badly it lags.
Absolutely insane how badly AndroidTVs perform after a year or so of ownership. If I could revert the core software updates I would.
Also, wifi causes the entire TV to become a laggy unusable mess. Has to be plugged in over ethernet. Absolutely unbelievable.
lol not for me, i don't connect it to the internet
There are/were already TVs that automatically connect to any public WiFi or even have their own SIM card.
well mine doesnt... but then again knowing roku it might lol
Didnt noticed ads on youtube with smarttube https://smarttubeapp.github.io/ or https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular ;)
imho adb works wonders debloating many smartTVs. mine shows zero ads outside of commercial tv breaks. not even suggestions for amazon shows or anything in the dashboard. smarttube,kodi etc are just great!
You've gotta realise the average joe doesn't know how to do any of that stuff though. Even trying to explain it to most people is too much. The frustration I find is, most people don't actually want to learn, and they'd rather stay ignorant, and basically take pride in it.
kinda true. wonder if this is sth. that changed or if it has been like this since ever amd we are just getting older so more ignorance.
People don’t even like ad block on their computers because it doesn’t look right
In past generations they would use half their monitor for toolbars
The reason monitors are delayed is because they need a way to work around the commercial market. TVs in commercial settings were already more expensive
not if I don't have a smart tv
My TV burned out a few months ago and we got a cheap vizio. We stream everything from another device so maybe that's the solution, but I haven't seen any of these ads.
Pihole can block all this nonsense.
is this a new trend? last time i bought a tv was 2019 and it doesnt even have a menu
An article on Ars Technica, complaining about advertising.
What hypocrite posted this?
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Fuck me, this is the amount of money that's enough motivation for them to ruin my experience and make me angry?
I guess regular users have much higher tolerance to ads than me, but our home has a strict zero ad policy.
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