I’m getting from context that this is a smart tv displaying an advertisement, but what the fuck is it even advertising here? A baseball game? Why is the countdown to-the-hour? Why does the player look like a drawing instead of a photo? Why is it specifically that player and not just 'dodgers game tomorrow!"…? It almost looks as if it’s an in-game notification for an MLB-Manager game.
If it were a burger-king commercial I’d be upset, but the inscrutability of this as an ad at all actually infuriates me.
Is there an open-source version of Google TV and similar smart TV software? I feel like i read about one quite recently.
when i order a screen in asia to germany i pay a lot less taxes than when ordering a tv or smarttv. so buying a smartTV is kinda dumb anyways.
I just bought this dumb tv. Couldn’t be happier.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CJV6722?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title
It’s not a good tv, but it’s the biggest one I could fit on my desk and it has absolutely no “smart” features.
Just don’t connect smart TVs to the internet. That’s all you have to (not) do
My TCL TV flashes a little ring light constantly if it doesn’t have an internet connection. The best part is the LED is part of the IR receiver, so if you cover it up your remote stops working. I’ve dimmed it as much as possible through the hidden service menus, but the option to remove it was apparently removed in a firmware update at some point.
I think I saw a review of the Amazon fire TV and they literally lock controls and tell you some basic af features are locked behind an Amazon account registration or login
I have an Amazon fire TV.
It is not connected to anything, and everything works fine. I just hooked up my shield to it and use that, but basic tv functions (settings and whatnot) work just fine without being logged in.
Too much of a gamble. What if someone already did once and it uses the cached ads? What if they have some preloaded?
Better financially support products that never have ads and that way demonstrate demand.
They put barely functional processors in these things. A new smart tv that isn’t connected to the internet is not going to come cached with ads.
From what I have heard, this is not true for all brands. Some won’t work without being connected. Shouldn’t be legal, but here we are.
from what I have heard
Where?
In a different thread here on lemmy.
Yes. I’ve heard some brands will search for nearby devices of the same brands that are already connected to the internet so that even if YOU didn’t connect the TV to WiFi, it still calls home/gets ads.
Ok now I know yall are just making shit up.
If that’s real, then it’s full refund or terrorism upon both the vendor and manufacturer.
orand
Anybody else have a weird level of fixation on the baseball player and the game character being in the same pose? Like, “maybe it’s watching” kind of fixation?
I’d like to be exactly this high, please
First rule of smart TVs: if you really have to buy a smart TV, then never connect it to the internet!
I lobotomized our TV after making the mistake of connecting it to the internet when we first got it.
The ads slowed down the menu to switch sources so much it actually angered me. No more internet for you, you get to be a dumb tv forever now.
I’ve read at some other post that some smart TVs won’t work at all if you don’t connect it to the internet.
Read with caution, I haven’t verified this.
Amazon fire TV requires an Amazon account to use basic features and they intentionally tell you they lock “certain” features
Some of them use wifi for the remote too.
Back to the store it goes then
I’ve also heard people say that they’ll automatically connect to any open wifi networks. People make up a lot of stuff. Just don’t tell your display device how to send any 1s or 0s to any server outside your home, and you’ll be fine
Indeed, I remember people complaining about Roku for that.
My TLC hasn’t done so up until now.
Like those single player games…
Oops, stepped on another $1200 landmine did you? Should have researched where you put your foot. Everyone knows this neighborhood is littered with landmines. No, there’s nothing we can really do about it except hand out these exhaustive charts and navigation tools. Of course they need to constantly get re-updated and are themselves periodically hijacked by the pro-landmine industry to turn into a second-tier grift. But that just means you have to research who you research for your TV research.
Don’t worry, you’ll get it eventually. God gave us two legs for a reason.
Four legs good, two legs BETTER!
I can’t believe this is real. I’ve just bought a relatively cheap Samsung smart TV and it’s got nothing close to this. I would hardly even say it’s got adverts since it’s mostly just recommendations from my apps in the same way they all do now, I don’t think I’ve actually seen it try to sell me anything or get me to watch something that wasn’t free.
Who the fuck would buy a TV like this? If a company was going to introduce on-screen ads like this they’d start really small.
