I recently bought an LG TV. I didn’t connect it to the Internet, I just use it with my Chromecast or Switch. Works great, no ads, no AI BS.
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de
on 17 Apr 00:27
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Coming soon (if not already): TVs with utility cellular connections or corpo network (like Amazon sidewalk) access that your neighbor may have not opted out of.
I find it highly likely that TVs will soon cease to function without an internet connection, complete with some BS explanation about protecting your privacy or security.
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de
on 17 Apr 00:50
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I can’t set my dryer to medium heat unless I do so with an app over the internet even though the controls exist to do it on the unit. I bought a window AC unit and the only remote control is an app - thankfully I was able to put that on a subnet with no internet gateway and it still works.
KnightontheSun@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 03:07
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Name them. Bosch does this with some functions too. I bought the model below and didn’t care about delayed start or whatever. I am not loading your app!
I swear we need to start some appliance hacking clubs or something to sidestep this crap.
Neither mentioned a network connection was required. The AC unit didn’t mention it at all, and consumer reports mentioned the dryer had “smart features” and an app but never said basic controls were locked behind a network connection
I mean, a camera is an easy thing to block, as long as you’re aware of it, understand the implications, and have the desire to block it. Just obstruct the lens. Roll of black electrical tape, put a strip over it, done. Now, most people out there may not actually do so…
Only becomes an issue if other services that you actually want are tied to the camera, or if the TV refuses to operate without a usable picture of the viewer or something.
How close are you to a starlink constellations orbital path, now that they can be connected to via cellular modems?
cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
on 17 Apr 00:59
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That doesn’t support data yet. Data will probably cost a fortune when they enable it. I doubt anyone will be willing to pay that much to serve ads. If they do, then the antenna will be replaced with a dummy load.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Apr 08:46
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this sounds terrible
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Apr 08:44
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a quick reminder that the 5G standard defined a peer to pear peer operating mode for smart devices
Some TVs already have the ability to connect to sidewalk. More worrying is that every newer “Smart” TV has the ability to cast to it so if anyone ever does that using an internet connected device like a SmartPhone then bam…your TV just got an internet connection and can now send out stored data and potentially grab a firmware update.
Surprise!
shyguyblue@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 00:31
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This is the way to do it
I blocked my lg from the Wi-Fi after i got a “Kobe Bryant memorial” ad, while playing on my switch… TF?!
Do you think he thought avoiding all that traffic was worth it as he plummeted?
QuantumSparkles@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Apr 23:53
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Okay so fuck rich people destroying the planet with private air travel—however, he was still statistically more likely to die from driving that day. And so was his daughter and the other innocent kids on that flight
I’ve heard this line many times from so many people.
So basically just Nintendo and google profit off your personal information? And doesn’t Chromecast serve ads? In the background, but still?
I fully support your decision to not connect your LG TV to the internet. I do the same thing but it’s often just for convenience. I get better performance from my devices rather than from the TV itself for whatever application.
LG TVs will soon leverage an AI model built for showing advertisements that more closely align with viewers’ personal beliefs and emotions. The company plans to incorporate a partner company’s AI tech into its TV software in order to interpret psychological factors impacting a viewer, such as personal interests, personality traits, and lifestyle choices. The aim is to show LG webOS users ads that will emotionally impact them.
“As viewers engage with content, ZenVision’s understanding of a consumer grows deeper, and our… segmentation continually evolves to optimize predictions,” the ZenVision website says.
Going beyond ads, if you start training AIs on human preference based on mass-harvested emotional data, I imagine that you can optimize output quite considerably. Like, say I have facial recognition being converted to emotional response data, maybe something like smartwatch pulse data, some other stuff, and I go train an AI to try to produce a given emotional output in a viewer. I bet that they can do a pretty good job of that. Like, maybe how to piss people off at a target in political campaigns, build an AI that has a potent ability to emotionally-manipulate and flirt with humans, or ensure that interest doesn’t waver in television content by determining at what points people have less interest.
FunnyUsername@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 00:39
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if it’s anything like the other ai features they offer, it will be garbage and never work and slow everything down
obsidianfoxxy7870@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 17 Apr 00:39
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If they ever make this a standard feature in all TVs and make it where I can’t just disconnect it from the internet, I will be using old TVs for the rest of my life.
My TV is there to display a visual output. It does not and should not do anything else.
Luckily digital signboards will always be an option to replace TVs with if the situation becomes truly dire. The sorts of no-frills displays corporations buy to display whatever media they want in store.
Might not come with sound, but you can pick up a cheap sound bar and it will still be better than whatever cheap speakers commercial TVs try to cram in there.
ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
on 17 Apr 01:21
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The future is great!
chaosCruiser@futurology.today
on 17 Apr 04:06
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As long as my 1080p plasma tv works, there’s no need to upgrade. Going 4K would also mean I would have to upgrade my HTPC hardware, because that old APU probably can’t handle resolutions like that.
In the meantime though, I’ll just keep on watching online videos in my living room without ads or interruptions. It’s been great even though all of this hardware is cheap and ancient.
DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org
on 17 Apr 08:50
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But that’s the thing: televisions are complex and can be very difficult to repair, so what do you do when you can’t buy a dumb replacement anymore? I have the same issue with cars. I would like to replace ours with an EV, but they are a privacy nightmare whereas my car’s peak technology is FM radio.
I was thinking earlier today about how much technology waste there is because old stuff is superseded so quickly. Maybe in future we will treasure the tech we had before it all went to shit.
chaosCruiser@futurology.today
on 17 Apr 13:10
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Kit cars have been around for ages, and Framework offers DIY laptops. I think we should have kit displays as well. Surely, someone has already made something like that with a raspberry or something.
DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org
on 17 Apr 13:16
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Yeah, hopefully we can just buy cheap panels and put it together how we want. If that also opened up options for hackers to build entirely new display applications, or in new ways, that would be the dream.
CatZoomies@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 00:40
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This sucks.
massive_bereavement@fedia.io
on 17 Apr 09:32
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Bro my body can’t take it anymore, I’m so sick. I’ve had 23 Mountain Dews and 14 Doritos Dew It Right today. My LG tv still wants me to sing and dance to continue.
I’m about to live in a camper full of paper books. I hate everything tech has done in the last twenty years.
AcidicBasicGlitch@lemm.ee
on 17 Apr 04:26
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I would make an inappropriate Ted Kaczynski joke if I didn’t know everything we do is being constantly monitored at all times by a bunch of turds with zero sense of humor.
So we pay them to do this to us? I stopped putting tv’s on the internet once I realized it offered me nothing useful. Firmware is about it and if that’s the case I’ll either usb it or put it on the internet for 5 min to do the update. Even then Samsung sucks so much with firmware the release notes for every single update are “bug fixes and improvements”… thanks Samsung.
If I am forced to put it online or it comes up with a way to phone home on its own, I am done buying those kinds of tv’s, and I’m sure some other brand will offer one that doesn’t, even if it isn’t the best one to buy.
most firmware releases will be to fix something with the online service anyway. If it displays stuff coming down a wire from your PC when you buy it, it probably never needs an update.
I will say I had 1 time i needed it. It was my Samsung Odessey monitor. It supports freesync but I noticed when it was on there would be a slight flicker. Dealt with it for probably 2 years before looking into it. Low and behold online comments all said firmware fixed it. It worked, fixed it and now it’s been fantastic ever since. One of the only times an update on a screen did something amazing. It’s not the norm but the excception.
Same. I have a C3 and it’s awesome. It has this feature where when you turn it off it has this nice subtle clock screensaver thing but it always shows the wrong time due to not having an internet connection.
Enshittification in progress. Sadly their OLED TVs are amazing, if not for the intrusive ads. It is really crap what all those companies are doing shoving ads our throats.
I am trying to block everything using ad blockers, DNS filtering, Pi hole, etc.
Sometimes even that’s not enough. I’ve had some questionable kit before that would just ignore the DNS settings fed to it if it thought they were no good, and fall back to something else preconfigured.
pfSense is a wonderful tool for situations like that. Anything intended for local use only here just doesn’t get outside at all. Handy for stuff like a fire stick that only needs to be calling up a local media library.
