"each new connected TV platform user generates around $5 per quarter in data and advertising revenue."
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.
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, the social credit score credit rating company? Fuuuuuck
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.
That deserves to be its own headline. Something like "consumer electronics companies now conspiring with credit rating companies to surveil the public even more invasively."
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.
That's just 1 year's sales. If the TV lasts 5 years it's raking in 5 times the data. 190M x 5 = 950M/year, and 5 seems conservative.
I've heard somewhere else that it's a 50/50 split between the TV sales and ad revenue
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.
Wow had no idea TVs ran on Linux. They should pull the license.
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.
That is beyond the capabilities of normies.
My wife would agree with this:
And I've got Plex running on an always on NAS.
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.
Thanks. Really helps to know where to start looking when I get time over the weekend.
You may also want to look into Usenet instead of torrents when you're researching. Sonarr/Radarr/Readarr etc all work (in my opinion) better with Usenet.
You'll need to pay some, but the reliability is amazing, which is extremely helpful for the partner acceptance factor. I pay for two providers (newsdemon is primary and eweka is a backup) and two indexers (drunkenslug and nzbfinder), and everything has been rock solid reliable for years. Download speeds are also MUCH faster than torrents.
Combine this setup with overseerr (or jellyseerr) so your partner can find their own things to download and you might be able to get them back on board.
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.
That was definitely my misconception
I'm glad to clear it up! It's a super powerful tool, and I still occasionally skip the automation and just use it for manual searches since it reduces that process to a single click to search all configured torrent sites and a single click to download and have the rest automatically handled.
Before when I was visiting friends and wanted to quickly add something to plex, I used to need remote access to my torrent client and separate remote access to my NAS filesystem to move/rename files when downloads finish which was a really manual process. Now all I need is the reverse-proxied sonarr/radarr UI since it handles moving/copying/renaming on download completion - and while the UI isn't mobile-first, it's very usable and feels less error-prone than moving/renaming files remotely using a file explorer app.
Ive been pretty happy so far with roku and blocking stuff with pihole, but every day I am more and more tempted to build a media pc...
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.
That makes perfect sense and explains why you can't fix it just by bypassing blocking temporarily and reinstalling the app.
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.
It seems we have similar backend setups 🏴☠️
I'll need to dig into an android solution a bit - smarttube seems pretty nice but has no Linux version unfortunately.
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.
Looks like it was released in 2022, and I haven't been following the development but the github looks like it has changes as recent as two weeks ago. I had just assumed that the lack of apps is primarily the big streaming content providers not opting to allow apps on an OS without a shitload of telemetry because it's not in their interest.
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.
With HDMI-CEC you can achieve what your wife wants. I have one remote to turn on my Nvidia Shield (with Plex, Jellyfin, Netflix, etc), and that same remote also controls all TV functions.
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
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.
Shut up and drink your verification can
Has it got electrolytes?
Best we can do is 5 minutes worth of additional in-game currency
*Start menu in windows 11
... both Microsoft products ... weird.
Mine is a monitor and nothing more.
Literally came here to say that. HDMI is king!
DisplayPort is superior
Definitely, but unfortunately TV's don't usually have DP.
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.
Then right back to the store it goes and labelled as defective so it gets tossed resulting in losses for all companies involved.
Of course, but that's a lot more effort than it should be.
Even then, you're still having to wait for its CPU to fuck around with the image and sound before it actually outputs it,
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
Custom OS isn’t going to address the anaemic hardware, nor do I think relying on open-source custom ROMs for a niche item is the best way to ensure any hardware-level vulnerabilities are covered.
If you already have an Internet-connected device hooked up to your TV (eg. PlayStation); there is no need to connect another, especially when it provides an overall worse experience.
Shit, a basic HTPC is infinitely better - using a Linux-based distribution (which will have a lot more support vs. a niche TV ROM), and it’ll be supported well beyond what the hardware could handle.
Custom OS isn’t going to address the anaemic hardware, nor do I think relying on open-source custom ROMs for a niche item is the best way to ensure any hardware-level vulnerabilities are covered.
