I got this popup ad on my TV **while watching a DVD**
we live in hell
I don't even understand the pitch? you have the disc playing, in your hands, your ownership, no buffering, no subscription required. and they're saying....hey do you want a worse experience?
Protip: Do not connect your TV to the Internet.
I ended up giving up and just putting a Linux PC attached to my TV as a media center. I host plex on it.
This is the way (Jellyfin here)
I'm new to all this. Got any recommendations how to learn about Jellyfin?
while often outdated, there are youtube tutorials. you could buy a cheap thinkcentre or set up a virtual machine to try it out.
personally, i run truenas scale with jellyfin as an "app" on my old PC.
So here's how I'm running things: At the top level it's a Raspberry pi 5 running raspbian, then everything else (jellyfin, prowlarr, radarr, sonarr, Usenet download software, etc) is a docker container. If that sounds like how you want to do it feel free to message me and I can try to get you on your feet
I’m not who you replied to but I’ve been looking to set up something like this (I have a year old dedicated tower for hosting)
But I don’t know anything about docker, and it seems like a pretty big learn - is it required for the sonarr radarr and overseerr stuff, or just a nice to have thing?
It's not required it's just a lot smoother to update and sort things out. I recommend it but you don't need it.
Honestly you can just run the app on your computer and tv connected devices. You don’t have to get fancy. I had trouble getting it setup to recognize and remember my library server address at first, but somehow I got it to work. I don’t like the UI though, and just use PLEX instead.
I don't see how this is giving up though. Been doing this to close to two decades in one form of another and I wouldn't consider any other way. Except kodi instead of plexus here.
I mean, steam made it work with games, you telling me that 6-7 of these giant media companies can't get it to work for video? The giving up part is that you have to embrace piracy (again?) to get to acceptable levels of service per dollar
Until Plex gets unbearable as well. They have been getting a lot shittier lately.
Other server software are available of course. The concept stays the same though. Very much recommend doing this. I'm halfway there, running Plex on my desktop PC and watching on my TV and other devices at home. Very comfortable setup. But I wish I had a small computer like a Pi or something, and a NAS to hold my drives. That way my desktop PC could rest.
There's always Kodi! You don't have to update your media server software.
Nah, I'll just switch to Jellyfin.
They hit my threshold of shittiness some years back and I’ve been enjoying Jellyfin ever since. It’s a much better alternative for most!
I have my Steam Deck attached to my TV. It's great for watching pirated sports streams via web browser.
I still get Roku recommendations on plex content from my Apple TV. They are doing content recognition off of the hdmi input
https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smart-tv-snooping-features-a4840102036/#roku-t-vs
Protip: destroy your 'smart' TV.
Protip: burn your house
Protip: burn down the world
Protip: read Protips
The real protips are always in the comments
You go ahead and destroy something that cost you hundreds of dollars. Be it a TV or cans of Bud Light, I'm not going to destroy something I already got out of some need for a moral victory.
I hate 'smart' TVs. I wish they didn't exist. But telling someone to destroy the one they already had- meaning that if they want to watch TV, they'll just have to buy another- doesn't really make much sense to me.
Or, if you must (cringe), use anonymous credentials, have a router level VPN, and maybe even run pihole. But much better to just hook up a PC to your TV and run all of your apps off of that.
What brand? so I know NOT to buy it
I believe it's Roku. That purple symbol in the bottom right is on the remote as well.
Very budget so this doesn't surprise me.
Also beneath the purple asterisk is the words "Roku TV" in grey on the bezel
Fuck Roku. Don't buy these. They shove ads down your throat constantly, and they proactively, aggressively stop methods of circumvention.
Wtf I thought roku TV were one of the good ones. I use a Roku thing that you plug in and I haven't seen this yet.
The good ones go bad eventually :(
The Roku box was one of the good ones... about ten years ago. Though maybe this is just a TV thing. TIL Roku makes actual screens.
In the past few years especially, I've seen so many unshakable "good ones" go bad. Some, in the worst possible way.
My Sharp TV runs Roku software. Suffice it to say I do not have it web connected and use an android box instead
The poster really needs to just turn off the Smart TV experience.
No. No, they are not one of the good ones.
The little asterisk symbol on the screen is leading me to believe it's a Roku.
I have two roku tvs. The day I see this is the day they get disconnected.
You can probably use a pi-hole to block those things.
