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TV's are becoming intrusive and abusive; what to do about it?
49 points by i_am_roberto on Aug 29, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 112 comments
I have, over the years, watched as our TV has become more intrusive and abusive. Every software update takes it up a notch.

As I say in a Reddit post [0], I didn't go to the store to buy a remotely controlled ever-changing remotely-controlled digital advertising platform to hang in our family room.

I didn't go to the store to buy a data gathering device to plant into my home.

I didn't go to the store to provide a TV manufacturer with, as they say in their newest terms of service:

"grant and agree to grant to VIZIO and its affiliates and licensees, a non-exclusive, transferable, revocable, royalty-free right and license (with right to sublicense) to use, reproduce, publicly display, publicly perform, adapt, collect, modify, delete from, distribute, transmit, promote and make derivative works of the VIZIOgram Content, in any form"

This device, which cost well over $2,000 is the source of stress and consternation.

When family and friends come over for a visit, it is impossible to control what they click on. The "home page" is full of ads.

They have a service through which you upload your family photos into their cloud service. The above license is just one aspect of what they grab from consumers without consent.

I say "without consent" because of several realities.

- They do not make you read and sign anything when you buy the product. Go to the store to buy a TV. You walk away with a big box and no disclosures of any kind. The plastic bag they ship it in has more visible disclosures than the device itself.

- How about the terms of use/service? Nobody reads 34 pages of nonsense (assuming they can find it).

- If you have the TV installed by the shop where you bought it, they set it up and walk away. You never agreed to anything.

- They constantly change and update firmware and TOU/S. You never agree to anything.

In short, they take advantage of consumers and tend to become abusive about just how far they push it. This multi-thousand-dollar TV is now a fully remote-controlled digital ad serving system in my family room. That is not what I signed-up for and not what I bought at all.

I just want a TV.

What about watching network TV with ads? Isn't that an advertising platform in your home?

Sure, except that I can choose to tune in or not. And the TV station doesn't modify the software in my TV to deliver more and more ads into my screen.

Interestingly enough, in a prior job I designed image processing boards to drive LCD and other display modules. Part of me has been thinking it is time to engineer a "TV Lobotomizer" board that can be used to modify these TV's and completely remove all such capabilities while (via open source) giving the consumer full control of what happens with their TV.

Sorry if that came off as a huge rant. With the last software update this thing has just gone over a threshold that is simply intolerable. Actively looking for solutions.

I think this kind of consumer protection has to be undertaken by government. I am not one to automatically reach for that kind of a solution. However, it has become beyond clear that TV manufacturers are perfectly happy abusing consumers as far as they can go. The only expedient way to fix this might be some kind of a law that forces full user control of every single feature on a TV and an absolute iron-clad privacy requirement. If a customer chooses to pierce that protection, they should be free to do so after informed consent and have every right to take it all back.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/VIZIO_Official/comments/162xuop/p75qxh1_ready_to_hire_an_attorney/




I recently bought a smart TV and spent about 20 minutes unscrewing its back plate, unplugging the daughter-board where its wireless NIC and antennas were, and desoldering the ethernet port from the main board. Was super easy and the TV still works fine, just with no networking capabilities of its own (entering the wireless settings menu and trying to scan for wifi networks just immediately crashes back to the previous settings screen, which is perfect). It's effectively a dumb TV now, just like I want, and any "features" are provided by whatever system I plug into it.


Genuinely curious, but why desolder the Ethernet port? If you don't want it to connect to the network just don't plug a cable in right?


I mentioned it in another comment, but it's to prevent the case where the TV might be connected with an ethernet cable in the future by someone other than me, giving it an opportunity to upload any collected historical data it might have. I'm not actually very worried about that happening, but I already had the thing splayed open so I figured I might as well just gut anything I could get an iron to and didn't plan to use.


Hopefully it never has a genuine bug that requires a firmware update.


They (Android based Smart TV's) often have USB ports and various means of installing your own sideloading software | dropping back to command shell as admin, etc.

While firmware updates can be applied that way, here's hoping for a future OpenTV OS with all the desired features and none of the bolt on merchant wares.