It can also mangle any DNS requests going out to a different server and redirect them to itself instead. You could do this without it with iptables/nftables on a generic Linux box, but pfSense makes it much friendlier.
There are other packages that can do the same, but physically all you need is one piece of hardware as a bouncer that manages connections between inside/outside.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Apr 08:38
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what can it do if the TV uses DoH, DoT, or something else similar? I expect that it can do nothing. unless the TV is on a separate vlan with very strictly only access to internal services
Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub
on 17 Apr 08:44
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Don’t connect it at all and just use an Android TV box or dongle.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Apr 10:19
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well that’s what I’m saying to the parent commenter
At that point I would expect control of it, or at least for it to respect the configuration it is given. If neither are true, then it just doesn’t go online at all. If that’s part of the main function, then I find an alternative or live without it.
Nothing on the inside should be sending anything to the outside that can’t be inspected before it leaves, with the exception of stuff that is directly driven by a human (guests browsing, etc).
Blocked all the server domains. There are a bunch of lists out there for various TV brands.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Apr 15:44
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that may not be enough. while I don’t know how common it is, it is not unknown that they use DoH, DoT, direct connections to hardcoded IP without DNS to evade such blocking measures. chinese IP cams often do the latter
It takes a bit of effort. A chromecast sideskirts your DNS and uses 8.8.8.8. I had to intercept the traffic and redirect it to my DNS server with easylist on it.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Apr 15:59
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yeah, i too have set up a redirect for port 53 to my DNS server on the main router, for a long time didn’t do that though. but then, even this doesn’t matter if they just hardcode a list of IPs
Fingolfinz@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 02:54
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Hell yeah. Emotionally raping people is super ethical
TwinTitans@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 02:59
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Cool one more reason I’ll never connect my display to the internet.
Bellingdog@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 03:31
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“Gee, boss. Says here 87% of viewers were angry with the TV for spying on them.”
SpicyLizards@reddthat.com
on 17 Apr 03:35
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The TVs are reporting a lot of anger. Add more cameras!
orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts
on 17 Apr 03:42
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Can we please ban electronic advertising already? And billboards? Society would be better off without them.
moopet@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Apr 08:30
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If we ban people from “earning” over a certain amount, they’ll get round it through “gifts” or exchange in-kind or something, right? Same with ads. If we ban them, then product placement with plausible deniability will be rife, paid through essentially money-laundering methods, worse than it is now.
Buying a TV should be a one time cost. These companies trying to create a continuing income where none exists is just rampant greed. Don’t want to pay the cost of updating and distributing your software? The open source it and get back to making better TVs.
Sixtyforce@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Apr 05:19
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Echoes back to the Facebook leaker
There’s no bar too low except that which receives continuous ceaseless push back against people who push things like this.
There isn’t enough push back to matter. So the bar lowers.
oliver@lemmy.neuralwhisper.eu
on 17 Apr 05:20
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Good that there’s Pi-hole or similar solutions. Have both LG and Samsung at home and if I see what Pi-hole drops and how talkative both vendor TVs are… bloody hell! Don’t use the stock functions anyway, Apple TVs are doing there job here so I took them offline a while ago. Anyway, the whole industry is turning into a completely wrong direction…
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Apr 08:40
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does not worth anything nowadays. they’ll just retry with 8.8.8.8, a DoH service or something else. pretty sure they can also do without DNS, like chinese cameras use connections that cannot be blocked with a hosts file because they are going directly to a preprogrammed IP
oliver@lemmy.neuralwhisper.eu
on 17 Apr 09:16
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Works with both vendors if looking into Pi-hole‘s logs and once they should really hardcode the DNS or similar stuff here, the connection will be disabled (which is the best way to deal with this anyway apart from updating firmware if you use an external box).
Once they try to reach IPs directly (ECOVACS once did so) you may block those on a firewall-basis but everything depends on your needs, will and setup of course.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Apr 10:25
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if pihole says its blocked, that does not mean your device does not also query another DNS server
and once they should really hardcode the DNS or similar stuff here, the connection will be disabled
but how’ll you notice that? that ads return? different subsystems of the tv might work differently
Once they try to reach IPs directly (ECOVACS once did so) you may block those on a firewall-basis
and how do you know what IPs to block? and then, a server on an IP could hold multiple services such that blocking it breaks multiple things.
I’m not here to tease you, but I really think that this might not be enough even today
oliver@lemmy.neuralwhisper.eu
on 17 Apr 10:52
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Well, there is some work to do with identifying the device in your network (which shouldn’t be the problem) and monitor the connections over a specific time. When (as happened with ECOVACS) a single device frequently connects to DNS and HTTPS reaching a single IP belonging to this vendor, this is regulated quite easily with a proper firewall. Without the insights, this is (like you wrote) difficult to accomplish and yes, there may be false positives. Also separating those devices within an own VLAN could be part of a (individual) scenario.
Samsung mostly talks to specific hosts, LG does as well and searching for firmware triggers different targets. These are easy to find if you know what you‘re doing but this depends on setup and knowledge. It‘s a hare-and-tortoise-race though.
The safest way would be disabling the WiFi or LAN-connection if you don“t need any of the services shipped with the devices but while this may work for TVs, it may make your Vacuum Cleaner useless as the specific app for that device won‘t work anymore.
Holy shit there were so many ads in that article that I just stopped reading. It sucks LG is going down this route. They make really nice displays but now I dont ever want to buy an LG tv if its spying on me to serve me these ‘better’ ads. Fuck advertising. Its turned into a complete monster
empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 17 Apr 06:02
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You can’t hardly even buy computer monitors without them anymore either. Every one of the higher end Samsung or LG monitors is starting to include “smart” bullshit.
it’s not talking about tracking emotions from looking at the viewer, it’s tracking the emotions in the script of the thing they’re watching, so it knows what they like.
Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub
on 17 Apr 08:42
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Don’t connect a computer monitor to the internet?..
I’ve owned one of their 850UK 4K LCDs and currently their C4 OLED. I can say unequivocally that their software is ABYSMAL. They make great panels. No doubt. But they really have no business deploying them. The worst I’ve ever used.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 08:59
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I tried the YouTube app exactly once. Since then my TV doesn’t have an internet connection any more.
LOL. I give it wifi to update and then disable it. At least in the new version it remembers your password (which is another ridiculous thing that it didn’t for the longest time). But it stays disconnected.
I would actually lay a premium for literally a panel and nothing more. I’m shocked no one has jailbroken TVs to rip out their telemetry or made hardware bypasses. I would love to install a hardware mod chip that gives me access to the raw firmware features.
moopet@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Apr 08:27
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It’s just the addition of “AI”. We’ve been doing the same thing for a long time. I used to work for an advertising data company over a decade ago, and they filtered all the ads for one of the big channels’ streaming services in exactly the same way just with regular algorithms rather than AI. It’s what would make ads for men’s razors appear in the middle of a soap opera at 11PM because it knew the user was a man getting home from the pub.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 17 Apr 13:56
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Sounds like you need an ad blocker. I didn’t see any ads on the article except text links that were relevant to the story, which arguably aren’t ads.
How did you root it? All methods I’ve seen appear to require you to get it online first, usually to visit a website that does it for you (seems sketchy).
The framework for an authoritarian tech surveillance state is in our pockets.
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
on 17 Apr 19:22
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Luckily, not if you actually read the article. The headline is misleading. “Emotional advertising” is a marketing gimmick term by LG for guessing your personality from the shows you watch.
daggermoon@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 08:54
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They’ll have to pay for the cellular connection themselves because I’m not gonna enter my wifi password into the tv lol. Been using a pc hooked up to the screen for ages. Screw “smart tv” features, slow and inconvenient as hell.
The inconvenience creared by their greed. You buy a tv, a PC, internet and a netflix sub but you cant watch full (shite) resolution unless you are in a native app.