Not only would it give "anemic" hardware new life, I can point at how its already been done at another in home device. Routers. DDWRT/OpenWRT/Tomato do exactly that for old, otherwise useless routers.
Literally every single argument you make can make against it has been proven wrong, and has in other devices, be addressed with a custom OS/Firmware that is designed for purpose without all the bloat and other BS.
You can adamantly say "Nuh uh!" all you want, but it doesnt change the facts.
You can buy PS5s for every TV in your house if you want to, Not everyone has that money, luxury, or stubborn desire.
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.
They can't show you ads if you never connect them to the internet
I happen to work for a commercial touch screen and android OEM. In my position, I needed to test a 50” 4K IDS display, and since i work from home it had to be shipped to me and we don’t exactly have a “return” option. It’s now in my bedroom with an Apple TV 4K on it.
You’re right. This is likely the only way to get a “dumb” display and tbh it’s not even the “best” display tech because it’s for commercial use, designed to run for longer hours with higher reliability at the cost of the newer fancier bells and whistles. But i didn’t pay for it and it’d pretty decent. I’m not complaining. And you’re also right that no one will actually sell you one of these. You have to buy it through a distributor at volume. Getting one outside of my weird circumstances as a one-off is basically not possible at all.
Which is exactly where you were before smart TVs.
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.
Don't give your TV the wifi password, kids. No, you don't need to 'finish setting up' your TV; it works just fine as a dumb display.
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).
A way more than enough Mini PC for streaming content costs about $140 nowadays.
It's a direction I went into recently and was pleasently surprised how cheap it all is.
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.
netflix limits you to incredibly low bitrate if youre using their webpage
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.
No. Even on a 4k 55" tv, I cant manage to get more.
Dumb monitor > smart TV.
Point is, it’s near impossible to find a dumb tv with good specs. Like LG is producing no-smart version of LG C3 (best display ever so far), but it’s only sold to businesses.
My phone is a billboard. My TV is a billboard. My PC is sometimes a billboard.
Like, what hasn't advertisement infected?
I think it's about time we just harass marketers back, but not with advertisements, but with other means. Enough so they get the message.
Ironically the billboards in my town seem to be disappearing due to lack of use.
The billboards are the only thing that aren't billboards.
“We estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual’s visual field before inducing seizures.” ~Nolan Sorrento
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if your screens are showing you ads then they aren't your screens..
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.
Imo, the larger problem seems to be the majority of users appear to be fine with ads and data collection a lax and ineffective regulation.
"Voting with your wallets" is a false premise dreamed up by corporate to avoid govt regulation and has not and will never be a real thing that works in this world of monopoly and lack of option.
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.
I notice OP said
This world of monopoly
And you agreed with him, but I'd like to point out you're talking about one country
Monopolies are really really bad for consumers and are strictly regulated in modern countries
I think the best motive now is to stop paying altogether.
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.
Oh man, I'd hate to be the dude twiddling his thumbs on Ad 2 of 8 on Twitch.
"Dum de dum dum, wonder what the streamer is currently up to. Oh well, another 45 seconds to go. Dum de dum dum"
Your average user would also never be on lemmy to see this, at least for now.
They're not "fine with ads and data collection" so much as they don't care and can't be bothered to look for a better way.
It's just apathy and a bit of lazy inertia.
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.
No, it implies that they don't understand that there is an option.
and i bet if most users would not put up with that, they would remove hdmi ports.
First thing I thought of, Idiocracy, love that movie.
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.
Unfortunately things wear out and you have to buy new ones.
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. LG OLED disconnected from all web connections - literally has its MAC address blacklisted from my router, changed the launcher from stock Google for my NVIDIA Shield to a non ad-riddled launcher called WOLF, side-loaded SmartTube for ad-free YT, and Plex = non-dystopian media experience.