I can always solder the port back on if I really need to


My guess is that GP may have been curious if the TV would react poorly to not having being able to phone home via any method, including ethernet.


I don't think the TV can electrically tell the difference between the ethernet port being soldered in or not. Removing the wireless NIC was the only thing I was concerned might cause some broken behaviors.


I may well be wrong, but I have a vague recollection of reading that some devices can enable/share an Ethernet connection over their HDMI ports.

I worried a bit about this when I was deciding to provide content to my unnetworked Toshiba Fire TV using a Roku device.

Yeah, Roku... at least it's not Amazon, hopefully it's not communicating what's on other HDMI sources, and so far the TV's not superimposing its own ad streams.

Whole setup was bought piecemeal on sale, and was a "good enough" compromise for the limited stuff I watch.

P.S. The TV's just old enough that, especially without any updates, I may have escaped the open/public/mesh wifi "enhancements" that apparently are becoming more common. I guess I should poke through settings and see whether I can find a system and/or firmware date or version number...


Man, if someone like you set up shop and offered this as a service to TV owners, you could probably make a killing. Either aftermarket, or like the WRT market for routers that are flashed with F/OSS routing kernels and then sold to end-users.


You can achieve the same effect by not connecting the television to wifi or Ethernet.

Sadly that means you’re also buying the device to plug it into, which is an AppleTV in my case.


These types of devices are increasingly leveraging mesh networks to connect to the internet even if they're aren't explicitly connected by the owner. Simply not connecting your device to the internet isn't as reliable as it once was.


I keep hearing this but haven’t seen proof of this happening. Curious to see if this is reality yet.


They are just as likely to use telepathy to upload data via superintelligent owls.

There's no evidence of Smart TVs connecting in this way.


Is there a documented instance where this happened?

I've heard of this but I've never actually seen this in person. A google, ddg, and even a leddit search doesn't bring up anything.


Amazon Sidewalk[1] is one of the big players in this area. They've recently announced a partenership wwith Panasonic[2]/.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?ie=UTF8&node=213281...

[2] https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/amazon-ces-2023-ann...


Haven't seen a TV manufacturer implement it yet, but

> , Sidewalk can help simplify new device setup, extend the low-bandwidth working range of devices to help find pets or valuables with Tile trackers, and help devices stay online even if they are outside the range of their home wifi.

https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?ie=UTF8&node=213281...


Amazon Sidewalk uses BLE for short distances and LoRa for long distances. LoRa is seriously low bandwidth. The highest is 50 kb/s and that is for the shortest range and all users. BLE is higher bandwidth but requires having an Amazon device as gateway.


10 kB/s is 25 GB/month. That's a lot of telemetry going one way, and a lot of automatic content recognition signature updates going the other.


The Sidewalk bandwidth limit is 500MB/month. Per account not per device.

Also, the LoRa bandwidth is shared. It isn't 50 kbps per device but everybody within a mile or two. Also, the 50 kbps rate has a pretty short range. The normal, long range LoRa bandwidth is more like 5 kbps.


For most people in high density housing (non-single-family), there's a pretty good chance someone with an alexa is within range, which means BLE communication is probable. But even for LoRa, a few KB of telemetry being sent every x hours is probably likely if a manufacturer ever integrates the radio - although the ROI might not be there if it can't handle carrying ads.


Low bandwidth is fine. One way that smart TVs track you is fingerprinting the audio that you're listing to, even turning on the microphone to do so. They do this to sell analytics on the content you watch. Audio finger prints are pretty tiny, and you could easily send periodic fingerprints over LoRa.


What mesh networks are they going to connect to? Are there any mesh networks?

The only other options are cellular, which manufacturer is not going to pay for a modem and service, or LoRa, which is way too low bandwidth for leaking any data.


Check out Amazon Sidewalk


Amazon Sidewalk is LoRa.

It doesn't have data price but is capped 500MB per account per month.


Links? This has often been described as the obvious next step for consumer-unfriendly TVs, but I don't know which brands and models to avoid.


