First of all, open the TV and disconnect the wireless radio from the main board, on mine (Samsung) it was just unplugging one cable (AI or Google it). I dislike doing stuff like that, but it was easy in my case, maybe you'll be lucky, too.
Second, never use the "apps" built into the TV.
Next, don't plug Ethernet into the TV. Plug HDMI cables into the TV.
Use a box of your choice on the other end of the HDMI cables. This is now the box that you trust. (Roku? Shield? Blu-ray? MacBook? PC? Linux? Playstation? XBox? Whatever you want.)
The Smart TV itself is now fine. Choose the devices you plug into it to play content. The TV just shows it.
The thing I'd be worried about when doing this is spending $1000+ on a TV, then realizing it has some sort of pre-downloaded ads that it shows on the main screen ("sign up for your free six months of HBO Max!") or otherwise has a nag prompt that appears to tell you to connect to WiFi. I think that would be basically intolerable.
While practical advice its just odd to me there's no major legislation or movement or activism or boycotts about this. We just accept our TV might be silently recording everything we say in our home and the fix is to not plug it into the internet.
Even if you never connect the TV to your WiFi network it will constantly scan for public networks and also scan for any devices that will respond. “Off” doesn’t actually mean off anymore. :(
Do you have any specific examples of devices where this has been implemented? Because I've heard this idea thrown around a lot as a hypothetical, but never any concrete evidence that it's been done.
> Use a box of your choice on the other end of the HDMI cables. This is now the box that you trust. (Roku? Shield? Blu-ray? MacBook? PC? Linux? Playstation? XBox? Whatever you want.)
If they choose a Firestick or Roku what's the difference? XD
>I went and researched this, and found that basically none of the TV brands were anything but creepy on privacy.
Yeah they do. Go to your shopping center or airport and you'll see LG and Samsung displays everywhere. And that's the key word, 'displays' not 'TVs'.
Both sell large displays meant for 100% user ownership with no spyware or mandatory internet connection, you just have to buy those and not their TVs.
The catch? They come at steep prices compared to consumer TVs, unless you can land a deal on the used market. But that's the cost of turning a profit on screens with no spyware and ads.
Are you sure those displays have everything needed for a smooth TV experience? Do they have eARC to connect a sound bar, and stuff like that? Modern TVs are also quite good at upscaling 1080/720p content, screens often aren't.
The other catch is that those displays are built for heavy duty use, not for picture quality, and as such aren’t going to look as good as even a budget consumer OLED TV.
Disagree. They look more than fine, much better than the budget TV with their fake saturation turned to 11 out of the box. If you think that looks good you might have gotten used to it.
Hotel TVs, same panels as consumer models with different supporting hardware and stock calibrations. These are actually dimmer than the consumer models to increase panel longevity.
They tend to lack gaming features like high/variable refresh rate but they're more functional as normal TVs than digital signage displays.
They have similar OSes as the consumer models and can run the same apps but don't have ads unless the operator wants them to and can be centrally managed, support internal IPTV networks, etc.
Or jailbreak/defang the consumer TVs to have privacy anyway, and teach others how, and screw over the entire profit model of the surveillance-subsidized TVs to force things to be sold at a real cost.
>Or jailbreak/defang the consumer TVs to have privacy anyway
And how will my 50 year old mom and 70 year old grandpa know how to do that? "Hey Claude scan the wifi for a LG TV, hack it, root it and give me the keys to install what I want, then lock out LG from access it?"
As always, the sane fix is in government legislation and enforcement of privacy regulations. But this isn't happening since knowledge of smart device spyware across politicians and the voting population is small and governments want to use that data dragnet that smart devices enable for their own means.
I have bad news for you. Those commercial TV-s also phone home if connected to the internet. For software updates, analytics regarding digital signage usage etc.
For a long time they haven't been just dumb displays. They also run Tizen or WebOS for digital signage applications.
> that's the cost of turning a profit on screens with no spyware and ads.
I don't think that the cost of TVs has gone down when they added spyware and ads.
You could say that that's the cost of turning less profits, rather, and I suspect that TV manufacturers keep the costs of normal displays high just to discourage their purchase by normal people.
> Amazon Sidewalk[0] is a low-bandwidth long-range wireless communication protocol developed by Amazon. It uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for short distance communication, and 900 MHz LoRa and other frequencies for longer distances.
In reality that'll never work because the front of the tV needs to be exposed. At best you can make your whole room/house a faraday cage, but that'd be insanely expensive to do correctly. You might think a microwave is a faraday cage, but a phone can still get calls even if you put it inside.
Completely wrong. Apple goes to extraordinary lengths, to the point of harming the usability of their products, to protect user privacy and avoid collecting user data.
Apple could easily make tens of billions dollars extra if they spied more on their users.
Not completely, not anymore. Apple's gotten a taste of advertising dollars via the App store. Search for product A and product B will pay money to come first. Apple TV advertises for the shows they've made in the Apple TV app instead of going to your library. Same for Books.app.
The biggest indightment of Apple in my mind is the copy and pasting of links into iMessage. iMessages "helpfully" renders a preview so a dumb consumer doesn't have to see an ugly long text of a url. But in doing so, it also happens to hides the utm code that is used for tracking by marketers.
They've got their eye on that tens of billion dollars extra.
While I dislike Apple’s move to ads, I’m at a loss how accepting money to degrade search results is a privacy issue rather than just a UX quality issue. What information is Apple sharing with advertisers?
What the parent is saying is that the desktop versions of those programs are not remote friendly and the interface is not ideally scaled for 10-foot use. What you want are the Android TV versions, running on Waydroid or an x86 build of Android TV. See my other reply.
You know why. Nobody wants to sysadmin their “friendly Linux distro” just to watch shows. Kodi is amateur hour compared to tvOS. Nowhere do people care more that it “just works” than the thing their TV remote talks to.
I got an old gigantic monstrosity of a DLP tv off facebook marketplace for free then plugged an old Intel NUC into it. It's not for everyone, but I think that it's great, partly because the facts that it was free and that it's stupidly big give me joy.
More practically, when I am not using that, I just watch tv shows and such on my desktop computer running NixOS with a nice and modern (1440p 170Hz high quality but not highest possible end IPS) monitor over displayport.
Other options include a projector, buying a very large computer monitor marketed panel, or using something that is modern enough to be fine, but not so new that it has malware in it (like a friend who was moving gave me a very heavy but also very nice plasma tv, with zero malware on it).
Basically, anything except something marketed as a consumer grade TV. The last time that I had to displeasure of dealing with that it was when my parents bought one and asked me to set it up, and the built-in Roku software refusde to even display from an HDMI or DP input unless it was logged in and connected to WiFi! Alas, I was not able to convince them to return it, but I did decline to have anything to do with it.
Buy any TV you want, ignore all instructions to connect it to the internet, then look for an HDMI port on the back. Plug an HDMI cable into one end, and in the other end plug in a cheap Linux computer like a used Intel NUC from ebay. Then use a nice air-mouse remote like the Pepper Jobs W10.
I watch any movie or TV show I want in 4k via Kodi, but then can alt tab to a Terminal or a real web browser.
Privacy, and dramatically more functionality than any TV would ship with anyway.
Using this setup to type this message right now on pc hooked to a projector in my garage from my couch.
It turns out we never needed Smart TVs in the first place. Just treat it as a screen for a desktop computer.