My next experiment will be to install a glue-tun bound Invidious instance via docker on my NAS, and then point Yattee on my iPhone to it for a mobile version of YT that’s not filled with non-stop ads… now if I can just figure out how to launch it correctly… 😓
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
Look at some n95 NUCs on Amazon, or any mini pc really. Often less than 200$ for a full windows PC that can stream anything you throw at it.
You can get decently capable machines for under $100 if you go used
This is the only way for me.
No Amazon or Google or Nvidia stuff.
Just an old PC, a cheap wireless keyboard with a touchpad and you are good to go.
Overestimate
Your TV may still search for open network and send telemetry back home this way. Connect it somewhere and drop all packets here too if you want to fix this.
Didn't think about that, thanks.
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/
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.
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.
Can you install separate launchers on webOS? I installed a launcher on my Android TV and haven't seen an ad since, even with smart features.
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.
Or hear me out... Just don't give it an internet connection.
Some TVs listen for open networks and use those, so if there is one near you your TV could sneak out either way.
open the back of the TV, locate the arial on the board and scratch away the traces leading to it.
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?
Not available in all markets
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.
3000 dollars
Guess I’ll continue to use my old computer and an hdmi connection to a physically Wi-Fi disabled smart tv. I understand why it costs what it does but fuck.
Try a Spectre t.v. they're made for digital signage. I got one and hooked it up to a media server.
Seems promising, but also seems to be an US thing. I should've mentioned I'm in the EU.
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!
It's also 60", which is absurdly large to me lol. Glad I could help, though.
It was maybe 7 years ago now, but I bought a dumb Sceptre TV and it still works great. Was only $300 at the time.
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.
I'm still a bit concerned about OLED - my main gripes being 1) the potential for burn in and 2) the somewhat limited maximum brightness. Still, thanks for the suggestion.
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.
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.
My attitude is if I'm paying, I'm not watching a single ad.
If it's free you can send me ads.
Jokes on them, my TV can't connect to the internet anymore because of the the bloat added by Roku in automatic updates.
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.
Ummm why even connect it at all...let the dumb thing stay offline
so your TV doesn't bother you.
Many TVs have a constant "no wifi connection" visual error if it's not connected.
It also bugs me to turn on voice recognition by connecting
LET US LISTEN TO YOU IT WILL BE FINE.
IGNORE ME!
I haven't bought a TV in several years, but is this something that is in general TVs? I ask because I plan on getting one soon and would very much like to avoid it having a mic
I can’t speak for all TVs of course, but from what I have seen, yes.
Take the stupid thing back.
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)
Honestly even a chromecast with Google tv and something like Stremio launched on boot would give you similar results for relatively cheap. No techiness needed, just some fiddling with settings.
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.
I've heard the nvidia shield is/was the gold standard for this purpose
it's not, they started the enshitification process years ago, I threw mine away. In the fucking garbage if you can believe it because it started showing me ads.
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.
Huuuuuge price difference though.
Though I guess the chromecast is being killed off so the difference doesn’t matter much anymore.
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.
Any remote recommendations? I've been thinking about doing something similar.
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).
Saving this for later, And yeah, while I think having a keyboard on the remote would probably be useful. I plan on using a wireless keyboard and mouse as well because my plan involves using a more powerful computer so it can double as a gaming machine.
As opposed to the old days when it was an analog billboard
There were no ads in the UI of the TV though.
The only thing close to a UI was TV Guide, which most certainly had ads.
(I kid, but only a little.)
Was this something called ceefax or teletext? I vaguely remember hearing of someone using it to book a holiday when I was growing up
My TV doesn't get connected to the internet.
If I connect it then eventually it will update to a version of the OS that is slow, buggy and all the apps will be out of support regardless.
If I airgap the TV and use a computer it is good until too many pixels burn out or someone yeets something into it.
Problem is getting an 55+" Screen with an OLED panel and support for HDR in a non-smart package
It's not smart if you don't connect it to the internet
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
I haven seen my LG OLED’s smart OS for years.
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
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
Ah that's a terrible sign of where things are going
That's some fucked up shit
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.
It's a visio.
