I have heard good things about Apple TV as a better alternative to most smart TV native apps. Would some TV’s pair better with this than others for privacy? I don’t want the TV doing anything other than being the display for Apple TV.
I am curious what success others have had.
- Root it [0].
- Install Glasshouse [1] and disable all telemetry. YOU now own the glass. Now you can chromecast to the TV, use Adfree YouTube, access IP TV, etc etc etc. No point crippling your TV by pulling the wireless module and voiding your warranty.
- Install a bunch of cool apps to your TV [2] (there are many more out there besides those listed here)
- Restore to Factory Defaults if you ever want / need to unroot and get back to stock e.g. a warranty claim
The only issue is that LG recently closed the vulnerability that made rooting possible so you don't want any firmware released after 2026-10-10 like 43.21.84. Hopefully a new exploit is found that makes rooting possible once again.
BTW, you might have heard of Dev Mode on these TVs but they don't allow anywhere near the functionality that rooting provides.
[0] https://tv.slada.sk/guides/rooting-guide
[1] https://github.com/rorygallagher2024/glasshouse
[2] https://www.webosbrew.org/
I assume the TVs Google backdoors are even worse (video scraping, etc, etc) since they are not power constrained.
When I brought it home, I never connected it to Ethernet or WiFi. Instead, I connected it to my laptop over USB, then using adb I uninstalled almost every application from it. It took me quite some time to figure out what app is possible to remove and what should be kept to let TV functionality to work. I even had to factory-default it a couple of times because some random apps I removed were crucial for Android to work. :) I think it took me 5-6 hours to clean it. Now it has only basic TV functionality like any dump TV does, I can watch air and cable TV channels, watch movies and play music from USB storage. If there's a need to watch something online, I connect it over HDMI to my small mini-PC that runs FreeBSD. I think I'm satisfied with the result. :-)
PS: Yesterday I opened the case and disconnected WiFi antenna. Just in case.
While this couldn't hurt, it also won't stop the TV from being able to connect to wifi. I ran my desktop without an antenna attached for months. The speed noticeably improved when I attached an antenna but it was fine for browsing the web and downloading software updates without one.
When building my PC, I got a PCI WiFi card but it turns out there was also a direct WiFi network interface built into the motherboard somehow
But I don't the GP comment was talking about that; I have also used WiFi without an antenna (PCB or otherwise), and it was also slow for me.
A dummy load is probably the best idea: an impedance mismatch would obliterate any chance of anything working (including Bluetooth fwiw).
As an example - if you have a motherboard on your computer that supports wifi and comes with a port/plug for an antenna, you could remove that antenna and still receive a signal (IDK about sending) but it would suffer more signal loss due to the lack of antenna.
All that is just a guess of course. People more knowledgeable than me could explain/clarify.
That being said, without an antenna it is highly improbable that it could still find an open WiFi AP to connect to (especially if you don't have one in your house).
Did the TCL not have this option?
That's not me for sure. :) But what I'm sure about it that their TVs are made either by Haier or TCL.
F--- Google, but at least the kids know those menus are bullshit, and do not have the wifi password at any rate.
Also, we're probably already to the point where I could just put it on a firewalled network, and have a [chinese open weight] LLM pop the factory android, get root, and reprogram the remote buttons to no-ops.
Or, I could open the remote up, physically cut out the spam buttons, then 3d print an alternative top-half of the shell without holes for them.
So many options, so much enshitification.
We bought it because it has crazy high brightness (it is in a bright room with direct sunlight hitting the panel while we are watching it), and while it can beat back the sun, it cannot do so by just turning all the zones on 100% because it would melt or something.
So, if all the image slopping were turned off, the contrast ratio would drop 100x, and the TV wouldn't really be fit for purpose.
(For when the sun is not actively trying to kill the panel, I have a de-slop shortcut setup. That also has the backlight enhance stuff turned on -- as low as possible -- to get true black on the LCD. It works OK. OLED is not quite there yet for this corner case.)
> the image enhancements.
