I blocked my two TVs from phoning home via my pihole. They are the two noisiest devices on my network, by leaps and bounds.
On a day of heavy usage, my phone and desktop may get ~2000 blocked requests combined. That’s high, but not unheard of. It just means I did a lot of browsing, with a lot of blocked ad requests. My TVs average somewhere around 7500 blocked requests per day, on days that I haven’t even turned them on. That’s an attempt to phone home every ~12 seconds. And it is much worse on days that I actually use them.
One way to get Congress to act on this would be to remind them of how Robert Bork’s video rental history got released. They very quickly realized that they all had the same sleazy movies on their rental list and passed a law making it illegal to share them.
Call your Congressmen and tell them that their smart TV is sending screenshots of whatever they’re watching back to home base, including stuff that’s not streamed, and there might be swift action.
Better yet, hack Samsung and leak it to the press. That’ll definitely light a fire under them.
I’m more than happy to buy a TV that uses post-purchase monetization, because I am never going to connect that fucker to the internet. It’s a display. I shall use it as a display. I do not care that it can replace my streaming box. I fully control my streaming box, and I will use that.
If I catch it doing any sketchy shit like trying to use unsecured/Comcast/etc WiFi to phone home, it’ll be time to pull out the screwdriver, though.
What happens when it no longer needs your WiFi and uses something like LoRa to phone home with your data and location? It may not know who you are exactly but it’ll have a good guess.
What happens when it no longer needs your WiFi and uses something like LoRa to phone home with your data and location? It may not know who you are exactly but it’ll have a good guess.
I mean…what happens when it becomes sentient, sprouts legs and you catch it sleeping with your spouse?
Let’s deal with the here and now.
You know LoRa hardware is getting cheaper and the reliability of these TVs are just terrible. This is likely to happen sooner rather than later. For now just don’t plug it in to WiFi unless you’re willing to go further and desolder its module? I don’t think we can do much via legislation other than write to our congressional reps.
Fuckingcapitalists
The non-capitalist solutions have been here all along, mostly things licensed under copyleft. But people just need to have the wherewithal to actually use these solutions.
I dumbedcmy smart tv by disconnected it from the internet. The stupid thing is the tv was requesting internet connection to work, so I had to put it on my network and then block everything so the tv pouted and then shut up.
Now I switch to a Fire tv usb stick on it but god I hate it…
Why do we continue to be ok with this? Where is the outrage and call for change?
the overwhelming bulk of humanity cant be fucked to care about shit like this… until it personally affects them.
Then they will wail like banshees about the great injustice of it all, and how could anyone let it happen to them.
It’s there, but people forget about it when they can get a 4" bigger TV for 100 bucks less.
My current tv is a 42” I got in 2012. I would love to upgrade to a bigger one, but I don’t wanna get a lame smart tv.
My next purchase will be a dumb tv with a media stick.
Unfortunately it’s very hard to buy a decent dumb TV these days.
For smart tv, they recommend just never give access to internet. And look if it has some kind of monitor mode so it always launch display on the hdmi port.
They still keep searching for some open wifi to send their stuff through.
This has never been proven in any way. It would be really easy to show that a smart TV will automatically connect to an open WiFi connection and send data, but nobody has done it.
I wonder if a software that just generate gibberish data could be made, just to fuck with them.
Video projectors are available, though.
They’re all smart too, unless I’m missing something?
Not at all. The better ones are dumb. You have to stay away from cheap chinese drek, of course.
not the optoma uhd35, it’s the one I have. 4k60fps or 1080p240fps for when I game.
we have to support the companies that give us what we want, and I voted with my wallet. Im very happy with it
yup, this is what I do. costs about as much as a good TV.
Buy a monitor, not a TV
Lemme just pluck a 52" monitor from the 52" monitor tree where 52" monitors grow bountifully.
They called me crazy.
To dumb your TV, just don’t connect it to the internet. Get a SFF pc or something and use that to watch your series/movies. My TV functions as a monitor.
What would you guys recommend for a dumb TV with a good quality panel in the 65-75" range that’s a available to buy in the EU? My intention is to hook it up to my own device (probably a mini PC running some Linux distro with Kodi and some other stuff).
Eizo or iiyama monitors are very good imo. The other use raspberry pi ( or anything else ) + tv card
I just use an Apple TV connected to my TV which isn’t connected to any network. I hook it up every now and again to update the software when there are new features available related to picture/sound.
I also run a Jellyfin server for most of my streaming needs.
Apple TV most certainly collects information too…
Do most smart TVs still allow performing updates via USB? I have an older LG TV which does this.
can we just ban online features from tvs, cars, printers, light bulbs etc.
Cars being online has some tangible benefits in that they can transmit location data to emergency services, especially if the driver is unresponsive. Might save someone from dying in a ditch in the middle of nowhere.
Arguably, some of the data collected while driving is also very useful for maintenance and development (e.g. if a lot of vehicles start having a similar issue after X miles).
That said, this data should be limited in scope and use (e.g. must not be sold, especially not to insurance companies), as well as anonymized as much as possible. Which is currently not the case, and that definitely needs regulation.
You don’t need a high bandwidth connection to do emergency notifications, and considering it might be in a remote area it would be better than LTE.
For the diagnostics you could log events internally and then collect them with OBD-II readers, though I’d like to force car makers to use open data formats so people can see for themselves what’s collected.