Piracy is the way forward.
slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org
on 17 Apr 09:42
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I have an lg tv that has never seen the internet. It runs on a shield with kodi. With that being said, fuck shield and their ads
Shield has ads built in!? Out of the cart it goes.
WetBeardHairs@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 12:33
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Yeah that part blows ass. My solution for now is an appletv. They at least don’t shove ads down your throat and their main business models are not based on collecting user data for advertising or databroker purposes (looking at you, google).
I agree, but with TVs (or large displays" we’re at the point where there are no good options. Commercial displays are over engineered for the home and lag in technology Vs home TVs. So they’re not an option. Lg and Samsung are the display technology leaders, but their TVs are full of crap— so no. Monitors don’t go large enough for the living room.
Guess I’m stuck with what I have.
knatschus@discuss.tchncs.de
on 17 Apr 11:55
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Monitors are still bigger than TVs our parents had in our childhood, no way I’m buying such a surveillance machine just for a bigger screen.
schizo@forum.uncomfortable.business
on 17 Apr 12:30
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For real: I’m using a 38" ultra wide, and if you had told child me that a 38" monitor would be the smallest display in the house I’d have told you that you’re full of shit.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 14:17
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Damn you for making me feel old by realizing my computer monitor is bigger than my childhood CRT TV.
You can get them now days up to 360hz refresh rate. Gaming projectors and projectors in general have came a long way from the faded blurry shit they were 10 to 15 plus years ago.
They’re industrial boxes with a screen. Not aesthetically what I want in my living room. The displays are chosen for their longevity, not their picture quality. They’re often actively cooled with fans, so adding a noise level to their operation.
Why would you ever accept this anti consumer bullshit for a slightly better screen? It might not even take a year before the current cutting edge not “the best” anymore with how fast tech cycles. I would absolutely go out of my way to get a device I can deprive of an Internet connection and still use.
Let’s be honest: I, as a customer, want to make informed buying decisions. I want to buy food that is tasty and maybe is healthy, but not based on some image that some marketing guys want to push. I want to choose the car which is best (and cheapest) for my purposes, and don’t want to be hearded into buying something else. I want to choose the best insurance for me and not be mislead by some emotional ad showing me a happy family.
And I really do not want to be manipulated in an emotional vulnerable moment so that I buy something. That’s shady as fuck
Are there any TV manufacturers out there that do great screens like the lg ones, but without all the rest of the bullshit?
We are in the market for a huge TV soon, and we were looking at the lg oled Evo. However I don’t really like rewarding bad behaviour, so if there’s any others you can suggest then suggest away…
slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org
on 17 Apr 09:41
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My lg tv is honestly the best tv i have ever owned. I have 0 complaints, my old house got flooded a few years ago and the tv soaked up a good amount of water and after some running time, it went back to working flawlessly.
But i would never connect that fucker to the internet.
TheRealKuni@midwest.social
on 17 Apr 13:39
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Exactly this. I love my LG, but it doesn’t get internet privileges.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 09:46
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Maybe Panasonic or Philips they use LG OLED panels. I don’t know if they spy or not but worth investigating. Or Bang and Olufsen if you are swimming cash.
For what it’s worth, I subscribe to the “use your TV as a screen, plug another device in to deal with content” method. It’s not connected to the network.
So, whatever my TV wants to do, I’m not using it’s janky apps that might get slow over time or try to advertise to me - my Nvidia shield (which is on the ropes/way out due to some updates it pushed) CEC wakes the TV and plays content without having any particular insight into my emotional state. But I can replace that relatively easily/cheaply until my screen literally stops working, rather than if some new service isn’t supported on it or an old one is deprecated.
I’m being tempted to replace the shield with a NUC or other device due to the updates I mentioned above - but I can probably replace the launcher more easily.
No, which is why people saying “Buy it and don’t connect it to the internet” isn’t helping. More people need to not buy it and tell other people not to buy it.
WetBeardHairs@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 12:27
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They make more money from those continued sales through their app store and commercials. I’ve heard (on reddit news articles posted to r/technology, so not exactly the most reliable source) more than the profit for the initial sale of the tv because they actually subsidize the initial price and may sell it at a loss to get those ads in your livingroom.
To get them to stop they need to lose both the original sale and the additional advertising revenue. Right now their thinking is:
People are buying our TVs
Putting advertising on them isn’t causing our sales to drop
Therefore it’s costing us next to nothing to do.
It often gets us extra revenue if they connect to the internet.
If they don’t connect, we still more than covered our costs.
There is no downside for them. Only upside. The equation needs to change for them to stop doing it.
WetBeardHairs@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 12:30
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I’ve been planning to do the same thing when our current batch of TVs kick the bucket. But I was going to use an appletv, not a NUC, because all of the streaming services only serve 2k through browsers but their apps can get 4k+. And for the rest I’ll run jellyfin and serve from my home media server. The TV will never see the a valid internet connected network.
Recently my roku tv started showing a blaringly loud auto-play ad on the homepage once every 2-3 weeks. FUCK THAT.
brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 17 Apr 13:37
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I was describing this to my partner and she thought i said “LGBT”. Yes. The LGBTQ community created this technology and weaponized it. Next on Fox News.
Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 13:46
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Well yeah. Did you forget what LGBT stands for? LG BlueTooth. That’s how they get you
Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee
on 17 Apr 13:54
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“Gay radio waves!”
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 14:14
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they’re putting radio in the waves that are turning the freakin networks gay!
TheRealKuni@midwest.social
on 17 Apr 13:38
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I have an LG TV. Absolutely love it.
However, it’s not connected to the internet so it doesn’t do any of this shit. It’s just a really nice dumb TV that has the potential to spy on me if I ever gave it a chance to be smart, and I still get to take advantage of the various picture improvements that come from having the processing power of a smart TV.
Just need something else to do streaming if that’s what you want. Like an Apple TV, nVidia Shield, Roku, or game console. Some of those will also advertise to you, but I’ve had good experience with my Apple TV.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 14:11
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I wouldnt be surprised if it randomly connects to unsecured/public wifi networks to still send the spy data if it can find any in its area.
TheRealKuni@midwest.social
on 17 Apr 15:46
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Maybe. If they’re following the rules they need you to agree to their privacy policies, and to do that you have to connect to the internet. I know from the time I did have it connected (before they rolled all this shit out) that they would let you use the TV without those policies accepted. They would just bother you about it constantly. Since I factory reset and didn’t let it connect, it hasn’t asked.
But that’s assuming they follow the rules. I’m not knowledgeable enough to find out if they’re doing this or not.
They have a bunch of display ports and HDMIs. You can buy the tuner you need (SAT, OTA, cable, other streamer), or use a PC&Linux and watch YT add-free.
My next TV will be either a business/signage monitor or a computer monitor.
At least something without any connection outside. No network, no anything.
At most something like a Chromecast or similar.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 16:06
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“I dont want it to have anything, except google, the biggest invader of privacy there is” :p
You can still set up your own HTPC in your living room and configure it yourself.
And there are more solutions like from Apple (but they absolutely fucking track you as well) or other streaming box/stick solutions I am not aware of.
Unsure how good an Nvidia Shield is in regards to privacy. Your best bet for privacy is probably to just build your own solution on Linux.
Nvidia is huge on producing AI and is certainly data-hungry. Without actually knowing, I would bet it’s about as bad as anything else. Since all your data is passing directly through their servers it’s trivial for them to do whatever they want with it.
FleetingTit@feddit.org
on 17 Apr 14:36
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For now, most of the ad bullshit can be turned off. Though it turned back on after the latest software update and forced me to spend another 10 minutes digging through the horrendous settings menu.
I’ve seen this linked before, and unfortunately the specs are very mediocre on their TVs. I don’t know how they can claim a TV is HDR when it has a meh contrast ratio, no dimming zones, and can’t even do 100% of the sRGB color space.
I don’t know how much of the price of other TVs are subsidized by ads, but these Sceptre TVs are pretty bad value when looking at panel specs alone.