Having spent a couple decades working in and around digital video production tooling and engineering, as well as being a filmmaker and home theater enthusiast, it's worth mentioning that today almost all television image enhancement features are net negative, even if they make the image subjectively 'pop' or motion appear smoother on typical scenes, they'll introduce artifacts or trade-offs in other kinds of scenes.
In my experience doing a lot of testing over the years with objective signal analysis tools at work as well as subjectively across 7 generations of upgrades in my own home theater, the trade-offs aren't worth it. There are a few context and content specific exceptions but they're quite rare and usually involve slightly improving significantly degraded signals which no longer exist in most home theaters (eg noise reduction in analog sources like laserdisc, DCT macro-block smoothing in highly compressed old MPEG 1/2 sources or dynamic range expansion on legacy SD sources).
With today's 4K and HD digital sources encoded at high bit rates in modern codecs, the director, colorist and mastering engineer can finally deliver their precise intent all the way to your eyeballs. The ~$20 chip calculating synthetic frames and pixels in your TV introduces surface curb appeal at the cost of artifacts and a poorly integrated image. If it actually made the image look better, the director and colorist have more and better tools than that $20 chip that they're already applying to the source. You're just turning a $20 chip loose on 'full auto' to guess at (and often undo or muddy) intentional enhancements manually applied frame by frame over days by experts.
Do whatever you like but I encourage you to critically audition each of those enhancements across a range of source types (4K, HD, HDR, HDR10, SDR, 24, 30, and 60 frame) and diverse scenes (low-light, quick panning, smooth dollies, and synthetic test signals, etc). Once you compare the before/after across that breadth back-to-back you'll see what I mean. I run my calibrated, high-end 3-laser projector (150" screen) as close to neutral, native settings as I can get and it looks sensational. And to be clear I'm not being a purist, if 'enhancements' really improved some scenes meaningfully without degrading other scenes, I'd be "Fuck the director's intent, it's just better." But for every scene an enhancement improves, I can queue up a scene from another film it makes noticeably worse. Fortunately, on most high-end Sony TVs you can get an un-hyped, accurate image in the standard UX without going to the calibrator or factory menus.
Yep, generally you don't want anything the TV manufacturer markets as "enhancements." They basically all add things to the signal that were not part of the director's or video editor's vision. Any cinephile will remind you that there is one correct setting for "brightness," "contrast," "color," and "tint". "Sharpness" should almost always be zero, and any other setting that claims to "enhance" the picture should be turned off for correct output.
The worst ones now are the "motion smoothing" modes that take your normal FPS movie and try to interpolate them up to 60FPS, 120FPS or even 240FPS, giving them that cheap, crappy "soap opera" effect. Turn it off as soon as you turn on your TV for the first time.
Of course a modern console only managing 30fps is the actual 'bug' :-). But I agree that's one of the narrow exception cases where an 'enhancement' might be a net benefit. Although if you're going to use synthetic frames, doing it in the console can be better because intra-frame motion hinting might be available and, even if it's not, the console's frame gen is trained on game content where a TV's chip is cross-function and far less capable (both in look-ahead and motion vector count). But I know some consoles don't have frame gen, so in that case it's a win.
2) Why bother removing the apps if it has no network connection? Defense in depth is sensible to me, but maybe there's something else I'm missing ...
3) Why not buy a large desktop computer monitor, or are those no longer 'dumb' either?
1) All the google data gathering crap, and all the "give permission to garbage preload to turn on the microphone" bullshit (and look for a physical mic switch; ours has that. Also, turn off notifications, because, do you want notifications telling you the wifi does not work? If you have an android phone, do this on your phone first.
2) Less crap = less backlog of surveillance data if you ever accidentally need to put it online. Also, see (1).
3) You can't get a nice 55"-100" desktop monitor for < $2K.
Ppl worry so much about privacy, but are fine having kids watch TV when they eat breakfast.
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.
We have to use the actual TV remote to debug some audio issues or disable the motion blur stuff again every once in awhile, but otherwise it might as well just be a display for the AppleTV. I’ve only seen the actual home screen of the TV a handful of times.
I guess it’s probably still spying on us somehow, and it seems like different models make using the AppleTV remote and booting right into the AppleTV harder than others, so your mileage may vary.