Samsung TVs (and probably others) will connect to other Samsung TVs in range and exfiltrate data via that route… merely not connecting the TV doesn’t present data harvesting
Iirc, Amazon uses a tool they call “sidewalk” for this purpose
In that case, jailbreak it, or open it and unsolder the wifi antenna, or put some well placed copper tape until you no longer see any wifi traffic from the TV from other wifi capable devices running a wifi packet inspector.
The TV belongs to you and it will obey you with modest effort.
I want to know how to disable their external communication via wifi, I'd like to see how they are exfiltrating info. If I don't connect them to my wifi, apparently they connect to Xfinity wifi at your neighbors house.
Or use something Kodi as the OS and just have a TV like interface. You can also run a Jellyfin client on linux or with Kodi and have that as a reasonable interface for the TV too.
If you are open to projectors they still make “home cinema” projectors that don’t have any smart features or connect to the internet.
I have a BenQ (710tki iirc) that is like this and I believe it meets all your stated requirements (size, resolution, etc). I’ve been very happy with it.
This is what I landed on as well - projector connected to an Apple TV. It cost a bit more, and there’s some extra setup, but the results are excellent.
The main issue switching to a projector is figuring out where you are going to position it (different projectors have different throw distances).
More money and more setup, but very worthwhile in the end IMO.
We have to block our TV from dialling home (there just aren't any privacy oriented 'smart' TVs). We chose to go down the DNS filtering route and pay for https://nextdns.io/ - it turns out it super helpful for a whole host of home network privacy jobs (ad blocks, kids safety filtering, security posture etc.). I can't stop recommending it to people.
The one with the best looking picture at the store. Don't connect it to Internet and use your own streaming box (that you trust).
Really I think in store is the way to go. Some "low" and "mid" tvs look identical to me. Some "high end" are meh. Some other "low end" look great. I think it's a bit of a crapshoot. Not sure currently but Samsung QLED used to be rated well but I always thought LG OLED looked worlds better. I've always liked LG OLED although I've heard their firmware has gotten pretty predatorial...
Some good answers here already. Step 1 is always not to connect the TV to the Internet. You can go further and remove the WiFi daughterboard and/or desolder the chip.
Step 2 is to connect a TV box, but if you replace Samsumg, LG, or Google by Apple or Amazon, you have made no progress at all towards privacy.
Having researched this topic extensively, there are two main options for real user control and privacy. First, you can run an ordinary Linux distro on a mini PC, with a "launcher" such as Plasma Bigscreen. It's fine with an airmouse, but you will be mostly running upscaled desktop apps that aren't remote or controller friendly.
The best solution is actually to keep the mini PC and compile Lineage OS (Android TV 17) for a generic x86 target. This is a true degoogled Android TV distro that can, with some more hacking, run any ARM TV app from F-Droid, Aurora or other source. It is by far the best solution in that it is a true 10-foot UX and is compatible with almost all TV apk apps out there. The downside is that this not exist off-the-shelf. I spent a couple of days putting this together with Claude and it takes several hours to compile. I also found several upstream bugs in the process and will be submitting patches to the AOSP and Lineage.
There's a big gap between LG and Samsung, whose terms of service states that they sell your data to advertisers, and Apple, whose privacy policy states that they don't do that. Of course, there's an even bigger gap between Apple who can access your data if they wanted to or were told to and a home brewed Linux media box.
Unless you view privacy as all or nothing, I'd say replacing Google with Apple is progress. I think the majority of people are more upset at the idea of how their data is being sold for advertising than they are concerned about being able to act completely out of sight of any actor.
I rooted my LG C1 and honestly I can't go back to an unrooted TV. Game streaming works so much better(I can actually install the apps). I can control everything so Home Assistant automations are much better. Internet is blocked so no nagging or ads, But they are turn off via root just in case.
Now I have a weekend project in the future, assuming I can find a compatible process for my hardware. Never connected to the network, but the thing makes a few ever annoying popups I would love to disable. Or at least ensure that no "helpful" guest fills in the wifi information when I am not looking.
I have a TCL QM8, which until recently I was using for its full smart-TV capabilities, and always feeling rather icky about all of the stuff it was sending. I would keep getting notifications about the microphone being turned on even when I had explicitly disabled it at every level.
I eventually got an NVIDIA Shield Pro, for which I:
1) Blew away the default launcher and installed Projectivity
2) adb disabled nearly all of the background Nvidia/Google services, following a guide
3) Removed all of the preinstalled streaming apps and added back the ones I use, opting for more privacy-respecting alternatives like Smarttube over YouTube standard.
Finally, I then factory reset my TCL TV and put its Google TV into "Basic" mode, which makes it a dumb TV for all intents and purposes. The TV itself is not allowed to connect to the internet anymore for any reason--everything goes through the set-top box.
The skeezy thing is the TV still tries very hard to get you to enable regular mode. Like if you try to launch ANY app of ANY kind, it will throw some pop-up about needing to connect to the internet to do so, and then flashing some fine print about how this will revert the TV to normal Google TV/Android TV mode. I had a guest in my house using the TV while I was in another room and suddenly asking me for my WiFi password, and when I went to see what was up, saw that they were halfway through opening the floodgates again before I stopped them.
I would go one step further and recommend a router with a customizable, Linux, firmware (OpenWRT, Tomato, DDWRT, etc).
Your TV is probably just one of the many devices that sends a scary amount of requests to a bunch of shady servers. With a firewall + DNS server that you control and a decent blocklist you should be able to block most requests and you won't be exposed if a new device connects to your network (for whatever reason).
> I would go one step further and recommend a router with a customizable, Linux, firmware (OpenWRT, Tomato, DDWRT, etc).
Yes, those are good options, but in true HN spirit, my suggestion is a plain Linux distro. The firewall/router is just a few iptables lines, which AI can now provide in a few seconds.
IIRC, IPFire is more or less that. I control my Debian router/home server using SSH and have no GUI at all. It's largely set and forget, and don't recall last time I touched the firewall.
Does anyone make TVs with Opera/Vewd (rythmes with lewd) anymore? That's what mine is running, and it supports Netflix and whatnot, but doesn't show ads or spy.
Also, Android TV boxes sometimes have shenanigans installed by the manufacturer, but they are easy to customize to only run what you want, and they run fine without a Google account.
As far as I can tell, there's no way to use an Apple TV box without linking it to an Apple account and letting them spy on you.
Well, I have CRTs in most of the rooms in my home. That's because of an unrelated condition for which I refuse to be treated, but they are great for privacy!
Plasmas are great, and I have one - and our main screen in the living room is just a bog standard Sony...I just love CRTs, but I'm a retro gaming nerd.
Use any screen or projector connected to a linux box or AppleTV for streaming. Personally I use an old laptop running Kodi.
What sort of screen? Well, whatever you can tolerate. I use a very old commercial display I got through an e-waste reseller. It’s not great, but it was cheap ans has worked fine for years.
If you insist on a “TV” screen or any monitor/projector with connectivity, pick one you can root. As other users have pointed out, simply “don’t connect to the Internet” unfortunately isn’t enough to guarantee your data stays private.
I like LG OLED quality. My lg tv has never been connected to the internet and connects to a avr that handles inputs and 5.1.2 speakers Nvidia shield with hdmi-cec to turn on/off the receiver and tv. Jellyfin, android tv app for cable company, YouTube sans ads and projectivy launcher (Google one sucks). You can update firmware via usb stick. Would get an Apple TV if it died but like my Dolby vision HDR10 and atmos. Highly recommend.