The amount of Roku stuff my PiHole blocks is asinine. I just recently added a blocklist for smart TVs and it ballooned the query counts like mad.
+1 for PiHole. Worth the ~$40 for the Pi Zero W and accessories alone.
That's because they retry failed connections until they can phone home again. They aren't normally making tens of thousands of requests.
It can scream into the void for as long as it wants.
I fucking hate my Roku Tv. One of my roku TV became unusable after software update. Can’t be rolled back. I’m just stuck with a perfectly fine screen and shit software. And yes even connecting another device via HDMI is an issue because the TV restarts randomly for “updates” while watching external sources.
Shoutout to the PiHole team. Love you guys and the work you do.
Which smart TV blocklist are you using? Should probably add that into my pihole.
Posted under Phar's comment, but here's the direct link
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/master/SmartTV.txt
No, you can’t. I’m running pihole and have a TCL Roku tv connected via HDMI to an Apple TV, and the ROKU APP RECOGNIZES CONTENT FROM IT and makes the suggestion, overlaying it OVER THE HDMI STREAM.
It’s the worst
You can actually turn that off in the Roku settings. I did when I saw it demanding I watch my content from my PC on their shitty ad bloated sponsors.
I am now realizing it might be more work than it's worth for Roku even though I used to prefer their systems being a bit more stable.
Pi-hole FTW.
You can, but don't forget to also block other outbound DNS connections in your firewall. Lots of "smart" devices are hard coded to use 8.8.8.8 regardless of what DHCP says. Pihole won't stop those, so you have to block it at the firewall.
They put one too many ads on the home screen... then they made them larger...
fuck em. they get nothing now.
blocked their ad servers at the DNS level.
Name and shame!
See the problem is that you let a display device connect to the internet
Connected a Samsung smart TV to my network when we first got it. The thing damn-near crashed my pi-hole asking for so many ad/tracking domains. Factory reset it later that same day. I think my % of requests blocked went from 15% to 68% in just the 3 hours or so the Smart TV was connected.
They started to wisen up and hard-coded dns requests to 8.8.8.8 to bypass dns ad blockers now. Heck, some apps like Netflix already do it for years now. If your router can transparently redirect all dns requests to your pi-hole, you should use that feature.
So they recognize that the owner of the product is trying to prevent them from collecting data, and actively try to circumvent the owner's security measures? This shit should be illegal, and carry a huge fine. You paid for the device, and it's connected to your network, which you control. I'm sick and tired of corporations thinking it's totally okay to be straight-up spyware and adware. Some supposedly legitimate companies these days make old-school computer viruses look down right respectful.
Not only that, I have the entire Roku domain blocked on my network, and even though there’s no reason for it, as evidenced by the fact that there’s no problem running it for a month, and it doesn’t happen to all TVs, depending when it was last handled, it breaks my Plex app every 30 days in such a way that it needs to be fully reinstalled, which requires unblocking Roku, allowing phone home of the prior month’s data. Old, but not obsolete, app versions should still work fine - have a kodi Plex app that hasn’t been updated in years and that works without issue. So this is absolutely an intentional choice to force users to at least cough up their viewing data, even if they can’t give you their ads. And they can collect a surprising amount of information through those apps.
Took me a couple months to figure out what was happening (by waiting 2 months and doing the reinstall on the same day for all of them and checking the next time one broke, then staggering them the next time) but I’m no longer using the apps and will probably just factory reset all three of them, leave them off the network entirely.
The amount of work they do as a company to make my private experience complete shit because I don’t want them invasively collecting my info and shoving ads down my throat… is absolutely disgusting.
or use the blocking feature of your firewall. Here’s Roku being persistent and ignoring my pihole. Firewalla for the win.
Firewalla's are great. All the features of pfsense and then some, in a fine little hardware form factor.
Heads up if you have the purple though : they had a bad hardware batch that had a soldering flaw on the lan side nic that would eventually make your upload reduce to KB/s. I replaced far too many waps before I found a thread about it and realized it was the firewall.
Replacement was simple and free, but they should have been more proactive reaching out to purple buyers.
Easy enough to do with NAT unless it uses DNS over https. Then you have to block a lot more than just DNS.
I deny all DNS traffic except traffic going to my router IP so my pfBlocker will always work.
Yep - this. I absolutely abhor "smart" TVs for just this reason.