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
on 17 Apr 19:18
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Panasonic, or some of the European brands are good. Or you buy the largest 4K computer monitor that can afford.
deepfuckingdumb@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 16:12
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I have a TCL Roku TV and holy shit it was engineered to deliver ads. If it is not connected to the network, the power LED blinks and is very annoying. The power LED is right next to the IR receiver and can’t just be taped over. Assigning a manual IP and DNS is blocked so traffic can’t be routed through a pihole. I use the Jellyfin app on the TV so it needs local network access. At this point the damn thing needs to have traffic managed at a network level firewall. I don’t have the hardware for the firewall at the moment but now that Roku has pop up ads for simply moving around the app menu (yes really), I may need to get on that.
Buelldozer@lemmy.today
on 17 Apr 17:28
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but now that Roku has pop up ads for simply moving around the app menu
Huh? I have 3 Roku Ultras, a Roku Stick, and a Roku TV and none of them do that. Have you gone into the Roku settings menu recently and checked your advertising settings?
01189998819991197253@infosec.pub
on 18 Apr 01:50
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Nah, they’re doing A/B testing currently for their next several waves of ads. I think (but don’t quote me on this) I read that in the new EULA.
if your router is able to you can set up ACLs to allow the TV access to your network but not the internet.
TwistyLex@discuss.tchncs.de
on 17 Apr 16:57
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I see a lot of concern in this thread that future TVs would just peer-to-peer or cellular connect to do their dastardly functions. Wouldn’t this be preventable by putting a fine wire mesh around the box on the rear of the panel? Sure, the signal could still go out through the panel, but that’s bound to incur a lot of interference from the panel itself, right?
Grappling7155@lemmy.ca
on 17 Apr 17:58
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milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
on 17 Apr 19:16
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Or expensive.
Integrate777@discuss.online
on 17 Apr 20:26
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At this point, I’m wondering if I should set up a shell company of some kind, just to buy commercial digital signage TVs. They require registering with a company just to be allowed to buy them.
Chances are they’ll have some antenna line going to the edge of the TV. The box on the back of the TV already has a bunch of shielding over it inside. If you were to go to the trouble of opening the TV to find it, you may as well disconnect the antenna and ground it so there’s no chance of a signal.
Takumidesh@lemmy.world
on 17 Apr 18:57
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Hopefully the TVs don’t won’t require that connection to operate.
I have a Kurig coffee maker (too little respect to spellcheck their name). It puts out a BLE beacon that I can receve a mile away. Its hard to know what that bugger is doing. G-force was right!
That’s okay, it will just autoconnect to any other LG device in bluetooth range, which has a working internet connection. Like, the neighbour’s TV on the other side of your wall.
thisphuckinguy@lemmy.world
on 19 Apr 01:40
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Sheesh…
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 17 Apr 18:45
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This is why you block the camera with a little diorama that shows a single white male viewer…frantically masturbating.
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
on 17 Apr 19:14
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Good idea, though, this isn’t actually about cameras watching you as the title looks like.
Robust_Mirror@aussie.zone
on 18 Apr 08:57
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I got an Optoma projector for the bedroom that I love. It’s about $1000 USD. Is that on the high end? I guess. I’d call it medium. But I know many people that spend that much and more on their TV. Works pretty well even in day/with the light on, obviously far better with the room darkened, and even has a gaming optimised mode.
Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 17 Apr 20:08
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HOW EXCITING…
said no one ever.
FeelThePower@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 17 Apr 20:36
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I still use a dumb TV, and I will for as long as possible. I’ll never buy a new TV ever again. only used from Facebook. most stuff I only watch on my computer anyways.
You know back in the day they were like easily half a dozen custom Android ROMs for any given phone. I’m pretty sure that there’s still a diversity of ROMs available.
Why is this not the case with televisions?
Robust_Mirror@aussie.zone
on 18 Apr 08:48
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Because there’s no easy way to install it. TVs don’t usually have a data transfer usb-c port.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
on 18 Apr 17:09
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TVs generally don’t come with unlocked bootloaders. That shit is locked down big time.
AnimalsDream@slrpnk.net
on 17 Apr 22:54
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Simple solution I use: Fuck television sets, get a computer monitor and basic speakers instead. A display should do only one thing and do it well.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
on 18 Apr 17:08
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That would certainly be ideal, although there’s great difficulty in finding 50"+ monitors, and they cost a huge amount more
I guess that would beg the question, how much is it worth to you pay extra to not have additional spyware in your home? Or as others have said in this thread, there is at least one brand of television that still sells dumb tvs.
If it makes a sound you don’t recognise, use the gun.
PunkRockSportsFan@fanaticus.social
on 18 Apr 03:58
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The printer lol
SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
on 18 Apr 12:18
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For the lower tech people, smart TVs are just OkAy. They allow an end user to use Netflix etc. It’s the fucking cameras mics and sensors illls in my Tv that’s fucked up
nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org
on 18 Apr 08:28
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No.
Blinsane@reddthat.com
on 18 Apr 08:53
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I just use a pi-hole to block my LG TV from connecting to any services I have not approved. So it can connect to YouTube but not lg.trackingservices.brainscanner.com. Never seen an ad on my TV.
I got a Samsung TV a couple of years ago. I use it with a Roku. It’s not on my network. I’ll keep it until it stops working because I think eventually TVs will refuse to work without an Internet connection.
DontMakeMoreBabies@lemm.ee
on 18 Apr 23:37
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threaded - newest
So glad I’m not in the market for a new TV
Rather have a TV from 1999. Hope LG goes under.
Nahhh that’s insane. A recent 1440p/144+hz monitor is a fantastic choice and it doesn’t know how to connect to the internet.
A TV used to be clearly different from a computer monitor. Hopefully monitors resist this for longer but no reason to think this can’t happen there.
And you are correct as there are now Samsung and LG smart monitors. It won’t be long before all monitors are smart.
BOOOOOO
I recently bought an LG TV. I didn’t connect it to the Internet, I just use it with my Chromecast or Switch. Works great, no ads, no AI BS.
Coming soon (if not already): TVs with utility cellular connections or corpo network (like Amazon sidewalk) access that your neighbor may have not opted out of.
I find it highly likely that TVs will soon cease to function without an internet connection, complete with some BS explanation about protecting your privacy or security.
I can’t set my dryer to medium heat unless I do so with an app over the internet even though the controls exist to do it on the unit. I bought a window AC unit and the only remote control is an app - thankfully I was able to put that on a subnet with no internet gateway and it still works.
Name them. Bosch does this with some functions too. I bought the model below and didn’t care about delayed start or whatever. I am not loading your app!
I swear we need to start some appliance hacking clubs or something to sidestep this crap.
It’s an LG dryer.
I’d have to go look up the window unit. Its almost certainly a white labeled OEM who’s advertised brand no longer exists, though.
such things should be brought back to the store as defective
Why did you buy those devices?
Neither mentioned a network connection was required. The AC unit didn’t mention it at all, and consumer reports mentioned the dryer had “smart features” and an app but never said basic controls were locked behind a network connection
“For child safety!!!111”
Broadcast TV is already going that way. ATSC 3 requires an internet connection to get decoding keys. For your protection, of course.
I mean, a camera is an easy thing to block, as long as you’re aware of it, understand the implications, and have the desire to block it. Just obstruct the lens. Roll of black electrical tape, put a strip over it, done. Now, most people out there may not actually do so…
Only becomes an issue if other services that you actually want are tied to the camera, or if the TV refuses to operate without a usable picture of the viewer or something.
Pictures are far from the only thing to worry about.
Luckily my neighbors are way out of WiFi range and there is barely enough cell service here to send a text from inside the house.
How close are you to a starlink constellations orbital path, now that they can be connected to via cellular modems?
That doesn’t support data yet. Data will probably cost a fortune when they enable it. I doubt anyone will be willing to pay that much to serve ads. If they do, then the antenna will be replaced with a dummy load.
this sounds terrible
a quick reminder that the 5G standard defined a peer to
pearpeer operating mode for smart devicesPear to pear communication.