Literally the cheapest 32inch TV that best buy had.
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.
I don't really get the whole projectors thing when you easily just the do same thing for a TV that's offline 😆
Sure, that's another option, but I would have bought a projector anyway, and the fact that they haven't been hit by enshittification is a nice bonus on top
Problem with projectors is they don't work very well in bright spaces
That's true
Pi-hole, nvidia shield, custom launcher = less ads for the whole family
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.
Oh cool!
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!
My tv hasn't seen an ad since i plugged it in.
You sure you pay the electric bill?
Nah, same here. I never connected it online. I just use it as a display
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.
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...
GO AWAY!! BAITIN'!
I unironically wanna watch "ouch! my balls", that looks like quality programming i could get behind
And it's driving up the price of commercial flatscreens.
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
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?
I'd probably opt for an external streaming box and simply use the TV as a monitor instead of the whole system (as it was originally)
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
I have mine behind a Pihole too. It blocked all the ads at first but Roku seems to actively varying the ad servers and they've started showing up again. I haven't had a chance to see if I can block them again.
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.
Even when you are paying for the product you are still the product.
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
I only connect to internet if my tv needs an update. Generally hardware inside TVs are super slow too.
Do I have Nvidia shield connected that been debloated with a simple launcher, which is connected to my router that's running a VPN + DNS filter.
Smart tub and stremio. I'm good.
Amen. I recently switched over and I haven't been happier. I even got my parents onboard with it instead of satellite TV and streaming services.
do we have ads in computer monitors yet? monitors often have mediocre speakers so people that weren't going to bring their own sound system have that option
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
Don't give them ideas man!
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
Vote with your dollars. Unplug. Fuck them
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.
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.
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.
This should add to their profits.
Experian, the
social credit scorecredit rating company? FuuuuuckExperian 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.
That deserves to be its own headline. Something like "consumer electronics companies now conspiring with credit rating companies to surveil the public even more invasively."
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.
That's just 1 year's sales. If the TV lasts 5 years it's raking in 5 times the data. 190M x 5 = 950M/year, and 5 seems conservative.
Good point.
I've heard somewhere else that it's a 50/50 split between the TV sales and ad revenue
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.
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!
Wow had no idea TVs ran on Linux. They should pull the license.
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.
That is beyond the capabilities of normies.
My wife would agree with this:
And I've got Plex running on an always on NAS.
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.
Thanks. Really helps to know where to start looking when I get time over the weekend.
You may also want to look into Usenet instead of torrents when you're researching. Sonarr/Radarr/Readarr etc all work (in my opinion) better with Usenet.
You'll need to pay some, but the reliability is amazing, which is extremely helpful for the partner acceptance factor. I pay for two providers (newsdemon is primary and eweka is a backup) and two indexers (drunkenslug and nzbfinder), and everything has been rock solid reliable for years. Download speeds are also MUCH faster than torrents.
Combine this setup with overseerr (or jellyseerr) so your partner can find their own things to download and you might be able to get them back on board.
Plus, no flaresolverr required!
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.
That was definitely my misconception
I'm glad to clear it up! It's a super powerful tool, and I still occasionally skip the automation and just use it for manual searches since it reduces that process to a single click to search all configured torrent sites and a single click to download and have the rest automatically handled.
Before when I was visiting friends and wanted to quickly add something to plex, I used to need remote access to my torrent client and separate remote access to my NAS filesystem to move/rename files when downloads finish which was a really manual process. Now all I need is the reverse-proxied sonarr/radarr UI since it handles moving/copying/renaming on download completion - and while the UI isn't mobile-first, it's very usable and feels less error-prone than moving/renaming files remotely using a file explorer app.
This is the way
Ive been pretty happy so far with roku and blocking stuff with pihole, but every day I am more and more tempted to build a media pc...
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.
That makes perfect sense and explains why you can't fix it just by bypassing blocking temporarily and reinstalling the app.
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.
It seems we have similar backend setups 🏴☠️
I'll need to dig into an android solution a bit - smarttube seems pretty nice but has no Linux version unfortunately.