But, even lack of internet sometimes isn't enough. I recently, and inadvertently, left the wireless adapter on my TV enabled, after having to temporarily join it to my wireless for a firmware update (digital TV tuning needed updating for my region). After I was done, I cleared the wireless config, but I didn't think to go into the other menu where you can entirely disable the wireless adapter.
Little did I realise that meant the TV started broadcasting its own SSID, for friggin' Apple Airplay or some other shit. I found this out when my 9yo daughter was suddenly exposed to some adult content for about 10 seconds. Best guess is a nearby neighbour mistook my TV for theirs.
I've obviously disabled the wireless adapter again, but this has been a terribly difficult lesson I've had to learn.
For anyone concerned, my daughter is OK. My wife had a good chat with her about it. She had considerably more talking down to do with me - I was ready to start knocking on doors, to have my own chat.
I work in IT at a fitness center and we have TVs in front of the treadmills. They are not enterprise TVs, just standard Samsung TVs. Above the treadmills, we have a conference room. After setting up a conference room with wireless screen sharing, I found that all of the TV's below show up when trying to cast. Obviously I tried to disable them, but there is no way to do so outside of physically ripping out the antenna. I called support and everything. Why the fuck was that decision made
honestly, whoever connected to your TV is probably used to their device being the first one to show up. i would blame the streaming protocol for not requiring one of those one-time pin thingys.
All new Roku devices do that, even if it’s not a Roku tv. Roku went from one of the best video devices to the worst in one fell swoop. Literally the only good off the shelf device is the Apple TV.
My Roku TV will be in a landfill before I allow it to send 1s and 0s through anything but the HDMI cord
No, the fault is with the people who make the TV. It’s not the customers fault that other people are evil.
Anytime you see the word "smart" in the name of the product, remember to mentally replace the word "smart" with "tracking".
"Ad enabled"
Same with IoT
The S in IoT stands for security, and the P stands for privacy.
😂😂😂
This is called Automatic Content Recognition and it can be disabled in the settings, highly recommend doing that. It should have asked you whether you wanted it enabled when you set up the TV, as it's legally required to be opt-in in the US opposed to opt-out. Since you're using a Roku Smart TV, it specifically is taking two full resolution "video snapshots" every second.
"To disable ACR on a Roku TV, the privacy policy says to "visit your Roku TV's Settings menu (Settings > Privacy > Smart TV Experience) and de-select 'Use Info from TV Inputs."
Well that is an incredibly misleading name that sounds like something I would want to keep enabled.
"Got a data cap? Ha ha, fuck you." -- Roku
I haven't done any research into what's actually being transmitted, but I assume ACR feeds the snapshots into an ASIC that does something akin to perceptual hashing, then sends a chain of hashes collected over something like a 2-4sec window to an edge server for matching. So perhaps around 24kbps is actually being transmitted.
How to turn off/change ACR.
That link also works for other TV brands. Just scroll to the top of the article to find your TV section.
Where I live, it's usual practice to get the vendor to send a team to your house to do the unboxing and installation of expensive TVs so it's easier to deal with doa products and whatnot. When the guys came in to set up my LG oled, I watched in horror as they speed ran the setup wizard, checking all the boxes and giving my consent to every single tracking feature without even telling me anything. I had to go back and redo everything once they'd fucked off.
They’re taking pictures of what you’re watching on the screen and sending it to random 3rd party data collectors to analyze and then harass you with ads.
Or just reading the file name on the DVD lol
Sure but this is actually Automatic Content Recognition, specifically Roku's video ACR that takes snapshots twice a second.
Would it be possible to argue that this is copyright infringement? They're basically screencapping copyrighted content at a shitty framerate and distributing it over the internet.
Whooops! You accidentally thought that companies have to follow the same rules as civies, silly you!
They're not distributing it. They're taking a screenshot, identifying the content, and transmitting hashed and aggregated data. Even if they were transmitting screenshots, they'd be transmitting it to their own systems to be hashed and analyzed, not watched.
Sure, but they do take snaps of the screen and send it to advertisers. Almost all “smart” TVs do this.
Only if the DVD player is built into the tv
This is why my TV does not have internet access.
I really don't get why you would allow your tv Internet access anyways. A huge number of them carry tons of spyware that not only is on the TV but creates backdoors into your network.