Imagine you wouldn’t have this but technically the front two speakers are on a much higher end naim amplifier (connected to my audio stuff) but it has avr pass through. Sometimes an extra button to switch it to turn the front two speakers back to avr mode.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Gamersnexus investigation show that even un-connected LG TVs will still scan for open WiFi networks to clandestinely upload their spy data?
I was able to root my Samsung TV easily with Codex, disable updates and spyware, MITM everything with the eMudhra certs. The problem is no one really knows what these TVs do, they're all liars with 100 page privacy policies that will legally allow anything, and encrypted HTTPS communications that we can't even ordinarily monitor what they're sending. They can be updated at any time to start sending more or less data without your knowledge. So I feel the only realistic option is find a TV that can be rooted and do that. If you root a TV, you can fully disable network access and then use an Apple TV, or use the TV's software with MITM and deeper analysis with AI to disable snooping.
Sadly they no longer make or restock their dumb TVs. They're desktop monitor only.
I bought one of their TVs in 2019, it's fabulous if your criteria is "turns on, displays what is connected to its inputs, and has decent video quality", and nothing more. I would recommend them heartily, if you can get access to one.
Which is interesting, since the E247BD-FSRD is a TV and one of the first ones mentioned on their web site. It does not seem to be available anywhere, though. (The Sceptre web site says Amazon and Walmart; but, neither carries it.)
The monitors lack the tuner and the cable/antenna connector; so, if you're only playing of a computer, they should work fine.
I have two Sceptre TVs and I recommend them, as well, if you can find them.
I got 2 of these, Amazon, 65inch. When I purchased (years ago) Amazon said "only 8 left". This TV is so dumb its clock is still in 1989. Three HDMI so it's got a Sworch2, Roku and a vSee box on it.
I was so/so on the purchase but after watching all the heck around 'smart" TVs I'm wondering what I'll do when these die. They were like 50% cost of the industrial display category, which seems my only option in the future.
I don't know how true it still is, but dumb TVs have traditionally been marketed as "commercial displays". You'll pay more and have to bring your own media, of course.
I believe those displays intended for static advertising etc are not set up for good refresh rate or cinema viewing, so they'll have very poor e.g. ghosting during action sequences, low contrast ratios, a lot like a LCD TV from the early 2000s.
This is repeated every time this topic comes up, but so far it's just a conspiracy theory. An urban legend. An old wives' tale. Are there any documented cases of this happening?
With TV makers having recently destroyed trust and there not being a good way for consumers to force trust it makes little difference whether they are doing it or not.
If you can't tell whether your disconnected TV is spying on you but you know that you cannot trust it, it's better to treat it as compromised.
probably, but I'll let gp answer. But I want guarantees that they don't do that, until them I'll consider the fact that if they can and it's profitable they will do it
If you want a guarantee, that's a conservative threat model and a fair position. What's not fair is GP saying "doesn't work, all the TVs do XYZ", when not a single TV in the real world has ever actually done XYZ.
Ultimately I'll need to find data to settle how paranoid I might be. I'm still leaning on not enough. But isn't it also not fair to claim not a single tv has done it? Proving an universal is not easy for gp but the inverse of forall is not a not exists.
And I know the world of middle management profit optimization.
I indeed cannot prove it. I also can't universally prove that wombats don't have telekinesis. But the preponderance of the evidence points to neither being true.
I know there are lots of advocacy groups and youtube channels that are testing TV models and would LOVE to be the first to break this story and publicly shame Samsung or whoever. But it simply hasn't happened.
Sadly the Samsung TV I have was the best display for the price by a mile, so I've done what i can to balance usage and protection. Its connected to the wifi to allow for AirPlay natively.
The tv has a fixed IP at the router to block all traffic in and out of the network, and as a visibility layer its DNS'd through a PiHole too.
Its unbelievably talkative over the network! In the 7 days just passed, its been 90% of the blocked requests by volume (there's no allowed domains from that IP).
I'm still not convinced it isn't sneaking out data somehow - piggybacking off a connection somewhere to the neighbors TV. Its HDMI runs through a stereo amplifier, so it can't piggy-back off the connected PC that runs it.
Maybe the PC (Mint) can run AirPlay somehow and I can disconnect it entirely from the internet?
I feel overly paranoid about this device relative to everything else in the house, I'm not sure how justified that is.
> I'm still not convinced it isn't sneaking out data somehow - piggybacking off a connection somewhere to the neighbors TV
I think we've overshot the mark a bit about TVs' connection abilities. A built-in SIM was one early conjecture. And while it hasn't been seen in the wild, it is often assumed to exist.
More to your point, we've not seen connections (assumedly ad-hoc wifi) to a neighboring device and uploading data to manufacturer, partner, etc.
We have recently seen a case of data collection, that included wifi scans. What we have not seen is a device that connects to other APs on it's own.
I saw 1 redditor claim that this occurred but it was not substantiated. Lots of folks are looking for this behavior but it hasn't been found.
This tells me that our existing methods of self-protection are effective.
I allow my Samsung to connect to my local network, but then use openwrt and refuse to allow any outbound data from any IP using the MAC address of the television set. It cant update itself and no traffic suggests it can do anything regardless of what it might be collecting. Rooting it to prevent it from connecting to other wifi AP’s is probably the only better thing.
Don't smart TVs (of LG or others?) connect to open networks of neighbors, like Vodafone hotspots? That was told to me at least.
So only disconnecting the antenna or destroying it would work, unless you live remotely.
Ah, here:
> DiabloD3 43 minutes ago | unvote | parent | next [–]
Doesn't work, all the spyware modules connect to open Wifi of neighbors, and soon, LTE.
reply
> nvme0n1p1 37 minutes ago | root | parent | next [–]
This is repeated every time this topic comes up, but so far it's just a conspiracy theory. An urban legend. An old wives' tale. Are there any documented cases of this happening?
> Don't smart TVs (of LG or others?) connect to open networks of neighbors, like Vodafone hotspots?
I can find no verified reports of this behavior. People are looking for it.
> all the spyware modules connect to open Wifi of neighbors, and soon, LTE.
I can find no verified reports of this behavior. People are looking for it. Cellular connections have been theorized since the beginning but have not been discovered.
Given the number of qualified people seeking out these behaviors, if they appear we will know it - with certainty.
Got a Bravia TV for cheap back in 2014 that happened to be pre-Android TV (and pre-Google TV) so Android TV was just released and those something-else-os were "outdated".
Sony stopped releasing security patches a while back and there are no longer apps whatsoever and they all were crap - the youtube one was pure torture because of how slow it was and the web browser was just as miserable as ie6.
But besides that I can send it commands to it via its IP and control it, consume stuff via a DLNA daemon, do screen mirroring, and all the usual tv stuff. The image quality and sound are still great after 10+ years though I can't care less about oled 4k 120Hz and all that stuff. So it's no longer a "smart" tv but it's not also so "dumb" for a now dumb tv.
As everyone is saying: just don't let it on the network. It's a little annoying because you can't have smart home stuff like "turn off the TV when I leave the house" working, but that's it.
My thing is, don't use an Apple TV. For the last 15 years or so I've just used a Mac Mini plugged into a big TV, and it's perfect. Get a wireless keyboard and trackpad and one of the many available trays that will hold them together. I'm literally typing this right now on this exact setup.