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.
Looks like it was released in 2022, and I haven't been following the development but the github looks like it has changes as recent as two weeks ago. I had just assumed that the lack of apps is primarily the big streaming content providers not opting to allow apps on an OS without a shitload of telemetry because it's not in their interest.
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.
With HDMI-CEC you can achieve what your wife wants. I have one remote to turn on my Nvidia Shield (with Plex, Jellyfin, Netflix, etc), and that same remote also controls all TV functions.
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.
Shut up and drink your verification can
Has it got electrolytes?
Best we can do is 5 minutes worth of additional in-game currency
*Start menu in windows 11
... both Microsoft products ... weird.
Mine is a monitor and nothing more.
Literally came here to say that. HDMI is king!
DisplayPort is superior
Definitely, but unfortunately TV's don't usually have DP.
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.
Then right back to the store it goes and labelled as defective so it gets tossed resulting in losses for all companies involved.
Of course, but that's a lot more effort than it should be.
Even then, you're still having to wait for its CPU to fuck around with the image and sound before it actually outputs it,
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!”
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
Custom OS isn’t going to address the anaemic hardware, nor do I think relying on open-source custom ROMs for a niche item is the best way to ensure any hardware-level vulnerabilities are covered.
If you already have an Internet-connected device hooked up to your TV (eg. PlayStation); there is no need to connect another, especially when it provides an overall worse experience.
Shit, a basic HTPC is infinitely better - using a Linux-based distribution (which will have a lot more support vs. a niche TV ROM), and it’ll be supported well beyond what the hardware could handle.
Not only would it give "anemic" hardware new life, I can point at how its already been done at another in home device. Routers. DDWRT/OpenWRT/Tomato do exactly that for old, otherwise useless routers.
Literally every single argument you make can make against it has been proven wrong, and has in other devices, be addressed with a custom OS/Firmware that is designed for purpose without all the bloat and other BS.
You can adamantly say "Nuh uh!" all you want, but it doesnt change the facts.
You can buy PS5s for every TV in your house if you want to, Not everyone has that money, luxury, or stubborn desire.
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.
They can't show you ads if you never connect them to the internet
I happen to work for a commercial touch screen and android OEM. In my position, I needed to test a 50” 4K IDS display, and since i work from home it had to be shipped to me and we don’t exactly have a “return” option. It’s now in my bedroom with an Apple TV 4K on it.
You’re right. This is likely the only way to get a “dumb” display and tbh it’s not even the “best” display tech because it’s for commercial use, designed to run for longer hours with higher reliability at the cost of the newer fancier bells and whistles. But i didn’t pay for it and it’d pretty decent. I’m not complaining. And you’re also right that no one will actually sell you one of these. You have to buy it through a distributor at volume. Getting one outside of my weird circumstances as a one-off is basically not possible at all.
Which is exactly where you were before smart TVs.
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.
Don't give your TV the wifi password, kids. No, you don't need to 'finish setting up' your TV; it works just fine as a dumb display.
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).
A way more than enough Mini PC for streaming content costs about $140 nowadays.
It's a direction I went into recently and was pleasently surprised how cheap it all is.
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.
netflix limits you to incredibly low bitrate if youre using their webpage
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.
No. Even on a 4k 55" tv, I cant manage to get more.
Dumb monitor > smart TV.
Point is, it’s near impossible to find a dumb tv with good specs. Like LG is producing no-smart version of LG C3 (best display ever so far), but it’s only sold to businesses.
My phone is a billboard. My TV is a billboard. My PC is sometimes a billboard.
Like, what hasn't advertisement infected?
I think it's about time we just harass marketers back, but not with advertisements, but with other means. Enough so they get the message.
Ironically the billboards in my town seem to be disappearing due to lack of use.
The billboards are the only thing that aren't billboards.
“We estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual’s visual field before inducing seizures.” ~Nolan Sorrento
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if your screens are showing you ads then they aren't your screens..
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.