Others just overlay banners on top of the video.
Caveat emptor.
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.
They still need to tie it to you. If you've not given it a shred of personal information, it has to be fingerprinting via surreptitious audio/video recording, or else by obtaining the purchase info from the retailer (like the name and billing address from your credit card) and matching that by serial number (which would have to be recorded during purchase).
(It has an HDMI port, but it's clearly a second class citizen in the menus, etc. Default to HDMI on power up is intentionally broken. It's also intentionally designed to turn into a brick if we ever lose the remote. At boot, it puts a screen up saying to press a button on the remote if you want it to display anything else, and that screen never times out. If you plug in an HDMI input, it says "HDMI input detected; press OK.". There's no "OK" button on the projector itself. You have to press the OK button on the remote.)
Can you explain why you can't just not give the TV your Wi-Fi password?
Or are we worried about the case when the TV did have Wi-Fi (due to it being mandatory for some initial setup, say), but we don't trust that "Forget Network" and "Wi-Fi off" are actually honored?
Suppose the device surreptitiously reconnects to Wi-Fi in spite of being told to forget it. You may be able to block it in your router and failing that, change the access point password.
No?
I assume at some point, appliance manufacturers will start "partnering" with things that actually need WiFi for exfiltration purposes. Phones would be a good place to start.
That way, we'd need to either Faraday cage our friends' phones, not invite them over, or send marketing pervs video feed of our moldy pickles.
But if the TV manufacturer is smart in their spying game, they could also be probing for any public SSIDs to connect to when no local internet access is setup.
But also, you think tv manufacturers are sane? They have proven that they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt, in my opinion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#HEC
Any chance the TV can phone home via that? One would have to make sure the HDMI cable physically doesn't have the Ethernet pairs, or set the trusted box to filter the traffic.
Other than that, I agree regarding TV, with one caveat: you might want to update the firmware right away, or at some point. The device might need to phone home for that. In order to achieve that, you can put up a temp WLAN AP with your smartphone.
With regards to my STB: I am considering cancelling all my subscription services and simply downloading everything to my NAS. This already runs Jellyfin. Then all I need is a Jellyfin client and HDMI. Perhaps a RPi 4 or RPi 5 would be suffice there.
Why?
They want to be "helpful" and show me they can "work tech" by doing stuff like this. They don't understand that the TV is manipulating them. I don't want to have to explain to them that I'm basically a neurosurgeon and they just tried to impress me by drilling a hole in somebody's head. Because the TV told them to.
Disconnecting the wifi avoids the need for unpleasant conversations.
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...
Sure, I would be disturbed that it's doing that sort of thing in spite of Wi-Fi being explicitly turned off.
What is the threat to me though?
Also, how do you pay for streaming channels, etc., if you don't give it any information?
Without either doing the fingerprinting from surreptitious audio recording in the room that other commenters mention, or else matching the unit serial number to the purchaser (requiring the retailer to leak personal info to the manufacturer), they can't match the unit's location to our identity.
EDIT: What I am referring to here is the specific allegation that smart TVs will connect to open wireless networks without being commanded to do so. It's not a catch-all for any nefarious thing involving TVs or wireless networks.
LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true' (635 points, 2 months ago, 494 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49645480
Also Amazon does this same model with their Sidewalk service, which can run over bluetooth or lora, instead of wifi... and is specifically priced to be usable for large numbers of devices.
If the devices still scan all the time...
Living on the countryside there is no such problem.
If they choose a Firestick or Roku what's the difference? XD
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.
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.
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.
(I don't care about integrated speakers though)
If you're a videophile you might care. Most people would not notice.
I think what changed was the realisation that even with 4k hardware in theory, what you're actually seeing is so variable based on bandwidth and different services' support for different shows you basically don't know anyway and thus it doesn't really make much sense to care about it.
Besides which, you realise that things that are made to be more enjoyable on 4k, like where that would actually make a difference to how good it is, are probably not that much worth watching anyway outside of demos. Certainly it's not, for example, a factor on which you want to be choosing what series to watch.
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.
Well, why not?