I shop for elite televisions at the “reuse” center, my latest score was a 2013 Panasonic plasma which is a perfectly good dumb TV hooked up to an XBOX ONE and a home theatre. Downstairs I have a big curved Samsung 4K attached to my big PC. Someday I’ll see the high end OLED that I crave.
If you have the room and price is no object you definitely want at least 5.1 theatre, both movies and TV programs sound great in 5.1. The next step up is a second subwoofer, even for music subwoofers take a load off your other speakers and reduce distortion.
Disconnect the TV from internet and use a solution like Apple TV for apps you would like in TV. Even better is a Mini PC connected to the TV if you are savvy enough.
Any AndroidTV and then run CleanYourTV [1] on it, gets completely rid of all Google ads and additional bloatware by the manufacturer. Maybe run Claude against the repo first to check for malware but going by the number of stars it seems to be solid.
Samsung is the worst by far. Samsung (TizenOS) does not respect even privacy opt outs. It seems like LG, Google TV OS (Sony) and Fire TV OS (Amazon) and VidaaOS at least do that.
Anybody has experience with TCL and Spectre? I'm seeing them a lot, even saw one really big TCL TV in a local shop and loved the colors and the FPS, but no idea how good are they really, are they longer-lasting, are they annoying if you don't give them network access etc.
A solid late 80s RCA Colortrak 2000 with down-converter is a solid choice and excellent conversation piece. Hardwood finish, or go for the full console experience. Best part is it can't call anything.
I recently was stressed about the same & ended up buying an LG C6, sticking it on an isolated VLAN, rooting it, then just letting it hit my NAS for jellyfin.
Personally, I used to be very privacy-conscious, but have given up on enforcing it everywhere over the years. I still care, more than most people I know in real life, but when it comes to stuff like TV's I just get whatever has the best panel for the lowest price. Last time I bought a TV, that was an LG TV running WebOS, which is not exactly the best from a privacy standpoint. Initially I used it with an Apple TV, but now I just use the native apps and try to disable the telemetry that I can in the settings panel.
Ok I'm cheating, it's a monitor. Only it's the size of a TV and there's a remote.
But no tuner and no ARC.
But I don't care.
Zero smarts, boots in a millisecond, auto-wakes on device power-up, input switching just works, no half-baked HDMI-CEC hell. No wifi. No network. Nothing to spy on me because it's a FUCKING MONITOR and THAT'S IT.
Just get any old TV and use the HDMI input and don’t connect it to the internet. The fears of it phoning home anyway even when you don’t configure wifi are overblown (almost no TVs can do this), as are the privacy implications. Nobody cares that you watch Severance and MCU movies. It’s sort of like people who tape over their laptop camera but leave the mic alone, as if 86400 photos of your face are somehow private and sensitive but all of the conversations in the room are not.
First of all, open the TV and disconnect the wireless radio from the main board, on mine (Samsung) it was just unplugging one cable (AI or Google it). I dislike doing stuff like that, but it was easy in my case, maybe you'll be lucky, too.
Second, never use the "apps" built into the TV.
Next, don't plug Ethernet into the TV. Plug HDMI cables into the TV.
Use a box of your choice on the other end of the HDMI cables. This is now the box that you trust. (Roku? Shield? Blu-ray? MacBook? PC? Linux? Playstation? XBox? Whatever you want.)
The Smart TV itself is now fine. Choose the devices you plug into it to play content. The TV just shows it.
The thing I'd be worried about when doing this is spending $1000+ on a TV, then realizing it has some sort of pre-downloaded ads that it shows on the main screen ("sign up for your free six months of HBO Max!") or otherwise has a nag prompt that appears to tell you to connect to WiFi. I think that would be basically intolerable.
> First of all, open the TV and disconnect the wireless radio from the main board
This. Never trust software switches. See my other reply for what I suggest instead of "streaming boxes" that aren't any better than the TV firmware.
Honest question. Do projectors also suffer?
If it has any kind of in-built smart TV style OS - then yes.
While practical advice its just odd to me there's no major legislation or movement or activism or boycotts about this. We just accept our TV might be silently recording everything we say in our home and the fix is to not plug it into the internet.
> disconnect the wireless radio from the main board
Why?
Even if you never connect the TV to your WiFi network it will constantly scan for public networks and also scan for any devices that will respond. “Off” doesn’t actually mean off anymore. :(
Do you have any specific examples of devices where this has been implemented? Because I've heard this idea thrown around a lot as a hypothetical, but never any concrete evidence that it's been done.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/may/15/google-ad...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2011/apr/25/goog...
https://theweek.com/tech/wifi-signals-now-tracking-users-at-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlbjUvkoyBA
https://wigle.net/
And here's the opt-out steps to get Google to stop scanning your Wifi: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/1725632#how_opt_out&z...
I’ve heard the TV’s will try to connect to any passwordless, public access point it can reach even without your approval.
I guess for people living in cities where different neighbours move in and out and have open WiFis.
If the devices still scan all the time...
Living on the countryside there is no such problem.
> Use a box of your choice on the other end of the HDMI cables. This is now the box that you trust. (Roku? Shield? Blu-ray? MacBook? PC? Linux? Playstation? XBox? Whatever you want.)
If they choose a Firestick or Roku what's the difference? XD
I went and researched this, and found that basically none of the TV brands were anything but creepy on privacy.
What I’ve ended up doing was I got an LG and never hooked it up to Wifi/internet, and then use an Apple TV to watch things on.
It’s a bit annoying if I want to switch to a game console as Apple TV can’t control the TV’s input channel, but otherwise works very well.
Make sure the TV supports HDMI CEC.
>I went and researched this, and found that basically none of the TV brands were anything but creepy on privacy.
Yeah they do. Go to your shopping center or airport and you'll see LG and Samsung displays everywhere. And that's the key word, 'displays' not 'TVs'.
Both sell large displays meant for 100% user ownership with no spyware or mandatory internet connection, you just have to buy those and not their TVs.
The catch? They come at steep prices compared to consumer TVs, unless you can land a deal on the used market. But that's the cost of turning a profit on screens with no spyware and ads.
Are you sure those displays have everything needed for a smooth TV experience? Do they have eARC to connect a sound bar, and stuff like that? Modern TVs are also quite good at upscaling 1080/720p content, screens often aren't.
(I don't care about integrated speakers though)
The other catch is that those displays are built for heavy duty use, not for picture quality, and as such aren’t going to look as good as even a budget consumer OLED TV.
Disagree. They look more than fine, much better than the budget TV with their fake saturation turned to 11 out of the box. If you think that looks good you might have gotten used to it.
Post specs, in my research these types of displays universally prioritise brightness over all other specs.
https://solutions.lg.com/us/hospitality-tvs/lg-55am960h0ud
Hotel TVs, same panels as consumer models with different supporting hardware and stock calibrations. These are actually dimmer than the consumer models to increase panel longevity.
They tend to lack gaming features like high/variable refresh rate but they're more functional as normal TVs than digital signage displays.
They have similar OSes as the consumer models and can run the same apps but don't have ads unless the operator wants them to and can be centrally managed, support internal IPTV networks, etc.
Or jailbreak/defang the consumer TVs to have privacy anyway, and teach others how, and screw over the entire profit model of the surveillance-subsidized TVs to force things to be sold at a real cost.
>Or jailbreak/defang the consumer TVs to have privacy anyway
And how will my 50 year old mom and 70 year old grandpa know how to do that? "Hey Claude scan the wifi for a LG TV, hack it, root it and give me the keys to install what I want, then lock out LG from access it?"