Imo, the larger problem seems to be
the majority of users appear to be fine with ads and data collectiona lax and ineffective regulation."Voting with your wallets" is a false premise dreamed up by corporate to avoid govt regulation and has not and will never be a real thing that works in this world of monopoly and lack of option.
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.
I notice OP said
And you agreed with him, but I'd like to point out you're talking about one country
Monopolies are really really bad for consumers and are strictly regulated in modern countries
I think the best motive now is to stop paying altogether.
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 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.
Oh man, I'd hate to be the dude twiddling his thumbs on Ad 2 of 8 on Twitch.
"Dum de dum dum, wonder what the streamer is currently up to. Oh well, another 45 seconds to go. Dum de dum dum"
Your average user would also never be on lemmy to see this, at least for now.
They're not "fine with ads and data collection" so much as they don't care and can't be bothered to look for a better way.
It's just apathy and a bit of lazy inertia.
This implies they are fine with it by tacit agreement.
No, it implies that they don't understand that there is an option.
and i bet if most users would not put up with that, they would remove hdmi ports.
First thing I thought of, Idiocracy, love that movie.
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.
Unfortunately things wear out and you have to buy new ones.
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. LG OLED disconnected from all web connections - literally has its MAC address blacklisted from my router, changed the launcher from stock Google for my NVIDIA Shield to a non ad-riddled launcher called WOLF, side-loaded SmartTube for ad-free YT, and Plex = non-dystopian media experience.
My next experiment will be to install a glue-tun bound Invidious instance via docker on my NAS, and then point Yattee on my iPhone to it for a mobile version of YT that’s not filled with non-stop ads… now if I can just figure out how to launch it correctly… 😓
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
Look at some n95 NUCs on Amazon, or any mini pc really. Often less than 200$ for a full windows PC that can stream anything you throw at it.
You can get decently capable machines for under $100 if you go used
This is the only way for me.
No Amazon or Google or Nvidia stuff. Just an old PC, a cheap wireless keyboard with a touchpad and you are good to go.
Overestimate
Your TV may still search for open network and send telemetry back home this way. Connect it somewhere and drop all packets here too if you want to fix this.
Didn't think about that, thanks.
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.
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.
Every time they do an update, things get worse. But my last TV had some dying pixels, so there's no going back.
Can you install separate launchers on webOS? I installed a launcher on my Android TV and haven't seen an ad since, even with smart features.
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.
Or hear me out... Just don't give it an internet connection.
Some TVs listen for open networks and use those, so if there is one near you your TV could sneak out either way.
open the back of the TV, locate the arial on the board and scratch away the traces leading to it.
Cheaper TV's sometimes won't function without one.
So buy one that's a little more expensive and will. It's still going to be tons cheaper that a commercial display and offer better performance
This is what I did. Works fine for my needs. My older relatives hate it but they rarely come over.
Hospitality TV
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.
You could also try this, apparently.
Oh, that's clever! Definitely bookmarking that for future reference.
Anyone have a non-Spez link?
Not available in all markets
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.
Guess I’ll continue to use my old computer and an hdmi connection to a physically Wi-Fi disabled smart tv. I understand why it costs what it does but fuck.
Try a Spectre t.v. they're made for digital signage. I got one and hooked it up to a media server.
Seems promising, but also seems to be an US thing. I should've mentioned I'm in the EU.
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!
It's also 60", which is absurdly large to me lol. Glad I could help, though.
It was maybe 7 years ago now, but I bought a dumb Sceptre TV and it still works great. Was only $300 at the time.
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.
I'm still a bit concerned about OLED - my main gripes being 1) the potential for burn in and 2) the somewhat limited maximum brightness. Still, thanks for the suggestion.
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.
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.
My attitude is if I'm paying, I'm not watching a single ad.
If it's free you can send me ads.
Jokes on them, my TV can't connect to the internet anymore because of the the bloat added by Roku in automatic updates.
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.
Ummm why even connect it at all...let the dumb thing stay offline
Many TVs have a constant "no wifi connection" visual error if it's not connected.