Zealous Autoconfig: https://xkcd.com/416/


> You can achieve the same effect by not connecting the television to wifi or Ethernet

You can hope that you're achieving the same effect, unless the manufacturer has shipped the device with software that will scan for open wireless networks and send its collected data out once it finds a network that allows it Internet access. The TV I got was an Amazon Fire TV, so for all I know the thing is going to some day silently connect to some kind of mesh network built out of the Ring doorbells my neighbors have. Physically removing the networking hardware gives me much better peace of mind, and prevents some well-meaning future house sitter from briefly plugging in an ethernet cable and allowing the device to upload years of collected data or something.

> Sadly that means you’re also buying the device to plug it into

I don't see what's sad about that. I'd much rather have that functionality be provided by a separate device that I can replace or upgrade without trashing the whole TV. I see other people with smart TVs that are a few years old and half their "apps" no longer work because the technologies used by the services backing them have changed and the TV doesn't support them.


Its sad for two reasons:

1. Those without the means and who are uninformed have less privacy and 2. It’s a waste of resources to not use the computer built into the TV and have to by another one for the sake of privacy.


I don't think the second point has any weight when people are shipping miniature computers in literally everything these days. Personally, I don't want these devices using all of their power.

The first point is indeed tragic. But I think some of the blame has to fall on the consumer for failing to keep abreast of changes, and for not forcing manufacturers to change their ways.

We're super quick to cancel companies for social justice stuff, but not for spying on us?


No! It's a waste of resources to include stuff that's quickly outdated and only used to sell our info and serve ads.

I dont go as far is desoldering ports, but day 1 everything I can disable is, and they get a device I control in HDMI 1.


What is preventing a future owner to plug an USB-Eth interface?


That's a good point! I don't intend there to be a "future owner" of it, but I've made a note to sever the USB data lines when I have some time tomorrow. Want to leave the USB power lines intact in case an accessory needs the 5V.


That's a lot of effort while you could just have not connected your TV to the wifi.


It wasn't much effort at all, and I enjoyed doing it. And I've mentioned in another comment why "just don't connect it" isn't necessarily a foolproof plan, even if it's very likely to be sufficient.


Until they add a cellular chip or make a deal to get their TVs on the “Comcast sharing your cable with other Comcast users” networks all over the place, assuming they having already done it


Don't connect your TV to the internet and you won't have a problem.

Most TVs have a setting to go to the last used input or a specific input on startup, so set that to whatever box you use to watch stuff and you won't have to look at the menu.


I do the same thing, don't hook it up to internet, never update, don't use smart features, watch everything off a separate Kodi box.

But TVs have become so hopelessly enshittified I would support legislation at this point. I am sure they are making a lot of money serving these ads ensuring the behavior will only continue and no "normal tvs" will even be sold.


I’ve recently learned some Roku TV have an LED that will flash at you whenever they’re not connected.

“Just use tape”

How long until it’s a message on-screen covering up what you want to watch? Or even preventing you from watching?

There is only one fix: regulation. Good luck with that. We’re doomed.


or just purchase a digital signage screen instead of a tv


Are there any 4K digital signage screens as high-quality as some of these OLED smart TVs?


OLED would burn in, I doubt you could find that.

But can you get 120hz? Or VRR? Low latency? Any other good feature?

I doubt it. I suspect (as it seems you do) that if you want anything past a bog-standard tv you’re out of luck.


Actually, I'm curious as to why someone would buy a Roku tv and not hook it up to the internet?


Since they’re subsidized by all the spyware/services they’re cheap.

So people buy them, even people who (like many ok HN) hate “smart TVs” and intend to only use it as a monitor for an Apple TV, Chromecast, cable box, etc.


I don't know of any actual TVs that have this, but Amazon's Sidewalk network seems ideal to route around this. If you have an Echo device hooked to the internet, any Sidewalk device within hundreds of feet now has a low-bandwidth internet connection that could phone home usage information.

Or they could just build a cellular modem into the TV. It's all about whether the payoff is worth the cost.


My Samsung’s auto HDMI switching and CEC (ATV, Xbox, Blu Ray) works 95% of the time. I hardly see their switching menu.

I went to settings and opted out of everything I could, and only hook up via Ethernet to update firmware.