<img alt="" src="https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/00d359d4-d077-4a39-9674-50b533ce5e7c.png">
that was a good one :) fixed the typo
Coming soon: a screwdriver and a soldering iron
Some TVs already have the ability to connect to sidewalk. More worrying is that every newer “Smart” TV has the ability to cast to it so if anyone ever does that using an internet connected device like a SmartPhone then bam…your TV just got an internet connection and can now send out stored data and potentially grab a firmware update.
Surprise!
This is the way to do it
I blocked my lg from the Wi-Fi after i got a “Kobe Bryant memorial” ad, while playing on my switch… TF?!
Do you think he thought avoiding all that traffic was worth it as he plummeted?
Okay so fuck rich people destroying the planet with private air travel—however, he was still statistically more likely to die from driving that day. And so was his daughter and the other innocent kids on that flight
He was in a helicopter not a 747.
Hopefully no IBS either.
I’ve heard this line many times from so many people.
So basically just Nintendo and google profit off your personal information? And doesn’t Chromecast serve ads? In the background, but still?
I fully support your decision to not connect your LG TV to the internet. I do the same thing but it’s often just for convenience. I get better performance from my devices rather than from the TV itself for whatever application.
Just was thinking about that recently is all.
Going beyond ads, if you start training AIs on human preference based on mass-harvested emotional data, I imagine that you can optimize output quite considerably. Like, say I have facial recognition being converted to emotional response data, maybe something like smartwatch pulse data, some other stuff, and I go train an AI to try to produce a given emotional output in a viewer. I bet that they can do a pretty good job of that. Like, maybe how to piss people off at a target in political campaigns, build an AI that has a potent ability to emotionally-manipulate and flirt with humans, or ensure that interest doesn’t waver in television content by determining at what points people have less interest.
if it’s anything like the other ai features they offer, it will be garbage and never work and slow everything down
And use 10x the electricity to get this slop.
If they ever make this a standard feature in all TVs and make it where I can’t just disconnect it from the internet, I will be using old TVs for the rest of my life.
My TV is there to display a visual output. It does not and should not do anything else.
Luckily digital signboards will always be an option to replace TVs with if the situation becomes truly dire. The sorts of no-frills displays corporations buy to display whatever media they want in store.
Might not come with sound, but you can pick up a cheap sound bar and it will still be better than whatever cheap speakers commercial TVs try to cram in there.
The future is great!
As long as my 1080p plasma tv works, there’s no need to upgrade. Going 4K would also mean I would have to upgrade my HTPC hardware, because that old APU probably can’t handle resolutions like that.
In the meantime though, I’ll just keep on watching online videos in my living room without ads or interruptions. It’s been great even though all of this hardware is cheap and ancient.
But that’s the thing: televisions are complex and can be very difficult to repair, so what do you do when you can’t buy a dumb replacement anymore? I have the same issue with cars. I would like to replace ours with an EV, but they are a privacy nightmare whereas my car’s peak technology is FM radio.
I was thinking earlier today about how much technology waste there is because old stuff is superseded so quickly. Maybe in future we will treasure the tech we had before it all went to shit.
Kit cars have been around for ages, and Framework offers DIY laptops. I think we should have kit displays as well. Surely, someone has already made something like that with a raspberry or something.
Yeah, hopefully we can just buy cheap panels and put it together how we want. If that also opened up options for hackers to build entirely new display applications, or in new ways, that would be the dream.
This sucks.
You should drink another verification can.
Bro my body can’t take it anymore, I’m so sick. I’ve had 23 Mountain Dews and 14 Doritos Dew It Right today. My LG tv still wants me to sing and dance to continue.
I’m about to live in a camper full of paper books. I hate everything tech has done in the last twenty years.
I would make an inappropriate Ted Kaczynski joke if I didn’t know everything we do is being constantly monitored at all times by a bunch of turds with zero sense of humor.
Even Hannah Montana Linux?
Counterpoint, we have the Cosmic Desktop (or at least an alpha for it) and tbh its pretty cool :3
So we pay them to do this to us? I stopped putting tv’s on the internet once I realized it offered me nothing useful. Firmware is about it and if that’s the case I’ll either usb it or put it on the internet for 5 min to do the update. Even then Samsung sucks so much with firmware the release notes for every single update are “bug fixes and improvements”… thanks Samsung.
If I am forced to put it online or it comes up with a way to phone home on its own, I am done buying those kinds of tv’s, and I’m sure some other brand will offer one that doesn’t, even if it isn’t the best one to buy.
most firmware releases will be to fix something with the online service anyway. If it displays stuff coming down a wire from your PC when you buy it, it probably never needs an update.
I will say I had 1 time i needed it. It was my Samsung Odessey monitor. It supports freesync but I noticed when it was on there would be a slight flicker. Dealt with it for probably 2 years before looking into it. Low and behold online comments all said firmware fixed it. It worked, fixed it and now it’s been fantastic ever since. One of the only times an update on a screen did something amazing. It’s not the norm but the excception.
that was always my beef with ads, they just didnt speak to me on an emotional level
Yes, it’s always nice to feel like my ads get me, you know? Its important to have a meaningful relationship with your ads.
My LG OLED has never seen an internet connection and intend to keep it that way for a very long time: indefinitely.
Same. I have a C3 and it’s awesome. It has this feature where when you turn it off it has this nice subtle clock screensaver thing but it always shows the wrong time due to not having an internet connection.
Put it on an isolated vlan, run your own ntp server and if needed spoof the ntp dns it uses… Easy 😅
That’s pretty far out of my wheelhouse unfortunately lol
Enshittification in progress. Sadly their OLED TVs are amazing, if not for the intrusive ads. It is really crap what all those companies are doing shoving ads our throats.
I am trying to block everything using ad blockers, DNS filtering, Pi hole, etc.
I just… don’t connect the TV to the internet. Never had an issue with anything like that.
This is the best way, really. Generally, you have much more control over what you plug into it.
A display shouldn’t have anything even approaching what can be called an ‘OS’ on it. Yet here we are.
I got an LG OLED a few weeks ago. Hands down the best TV screen I’ve ever owned.
Fuck knows what the stock OS does because I’ve only watched Apple TV through it.
Sometimes even that’s not enough. I’ve had some questionable kit before that would just ignore the DNS settings fed to it if it thought they were no good, and fall back to something else preconfigured.
pfSense is a wonderful tool for situations like that. Anything intended for local use only here just doesn’t get outside at all. Handy for stuff like a fire stick that only needs to be calling up a local media library.
It can also mangle any DNS requests going out to a different server and redirect them to itself instead. You could do this without it with iptables/nftables on a generic Linux box, but pfSense makes it much friendlier.
There are other packages that can do the same, but physically all you need is one piece of hardware as a bouncer that manages connections between inside/outside.
what can it do if the TV uses DoH, DoT, or something else similar? I expect that it can do nothing. unless the TV is on a separate vlan with very strictly only access to internal services
Don’t connect it at all and just use an Android TV box or dongle.
well that’s what I’m saying to the parent commenter
At that point I would expect control of it, or at least for it to respect the configuration it is given. If neither are true, then it just doesn’t go online at all. If that’s part of the main function, then I find an alternative or live without it.
Nothing on the inside should be sending anything to the outside that can’t be inspected before it leaves, with the exception of stuff that is directly driven by a human (guests browsing, etc).
Blocked all this crap at the network level. Don’t get any ads now.
with a pihole they can easily work around, or proper network isolation?
Blocked all the server domains. There are a bunch of lists out there for various TV brands.
that may not be enough. while I don’t know how common it is, it is not unknown that they use DoH, DoT, direct connections to hardcoded IP without DNS to evade such blocking measures. chinese IP cams often do the latter
It takes a bit of effort. A chromecast sideskirts your DNS and uses 8.8.8.8. I had to intercept the traffic and redirect it to my DNS server with easylist on it.
yeah, i too have set up a redirect for port 53 to my DNS server on the main router, for a long time didn’t do that though. but then, even this doesn’t matter if they just hardcode a list of IPs
Hell yeah. Emotionally raping people is super ethical
Cool one more reason I’ll never connect my display to the internet.