Source on backdoors?
https://www.techfocus24.com/tcl-smart-tvs-may-have-chinese-backdoor-research/
I have a TCL even, but it's not allowed on my wifi network at all. Have its Mac addy blocked, all my smart TVs are blocked. Wish they sold more non smart TV's these days.
Some TVs automatically latch on to any open network they can find, to do their connected thing, even if you don't specifically give them access to your wifi.
Even if you must own a smart TV (because it's impossible to buy a large-ish TV anymore that isn't), I see no reason to actually connect it to any network. But! I notice recent models will bitch at you on every single power on if you leave them disconnected. So you're not even safe from being annoyed then.
Some people get big computer monitors instead of a TV, because of shit like this.
That's the route I took. I recently bought a 48" 4K monitor, hooked a mini PC up to it, and now I stream my movie and TV show collection through Plex. I still have Internet access on my "TV," but I'm in control of what pops up (I block all ads on my home network). I just use a small wireless keyboard and mouse instead of a remote.
I haven't actually owned a TV since about 2008. I have better media options through computers, and the technology just keeps getting better. Cable and public access television are a pain because you're constantly bombarded with ads. With my own computer, I can circumvent ads and get a solid viewing experience.
Where am I gonna get an 85" monitor for under $1k?
Under the heading: "Digital Signage Display"
For under $1,000?
I did a projector. Pretty close in price and I have a very modest, but serviceable 135" screen and no ads.
If I found out a TV required internet access to function, I'd return it to wherever I bought it next day.
Luckily I have a old-ish flatscreen that doesn't require internet but does have a netflix and other channels I can setup if I want. The Netflix client is so old it won't connect to their servers any more. That's OK. My Roku still works.
I have yet to see one that won't eventually let you use it as a dumb display after you dismiss one (or more) nags first. But I'm sure that's coming eventually. The worst offender I found yet is the "cheap" Black Friday sale Amazon Fire TV my boss got to use as a security monitor in one of our satellite locations. That fucking thing won't even show a picture until you dismiss its network nag, and then its sign-in-with-Amazon nag. At least I found you can disable the Amazon account nag in the options. The network connection one you can't.
We've just resolved never to turn it off. You can't dismiss the nag screen with the bezel buttons, either. You have to use the remote, so that's now permanently double-stick taped to the desk the TV is on.
Next time he'll just buy a fucking computer monitor like I told him to.
The TVs I've seen that do this have been smart enough to not get naggy about a lack of Internet until 30+ days after first power on. Then you get popups or autoplay videos begging you to connect it.
My Hisense has been pretty decent, surprisingly. But for my next TV I'm honestly thinking of going with a commercial display.
I bought a 65" HiSense last month. I was psyched the first time I set it up, and it gave me the option to configure it as a dumb TV without the Android TV experience or a network connection.
Right after you can’t return it anymore?? Evil
Yeah, that's why I've come to just pay the premium for professional displays instead of consumer TVs.
How much more is it?
This article is a year old, but it's still possible to buy dumb tvs.
Thankfully mine (about two yrs old now) only whined for the first couple weeks then gave up on me.
Now the only issue I have is the time it takes for android to boot. It's like having to wait for your tv to warm up all over again except without the high pitched noise old tv sets had.
And this is why we buy dumb TVs
Where? Which ones?
Btw, my LG tv would be able to stream from my phone, if the app didn't accuse me of unsupported rooting, because i have no Play Services running.
A quick search gave me this: https://www.makeuseof.com/best-dumb-tvs/
I might save up and pick up one of the 32" ones after the holidays.
When looking at options, search for “monitors” instead of TVs.
Just unplug it from the internet
That won't be the solution forever. They'll put an always online requirement soon.
Commercial signage displays it is then.
Don't by a tv, buy a monitor
Yes! got any recommendations because people are searching for dumb tvs and can’t seem to find them anywhere.
You probably want commercial displays. They'll cost a bit more, but they're also designed to run 24/7 (think the screens they use in menus, signs, etc) so they could probably last forever as a TV.
So you’re saying I need a commerical display to display less commercials?
Were it so easy...
Dumb tv with the latest panel tech is too much to ask for these days too.
this is one major reason i switched to a projector. The "smart" malware trend has not caught up to home cinema projectors
Almost every TV is a perfectly good dumb TV when it doesn’t know your wifi password.
Don't look for TVs, look for PC monitors or industrial displays
Absolutely this. I'm lucky enough to have access to commercial & hospitality displays. Great picture quality and longevity with none of the forced online nonsense.
is there a retailer I can buy gently used ones you know of?