It might be a bit more work, but Samsung also posts their updates so you can put them on a USB disk and upgrade from that and never need to connect your TV to the internet.


Yep. Some Android TVs even offer a “simple TV mode” that switches off the bells and whistles.

My Sony doesn’t have that mode but it works great totally offline hooked up to receiver and Apple TV nevertheless.


Do not use the Smart TV, Roku, Chromecast, Fire stick, cable box, or any other nonsense. Get a real computer, aka an HTPC (home theater PC). If gaming interests you, get a Windows PC, otherwise Mac is fine. Connect it to the TV with an HDMI cable.

Congratulations. Now by using both legal and illegal methods you can watch pretty much every TV show or movie ever, probably with no ads. And if you choose illegal methods, it will usually be free. You can also play just about every video game ever.

And what's great is you only have one box under the TV. That's it. A very clean setup. Throw every other box in the trash. You won't need them. A real computer can do everything they do, and more.

An AppleTV can be an acceptable choice because you can use a Mac and Airplay, which is sort of effectively the same thing as having the Mac directly connected to the TV.

I've lived with this setup for almost 20 years now, and it still can't be beat. I really don't understand why anyone with the technical knowledge to set this up would choose anything else.


Exactly. If you are bothered by the type of things mentioned by OP, then you are not in the target market for that product. And also, you are probably capable of building your own, custom setup. So simply don't buy the product. This actually extends for all consumer products, not only TV, or even electronics (recently I've been making custom cosmetic products).


For legal methods you're also likely limited to 1080p streaming at best though sadly


I see a lot of comments saying "don't connect to the Internet".

I think that's exactly the wrong reaction to what's going on. You should be able to buy a TV, connect it to the Internet, and only have it display what you want. In addition to that, you should be able to block all data going out.

I am talking about fighting for fundamental consumer rights here, not spending a couple thousand dollars on a product to then degrade it to the stone age.

Why over $2K? Picture quality, local dimming LED array, etc. I would not spend $2K on a crappy image. And yet, I stress, I went to the store to buy a TV, not a remotely-operated digital advertising sign with data gathering capabilities.

That's what these manufacturers are either failing to understand or choosing to ignore.


> I am talking about fighting for fundamental consumer rights here,

Ask Europe for that, they are probably the only entity will make a legalization to prevent such ads, that being said, I wonder why they didn’t already have, since they are always after Meta Apple and what not, or is it because most of TV manufacturers are Chinese?

However, that will take time, in the meantime and just like other suggested, use an HDMI cable with laptop or kodi box.


You should be able to connect to the internet without it being used for surveillance, but in practice you can't, so you shouldn't.


I understand. As consumers we need to find a way to reverse this.

One of the problems is that the vast majority of consumers are not tech or privacy savvy enough to understand. Just getting them to be careful about passwords, use passwords managers, etc. is horribly difficult.

Just the other day I had a conversations with someone who is enthusiastically using an app that gives you points for scanning your shopping receipts. Receipts that have all kinds of information on them. In some cases they print your name, address, phone, etc.

I tried to make them understand the myriad risks involved in handing-over that kind of information to some random app publisher. I tried hard. They just don't get it. The responses ranged from the typical "What could go wrong?" to "The information is already out there" and "Experian gets hacked all the time, so...".

TV (and other products, but TV's seem to be at the top of the abusive list) manufacturers take full advantage of this ignorance and just blast consumers with advertising and data gathering technologies.

Not sure what the right path to a solution might be. Legal, political, technological or a combination of all of the above?


I use a projector instead of a TV. Home theater projectors are still mostly sane devices that just display their inputs without any bloated software in the middle.

And with a retractable screen you have a (giant) TV when you want one, and it's gone when you're not using it.

This won't work for everyone (you need a proper space for it, generally involves some degree of installation that your landlord will not appreciate, and doesn't look great during the day) but if you can make it work it's great.


I have a big projector. Though I haven’t used it much recently. It gets hot and it’s in a well lit room..

But they’re the new ultra short throw (UST) projectors and screen technologies seem way better, though not cheap.

https://www.projectorcentral.com/How-UST-Screens-Let-You-See...