As always, the sane fix is in government legislation and enforcement of privacy regulations. But this isn't happening since knowledge of smart device spyware across politicians and the voting population is small and governments want to use that data dragnet that smart devices enable for their own means.
I have bad news for you. Those commercial TV-s also phone home if connected to the internet. For software updates, analytics regarding digital signage usage etc.
For a long time they haven't been just dumb displays. They also run Tizen or WebOS for digital signage applications.
> that's the cost of turning a profit on screens with no spyware and ads.
I don't think that the cost of TVs has gone down when they added spyware and ads.
You could say that that's the cost of turning less profits, rather, and I suspect that TV manufacturers keep the costs of normal displays high just to discourage their purchase by normal people.
With Amazon Sidewalk I don't think not hooking it up to the internet is an option anymore, unless you live out in the boonies
> Amazon Sidewalk[0] is a low-bandwidth long-range wireless communication protocol developed by Amazon. It uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for short distance communication, and 900 MHz LoRa and other frequencies for longer distances.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Sidewalk
>With Amazon Sidewalk I don't think not hooking it up to the internet is an option anymore
"Anymore"? So far there's no evidence any TVs are using it, so you're safe for now.
New business idea: fitted faraday cages for smart tvs
In reality that'll never work because the front of the tV needs to be exposed. At best you can make your whole room/house a faraday cage, but that'd be insanely expensive to do correctly. You might think a microwave is a faraday cage, but a phone can still get calls even if you put it inside.
Some well placed copper tape on the back of the tv will likely get the job done in many cases.
Or just rm the nic
Great idea, assuming that doesn't disable the entire system
Just configure your game console to turn on the TV/set the input.
You avoided hooking your TV to a surveillance capitalism company that trains on your data to manipulate you. Great!
Then you hooked it to an external device of a surveillance capitalism company that trains on your data to manipulate you. Why?
Or plug in a cheap mini PC running a TV friendly Linux distro and give your data to no one.
Completely wrong. Apple goes to extraordinary lengths, to the point of harming the usability of their products, to protect user privacy and avoid collecting user data.
Apple could easily make tens of billions dollars extra if they spied more on their users.
Not completely, not anymore. Apple's gotten a taste of advertising dollars via the App store. Search for product A and product B will pay money to come first. Apple TV advertises for the shows they've made in the Apple TV app instead of going to your library. Same for Books.app.
The biggest indightment of Apple in my mind is the copy and pasting of links into iMessage. iMessages "helpfully" renders a preview so a dumb consumer doesn't have to see an ugly long text of a url. But in doing so, it also happens to hides the utm code that is used for tracking by marketers.
They've got their eye on that tens of billion dollars extra.
While I dislike Apple’s move to ads, I’m at a loss how accepting money to degrade search results is a privacy issue rather than just a UX quality issue. What information is Apple sharing with advertisers?
Does Apple sell data on what I’m watching to third parties?
Linux is not a viable option for TV for the vast majority of users. There are no sit back, remote driven apps for the services they use.
JellyFin or Plex. Personally i just use a Linux Mint desktop connected to the TV instead. Web browser for streaming and VLC for downloaded videos.
But JellyFin and Plex exist for people who don’t want that.
What the parent is saying is that the desktop versions of those programs are not remote friendly and the interface is not ideally scaled for 10-foot use. What you want are the Android TV versions, running on Waydroid or an x86 build of Android TV. See my other reply.
Apple is not a “surveillance capitalism company that trains on your data to manipulate you”. The exact opposite, actually.
Source: I work at Apple. The privacy story isn’t just marketing, it’s very real and part of every discussion.
You know why. Nobody wants to sysadmin their “friendly Linux distro” just to watch shows. Kodi is amateur hour compared to tvOS. Nowhere do people care more that it “just works” than the thing their TV remote talks to.
I literally bought a mini PC, installed Arch with KDE via archinstall, installed chromium, and haven't done any "sysadmin" since.
Yes, it "just works". Why wouldn't it?
I got an old gigantic monstrosity of a DLP tv off facebook marketplace for free then plugged an old Intel NUC into it. It's not for everyone, but I think that it's great, partly because the facts that it was free and that it's stupidly big give me joy.
More practically, when I am not using that, I just watch tv shows and such on my desktop computer running NixOS with a nice and modern (1440p 170Hz high quality but not highest possible end IPS) monitor over displayport.
Other options include a projector, buying a very large computer monitor marketed panel, or using something that is modern enough to be fine, but not so new that it has malware in it (like a friend who was moving gave me a very heavy but also very nice plasma tv, with zero malware on it).
Basically, anything except something marketed as a consumer grade TV. The last time that I had to displeasure of dealing with that it was when my parents bought one and asked me to set it up, and the built-in Roku software refusde to even display from an HDMI or DP input unless it was logged in and connected to WiFi! Alas, I was not able to convince them to return it, but I did decline to have anything to do with it.
Buy any TV you want, ignore all instructions to connect it to the internet, then look for an HDMI port on the back. Plug an HDMI cable into one end, and in the other end plug in a cheap Linux computer like a used Intel NUC from ebay. Then use a nice air-mouse remote like the Pepper Jobs W10.
I watch any movie or TV show I want in 4k via Kodi, but then can alt tab to a Terminal or a real web browser.
Privacy, and dramatically more functionality than any TV would ship with anyway.
Using this setup to type this message right now on pc hooked to a projector in my garage from my couch.
It turns out we never needed Smart TVs in the first place. Just treat it as a screen for a desktop computer.
Samsung TVs (and probably others) will connect to other Samsung TVs in range and exfiltrate data via that route… merely not connecting the TV doesn’t present data harvesting
Iirc, Amazon uses a tool they call “sidewalk” for this purpose
In that case, jailbreak it, or open it and unsolder the wifi antenna, or put some well placed copper tape until you no longer see any wifi traffic from the TV from other wifi capable devices running a wifi packet inspector.
The TV belongs to you and it will obey you with modest effort.
Alternatively, don't give your money to e-waste vendors.
Sure when the choice exists, but we should encourage de-fanging the hardware that is already purchased.
I want to know how to disable their external communication via wifi, I'd like to see how they are exfiltrating info. If I don't connect them to my wifi, apparently they connect to Xfinity wifi at your neighbors house.
Or use something Kodi as the OS and just have a TV like interface. You can also run a Jellyfin client on linux or with Kodi and have that as a reasonable interface for the TV too.
Yes. Or you can do the same thing with a regular monitor that has no wifi capabilities at all. Some are quite large, good quality and good price.
LG’s monitors were caught installing adware on Windows computers recently…
Through an HDMI connection?
Through Windows automatic driver downloads.
The problem here is Microsoft as much as LG. The same monitor on Linux wouldn't download anything. This would require root anyway.
Did this for years when I was single living in a tiny room. Nothing wrong with this either!
If you are open to projectors they still make “home cinema” projectors that don’t have any smart features or connect to the internet.
I have a BenQ (710tki iirc) that is like this and I believe it meets all your stated requirements (size, resolution, etc). I’ve been very happy with it.
This is what I landed on as well - projector connected to an Apple TV. It cost a bit more, and there’s some extra setup, but the results are excellent.
The main issue switching to a projector is figuring out where you are going to position it (different projectors have different throw distances).
More money and more setup, but very worthwhile in the end IMO.
...and when you drill the holes in the wall, remember the lens is often to one side, and NOT dead centre to the projector.