Now that is some serious privacy invading.
You like this episode of Futurama. Would you also like to watch this episode of Futurama?
We noticed you found a way to watch this episode without ads. We suggest watching it from one of our providers so they get a cut.
I love when i buy a new bottom bracket from cycling webshop x.
After i finish the payment and move to a different website the ad there is that same bottom bracket again from cycling webshop x.
Do they not understand it's a waste of space?
It's the amazon approach. You bought these jeans. Wanna buy them again?
We need a Lemmy community dedicated to find, repair and exchange dumb TV. These are become increasingly rare and increasingly needed.
Look for digital signage if you want one with a lot of input options and a guarantee it will do only what you tell it to do (they are however more expensive than consumer grade models)
Just don't connect smart TVs to the internet and boom, dumb TV.
Except my old TV would still try to load ads even though it wasn't connected to the Internet. Made it run slow as shit. When the screen died conveniently right after the warranty period, I just switched to using a monitor to watch stuff.
Dang that sucks! What brand was it so I can avoid it?
I appreciate the ECO ramifications. But it's a hell of a lot easier just to firewall the smart ones. I suspect even a pihole might be enough
Maybe someone will get the idea to start !dumbtvsarewanted@lemmy.world for that and it could end up going as far as being dedicated to find, repair and exchange CRT TV as well.
good joke
The comments suggesting the system sends 2 screenshots a second is truly worrying.
It might take 2 screenshots a second, but I suspect that will be hashed in some way, even if just to save their on incoming bandwidth rather than for privacy reasons.
It's still fucking absolute bullshit though, and has at least told me that anything with Roku written on it is well worth avoiding.
See this shit. They're fucking proud of it.
That looks like an advertisement to advertisers though so they would want to be proud of it.
Roku:"money money money fuck the user money money fuck privacy money! Who cares that they paid for the device and the content money money money!!"
Advertisers: "OMG! Money money fuck the user! Money money money!"
"Building audiences for activation" sounds like they're planning to just activate a sleeper army to execute dastardly plans with a highly specific Activia commercial.
It's crazy how marketer-speak sounds like PR-friendly Saturday Morning bad guys.
Well I guess that explains why my Roku TV is the worst culprit for hammering my pihole.... Holy shit.
giggity
The SMART thing to do is to buy a DUMB TV. Pay a little more and get a real TV- you know. A display, with speakers and HDMI inputs. Nothing else.
Sometimes you have to be a bit more pragmatic. I'm not aware of any TV with HDR, Dolby Vision, OLED, etc. that isn't smart and reasonably priced. Your best bet is to buy a smart TV and block Internet access.
Another thing you can do is visit the selfhosted subs and they can help you out with other things like pihole for blocking ads and intrusive network activity on your home network.
Getting pihole set up may just be my new year's resolution.
Yep, most of them won’t complain if you just never connect them to Wi-Fi during setup.
Oh wow, a link to a product sold on Amazon. I've never seen one of those before
It even says "currently unavailable"!
Even better!
This is what's up. Buy a small Intel NUC, a USB-C combo Blueray & DVD player, and watch any service / play any content without the ridiculousness.
Spectres are reasonable TVs. Screen tech hasn't improved drastically for the last few years, and streaming quality hasn't had any major facelifts outside the frameworks we know and love -- don't let anyone fool you otherwise. Netflix, Hulu, Prime, etc., all stream comparably to one another.
Or just don't connect the smart TV to the Internet.
Lol that’s my exact tv!
Scepters are horrendous pieces of shit.
Or jailbreak your smart tv.
Underrated answer
On your Roku TV go to Settings > Privacy > Select Smart TV Experience and disable "Use Info from TV Inputs"
Crazy but expected it isn't off by default
Because who would willingly turn that on? Lol
Drink verification can, peasant.
Disable ACR on your TV. There was a news report that came out last week about this very thing.
And this concludes the enshitification of everything.
Oh my, you're quite optimistic today
"Automatic content recognition" https://advertising.roku.com/resources/blog/insights-analysis/acr-the-future-of-tv-and-audience-data#! Roku is not the only ones doing it :(
So the only way to opt out of this hell is to kill your internet connection? That sucks!
I blocked the servers with my pihole. Coincidentally, my two smart TVs are the two most blocked devices on my network. It’s not even close.