It also bugs me to turn on voice recognition by connecting
LET US LISTEN TO YOU IT WILL BE FINE.
IGNORE ME!
I haven't bought a TV in several years, but is this something that is in general TVs? I ask because I plan on getting one soon and would very much like to avoid it having a mic
I can’t speak for all TVs of course, but from what I have seen, yes.
Take the stupid thing back.
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)
Honestly even a chromecast with Google tv and something like Stremio launched on boot would give you similar results for relatively cheap. No techiness needed, just some fiddling with settings.
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.
I've heard the nvidia shield is/was the gold standard for this purpose
it's not, they started the enshitification process years ago, I threw mine away. In the fucking garbage if you can believe it because it started showing me ads.
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.
Huuuuuge price difference though.
Though I guess the chromecast is being killed off so the difference doesn’t matter much anymore.
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.
Any remote recommendations? I've been thinking about doing something similar.
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).
Saving this for later, And yeah, while I think having a keyboard on the remote would probably be useful. I plan on using a wireless keyboard and mouse as well because my plan involves using a more powerful computer so it can double as a gaming machine.
As opposed to the old days when it was an analog billboard
There were no ads in the UI of the TV though.
The only thing close to a UI was TV Guide, which most certainly had ads.
(I kid, but only a little.)
Was this something called ceefax or teletext? I vaguely remember hearing of someone using it to book a holiday when I was growing up
My TV doesn't get connected to the internet.
If I connect it then eventually it will update to a version of the OS that is slow, buggy and all the apps will be out of support regardless.
If I airgap the TV and use a computer it is good until too many pixels burn out or someone yeets something into it.
Problem is getting an 55+" Screen with an OLED panel and support for HDR in a non-smart package
It's not smart if you don't connect it to the internet
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
I haven seen my LG OLED’s smart OS for years.
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
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
Ah that's a terrible sign of where things are going
That's some fucked up shit
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.
It's a visio.
Literally the cheapest 32inch TV that best buy had.
It's absolutely unusable with the ads disabled.
Horrific television.
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.
I don't really get the whole projectors thing when you easily just the do same thing for a TV that's offline 😆
Sure, that's another option, but I would have bought a projector anyway, and the fact that they haven't been hit by enshittification is a nice bonus on top
Problem with projectors is they don't work very well in bright spaces
That's true
Pi-hole, nvidia shield, custom launcher = less ads for the whole family
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.
Oh cool!
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.
https://pi-hole.net/
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!
My tv hasn't seen an ad since i plugged it in.
You sure you pay the electric bill?
Nah, same here. I never connected it online. I just use it as a display
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.
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...
GO AWAY!! BAITIN'!
I unironically wanna watch "ouch! my balls", that looks like quality programming i could get behind
Isn't that basically what Jackass was?
And it's driving up the price of commercial flatscreens.
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
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?
I'd probably opt for an external streaming box and simply use the TV as a monitor instead of the whole system (as it was originally)
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
I have mine behind a Pihole too. It blocked all the ads at first but Roku seems to actively varying the ad servers and they've started showing up again. I haven't had a chance to see if I can block them again.
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.
Even when you are paying for the product you are still the product.
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
I only connect to internet if my tv needs an update. Generally hardware inside TVs are super slow too.
Do I have Nvidia shield connected that been debloated with a simple launcher, which is connected to my router that's running a VPN + DNS filter.
Smart tub and stremio. I'm good.
Amen. I recently switched over and I haven't been happier. I even got my parents onboard with it instead of satellite TV and streaming services.
not if I don't have a smart tv
Didnt noticed ads on youtube with smarttube https://smarttubeapp.github.io/ or https://github.com/polymorphicshade/Tubular ;)
Any 10 year old computer & LibreELEC.
do we have ads in computer monitors yet? monitors often have mediocre speakers so people that weren't going to bring their own sound system have that option
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
Don't give them ideas man!
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
Vote with your dollars. Unplug. Fuck them
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.