“Gee, boss. Says here 87% of viewers were angry with the TV for spying on them.”
The TVs are reporting a lot of anger. Add more cameras!
Yikes, don’t ever wank in front of your TV.
Or wank lots in front of the TV. Make the collected data useless.
Can we please ban electronic advertising already? And billboards? Society would be better off without them.
If we ban people from “earning” over a certain amount, they’ll get round it through “gifts” or exchange in-kind or something, right? Same with ads. If we ban them, then product placement with plausible deniability will be rife, paid through essentially money-laundering methods, worse than it is now.
Buying a TV should be a one time cost. These companies trying to create a continuing income where none exists is just rampant greed. Don’t want to pay the cost of updating and distributing your software? The open source it and get back to making better TVs.
Echoes back to the Facebook leaker
There’s no bar too low except that which receives continuous ceaseless push back against people who push things like this.
There isn’t enough push back to matter. So the bar lowers.
Good that there’s Pi-hole or similar solutions. Have both LG and Samsung at home and if I see what Pi-hole drops and how talkative both vendor TVs are… bloody hell! Don’t use the stock functions anyway, Apple TVs are doing there job here so I took them offline a while ago. Anyway, the whole industry is turning into a completely wrong direction…
does not worth anything nowadays. they’ll just retry with 8.8.8.8, a DoH service or something else. pretty sure they can also do without DNS, like chinese cameras use connections that cannot be blocked with a hosts file because they are going directly to a preprogrammed IP
Works with both vendors if looking into Pi-hole‘s logs and once they should really hardcode the DNS or similar stuff here, the connection will be disabled (which is the best way to deal with this anyway apart from updating firmware if you use an external box).
Once they try to reach IPs directly (ECOVACS once did so) you may block those on a firewall-basis but everything depends on your needs, will and setup of course.
if pihole says its blocked, that does not mean your device does not also query another DNS server
but how’ll you notice that? that ads return? different subsystems of the tv might work differently
and how do you know what IPs to block? and then, a server on an IP could hold multiple services such that blocking it breaks multiple things.
I’m not here to tease you, but I really think that this might not be enough even today
Well, there is some work to do with identifying the device in your network (which shouldn’t be the problem) and monitor the connections over a specific time. When (as happened with ECOVACS) a single device frequently connects to DNS and HTTPS reaching a single IP belonging to this vendor, this is regulated quite easily with a proper firewall. Without the insights, this is (like you wrote) difficult to accomplish and yes, there may be false positives. Also separating those devices within an own VLAN could be part of a (individual) scenario.
Samsung mostly talks to specific hosts, LG does as well and searching for firmware triggers different targets. These are easy to find if you know what you‘re doing but this depends on setup and knowledge. It‘s a hare-and-tortoise-race though.
The safest way would be disabling the WiFi or LAN-connection if you don“t need any of the services shipped with the devices but while this may work for TVs, it may make your Vacuum Cleaner useless as the specific app for that device won‘t work anymore.
Holy shit there were so many ads in that article that I just stopped reading. It sucks LG is going down this route. They make really nice displays but now I dont ever want to buy an LG tv if its spying on me to serve me these ‘better’ ads. Fuck advertising. Its turned into a complete monster
You can’t hardly even buy computer monitors without them anymore either. Every one of the higher end Samsung or LG monitors is starting to include “smart” bullshit.
You can probably just cover the camera with tape or smth.
it’s not talking about tracking emotions from looking at the viewer, it’s tracking the emotions in the script of the thing they’re watching, so it knows what they like.
Don’t connect a computer monitor to the internet?..
It gets its internet connection from the PC; both HDMI and DisplayPort allow this.
I’ve owned one of their 850UK 4K LCDs and currently their C4 OLED. I can say unequivocally that their software is ABYSMAL. They make great panels. No doubt. But they really have no business deploying them. The worst I’ve ever used.
I tried the YouTube app exactly once. Since then my TV doesn’t have an internet connection any more.
LOL. I give it wifi to update and then disable it. At least in the new version it remembers your password (which is another ridiculous thing that it didn’t for the longest time). But it stays disconnected.
I would actually lay a premium for literally a panel and nothing more. I’m shocked no one has jailbroken TVs to rip out their telemetry or made hardware bypasses. I would love to install a hardware mod chip that gives me access to the raw firmware features.
It’s just the addition of “AI”. We’ve been doing the same thing for a long time. I used to work for an advertising data company over a decade ago, and they filtered all the ads for one of the big channels’ streaming services in exactly the same way just with regular algorithms rather than AI. It’s what would make ads for men’s razors appear in the middle of a soap opera at 11PM because it knew the user was a man getting home from the pub.
Sounds like you need an ad blocker. I didn’t see any ads on the article except text links that were relevant to the story, which arguably aren’t ads.
Yeah I could really use one. Do you have any recommendations of ad blockers that you like?
uBlock Origin on Firefox-based browsers.
Viewer emotions will anger and frustration at their ads.
Lucky Cream and Goldstar (the L and G in LG) would be ashamed of this.
I rooted my 65" LG TV, and put a pi-hole in front of it.
How did you root it? All methods I’ve seen appear to require you to get it online first, usually to visit a website that does it for you (seems sketchy).
That’s true, but the root method is open source:
github.com/throwaway96/faultmanager-autoroot
That said, if it does cause issues, there’s nothing saying I can’t just block it at my router.
So glad I haven’t got a LGtv, I’d have to buy a sledgehammer as well.
I’d rather just not have a tv
Just don’t connect it to the internet.
Don’t some try to locate public access points nearby? Or is it just an internet myth?
I have an open access point and my neighbour’s TV is on it. I’m not sure if it was deliberatel.
Aren’t some companies thinking of releasing TVs that won’t work unless connected to the internet?
I’m sure they’re thinking about it. Anyone who buys one of those deserves no better.
Sure 4x the price of a good one and you get a bottom tier Walmart panel
This is why I switched to sceptre, they’re good quality, low cost, dumb displays.
Literally TV from 1984
We’re on the cusp of the panopticon.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
The framework for an authoritarian tech surveillance state is in our pockets.
Luckily, not if you actually read the article. The headline is misleading. “Emotional advertising” is a marketing gimmick term by LG for guessing your personality from the shows you watch.
God, I wish we kept our CRT.
My friend still has his. Let me tell you, that thing has a presence.
They’ll have to pay for the cellular connection themselves because I’m not gonna enter my wifi password into the tv lol. Been using a pc hooked up to the screen for ages. Screw “smart tv” features, slow and inconvenient as hell.
The inconvenience creared by their greed. You buy a tv, a PC, internet and a netflix sub but you cant watch full (shite) resolution unless you are in a native app.
Piracy is the way forward.
I have an lg tv that has never seen the internet. It runs on a shield with kodi. With that being said, fuck shield and their ads
Shield has ads built in!? Out of the cart it goes.
Yeah that part blows ass. My solution for now is an appletv. They at least don’t shove ads down your throat and their main business models are not based on collecting user data for advertising or databroker purposes (looking at you, google).
Leveraging people’s property to trash their privacy and serve them ads is really a good way to get me to avoid an entire brand for everything.
I agree, but with TVs (or large displays" we’re at the point where there are no good options. Commercial displays are over engineered for the home and lag in technology Vs home TVs. So they’re not an option. Lg and Samsung are the display technology leaders, but their TVs are full of crap— so no. Monitors don’t go large enough for the living room.
Guess I’m stuck with what I have.
Monitors are still bigger than TVs our parents had in our childhood, no way I’m buying such a surveillance machine just for a bigger screen.
For real: I’m using a 38" ultra wide, and if you had told child me that a 38" monitor would be the smallest display in the house I’d have told you that you’re full of shit.
Damn you for making me feel old by realizing my computer monitor is bigger than my childhood CRT TV.
Really. A bigger screen just gives my dog a bigger target when he flails his toys around.
