“I do fear that the pressure to make better TVs will be lost…”…
I am not buying a tv that shows me ads. Ever.
You can buy commercial televisions that have only functional software, long uptime ratings, and an absurd amount of inputs. They’re designed to be advertisement displays so they can have some lag, and some have low color accuracy, but they’re barebones workhorses.
yes. this title is a laundry list of why im out of buying a new tv for the foreseeable future.
Modern TV plus your streaming device. I only get home menu ads from roku. I don’t like them, but at least the apps aren’t full of ads aside from putting “continue watching” on the fifth or sixth row.
I keep seeing people say, “don’t connect your TV to the internet. Of course, this is good advice, and I follow it, but y’all know that pretty soon the TV won’t work unless it’s connected, right? I mean, that has to be coming.
Hopefully, the market will decide during transition. Keurig tried to use barcoded pods to ensure customers would exclusively purchase first-party coffee. Those coffee makers stopped selling and Nespresso had a market boom. Keurig returned to producing the non-barcoded machines a year later.
My TCL did this like 4 years ago. I went to sell it so I updated it, factory reset it… and it literally wouldn’t get past the setup until it had connectivity. I didn’t fight with it though. I just powered it off and handed it too a buyer who probably didn’t think twice about it.
It already has
If that happens you don’t really own the TV.
Captive dns, pihole and proper vlans and firewalls.
Any recommendations for the captive dns? Can I run it on the same pi as pihole?
My router blocks any port 53 traffic out that isn’t using the pihole then forwards it to the pihole. That way hard coded shit like IoT devices etc are all forced to use the pihole.
Good idea. Thanks for the tip.
In no place in the world having internet is mandatory. That reasoning, although credible considering the world we are experiencing, makes no sense.
I still find plenty of non-smart TVs in the market. Not name brand and all below the 40 inch mark but fine enough for watching a show.
What else do we need?
Never ever connect a TV directly to the Internet.
Tell the sales staff that you do not have Internet at home.
If the device does not function without an Internet connection, return it to the store as “not fit for purpose”.
If you want to access online services on your TV, always use a separate STB like an AppleTV or FireStick.
Thing is… Fire sticks are loaded with ads too (at least in stock configuration, different story once you tweak or so-called “jailbreak”)
As for now I just connect my Linux HTPC I grabbed for $30
Thanks. Honestly, we have a house full of Apple TVs and (except for the game consoles) I was struggling to find anything that was comparable that preserves (or claims to preserve) privacy.
I know a lot of people don’t trust Apple, and the latest tvOS is not as good as older versions.
So, No. then.
It looks like the only option these days is to connect your HTPC (doesn’t have to be super fancy, a Raspberry Pi based solution works just fine) and never connect the TV to the internet (and keep PiHole running on your local network just in case).
Absolutely. Tell your friends and family members too: Don’t connect your TV to the internet. They are slow, buggy, insecure, and a privacy nightmare.
HTPCs are ideal, but unfortunately they are can be a little cumbersome for people who just want to maximize convenience.
Streaming sticks are equally bad on privacy, but they generally perform better (than TVs), are supported longer, and most importantly: they can be easily swapped out if they stop meeting your needs.
That being said, what kind of HTPC distros do y’all recommend? I’ve been using an NVIDIA Shield Pro for a while and I’ll probably go Linux HTPC when this thing finally dies.
Saw plasma-bigscreen in another thread for htpc’ don’t know how good it is.
Looks promising, but it hasn’t been released yet. I hope they make arm64 builds.
I use a spin of Debian for ARM called DietPi. It’s not HTPC focused, but it makes it easy to install and manage all sorts of applications (including HTPC solutions).
Has a solid community as well and they’ve been around for a long time (a decade or so).
Are there good remote options for these yet? Imo this is a solution that will never see wide adoption until it’s as convenient as smart tvs or sticks
If you use Kodi for HTPC you can use the Kodi app. We use it on our living room tablet, but you can install it on a smartphone too.
You should be able to set up a universal remote as well, but you’ll need to do some research on how best to implement it.
Don’t forget no software updates after 3 years.
Don’t use your TV’s interface for anything other than changing inputs. Television software is well-known for privacy infringement.
Yes. Looking for business displays (digital signage displays) now, not consumer tvs. Afaik, these come bare bones without all the bloatware, except maybe a video player for an external or network source.
I got flamed for being surprised that anyone would actually use their TV for anything other than a display for their console or computer.
Buy PC monitors instead. Problem solved.
They are starting to add junk to monitors too.
Ads? Man, I need to replace my OLED because of screen burn-in, but I’m definitely not going to pay money to see ads. Are there any TVs left that don’t push ads directly to the TV?
Depends where those ads are coming from. I don’t ever connect my LG OLED to the internet and my roku gets filtered by a pihole. The only ads I see are from the over-the-air programming from my antenna.