I understand the frustration but this is like a problem for the 0.1% - but maybe I am wrong. How many people out there just want a "dumb" TV that can just do 2 things ON/OFF and "Show what's being sent to the Input port"? Probably not that many.

I also wonder, if a Pi-Hole or Firewall could help you deal with this - you could sniff what IPs the TV is trying to connect to and block them manually or even better block them all via MAC address?


I wanted it and couldn't find one. My parents wanted one, too, and they are not into technology like I am.


> a problem for the 0.1%

99.9% of the population like seeing ads and being spied on?


No, but they don't think of it like you and I perhaps - they're just like 'oh well that's quite weird... so anyway let's see what's new on the telly now..'


No, but 99.9% are sheep, will submit to anything, won't want to know why, and won't care if you explain it to them.


Non-smart TVs exist.

https://www.dealnews.com/features/tv/smart-tv/

If you don't like Vizio? don't buy Vizio. Speak with your wallet.

IE: Best-Buy Non-Smart

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?_dyncharset=UTF-...


Speaking with our wallets is what got us to this point. Continuing the same strategy guarantees the same result - choices vanishing and things getting worse.


Choices vanishing? hit the best buy link (or amazon. or newegg. or walmart. or your flavor of electronics store). Tons of non-smart TVs exist.

LED NonSmart: https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100167585%20600483673

Just because the display cases have the smart tvs doesn't mean dumb tvs don't exist.

And again... what are you going to do? Yell at walmart for selling what... sells? Go riot against a factory in China? A support group that has puppies and coloring books in their safe room?

What exactly are you going to do other than spend your money on stuff you want to support what you want?


Speak with your wallet, and with your voice, and with your keyboard. Sometimes with your feet and a placard.

If we restrict ourselves to speaking with the wallet, the 'discourse' gets more inegalitarian and less democratic


Voice your opinion and leave 1 star reviews on all of the smart-tvs - if you have the time.

I've historically bought Vizio's because I liked the inclusion but recently have decided to not because I don't like the direction they are going. I'm happy with a stupid chromecast or playing plex through my <console of choice>.

What is "less democratic" about literally voting with your wallet? Support your shows on patreon. donate to channels on youtube.

Not sure how supporting what you want is "inegalitarian". it's literally the result of using your voice and your support to prop up what you like. Is that not, in essence, democracy? Something gets more "unequal" because people support it - literally democracy.

What's your alternative? Government force to keep things "equal"? Keep things "just" and "fair" with ever increasing government intervention? Not sure you understand what democracy is if that's what your suggesting.


> What is "less democratic" about literally voting with your wallet?

The fact that some people get more votes. Voice, keystrokes, going to the streets is more accessible.

I am not saying dont vote with your wallet. I am saying do vote in all possible ways. Complain, tell people, talk to your representative, create ballot proposals.

Often 'vote with your wallet' is offered as a substitute for the other, more acessible, more powerful means of expression. More powerful especially for those that have smaller wallets.

So I think it requires a complement. "yes, and" :P


Sorry to hear that. Next time you’re looking for a new TV, look for “digital signage” instead. Though the price isn’t subsidized with adware, it should be what you’re looking for. It’s a shame it’s come this far.


Your comment might be lost on those who might not have visibility into that industry. Digital signage displays are mostly panels with minimal driving electronics and, more often than not, external devices to handle the storage and connectivity of material to display. In that sense, yes, they tend to be just a monitor with an input.


I've enjoyed either a PS4 or AppleTV with HDMI-CEC controlling power and volume... i never have to use my tv remote/built-in apps and don't suffer advertising


You’d think that, but the worse TVs will still splat advertisements on top of the Apple TV content

Additional fun fact, no matter whether you're watching streaming or cable, your TV can identify what you're watching and report it back to advertisers. Automatic Content Recognition, the future of TV advertising!

https://advertising.roku.com/resources/blog/insights-analysi...