Here, take it:
)Ta
This Samsung is out of stock, but there are options. You just need to look for signage displays or hospitality tvs.
Get a projector. Cheaper, bigger display area, less obtrusive.
You can get them now days up to 360hz refresh rate. Gaming projectors and projectors in general have came a long way from the faded blurry shit they were 10 to 15 plus years ago.
Huh, I’ve heard that commercial displays are the way to go. What do you mean when you say they are over engineered?
They’re designed and built to run 16/7 or similar. If you have TV on 16 hours a day, a commercial display is worth considering.
No, I’m not joking - I’ve seen folk who turn it on at sunrise, and off at bedtime.
They’re industrial boxes with a screen. Not aesthetically what I want in my living room. The displays are chosen for their longevity, not their picture quality. They’re often actively cooled with fans, so adding a noise level to their operation.
Might wanna look around, there are plenty used as wallboards in offices that high def and whisper quiet
Why would you ever accept this anti consumer bullshit for a slightly better screen? It might not even take a year before the current cutting edge not “the best” anymore with how fast tech cycles. I would absolutely go out of my way to get a device I can deprive of an Internet connection and still use.
.
Let’s be honest: I, as a customer, want to make informed buying decisions. I want to buy food that is tasty and maybe is healthy, but not based on some image that some marketing guys want to push. I want to choose the car which is best (and cheapest) for my purposes, and don’t want to be hearded into buying something else. I want to choose the best insurance for me and not be mislead by some emotional ad showing me a happy family.
And I really do not want to be manipulated in an emotional vulnerable moment so that I buy something. That’s shady as fuck
Are there any TV manufacturers out there that do great screens like the lg ones, but without all the rest of the bullshit?
We are in the market for a huge TV soon, and we were looking at the lg oled Evo. However I don’t really like rewarding bad behaviour, so if there’s any others you can suggest then suggest away…
My lg tv is honestly the best tv i have ever owned. I have 0 complaints, my old house got flooded a few years ago and the tv soaked up a good amount of water and after some running time, it went back to working flawlessly.
But i would never connect that fucker to the internet.
Exactly this. I love my LG, but it doesn’t get internet privileges.
Maybe Panasonic or Philips they use LG OLED panels. I don’t know if they spy or not but worth investigating. Or Bang and Olufsen if you are swimming cash.
For what it’s worth, I subscribe to the “use your TV as a screen, plug another device in to deal with content” method. It’s not connected to the network.
So, whatever my TV wants to do, I’m not using it’s janky apps that might get slow over time or try to advertise to me - my Nvidia shield (which is on the ropes/way out due to some updates it pushed) CEC wakes the TV and plays content without having any particular insight into my emotional state. But I can replace that relatively easily/cheaply until my screen literally stops working, rather than if some new service isn’t supported on it or an old one is deprecated.
I’m being tempted to replace the shield with a NUC or other device due to the updates I mentioned above - but I can probably replace the launcher more easily.
You’re still rewarding bad behaviour. They still put all the crap on and made the sale anyway.
Them missing out on a dozen sales because of that isn’t going to change their ways either.
No, which is why people saying “Buy it and don’t connect it to the internet” isn’t helping. More people need to not buy it and tell other people not to buy it.
They make more money from those continued sales through their app store and commercials. I’ve heard (on reddit news articles posted to r/technology, so not exactly the most reliable source) more than the profit for the initial sale of the tv because they actually subsidize the initial price and may sell it at a loss to get those ads in your livingroom.
To get them to stop they need to lose both the original sale and the additional advertising revenue. Right now their thinking is:
There is no downside for them. Only upside. The equation needs to change for them to stop doing it.
I’ve been planning to do the same thing when our current batch of TVs kick the bucket. But I was going to use an appletv, not a NUC, because all of the streaming services only serve 2k through browsers but their apps can get 4k+. And for the rest I’ll run jellyfin and serve from my home media server. The TV will never see the a valid internet connected network.
Recently my roku tv started showing a blaringly loud auto-play ad on the homepage once every 2-3 weeks. FUCK THAT.
As much as I loathe Samsung for many of their practices, there are options if you look for Commercial signage or hospitality tvs
I’ve heard that Sceptre is a good brand for that
I wonder if they have a “depressed loser” profile and what kind of ads I will get.
Rope
“Gorilla Ladder step stools. Now at your local Home Depot!”
They’ve got aluminum frames and aren’t strong enough to hold me. The TV should’ve known!
Guns and Republicans
I get the feeling these will be dominated by manosphere podcasts and testosterone supplements.
Probably hair loss and dick pills.
Jokes on them, I have facial paralysis!
Brb going to sell life size lego faces to lg owners…
I want one too! Only because I love Lego 😆
I was describing this to my partner and she thought i said “LGBT”. Yes. The LGBTQ community created this technology and weaponized it. Next on Fox News.
Well yeah. Did you forget what LGBT stands for? LG BlueTooth. That’s how they get you
“Gay radio waves!”
they’re putting radio in the waves that are turning the freakin networks gay!
Gaydio waves
thats the old generation, nowadays you want the faster LG BlueTooth Quick+
The ads make you gay
Dude if you could convince MAGA of that…
The gay makes you ads
Idk, the only people I know who pay for YouTube premium are a queer couple.
Great, now they are going to know how aroused I am when watching “Golden Girls” reruns.
Who doesnt get a raging rock hard at the sight of Bea Arthur.
LG actually has that data now
If it gets me Bea Arthurs nudes then its a sacrifice i’m willing to make.
NSFW but here you go
spoiler
christies.com/…/lot-john-currin-bea-arthur-naked-…
i knew it what it was before i even clicked the spoiler, lol.
So what im hearing is never buy an LG TV. Got it.
I have an LG TV. Absolutely love it.
However, it’s not connected to the internet so it doesn’t do any of this shit. It’s just a really nice dumb TV that has the potential to spy on me if I ever gave it a chance to be smart, and I still get to take advantage of the various picture improvements that come from having the processing power of a smart TV.
Just need something else to do streaming if that’s what you want. Like an Apple TV, nVidia Shield, Roku, or game console. Some of those will also advertise to you, but I’ve had good experience with my Apple TV.
I wouldnt be surprised if it randomly connects to unsecured/public wifi networks to still send the spy data if it can find any in its area.
Maybe. If they’re following the rules they need you to agree to their privacy policies, and to do that you have to connect to the internet. I know from the time I did have it connected (before they rolled all this shit out) that they would let you use the TV without those policies accepted. They would just bother you about it constantly. Since I factory reset and didn’t let it connect, it hasn’t asked.
But that’s assuming they follow the rules. I’m not knowledgeable enough to find out if they’re doing this or not.
IF YOU DIDN’T PHONE HOME I WOULDN’T NEED A PRIVACY POLICY
<img alt="" src="https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/3a180fb2-e842-4889-ba6b-a07d2764e523.jpeg">
Always asume the worst with any (tech) product and any major company, and a lot of times you will be proven right later.
With technology and politics, always assume the worst.
It does have Bluetooth on and you can’t turn it off . But the wifi setting can be turned off
Continue to never buy LG products again?
Gotcha. The advertising works, i guess…maybe not how they wanted to, though lol
Oh, they do have products without all that shit. They offer large screen monitors that are basically their TVs without the “smart” part.
i wager it has all the TV stuff gutted out, including the tuner… Which admittedly is only a problem if you use OTA and not cable.
They have a bunch of display ports and HDMIs. You can buy the tuner you need (SAT, OTA, cable, other streamer), or use a PC&Linux and watch YT add-free.
Why would a TV need to know about addition?
Because of f-ed up autocorrect, that’s why.
My next TV will be either a business/signage monitor or a computer monitor.
At least something without any connection outside. No network, no anything.
At most something like a Chromecast or similar.
“I dont want it to have anything, except google, the biggest invader of privacy there is” :p
You can still set up your own HTPC in your living room and configure it yourself.
And there are more solutions like from Apple (but they absolutely fucking track you as well) or other streaming box/stick solutions I am not aware of.