Not that I would forget that tiny detail when I mounted mine. Of course not.
We have to block our TV from dialling home (there just aren't any privacy oriented 'smart' TVs). We chose to go down the DNS filtering route and pay for https://nextdns.io/ - it turns out it super helpful for a whole host of home network privacy jobs (ad blocks, kids safety filtering, security posture etc.). I can't stop recommending it to people.
The one with the best looking picture at the store. Don't connect it to Internet and use your own streaming box (that you trust).
Really I think in store is the way to go. Some "low" and "mid" tvs look identical to me. Some "high end" are meh. Some other "low end" look great. I think it's a bit of a crapshoot. Not sure currently but Samsung QLED used to be rated well but I always thought LG OLED looked worlds better. I've always liked LG OLED although I've heard their firmware has gotten pretty predatorial...
Some good answers here already. Step 1 is always not to connect the TV to the Internet. You can go further and remove the WiFi daughterboard and/or desolder the chip.
Step 2 is to connect a TV box, but if you replace Samsumg, LG, or Google by Apple or Amazon, you have made no progress at all towards privacy.
Having researched this topic extensively, there are two main options for real user control and privacy. First, you can run an ordinary Linux distro on a mini PC, with a "launcher" such as Plasma Bigscreen. It's fine with an airmouse, but you will be mostly running upscaled desktop apps that aren't remote or controller friendly.
The best solution is actually to keep the mini PC and compile Lineage OS (Android TV 17) for a generic x86 target. This is a true degoogled Android TV distro that can, with some more hacking, run any ARM TV app from F-Droid, Aurora or other source. It is by far the best solution in that it is a true 10-foot UX and is compatible with almost all TV apk apps out there. The downside is that this not exist off-the-shelf. I spent a couple of days putting this together with Claude and it takes several hours to compile. I also found several upstream bugs in the process and will be submitting patches to the AOSP and Lineage.
There's a big gap between LG and Samsung, whose terms of service states that they sell your data to advertisers, and Apple, whose privacy policy states that they don't do that. Of course, there's an even bigger gap between Apple who can access your data if they wanted to or were told to and a home brewed Linux media box.
Unless you view privacy as all or nothing, I'd say replacing Google with Apple is progress. I think the majority of people are more upset at the idea of how their data is being sold for advertising than they are concerned about being able to act completely out of sight of any actor.
The consensus thus far appears to be that all modern TVs wipe their ass with user privacy.
Given what happened with games very recently, perhaps the question should be rephrased to: "Which modern TVs support flashing unsigned firmware?"
Many TVs are advertised with features (even local features) that don't work until the first firmware update.
So plug it in, and update it once.
Then you can do all the things these other comments suggest.
I rooted my LG C1 and honestly I can't go back to an unrooted TV. Game streaming works so much better(I can actually install the apps). I can control everything so Home Assistant automations are much better. Internet is blocked so no nagging or ads, But they are turn off via root just in case.
Now I have a weekend project in the future, assuming I can find a compatible process for my hardware. Never connected to the network, but the thing makes a few ever annoying popups I would love to disable. Or at least ensure that no "helpful" guest fills in the wifi information when I am not looking.
You could also just turn ads off in settings
I have a TCL QM8, which until recently I was using for its full smart-TV capabilities, and always feeling rather icky about all of the stuff it was sending. I would keep getting notifications about the microphone being turned on even when I had explicitly disabled it at every level.
I eventually got an NVIDIA Shield Pro, for which I:
1) Blew away the default launcher and installed Projectivity
2) adb disabled nearly all of the background Nvidia/Google services, following a guide
3) Removed all of the preinstalled streaming apps and added back the ones I use, opting for more privacy-respecting alternatives like Smarttube over YouTube standard.
Finally, I then factory reset my TCL TV and put its Google TV into "Basic" mode, which makes it a dumb TV for all intents and purposes. The TV itself is not allowed to connect to the internet anymore for any reason--everything goes through the set-top box.
The skeezy thing is the TV still tries very hard to get you to enable regular mode. Like if you try to launch ANY app of ANY kind, it will throw some pop-up about needing to connect to the internet to do so, and then flashing some fine print about how this will revert the TV to normal Google TV/Android TV mode. I had a guest in my house using the TV while I was in another room and suddenly asking me for my WiFi password, and when I went to see what was up, saw that they were halfway through opening the floodgates again before I stopped them.
I would go one step further and recommend a router with a customizable, Linux, firmware (OpenWRT, Tomato, DDWRT, etc).
Your TV is probably just one of the many devices that sends a scary amount of requests to a bunch of shady servers. With a firewall + DNS server that you control and a decent blocklist you should be able to block most requests and you won't be exposed if a new device connects to your network (for whatever reason).
> I would go one step further and recommend a router with a customizable, Linux, firmware (OpenWRT, Tomato, DDWRT, etc).
Yes, those are good options, but in true HN spirit, my suggestion is a plain Linux distro. The firewall/router is just a few iptables lines, which AI can now provide in a few seconds.
Is there any good GUI for a vanilla Linux networking stack, to your knowledge?
IIRC, IPFire is more or less that. I control my Debian router/home server using SSH and have no GUI at all. It's largely set and forget, and don't recall last time I touched the firewall.
Keep the glass disconnected from the network forever and it will solve the vast majority of your concerns.
Jellyfin is the answer if you are looking to spend a premium on a privacy-focused media experience.
Does anyone make TVs with Opera/Vewd (rythmes with lewd) anymore? That's what mine is running, and it supports Netflix and whatnot, but doesn't show ads or spy.
Also, Android TV boxes sometimes have shenanigans installed by the manufacturer, but they are easy to customize to only run what you want, and they run fine without a Google account.
As far as I can tell, there's no way to use an Apple TV box without linking it to an Apple account and letting them spy on you.
> run fine without a Google account
But you still need to accept Google TOS, before being allowed to do anything
Well, I have CRTs in most of the rooms in my home. That's because of an unrelated condition for which I refuse to be treated, but they are great for privacy!
Do crts make you better, or lcds make you worse? What about plasma?
Plasmas are great, and I have one - and our main screen in the living room is just a bog standard Sony...I just love CRTs, but I'm a retro gaming nerd.
buy a big monitor and hook whatever you want to it. samsung sells them and theyre about the same price as a tv, if not cheaper
Use any screen or projector connected to a linux box or AppleTV for streaming. Personally I use an old laptop running Kodi.
What sort of screen? Well, whatever you can tolerate. I use a very old commercial display I got through an e-waste reseller. It’s not great, but it was cheap ans has worked fine for years. If you insist on a “TV” screen or any monitor/projector with connectivity, pick one you can root. As other users have pointed out, simply “don’t connect to the Internet” unfortunately isn’t enough to guarantee your data stays private.
I like LG OLED quality. My lg tv has never been connected to the internet and connects to a avr that handles inputs and 5.1.2 speakers Nvidia shield with hdmi-cec to turn on/off the receiver and tv. Jellyfin, android tv app for cable company, YouTube sans ads and projectivy launcher (Google one sucks). You can update firmware via usb stick. Would get an Apple TV if it died but like my Dolby vision HDR10 and atmos. Highly recommend.
Imagine you wouldn’t have this but technically the front two speakers are on a much higher end naim amplifier (connected to my audio stuff) but it has avr pass through. Sometimes an extra button to switch it to turn the front two speakers back to avr mode.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Gamersnexus investigation show that even un-connected LG TVs will still scan for open WiFi networks to clandestinely upload their spy data?