> Roughly twice per second, a Roku TV captures video “snapshots” in 4K resolution. These snapshots are scanned through a database of content and ads, which allows the exposure to be matched to what is airing. For example, if a streamer is watching an NFL football game and sees an ad for a hard seltzer, Roku’s ACR will know that the ad has appeared on the TV being watched at that time. In this way, the content on screen is automatically recognized, as the technology’s name indicates. The data then is paired with user profile data to link the account watching with the content they’re watching. We should note, however, that this data becomes aggregated, removing personally identifiable information before it is received by advertisers.

But surely that data tracked on your user profile is totally secure and no one could ever misuse it for anything (beyond the aggregated tracking, which is already creepy). Just trust them, it's fine!


Why not buy a giant display panel and connect it to a computer that you fully control?


This. I do something similar, but instead got a laser projector. Similar price to a TV. I can either plug in my laptop or otherwise remotely cast to a plugged in stick. It just works. I get the added benefit from the projector where the screen needs to be pulled down - it's not in the view and I have to actively decide to start watching something.


I didn't think of projectors because I don't have a good set-up for it, but that's another great option along side dumb TVs, TVs that work without internet, and monitors/digital signage. Starting with a mini PC or something similar unlocks plenty of good options for avoiding all of the smart TV issues.


Also you don't even need an extremely dedicated space these days. Laser projectors like https://www.epson.com.au/LS12000B/ give better image than some TVs... without closing the curtains during the day. (Based on my older model, I assume they only got better)


I do a version of this approach. I have a 2018 model TCL TV that I do not give access to the internet (this one works without any issue, but I don't know if that is true of newer models). My TV is right next to my desktop computer, but in order to reduce noise and power, I bought a cheap Beelink mini PC and set it up with Fedora-GNOME and Kodi. Works very well for simple purposes and can easily handle light games. There are plenty of other (possibly better) solutions to this effect such as SBCs, spare laptops, or more capable mini PCs to handle some newer games. I would prefer using a computer instead of the Smart TV OS even without all of the concerns listed in the original post.


What's an example of a "giant display panel" that you can buy?


> TV's are becoming intrusive and abusive; what to do about it?

What do do about it? Do not, under any circumstance, ever buy a smart TV.


How do you buy a TV without buying a smart TV though?


Sceptre has non-smart TVs. I bought one a year ago and haven't had any issues with it.


Well personally, and this might not be an option for you, I just don't have a TV. I have a laptop for development and a phone, that's it.

I used to have my desktop and big monitor and a studio apartment where my entertainment center doubled as my desk, it was alright. The monitor wasn't a huge screen, but honestly I don't like huge screens. Even had an Xbox hooked into it for the last couple years of game playing, I don't really game anymore. So I didn't have a TV but I kind of did.

Now I don't really watch much, every now and then me and the wife feel like a movie, so we just watch one on my phone in bed together. Neither one of us has had a TV at least as long as we have known each other.

A TV is a lifestyle choice, you really don't need one, everyone feels like a house is incomplete without it but it's not true.


HDMI is soon to become a perpetrator. HEC compliance is not extremely common for the time, but it will become a leak.

HDMI with Ethernet: What is it and How Does it Work?

https://thehometheaterdiy.com/hdmi-with-ethernet/

Understanding HDMI vs Ethernet vs. HDMI with Ethernet: The Guide

https://nassaunationalcable.com/blogs/blog/understanding-hdm...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI

You need to do something about pin14 on your HDMI port and maybe go without ARC capability


I still want a modern TV that goes by the same philosophy as a PC or a Framework laptop - all interchangeable/replaceable screens, speakers, wifi modules, processors, ethernet cards, storage, ports, antennas...

---

For example, I was looking at the "new" L series of Sony Bravia TVs that arrived at Sony Store Colombia. None of them has the DBV-T2 internal antenna/decoder which made them incapable of using them to watch the open TV in here. When asking support about when they were arriving TVs that brought it, was told something along the lines of "we don't know, that is up to the manufacturing house at Japan".


I have a Samsung smart TV. When I got it and connected to my WiFi I saw all the phone homes coming from it on my PiHole.

I hooked up an Intel NUC with Linux on it and factory reset the TV and blackholed it's MAC. No more spying.


Buy yourself a big ass monitor and hook it up to your peripheral of choice.