This was with only ~1 hour of TV watching, while the device in the third spot is my phone (which I had been using all day). And yet the second TV still had almost 3x as many blocked requests.
Smart TVs are fucking invasive.
I really need to learn how to set that up.
It’s easier than ever these days. The hardest part is figuring out how to configure your router to point devices to it. Because router manufacturers love to bury that setting somewhere deep. For actually setting up the pihole, it’s usually just a matter of flashing the memory card with the right image, then finding some decent block lists. But even the block lists are easy to find nowadays.
Or worse, you have an ISP-provided modem + router that has it locked down. Yes I could buy a router and put it the modem in bridge mode blah blah, so I just configure each device manually.
Yeah, the combined modem/routers are almost all garbage. You really are better off bridging it and letting your own router do the work. Because the ISP has a vested interest in giving you the cheapest router possible.
yeah lol, no real need to obfuscate those ip fyi
No. It's actually simple to disable. On the Roku TV just go to:
Settings > Privacy > Select Smart TV Experience and disable “Use Info from TV Inputs”
Thank you!
The pitch doesn't need to make logical sense. The entire purpose of horrible shit like this is so some asswipe with a marketing degree can say "look boss, I did a thing". Welcome to late stage capitalism, where no one ever gets fired for shoving another advertisement in somewhere.
Turn off Smart TV experience on your Roku.
Disable Roku Snooping
Hey! How dare you only pay once for a lifetime of viewing, you should be paying monthly... No daily, for the right to view pieces of cultural history.
30$ monthly subscription rate + 5$ to rent each movie + 2$/hour for 4K. gotta make the business model as profitable as possible, otherwise the shareholders will start selling shares.
publicly traded companies are stupid.
It’s called “Post-Purchase Monetization”, and it’s why your 65” OLED tv is so cheap. They capture and sell your viewing data - but only if you hook it up to an internet connection. So don’t hook them up to an internet connection.
Bro they dont have buttons and dont even let you change channels without logging on first with youf full social credit its mad world
If this were true, the few remaining "dumb TVs" (e.g. from
SpectreSceptre) wouldn't be cost-competitive, but they are.This abusive shit isn't subsidizing the cost of the TV; it's just padding the manufacturer's profits.
Edit: the company isn't named after the villainous org from James Bond
One reason why I opted for a monitor instead of a TV. AFAIK monitors don't do this shit.
Good luck finding a 65"+ monitor at a reasonable price.
Not everyone needs or has room for huge displays. For those ppl monitors work great.
Yeah, for a living room TV the only option is either "digital signage" or no network.
I'll just stick to not connecting my TV to the network.
Then plug in a DVD player which will probably do the same thing.
Samsung smart monitors 🤧
Xiaomi has smart monitors with his crap.
I have two TVs. One is 15 years old, the other is so old that, even though it is still HD (only 720p but it's fine for me) it still has component video.
I will use those TVs until they die and not buy a new one unless I have no choice. I haven't seen a single feature on a "smart" TV that I want and a lot that I don't.
Picture quality..... Watching movies on oled is not comparable to literally anything else. But any decent 4k TV that came out in the last decade will blow out your TVs.
And besides, if you already have dumb TVs, and you don't care about the smart side... Don't add internet to a new TV, and it becomes dumb. With all its glory screen
The picture quality is fine for me. If you want higher quality, go for it. I have no problem watching 720p video on a 24" TV or 1080p video on a 40" TV. I don't need higher quality than that.
Dumb TV forever.
There are almost no dumb TVs on the market. Just get a smart tv and don’t hook it up to the internet. Use a separate streaming box
Yes, worse, but also more money on something you don't own - you just don't get it, bro... It's
progresssorry I always confuse those words, profits.That's terrible. This is why we need Foss
Pihole or similar DNS blocking. I can't recommend it enough. My smart TVs are the #1 offender on my network. The only thing that will try to pull in more ads are my wife's mobile games.
Can confirm, pi hole is awesome.
Some initial configuration required especially if you are doing it by device instead of at the router, but the results are well worth it.
Can confirm, well worth the $30 for the Libre le Potato that I run it on.
If they can do it, they will. It's ad dollars to them, as good as any others.
Don't let them do it. Buy dumb electronics, or at least smart electronics you can use airgapped.