Who the fuck would buy a TV like this?
mindless consumers
I didn’t exactly do a lot of research into either of the two TVs I have and neither of them have ads like this.
Looked at the CES reveals and aside from some minor improvements, its nothing but overloaded AI crap.
Even on TVs from 10 years ago, the first thing you had to do was turn off the stupid auto frame generation, smoothing, lighting, and other effects so you can actually enjoy your content in original detail and correct FPS.
My wealthy coworker buys top-of-the-line, really expensive TVs, and then just leaves all that shit turned on.
It took me way too long to figure out what was going on with those settings. One of my relatives tv’s was like this back in the day and at first I thought it was just their “HD” setup which made me completely write off getting anything HD because of the fake look like a soap opera. It wasn’t till I was gifted a blue-ray player that I realized their tv just had horrible “enchancement” shit.
Feel like I’m the only one that likes the soap opera effect to some extent 🙈
It’s fine for tv, but it causes input delay for video games.
Well yeah, minor improvements really stack up.
A friend is buying a TV or a screen for console gaming anyway and man, the TV’s are actually pretty decent for gaming nowadays. I haven’t checked out any for several years.
I bought a UHD LED tv in like 2016 and what a POS it is compared to these modern models. I mean I haven’t had it for years gave it to my sister but still.
I thought they looked pretty damn nifty. And AI isn’t a curse word when it comes to everything. I get being annoyed at the marketing, I am too, but, like isn’t Nvidia DLSS AI? That’s shit’s actually good.
DLLS and similars are nice for running newer games on outdated hardware.
Sadly it also enables studios to cheap out on optimization, you shouldn’t need upscaling for 1080p medium on a new GPU.
Sadly it also enables studios to cheap out on optimization, you shouldn’t need upscaling for 1080p medium on a new GPU.
Well that is a food point in late stages capitalism.
I was idealistically thinking about it light might be beneficial for those 480hz and whatnot screens coming out.
And for these new Blackwells like for 5070 the vram is still only 12, but they claim they have a much better resolution compressing tech or something.
Idk man but to me just thinking everything AI is “ick” is sort of ludditic. Yeah it’s a garbage overhyped marketing term but some of the
featuresapplications people are coming up for sophisticated neural networks are pretty godddamn cool.
I’ve seen LG getting trashed alongside the other offenders in the industry in smart TV discussions. I have an LG CX65 OLED from 2020, and I’ve always seen the onboard WebOS as pretty serviceable. Have they gotten a lot worse in the last few years? And/or does it vary by product price?
There are definitely some advertising options to turn off in the menus, and with all that taken care of the only UI I use is a row of app icons that pops up. No ads anywhere, and I don’t seem to be logged into the TV with any kind of account. (Though typing this reminded me that the cheap LG LCD in my son’s room does want a login in order to update firmware)
Note I said it was serviceable, not great. The UI could be more responsive on better hardware, but it’s also convenient for my family to just be able to use the Wiimote-like motion pointer built into the remote.
I have a newer C4 and I don’t think it’s bad. It’s not too obtrusive and there are guides to opt out of everything, but then again I’m not too concerned with data privacy in regard to my television, so I might be biased
I have an LG, which is…fine.
But what I do like about it is that I basically never have to interact with its OS. 100% of my content is watched through an Apple TV. I turn it on with the ATV remote and it goes immediately to the correct HDMI input.
LG sucks in many ways. I have a cx as well. I rooted it and blocked updates and all lg services, which helps a lot
If you update it though lg automatically and silently opts you in to data sharing without your explicit consent, which is bullshit and disgusting, but you can turn this of by unchecking a box in settings, which is easy enough. Although given how they handled it I don’t necessarily trust them to honor the opt out and thus traffic from the tv has to be to whitelisted servers (I don’t use any webos apps aside from ad free youtube app)
That said imo compared to all the other smart tv options webos is one of the best options. Especially if it’s rooted (though rooting it is becoming much more difficult these days). Then you can install adfree youtube with sponsorblock, permanently block updates, etc.