Turn it off, no seriously, turn it off and your life will move on, for the better too. Nothing really of value is lost, at best you are wasting time, at worst you are just consuming a fine-crafted propaganda, regardless which side it is. I think I read before that there is even a TV you get for free in return to show some advertisements, these machines are meant to advertise, not to entertain.


I don't have one personally but maybe one of the "Large format OLED monitors" would work as a dumb TV. The Asus ROG PG42UQ uses the same panel as the LG C2, but with a matte coating.

https://rog.asus.com/us/monitors/above-34-inches/rog-swift-o...


I'm also frustrated by the state of modern TVs. Not sure what to do about it.

I bought an Nvidia Shield in the hopes that it would alleviate some of my annoyances but honestly I have grown to hate the thing.


Install Wolf Launcher for a super simple interface for just launching the apps you want: https://www.techdoctoruk.com/custom-launcher-for-nvidia-shie...

I hate the standard launcher it's become so bad.


Why? I love mine dearly. Plex / Kodi are a lifesaver plus native 4K netflix and all the apps for streaming services that I need.


The advertisements on the home screen are one issue - but this is something I know can be alleviated with a different launcher, so I won't hold that against it too hard.

Apart from that though, I just find mine to be somewhat painful to use. The UI often just freezes up and won't respond. Recently I've been dealing with sound dropout on multiple apps - have tried a few different troubleshooting steps, none of which have helped. The "voice" integration from Google shuts down the whole box for 30 seconds at a time every time you accidentally finger the mic button on the remote. The special Netflix button on the remote is annoyingly easy to hit, which stops whatever you're playing.

Some stuff is Android TV specific. These aren't really the Shield's fault per se, but most apps do a very poor job of resuming where you left off. God help you if you accidentally send Max to the background, enjoy scrolling through 3 pages of crap to get back to what you were watching. Or if you want any form of parental controls that might prevent your kids from getting onto YouTube - you're stuck with the irritating "restricted profile".

I think really my problem is that I bought the base model (the tube shaped one) instead of the Pro. I imagine a lot of the performance related stuff I've seen would be better with a bit more horsepower. But my current experience has not made me super enthusiastic about the prospect of buying a more expensive model.

A lot of this might seem like nitpicking, but when you've got a dozen nits, that can add up to a lot of annoyance. I can't help but remember how seemingly flawless the experience of Netflix and Hulu were on my Xbox 360 like 10 years ago and wonder how the current landscape is so frustrating.


It is interesting and tragic how the business community absolutely refuses to let something just be. That would be leaving money on the table. And we can't have that, not at all.


To be clear, I am talking about consumers having to explicitly opt-in to those things and to have a clear understanding of what data and rights they are giving up. If someone wants to allow advertising and behavioral tracking, that should be their explicitly-authorized option. And definitely not the default configuration.

The current status-quo is that TV manufacturers abuse and intrude with abandon because nobody is making a fuss about it and politicians are too busy trying to throw each other in jail.


Install PiHole https://docs.pi-hole.net/


I keep waiting for the EU ato notice this and ban data collection on TVs, but they clearly have their “digital” priorities skewed.


I just avoid all that by defaulting my smart tv to the input my appletv is on and happily giving all my data to apple.

they have it all anyway.


>they have it all anyway.

I hate that rationale just so very, very much.


thanks bud


Intrusive? Just wait until NextGen TV standard becomes more adopted by the marketplace.


I'd rather buy a non-smart TV and connect an AppleTV or a Chromecast with it.


My smart TV is just a monitor for my living room PC. Problem solved.


Do one or both of the following.

1. Setup pihole on your home network

2. Disconnect smart tv from the Internet and get a Roku/Apple TV/Nvidia shield. While the former still have adds they seem to be better behaved.

This makes the experience much more manageable.