My three Sony Bravias from 2010 are still going well - LCD 1080p, no screen wear at all (a later Sony I bought ~2017 has already worn to buggery)
Not sure if there’s even a used market for older TVs, though
I was able to root my Samsung TV easily with Codex, disable updates and spyware, MITM everything with the eMudhra certs. The problem is no one really knows what these TVs do, they're all liars with 100 page privacy policies that will legally allow anything, and encrypted HTTPS communications that we can't even ordinarily monitor what they're sending. They can be updated at any time to start sending more or less data without your knowledge. So I feel the only realistic option is find a TV that can be rooted and do that. If you root a TV, you can fully disable network access and then use an Apple TV, or use the TV's software with MITM and deeper analysis with AI to disable snooping.
A "Dumb TV" that doesn't have any Android / set top OS on it. Plug a debian box into it via HDMI, and you're all set.
https://www.sceptre.com/ seems to be pretty much the only remaining brand of non-smart TVs left. However, I have no experience of them.
Sadly they no longer make or restock their dumb TVs. They're desktop monitor only.
I bought one of their TVs in 2019, it's fabulous if your criteria is "turns on, displays what is connected to its inputs, and has decent video quality", and nothing more. I would recommend them heartily, if you can get access to one.
Which is interesting, since the E247BD-FSRD is a TV and one of the first ones mentioned on their web site. It does not seem to be available anywhere, though. (The Sceptre web site says Amazon and Walmart; but, neither carries it.)
The monitors lack the tuner and the cable/antenna connector; so, if you're only playing of a computer, they should work fine.
I have two Sceptre TVs and I recommend them, as well, if you can find them.
I got 2 of these, Amazon, 65inch. When I purchased (years ago) Amazon said "only 8 left". This TV is so dumb its clock is still in 1989. Three HDMI so it's got a Sworch2, Roku and a vSee box on it.
I was so/so on the purchase but after watching all the heck around 'smart" TVs I'm wondering what I'll do when these die. They were like 50% cost of the industrial display category, which seems my only option in the future.
Hoping these LLMs get us to jailbroken TVs soon.
I have a 27 inch monitor and a 50 inch TV from Sceptre, and they are great. No apps, no OS, and no connectivity other than common A/V cables.
I’m sticking with my 2010 Toshiba REGZA until it dies. 1080p is fine for me.
I don't know how true it still is, but dumb TVs have traditionally been marketed as "commercial displays". You'll pay more and have to bring your own media, of course.
> commercial displays
These are generally meant to display (static) advertisement media, you'll have a false experience watching movies or playing games on them.
What is "a false experience"?
I believe those displays intended for static advertising etc are not set up for good refresh rate or cinema viewing, so they'll have very poor e.g. ghosting during action sequences, low contrast ratios, a lot like a LCD TV from the early 2000s.
Ah, I see. I saw some do that in front of fashion shops or jewelries, yep.
- Buy any TV you want
- Don't connect it to the network
Doesn't work, all the spyware modules connect to open Wifi of neighbors, and soon, LTE.
This is repeated every time this topic comes up, but so far it's just a conspiracy theory. An urban legend. An old wives' tale. Are there any documented cases of this happening?
With TV makers having recently destroyed trust and there not being a good way for consumers to force trust it makes little difference whether they are doing it or not.
If you can't tell whether your disconnected TV is spying on you but you know that you cannot trust it, it's better to treat it as compromised.
Agree that it should be observed before assumed. Would a software-defined radio and a packet capturing mechanism be sufficient?
Amazon Sidewalk is a real life product that offers this over bluetooth
Just because something exists as a product, doesn't mean it exists inside your TV.
probably, but I'll let gp answer. But I want guarantees that they don't do that, until them I'll consider the fact that if they can and it's profitable they will do it
If you want a guarantee, that's a conservative threat model and a fair position. What's not fair is GP saying "doesn't work, all the TVs do XYZ", when not a single TV in the real world has ever actually done XYZ.
Ultimately I'll need to find data to settle how paranoid I might be. I'm still leaning on not enough. But isn't it also not fair to claim not a single tv has done it? Proving an universal is not easy for gp but the inverse of forall is not a not exists. And I know the world of middle management profit optimization.
I indeed cannot prove it. I also can't universally prove that wombats don't have telekinesis. But the preponderance of the evidence points to neither being true.
I know there are lots of advocacy groups and youtube channels that are testing TV models and would LOVE to be the first to break this story and publicly shame Samsung or whoever. But it simply hasn't happened.
Until we learn they Bluetooth beacon and do mesh to find some Internet connected LG fridge.
Sadly the Samsung TV I have was the best display for the price by a mile, so I've done what i can to balance usage and protection. Its connected to the wifi to allow for AirPlay natively. The tv has a fixed IP at the router to block all traffic in and out of the network, and as a visibility layer its DNS'd through a PiHole too.
Its unbelievably talkative over the network! In the 7 days just passed, its been 90% of the blocked requests by volume (there's no allowed domains from that IP).
I'm still not convinced it isn't sneaking out data somehow - piggybacking off a connection somewhere to the neighbors TV. Its HDMI runs through a stereo amplifier, so it can't piggy-back off the connected PC that runs it.
Maybe the PC (Mint) can run AirPlay somehow and I can disconnect it entirely from the internet?
I feel overly paranoid about this device relative to everything else in the house, I'm not sure how justified that is.
> I'm still not convinced it isn't sneaking out data somehow - piggybacking off a connection somewhere to the neighbors TV
I think we've overshot the mark a bit about TVs' connection abilities. A built-in SIM was one early conjecture. And while it hasn't been seen in the wild, it is often assumed to exist.
More to your point, we've not seen connections (assumedly ad-hoc wifi) to a neighboring device and uploading data to manufacturer, partner, etc.
We have recently seen a case of data collection, that included wifi scans. What we have not seen is a device that connects to other APs on it's own.
I saw 1 redditor claim that this occurred but it was not substantiated. Lots of folks are looking for this behavior but it hasn't been found.
This tells me that our existing methods of self-protection are effective.
Huge fan of "never give it wifi, hook it up to a little linux box, remote control it via input leap" myself
Not input-leap, nowadays you'd use lan-mouse (wayland!) or, i was as much surprised as anybody, kde connect
I allow my Samsung to connect to my local network, but then use openwrt and refuse to allow any outbound data from any IP using the MAC address of the television set. It cant update itself and no traffic suggests it can do anything regardless of what it might be collecting. Rooting it to prevent it from connecting to other wifi AP’s is probably the only better thing.
Don't smart TVs (of LG or others?) connect to open networks of neighbors, like Vodafone hotspots? That was told to me at least.
So only disconnecting the antenna or destroying it would work, unless you live remotely.
Ah, here:
> DiabloD3 43 minutes ago | unvote | parent | next [–]
Doesn't work, all the spyware modules connect to open Wifi of neighbors, and soon, LTE.
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> nvme0n1p1 37 minutes ago | root | parent | next [–]
This is repeated every time this topic comes up, but so far it's just a conspiracy theory. An urban legend. An old wives' tale. Are there any documented cases of this happening?
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> Don't smart TVs (of LG or others?) connect to open networks of neighbors, like Vodafone hotspots?
I can find no verified reports of this behavior. People are looking for it.
> all the spyware modules connect to open Wifi of neighbors, and soon, LTE.