For a long time they haven't been just dumb displays. They also run Tizen or WebOS for digital signage applications.
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.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Sidewalk
"Anymore"? So far there's no evidence any TVs are using it, so you're safe for now.
Yes because you have to fetch a shitty TV remote with buttons inspired by a Boeing 747 cockpit, which must be aimed directly at the TV because it uses shitty infra-red.
Am I close? :)
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.
Apple could easily make tens of billions dollars extra if they spied more on their users.
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.
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.
But JellyFin and Plex exist for people who don’t want that.
Source: I work at Apple. The privacy story isn’t just marketing, it’s very real and part of every discussion.
Personally, I use an RPi4 with libreelec, and it works great - including responding to my remote via HDMI-CEC. (There's also no need for any sysadmin with libreelec, which is designed to work out of the box.)
Yes, it "just works". Why wouldn't it?
You must realize there are things like 3blue1brown, Veritasium, and Numberphile on YouTube, right?
I guess I am more concerned about random devices at home that need internet to work yet I have no idea what data they send where.
I was able to disable a bunch of stuff on my LG so I never actually see the WebOS interface anymore.
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.
Iirc, Amazon uses a tool they call “sidewalk” for this purpose
There’s something called Wi-Fi Direct but it requires explicit pairing. And Sidewalk isn’t on TVs. There’s no evidence of Samsung TVs trying to use each other as relays.
The TV belongs to you and it will obey you with modest effort.
Especially considering some models now refuse to work without seeing an internet connection during the setup procedure
Now many people are also claiming that TVs will surreptitiously connect to an open network, but as far as I can tell, there is no evidence of this actually happening [0]. Of course it’s technically possible, but until a researcher actually observes this behavior I would not lose sleep over this.
[0]: https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/how-to-use-smart-tv-offline
The easiest solution is to never give the TV network access at all (no WiFi, no Ethernet) and only drive it over HDMI, via an Apple TV for example. The onus then shifts to how much you trust Apple, and the TV becomes mostly a dumb display. That still isn’t a 100% guarantee, though, since the TV has radios and could potentially talk to other networks or devices without your knowledge. If you want certainty, the only real option is to remove the radios entirely, which can have side effects, like the remote no longer working if it relies on BLE.
Personally, I don’t like LG’s “smart” apps, so never using them isn’t much of a loss.
But if you’re more technically inclined and want to use a product you paid for the way you want, you can do what I did with my C1:
Root it, put it on a restricted VLAN with no WAN access and no outbound privileges to any device on the LAN, and enable SSH. These displays run webOS, which is Linux-based. Yes, you can literally SSH into your TV. :)
That let me deploy my own custom app that I drive over the network. My display also never actually turns “off”. I just paint black pixels when I’m not using it, so it’s very snappy when I want something on the screen. It works as a spare data and metrics display while I’m working, and as a media player (a simplified DIY Plex) when I’m not.
So I get the “smart” part of the TV without the privacy concerns.
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...
https://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/samsung-s-s99-h-qd-oled-tv-w...
I’m glad to see the crown change hands, though. It’d be ideal if there were more contenders.
The problem is that if you want a good OLED, there isn’t much of an alternative. Even if you don’t buy from LG or Samsung directly, they make essentially all the OLED TV panels on the market. A Sony or Panasonic OLED is still built on an LG or Samsung panel. So if you truly want to boycott them, your options for a quality modern display are very limited.
I bought my C1 before I was aware of how bad LG’s privacy posture was. The point of my comment is that you can still get the panel quality, and even some of the “smart” capability, without feeding them data, as long as you’re willing to treat the TV as a display and nothing else.
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.
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.
Not that I would forget that tiny detail when I mounted mine. Of course not.
https://www.bestbuy.com/product/samsung-65-inch-commercial-4...
Turn it on and it wants me to make an account, agree to a new TOS update once a month, comes with the full smart TV interface junk. Had no idea that was even a thing they were doing to monitors when I bought it.
I have a few year old LG oled and keep it offline.
- >= 85"
- VESA mount
- 4K @ 120Hz (or better)
- < $2K
- "infinite" contrast ratio
They have the strongest consumer protections and guarantees.