That said, this data should be limited in scope and use…
Yep, anonymized, limited, non-distributable, and secured, with severe penalties (on the order of tens of thousands of dollars per person, paid to the harmed party) for failure to adhere.
That ship, my friend, has already sailed.
Civilians used to own canons. For blowing up ships. And the occasional home invader. Doesn’t matter if it has sailed if we sink it. We should sink that ship.
For example, Amazon Web Services and ad-tech company TripleLift are working with proprietary models and machine learning for dynamic product placement in streamed TV shows. The report, citing a 2021 AWS case study, says that “new scenes featuring product exposure can be inserted in real-time ‘without interrupting the viewing experience.’”
Peacock is also working with TripleLift to develop “In-Scene” Peacock ads that owner NBCUniversal says it’s currently testing:
When a user plays episodic content, your brand’s product or message is dynamically placed in the frame of targeted scenes, creating a non-interruptive ad experience that aligns the programming with your campaign theme/goals.
This could be hilarious when your omegaverse softcore porn drama gets plastered with prune juice, old people pill adverts, and trump propaganda on everyone’s shirts, tattoos, jock straps, voice lines and whatever else the AI can scrounge up. “It totally fits with the narrative!”
Kind if reminds me of the scene in The Truman Show when they talk about the cereal to the hidden camera.
Am I reading this wrong or are they literally hijacking a shot in the content by placing a product in there?
Sounds like they could literally go in there and replace the kid watching tele-shopping in a movie with watching a literal ad made to look like it’s genuinley in the movie.omegaverse softcore porn drama
😏
Just disconnect your TV from the Internet and get an Apple TV.
First yes, second no.
The dumber the device the happier the user.
Apple TV doesn’t try to do much other than being a very technically capable passthrough. You get pretty much every streaming service, multiple Plex clients etc. And no ads.
My 1st Gen ATV4K is 7 years old now and was buttery smooth until last tvOS update, now it’s only slightly smoother than most high end TVs. That’s quite a good run.
You mean the same Apple that was found guilty to artificially slowing older devices with software updates?
I always found it tough to get upset with them much for that one. They had to deal with battery aging because they were the ones to support their devices long enough for it to matter. Plus I had a Nexus 6P at the time, and when its battery started getting weak the damn phone would just shut off while at 30% or whatever.
Them sneaking it in was obviously bad though.
Yes. Have you ever used Apple TV? This thing is leaps and bounds ahead everything of else, even Shield in terms of pure performance.
Why do I doubt this.
Why do I doubt this.
Because you hate Apple (for likely justifiable reasons) and thus at a basic level of intuition assume everything Apple does is bad.
But while Apple certainly isn’t good (there is no “good” when it comes to the way corporations monetize their customers), Apple is significantly better in some areas than their competitors (while being worse in others). iPhones are much better than Pixels for privacy, for example.
The Apple TV is a product that needs to do very specific things: show media, and run a few types of apps. This isn’t very computationally heavy. My smart TVs were always great until future updates added advertisements and features that slowed them down. The Apple TV doesn’t get bogged down by shitty advertisements.
My experience with Apple is that it doesn’t play nice with other ecosystems. Cludgy workarounds are usually possible but if you are doing that you may as well go for Linux.
What other ecosystems do you need your TV to interface with? It has a remote, or you can use your phone to control it. And it has all the major streaming apps you would want in a smart TV.
Yep. Like I said, likely justifiable reasons to hate Apple. Despite now being thoroughly in their ecosystem, I still hate them for iMessage exclusivity and it being easier for me to confirm than convincing 20+ people across my family and my wife’s family to switch to WhatsApp or something. Fuck them for that.
But there are things they do well. Apple TV is one of them, in my experience.
Agree, of all the companies out there, Apple isn’t the one I entrust with my data. Pretty happy with my Nvidia Shield instead, the OS is open enough to allow monitoring all telemetry, and I’m happy to say that after switching everything off that Android enabled by default, nothing really gets out there. I’ve sniffed connections on my router as well, and it only really connects to where it should.
Edit: Aww look, I’ve triggered the fanboys ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Apple TV 4K:
- no ads on homescreen
- updated near annually, last hw refresh 2023
- HDMI 2.1
- WiFi 6 / gigabit Ethernet
- 128GB internal storage
- $149 retail price ($129 for 64GB model that loses Ethernet for WiFi only)
Nvidia Shield Pro:
- ads on homescreen via google tv
- last hardware refresh 2019 (5 years)
- HDMI 2.0b
- WiFi 5 / gigabit Ethernet
- 16GB internal storage (USB 3 port for ext hard drive if desired)
- $199 retail price
Both support 4K, Dolby vision, atmos, etc. Apple’s dynamic frame rate switching actually works whereas NViDIA’s has bugs and been in beta hell for years.
For your average person without very specific needs like running a Plex server off the same hardware the Apple TV4K is as or more private than the shield at a cheaper price and under active development.
I wouldn’t really compare the pro version, when the regular one works better and has extendable storage via SD card and comes at $149 retail, with offers as low as $129 around.
Annual hardware revisions are nice and all, but in my understanding they don’t actually improve what the end user get to experience.
The main advantage I see in the shield is the ability to sideload apps, such as SmartTube for adfree youtube with integrated sponsorblock, ftp server, torrent client etc., and not least use VLC as a media player. Plus you can customize the launcher or replace it as a whole to tailor the UI to your exact needs.