I rooted my 2013 Samsung TV and overclocked it from 800 to 1200Mhz (the whole system is actually build for 1200Mhz but only the Highend-Ones are qualified for it). To my surprise the amount of data it send to Samsung was quite reasonable but still I removed most of it. Full removal of Internet is not an option because then I lose HbbTV and Prime TV which is like 50% of what I use that device for. And since I rooted it I also use it for BS and the public broadcasting mediatheks. Also, it now runs Quake2 in 1920x1080 in ~20fps.
Buv this is why our community is built stronger 💪
Three Words: Digital Signage Display
So when I searched for that, this is the first result that came up:
https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/jvl-55-led-uhd-digital-signage-display-jvl055tv
Seems pretty enshittified.
Where do you normally get yours? Do you have brand recommendations?
Ah yes I want to watch the exact same thing I am watching but from another provider, definitely just take my money, hypercapitalist
Is this a samsung tv? If it is one of the cheap tv's like Vizio and such they have this live advertising which is awful. I always buy non-smart TV's but now they actually cost more then the smart ones if you are going for a big 65-85" TV.
You can save the cash and just never let it connect to the internet.
Be careful because they automatically ping around for passwordless wifi
Really ? Not surprised in the least, but do you have a source for this?
Fire Stick auto connecting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25275350
Samsung Smart TV auto connecting: https://web.archive.org/web/20210830002600/https://forum.developer.samsung.com/t/if-you-choose-to-not-connect-your-samsung-smart-tv-to-wifi-it-will-secretly-connect-to-your-neighbours-passwordless-wifi/7926
Faraday cage it is!
Easy workaround: live in the countryside with no neighbours.
This. It's a simple as a really good router or a pihole at home or similar. Just block their domains they ring home to.
Yes, and now an option for the 99% of population that has no IT background lol
What are some good non-smart TVs?
None, I have a Vizio that shipped with non shitty firmware, only to be upgraded over time to shitty firmware.
Laugh.
They still make non-smart tvs?
I mean if it's possible to use it without connecting it to a network... You should be good until they cut a deal with cell providers to push their shit over soldered on LTE chips.
Based on the * button, it looks like some sort of Roku device or TV with Roku built in.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you own something and it either gets taken away or it gets tarnished in some way, you are fully justified to pirate it...
How? Did you got your dvd player hacked?
Most modern TVs have this lovely “feature” called Automatic Content Recognition so papa Google can tell when you’re watching pr0n.
I can almost guarantee this was some stupid marketing exec's idea. Someone had to write the code that interprets that you're watching an episode that someone else has available for streaming. Any software dev worth their salt would have seen this request and said "This is the dumbest fucking idea I have ever seen in my life" and they probably had to make it anyway because it pays the bills.
Thats instant grounds for breaking Consumer law here in the UK. I'd be returning the TV and if they didnt accept. Small claim court.
What model TV do you have?
I can tell from the interface it's a Roku Smart TV of some sort. I have a TCL with Roku and it does not do this crap.
⛵🏴☠️
2 words people: Pihole and Unbound.
Learn them, use them, and promote them.
Unbound is going to need some context.
That's more burn it with fire then mildly infuriating. Never go "Smart" not even once.
When I tested a roku (I think that's what this is, based on the button and color) stick a few years ago, it was awful - network errors during setup, atrocious password limits, and once I completed setup it had a ad that took 1/4 of the home page and it wouldn't calm the fuck down pinging servers even when idle. I actually returned it the next day, I wanted my like $40 back.
My ex bought one a couple years later and I cringed so hard. No way in fuck I'd let that infestation on my network again.
That's the reason i bought a dumb tv. No i don't need those subpar computer running my tv with a chance of crashing and which i can't control what fuckery they do, i have my PC tq.
terrible; keep your tv off the internet; it used the mic to determine that
It's worse than the mic. They're taking screenshots and sending them to a server that analyzes the image to determine what you're watching.
Proof? There are other (some equally creepy) ways that it could get this info. Depending upon how the DVD player is connected, it could simply be getting info from that. It could also be taking occasional screenshots. There are other things as well.
Edit: poster below links to Roku and they use screenshots.
My LG tv just update and now anytime I turn the tv on I have to wait 2 minutes for the default screen to go away. It has ads and app suggestions.
I only use a fire stick and don’t have the original remote. So nothing I can do but wait
Just got the same update. If you can get a remote you can go into settings and turn off the new Home experience.