I'd go for a Sony.
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.
3 HDMI ports. Any downsides using as a TV?
https://www.cdw.com/product/viewsonic-cde65g3-65-inch-4k-uhd...
It's damn near impossible to find an OS-free TV that is actually for sale like this.
Unless the Apple TV decides to be evil, I feel safe.
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).
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.
Samsung the frame 65" for $2000 constantly pesters about $15 monthly subscription to change the art on the display to their selection of public domain historical artworks. Otherwise you're stuck with the default slideshow, which you're now forced to see since the whole sales pitch of the display is showing art when turned off.
atleast they had the decency to not show ads as default art instead... but i wouldn't put it past them
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 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 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.
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.
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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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.
It doesn't seem that it's a DCMA limitation, yet at least. Would it fall under "right to repair"?
I use a Mac Mini M4 and a huge 300 euro 4K screen as my TV. much better than an Apple TV and no spying or ads at all.
Best TV in my life, a user friendly computer.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI
Jellyfin is the answer if you are looking to spend a premium on a privacy-focused media experience.
The next step for me will be setting up a Raspberry PI with Plasma Bigscreen.
6 years ago, discussion of an article about such: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24877363 (site hasn't survived, but article can still be found in archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20190511065920/http://redlightgre...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA
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.
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 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.
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 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.
These are generally meant to display (static) advertisement media, you'll have a false experience watching movies or playing games on them.
- Don't connect it to the network
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.
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.
Not sure if there’s even a used market for older TVs, though
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.
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.
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.
But you still need to accept Google TOS, before being allowed to do anything
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
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.
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.
Also, do not plug any Internet-facing devices into it, have a captive SBC that connects to a LAN server hosting (legally owned) videos.
Given what happened with games very recently, perhaps the question should be rephrased to: "Which modern TVs support flashing unsigned/self-signed firmware?"
Can you imagine explaining that future to someone in the 80s? They would not believe that our society let it happen
"Remember that discussion we had about phones? Yeah, so TVs are kinda like that except they're really big so we stick them in a room instead of taking them with us".
The screen would snap down for carrying, and it was reflected for viewing in a mirror, so it required a strong light from above to shine through the LCD panel. There was an accessory backlight with its own batteries to snap on top.
It had a pocket-size form factor, and I carried it around to Disneyland so we could watch TV while we waited in line, and it could receive any OTA TV channel in VHF or UHF.
I kind of miss that little guy!
[1] https://github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv
Thanks everyone for more practical comments, definitively bookmaking this post.
https://allaboutcookies.org/smart-tv-tracking-privacy-opt-ou...
Never connect to internet is the best option.
So plug it in, and update it once.
Then you can do all the things these other comments suggest.
Still, might be best to run an android tv box yourself, and plug hdmi.
Mine _is_ connected to my network, but I have DNS blocking via self-hosted Adguard along with specific SmartTV block lists and regular expressions, plus a firewall for the 'entertainment' VLAN that's fairly tight. I'm also monitoring (and recording to a database) all outgoing traffic on the entertainment VLAN so I can add further firewall restrictions - once I have the time to analyse the logs, maybe after I've retired...
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...
I stripped out the bluetooth+wifi module from my TV and keep it disconnected from ethernet. Now it doesn't matter what it tries to collect, it can't send it anywhere.
SOFTWARE SWITCHES CAN NEVER BE TRUSTED!
Or a projector against a wall.
I researched a bit for business displays from Samsung and these also have enshittified with "smart" features, so it lost my trust as well.
I use my monitor with a fire TV stick and it renders very well. LG 4k panel.
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.
I recently picked one up at Sam's Club. Since my use was only to display an external HDMI source, I never even configured Wifi. Unfortunately, they're now wise to this. If it detects its been offline for ten or so start-ups, the TV will 'helpfully' force you into the Wifi config workflow on the next start. It seems to keep an internal counter in flash memory which nothing but a factory reset will clear. In my tests, it seemed like it can be kept offline forever but at the cost of manually dismissing the Wifi config workflow with three clicks on the remote every ~10 power-ons.