Tell HN: or Ask HN:


I don't connect any of my Samsung TVs to the Internet, instead opting to use Google's stupid Google TV sticks, with some modifications to reduce some of the crapware that even those ship with and get rid of the otherwise unavoidable advertisements everywhere. This is, so far, the best setup I've managed, but even then it's far from ideal. These TVs are absolutely buggy. The most HDMI ports you can seem to find is around 3, and good luck getting them all to work right. HDMI CEC support can be enabled, but for some dumb reason you can't control the volume over HDMI CEC, so you still need an IR blaster for that (one point for using Google TV: the remote has a pretty versatile IR blaster built-in.) You also may think a Samsung TV and a Samsung "soundbar" would be a good pairing since they're both Samsung, and you'd be very foolish to think that, don't bother updating the firmware on either thing, it's going to randomly not work either way. I have to reboot the damn thing any time I want to use the HDMI input that it forwards to the TV because of course that doesn't work even when the firmware on both devices is completely up to date. Lest you think maybe it's just me, I have family who also has a Samsung TV + Samsung Soundbar combo and it also is similarly spotty.

What I want:

- A display panel that looks decent.

- A decent HDMI switch built-in, 5 inputs seems fair enough.

- A remote control that can send inputs over CEC.

- Automatic power off when there's no connection.

What I get:

- Advertisements everywhere.

- Tizen, the most miserable operating system I've had the displeasure of trying to use, and its godforsaken app store of garbage.

- Display processing that makes everything look horrifying by default.

- A game mode that improves latency from horrific to awful but causes really strange and confusing glitches.

- An ecosystem of very questionable hardware. Overpriced speakers inside of a plastic shell with a bunch of marketing attached, that barely work, and require taking one of the two or three HDMI ports you have for full functionality.

- If you dare connect it to the internet, you are subjected to ACR and data collection that should probably flat out be outlawed.

I didn't ask for any of this, but Samsung et al. need more revenue sources for these things I guess, that I don't believe they even sell at a loss anyway.

At this point I'm wondering if there is a single fucking thing I will ever buy in the future that I won't become completely disillusioned with. There's also my car, which has software brakes, and there's a known software bug that can cause them to error when you start the car sometimes, and it's not even an EV, where I'm sure I could experience the hell of tomorrow, today.


Just don’t connect the TV to the internet. Problem solved.


If a TV has built-in wi-fi, it can scan for open networks and connect automatically as a failsafe. It doesn't have to tell you that it's doing it, either.


urban legend but feasible


That's why I said that it can do it, not that it does do it.

The point is that the "just don't connect it to the internet" response is neither sufficient nor correct.


It is almost certainly sufficient for all extant models of TVs. It might not continue to be sufficient in the future, but for now, it probably is. And as another commenter pointed out, if you are really that worried about it, TVs are still among the easier electronics to open up, so you can just physically remove/destroy the networking hardware.

If a manufacturer ever _does_ ship a TV that will look for and auto connect to open networks, I'm curious if they would think to still do that, even if the TV is connected to a closed network. My guess is that they probably wouldn't (generally not worth the time to program for edge cases). So you could connected to a virtual network that doesn't have WAN access. The TV is connected to a network so (likely) wouldn't look for open networks, and still can't phone home or download updates.


> all extant models

"all" is a word I avoid, because of 2 reasons:

1. It's hard to have 100% knowledge of anything.

2. It is possible that it's currently being done, just not discovered yet. Consider the Volkswagen emissions scandal, Amazon ring spying scandal, Tesla spying scandal, etc. They aren't known about until they are discovered and reported to the correct place. That's the nature of people who flout privacy. It's probably happening somewhere already and just hasn't been found.

I assume that anything that has the ability to leak my private information, probably is leaking it to someone, and then take whatever steps I can to mitigate it. I'm not claiming absolute success, but at least I'm trying!

Furthermore, the more technology that you know about simply makes you more aware of the possibilities. I worked for a cell phone company a decade ago who also sold services to electronics manufacturers to add SMS-based communication to otherwise unconnected devices. In other words, if wifi is down or blocked, an SMS could be sent (small payloads, of course) as a backup. In grad school I listened to a presentation by a small, local newspaper that bragged about tracking people around town via bluetooth and wifi that people left enabled on their phones, and that their sensors were hidden in the newspaper stands around town.

So, yeah, I don't trust anyone who has a financial incentive to spy on me.


There is a reason I preceded it with "almost". And I completely agree with everything you said. I just think that "at least I'm trying!" covers "not connecting your device to your home network".




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