Unsure how good an Nvidia Shield is in regards to privacy. Your best bet for privacy is probably to just build your own solution on Linux.
Nvidia is huge on producing AI and is certainly data-hungry. Without actually knowing, I would bet it’s about as bad as anything else. Since all your data is passing directly through their servers it’s trivial for them to do whatever they want with it.
For now, most of the ad bullshit can be turned off. Though it turned back on after the latest software update and forced me to spend another 10 minutes digging through the horrendous settings menu.
umm guys this isn’t a news article, it’s a Black Mirror episode
Ahw fuck, wasn’t LG like the last reasonable tv brand out there?
What should invuy if i want a new good 4K TV?
Sceptre TV
www.sceptre.com
I’ve seen this linked before, and unfortunately the specs are very mediocre on their TVs. I don’t know how they can claim a TV is HDR when it has a meh contrast ratio, no dimming zones, and can’t even do 100% of the sRGB color space.
I don’t know how much of the price of other TVs are subsidized by ads, but these Sceptre TVs are pretty bad value when looking at panel specs alone.
A book.
Panasonic, or some of the European brands are good. Or you buy the largest 4K computer monitor that can afford.
I have a TCL Roku TV and holy shit it was engineered to deliver ads. If it is not connected to the network, the power LED blinks and is very annoying. The power LED is right next to the IR receiver and can’t just be taped over. Assigning a manual IP and DNS is blocked so traffic can’t be routed through a pihole. I use the Jellyfin app on the TV so it needs local network access. At this point the damn thing needs to have traffic managed at a network level firewall. I don’t have the hardware for the firewall at the moment but now that Roku has pop up ads for simply moving around the app menu (yes really), I may need to get on that.
Huh? I have 3 Roku Ultras, a Roku Stick, and a Roku TV and none of them do that. Have you gone into the Roku settings menu recently and checked your advertising settings?
Nah, they’re doing A/B testing currently for their next several waves of ads. I think (but don’t quote me on this) I read that in the new EULA.
That sucks. If I can’t control the ads with settings, dns fuckery, or firewalling then I guess I’ll leave their ecosystem.
Indeed. I’m saving up for a dumb tv with an HTPC, and hopefully will get it deployed before that nonsense comes my way.
If you set up your pihole as the DHCP it works. It’s weird that you can’t change the static IP…
Open up the tv, de soldier the led.
if your router is able to you can set up ACLs to allow the TV access to your network but not the internet.
I see a lot of concern in this thread that future TVs would just peer-to-peer or cellular connect to do their dastardly functions. Wouldn’t this be preventable by putting a fine wire mesh around the box on the rear of the panel? Sure, the signal could still go out through the panel, but that’s bound to incur a lot of interference from the panel itself, right?
The simplest solution is just don’t buy these TVs
That’s increasingly difficult to do.
Or expensive.
At this point, I’m wondering if I should set up a shell company of some kind, just to buy commercial digital signage TVs. They require registering with a company just to be allowed to buy them.
Chances are they’ll have some antenna line going to the edge of the TV. The box on the back of the TV already has a bunch of shielding over it inside. If you were to go to the trouble of opening the TV to find it, you may as well disconnect the antenna and ground it so there’s no chance of a signal.
Hopefully the TVs don’t won’t require that connection to operate.
I have a Kurig coffee maker (too little respect to spellcheck their name). It puts out a BLE beacon that I can receve a mile away. Its hard to know what that bugger is doing. G-force was right!
it’s looking for other keurigs to mate with, like a barnacle
I’ll never connect a TV to the internet again.
This is actually about analysing the shows you watch, so it’s invasive, but not insidious in the way, say, the screenshots of hdmi content is.
That’s okay, it will just autoconnect to any other LG device in bluetooth range, which has a working internet connection. Like, the neighbour’s TV on the other side of your wall.
Sheesh…
This is why you block the camera with a little diorama that shows a single white male viewer…frantically masturbating.
Good idea, though, this isn’t actually about cameras watching you as the title looks like.
Yep, this is just a standard market segmentation.
Close. This is why I mastubate frantically infront of the cameras. It satifies they kink for surveilance and my kink in exhibitionism.
It’s really an ecosystem, if you think about it
Wait, TVs have cameras now? That sounds super creepy
And an array of microphones. But it’s not like they have a clear view of their surroundings. Wait
NOPE
I wish there was a TV with absolutely no built in smart features and a slot in the back for a compute module (like a RP CM5).
Or just a few Display Ports and HDMI
Someone once said on here that NEC made TVs like that but I couldn’t find anything
Not sure where to find them, but I did see this video awhile ago about them
youtu.be/q9a3dCd1SQI
They call them projectors. They’re just way too expensive to be reasonable replacements for the average user.
Oh no, “smart projectors” are definitely a thing.
I got an Optoma projector for the bedroom that I love. It’s about $1000 USD. Is that on the high end? I guess. I’d call it medium. But I know many people that spend that much and more on their TV. Works pretty well even in day/with the light on, obviously far better with the room darkened, and even has a gaming optimised mode.
www.projectorcentral.com/Optoma-GT1080HDR.htm
HOW EXCITING…
said no one ever.
I still use a dumb TV, and I will for as long as possible. I’ll never buy a new TV ever again. only used from Facebook. most stuff I only watch on my computer anyways.
I make my smart TVs dumb. No internet connectivity.
That is my solution as well for now. I bet TVs will start to come with cellular chips soon though.
Does anyone make a living room sized Faraday cage?
If you want a serious mind fuck read “stand On Zanzibar” a science fiction novel from 1969.
One of the things that the writer predicted was Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere, a gimmick where your TV would insert your family into advertisements.
The novel is full of other, equally accurate predictions…
You know back in the day they were like easily half a dozen custom Android ROMs for any given phone. I’m pretty sure that there’s still a diversity of ROMs available.
Why is this not the case with televisions?
Because there’s no easy way to install it. TVs don’t usually have a data transfer usb-c port.
TVs generally don’t come with unlocked bootloaders. That shit is locked down big time.
Simple solution I use: Fuck television sets, get a computer monitor and basic speakers instead. A display should do only one thing and do it well.
That would certainly be ideal, although there’s great difficulty in finding 50"+ monitors, and they cost a huge amount more
I guess that would beg the question, how much is it worth to you pay extra to not have additional spyware in your home? Or as others have said in this thread, there is at least one brand of television that still sells dumb tvs.
Look at commercial sets
<img alt="" src="https://sopuli.xyz/pictrs/image/43f5be18-02b6-4900-b976-6fcfe83116e1.gif">
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/90baa1b3-3691-4ce9-8b45-cc4ba8140a12.jpeg">
Never connect your tv to WiFi
Don’t buy connected anything
Just buy things that do the thing you want.
No consumer ever asked for a smart tv
If it makes a sound you don’t recognise, use the gun.
The printer lol
For the lower tech people, smart TVs are just OkAy. They allow an end user to use Netflix etc. It’s the fucking cameras mics and sensors illls in my Tv that’s fucked up
Smart TVs are tools of the demiurge
Nope.
Don’t like that.
This tech has been in TVs easily for the past ten years.
Did you know this stuff is in most modern cars, too? Fuck. EVERYTHING listens to you now.
I hate to use this phrase, but, back in my day, we used to call this SPYWARE and it was treated as a virus - it was highly unacceptable by people.
This is still your day
No.
I just use a pi-hole to block my LG TV from connecting to any services I have not approved. So it can connect to YouTube but not lg.trackingservices.brainscanner.com. Never seen an ad on my TV.
I just don’t connect the snoopy bastard to my network 😂
but why
Sad people buy more to try to make themselves happy. Retail therapy.
People who serve ads have a vested interest in knowing when you’re unhappy and what makes you unhappy, so they can capitalise on it.
Verification can
I got a Samsung TV a couple of years ago. I use it with a Roku. It’s not on my network. I’ll keep it until it stops working because I think eventually TVs will refuse to work without an Internet connection.
At that point I’ll just buy a monitor.