I can find no verified reports of this behavior. People are looking for it. Cellular connections have been theorized since the beginning but have not been discovered.
Given the number of qualified people seeking out these behaviors, if they appear we will know it - with certainty.
Got a Bravia TV for cheap back in 2014 that happened to be pre-Android TV (and pre-Google TV) so Android TV was just released and those something-else-os were "outdated".
Sony stopped releasing security patches a while back and there are no longer apps whatsoever and they all were crap - the youtube one was pure torture because of how slow it was and the web browser was just as miserable as ie6.
But besides that I can send it commands to it via its IP and control it, consume stuff via a DLNA daemon, do screen mirroring, and all the usual tv stuff. The image quality and sound are still great after 10+ years though I can't care less about oled 4k 120Hz and all that stuff. So it's no longer a "smart" tv but it's not also so "dumb" for a now dumb tv.
I had my old Bravia TV, but the screen has issues like half turning into black or random colors through it. I'll try to fix it and use it again!
You could just use something like adguard to block DNS requests for telemetry endpoints.
DNS layer blocking is very coarse and easily bypassed.
I just rooted my LG in about 30 seconds [using claude] and disabled all the junk. can also run own apps / homebrew.
As everyone is saying: just don't let it on the network. It's a little annoying because you can't have smart home stuff like "turn off the TV when I leave the house" working, but that's it.
My thing is, don't use an Apple TV. For the last 15 years or so I've just used a Mac Mini plugged into a big TV, and it's perfect. Get a wireless keyboard and trackpad and one of the many available trays that will hold them together. I'm literally typing this right now on this exact setup.
you can let it on the network, just block it from leaving the network. Lets you have the remote control features but without the risk.
I shop for elite televisions at the “reuse” center, my latest score was a 2013 Panasonic plasma which is a perfectly good dumb TV hooked up to an XBOX ONE and a home theatre. Downstairs I have a big curved Samsung 4K attached to my big PC. Someday I’ll see the high end OLED that I crave.
If you have the room and price is no object you definitely want at least 5.1 theatre, both movies and TV programs sound great in 5.1. The next step up is a second subwoofer, even for music subwoofers take a load off your other speakers and reduce distortion.
A large format monitor that does not connect to the Internet nor has any smarts at all.
Also, do not plug any Internet-facing devices into it, have a captive SBC that connects to a LAN server hosting (legally owned) videos.
The fact that we even need to have this conversation is messed up...
Thanks everyone for more practical comments, definitively bookmaking this post.
Disconnect the TV from internet and use a solution like Apple TV for apps you would like in TV. Even better is a Mini PC connected to the TV if you are savvy enough.
I just had claude connect to my Android TV over adp and rip out all of the spyware it could find.
Any AndroidTV and then run CleanYourTV [1] on it, gets completely rid of all Google ads and additional bloatware by the manufacturer. Maybe run Claude against the repo first to check for malware but going by the number of stars it seems to be solid.
[1] https://github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv
I just dont connect mine to the internet, hook up an Apple TV to it.
Samsung Frame is esthetically pleasing, high picture quality.
Samsung is the worst by far. Samsung (TizenOS) does not respect even privacy opt outs. It seems like LG, Google TV OS (Sony) and Fire TV OS (Amazon) and VidaaOS at least do that.
https://allaboutcookies.org/smart-tv-tracking-privacy-opt-ou...
Never connect to internet is the best option.
Anybody has experience with TCL and Spectre? I'm seeing them a lot, even saw one really big TCL TV in a local shop and loved the colors and the FPS, but no idea how good are they really, are they longer-lasting, are they annoying if you don't give them network access etc.
Spectre is the only manufacturer I'm aware of still mass producing non-smart consumer TVs.
I think the answer now changes with ability to root some of these tvs.
Still, might be best to run an android tv box yourself, and plug hdmi.
A solid late 80s RCA Colortrak 2000 with down-converter is a solid choice and excellent conversation piece. Hardwood finish, or go for the full console experience. Best part is it can't call anything.
That old kind that just had a VCR slot on the front.
Or a projector against a wall.
Find an old projector TV
Read a paperbook
just pick a PC screen with TV sizes, although they might max out at 55 inches. displayspecifications.com has many hits for what has no FRC then.
Just open up whatever you buy and pull the networking components, microphones, and covert cameras. Leverage HDMI after that. Problem solved.
I recently was stressed about the same & ended up buying an LG C6, sticking it on an isolated VLAN, rooting it, then just letting it hit my NAS for jellyfin.
Don't connect it to a network, buy a mini pc and install Linux on it. Get a Logitech k400 keyboard with an integrated touchpad to control it remotely
At this point I'd just hooking up a gaming monitor (a very large one) with separate speakers and low-spec computer to run it.
I researched a bit for business displays from Samsung and these also have enshittified with "smart" features, so it lost my trust as well.
It's like every 3 months someone asks some variant of this question.
There are certainly new TV models coming out almost constantly, do it seems warranted? I see no problem with "duplicated" questions?
What I find amusing is people asking for advice on buying an appliance on this site. Not bad, just an unexpected pattern to my eyes at least.
Buy something used that was manufactured before ca 2018. Or get a projector that doesn't have any smart stuff built in.
Personally, I used to be very privacy-conscious, but have given up on enforcing it everywhere over the years. I still care, more than most people I know in real life, but when it comes to stuff like TV's I just get whatever has the best panel for the lowest price. Last time I bought a TV, that was an LG TV running WebOS, which is not exactly the best from a privacy standpoint. Initially I used it with an Apple TV, but now I just use the native apps and try to disable the telemetry that I can in the settings panel.
sorry to interject on your experience, but this sounds really bleak
You can use a Sony Bravia connected to an Apple TV without connecting the Sony to the internet.
Digital signage displays are dumb PC screens in giant sizes, like you are looking for.
LG Ultragear 48GQ900-B
Ok I'm cheating, it's a monitor. Only it's the size of a TV and there's a remote.
But no tuner and no ARC.
But I don't care.
Zero smarts, boots in a millisecond, auto-wakes on device power-up, input switching just works, no half-baked HDMI-CEC hell. No wifi. No network. Nothing to spy on me because it's a FUCKING MONITOR and THAT'S IT.
https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-48gq900-b-gaming-monitor
I'd recommend a search, this gets asked at least once a year
I love this: Just hook up your Apple TV for streaming.
A monitor. You will lose some controls over color & clarity (motion smoothing). But it will provide the best “dumb TV” experience.
I use my monitor with a fire TV stick and it renders very well. LG 4k panel.
My honest answer at this point is none.
Tvs can themselves have their privacy improved by never connecting it to WIFI, except, maybe for software updates, if needed (rare).
The smarts you connect to the TV can vary.
Apple Ts manage things in some good ways.
NVidia Shields are good in others for Android TV.
The Android TV platform is likely more customizable (check youtube the past few weeks) to get it how you want.
Last, but not least, some poeple may just hook up a web browser to the TV and then contain that.
Honestly, anything pre-2020.
Use dumb.tv
Just get any old TV and use the HDMI input and don’t connect it to the internet. The fears of it phoning home anyway even when you don’t configure wifi are overblown (almost no TVs can do this), as are the privacy implications. Nobody cares that you watch Severance and MCU movies. It’s sort of like people who tape over their laptop camera but leave the mic alone, as if 86400 photos of your face are somehow private and sensitive but all of the conversations in the room are not.