The TV also will not turn on and just display an external HDMI source even though it has a "Remember Last Source" feature. That feature does work as expected with any internal streaming source but external sources must first be manually selected with the remote after each power on (also undocumented in the manual).
I figured this out because I bought this small TV to be a wall-mounted screen in the dedicated bathroom of our home theater room. It's only job is to turn on while someone is in the little bathroom and display a copy what's on the main 150" projector screen in the next room, then turn off when they leave. The on/off is handled by a motion sensor and standard Home Assistant automation but after power on it correctly shows the Last Selected external HDMI source for 1 second, then blanks the screen. The source is already selected and working but being blacked out until you manually re-select the same source with the remote (only if it's external). This is clearly an undocumented anti-pattern added specifically to prevent the TV being used unattended as a display screen, picture frame, digital sign etc. Why? Because Vizio (now owned by WalMart) doesn't get rev share if it's: 1) Not online, and 2) Only displaying external sources. That's why it demands manual "proof-of-life" before it'll grudgingly deliver the basic functionality it claims on the box.
This made me angry - and the TV was otherwise the perfect size and feature set for my use case. So I programmed an ESP32 with an IR emitter so that every time the TV powers on it sends the remote presses to manually clear the "Please Connect Internet" message and re-select the already-selected external HDMI. Very annoying to be forced to figure this out but now it works fine and no one even sees the annoying messages as they're already gone before by the time we enter and see the screen. So, fuck Vizio :-). Although, I'm pretty sure almost all current consumer TVs now sell all your data exactly the same. The only differences may be the depth of dark patterns they deploy to resist offline usage.
To be fair, aside from all the super evil dark patterns, it's a shockingly good quality small TV (24-inch) for $88. Although it's obviously not a high-end display (no native HDR or 24fps), the chipset does do a decent job tone mapping external HDR (and HDR10) sources to SDR and it does proper 3:2 pull-down to display 24 frame external sources at 60fps - which very few TVs in this size do well (or at all). This is why I kept it and spent the time 'fixing' it. Of course, this is only because the TV is subsidized by the $35-$60 avg yearly revenue TV manufacturers reportedly can collect from advertising, app install payments, rev shares and selling all your viewing data. For $88 at local retail, it's probably being sold at a small loss. What's sad is I would have paid double that for the same TV without the dark patterns (in fact, I did buy and return two 24" TVs before this one for $160 and $200 but they couldn't even display external HDR or 24fps sources at all - which was a requirement since this secondary display has to display sources configured for the main projector).
If you wanted to give your coding agent a crack at the internet connection thing and patching that out, there's some sort of pairing you can do over LAN to allow access to launch web content, this can be chained with old Chromium RCEs to gain root access.
I'm not sure they'll care about any of the issues I had since they were clearly put there on purpose. Kinda like complaining to the concentration camp guards about the poor service and lumpy bedding... :-)
> If you wanted to give your coding agent a crack at the internet connection thing
Good to know but I've got the IR commands and timing working to nullify the dark patterns and I'm not going to touch it. To Vizio we're not the customer, we're the product. I wish the community godspeed in pwning Vizio TVs as they've certainly 'earned' the attention through bad behavior. :-)
Frankly, I've never used any apps in a smart TV nor have I ever allowed a TV internet access. I always feed my displays via external HDMI because our main viewing room is a custom-built, fully sound-proof, tri-level screen room with elevated stage and motorized curtains. All walls & ceiling are 100% fabric over acoustic padding (no windows), separate snack bar and dedicated restroom. Seats 17 in matching, reclining theater loungers. The sources are mounted inside three in-wall sliding racks and include UHD disc, PS5 Pro, 3 older consoles, media server, satellite, cable, vintage LaserDisc and cloud streaming multiplexed through dual AVRs with separate amps driving 9.2.4 sound (B&W THX speakers + subs the size of 55 gal oil drums backstage).
I just needed to make that little 24-inch Vizio work because that's how big the in-wall display cutout in the restroom is (the screen cutout is integrated into the interior design). Finding a secondary display that small able to at least display via conversion every format all those sources can throw was challenging. :-)