Android tv is absolute garbage and loaded with more ads than anything. But at least android doesn’t break when you use adblocking; my old Roku tv doesn’t allow you to set custom dns servers and when you set an ad blocking dns server at a router level the TVs apps break. Android still works although googles ad game is so strong that even blocking all their ad networks still allows some ads somehow, even deleting caches. I’m pretty sure android tv just has ads installed in it
Of course the best thing to do is never ever ever connect your smart tv to the internet at all and buy a secondary device to utilize for watching media. I recommend ugoos devices. I use the am6b+ but they have other/newer devices that may fit your use case better. Stripped down android with 0 ads but can still run all streaming apps/dolby vision licensed and you can flash them with Coreelec so they natively boot to kodi
My current TV has started to die. It’s developing a purple spot that starts to be very distracting. I am not excited about researching a new model that doesn’t pull out this kind a shit on me. I don’t intend to ever connect it to the Internet. My current TV is nothing more than a big display for my NVIDIA shield TV and the next one will be the same.
Sceptre makes a decent dumb tv.
I have one. I like it. 4k. Good enough for me.
I got their 1080p 43" “dumb” model for $150 not too long ago. I wouldn’t choose it for my main living room TV, but it is perfectly fine for what I needed it for and they can’t retroactively make it worse like the Roku tv it replaced.
I think mine was around 300 and is 47”. I don’t watch a lot of tv, it’s mostly there for the kids. The 4k picture looks amazing when I do use it. I do most of my gaming on my Steam Deck and I dock that to a 720p Samsung I’ve had for 18 years now (Was very high end when I got it). It is good enough for me.
I’m about to inherit my daughter’s gaming laptop and I’ll plug that in the bedroom and be happy with it too.
$300 isn’t too bad of a price for a 47" 4K where they aren’t getting extra money from your data and ads. I went for the 1080p model because at the distance we sit at it was impossible to tell the difference based on the 4K Roku TV is replaced.
This is where I would go to research a new tv https://www.rtings.com/
Check out “commercial” TVs. These are TVs for businesses (e.g. displaying a menu at a restaurant). They typically don’t have the “smart” features. You have to look for them specifically.
No, they are NOT tvs! The difference is that the display panels are to slow for fast action scenes or any kind of scene switch, that’s why they only show a set of static images on rotation.
There are plenty of panels that are 60hz+ with decent g2g in the display panel space. My company sells them sometimes so i just ordered from there for my current tv. 65 inch. LED. 5 year warranty. Just a panel. No smart anything. It’s fine for sports, at least cricket and basketball which is what I watch.
This looked really promising but it seems like they only have HDMI 2.0 or lower? Some don’t list the version at all. Unfortunately HDMI 2.1 or better is kind of required in 2025.
I’ve been wanting a Sceptre for a long time but they are hard to find in Europe.
Interesting! I’ll have to see if I can find one to a good price in Germany. Thanks for sharing.
The Nvidia shield ships with the exact same OS as many of these smart TVs
It’s still better. It uses stock android base. So normal play store.
Fair enough, but this setup won’t display an ad on top of my game console feed, like shown above. No guarantee a brand new Android TV won’t start doing this after, could even start doing this after a firmware update.
When I bought my Sony TV from Costco, it let me skip all of the agreements and sign-ups and accounts the day that I bought it. Fast forward a few months later after the return window was over, I turned it on one day and I had to agree to all the different things and it started asking me for an account, if I recall.
I will never buy another smart TV ever in my life.
Its pretty hard to avoid at this point if you want anything larger than a big computer monitor or a refresh rate above 60hz.
Yeah, I’ll probably go with a projector setup next time. Will probably be my luck that they’ll only be selling smart projectors at that point haha
Projector you’re looking at 3 grand for a decent one
Doesn’t the Shield use Google Android? That box is also spying on you.
Yes it does. A significant portion of the traffic gets caught by pihole. I haven’t taken the time of rooting it so far. But with an alternative launcher, SmartTube and Jellyfin, I have a completely ads free watching experience :)
pretty sure it can be rooted + degoogled.
Instead of buying a TV, look for a digital signage display. It’s a TV, but with none of the “smart” crap on it.
Alternatively, just don’t hook your device up to the internet.
This is good advice, but I really wish we lived in a world where consumers could bond together and get laws passed that make this type of crap illegal so that buying TV’s (or any type of appliance for that matter) didn’t involve having to do research on weird non-consumer hardware just to have a nice experience.
EDIT: some morons in my replies keep on saying shit about “voting republican” and We Do In OtHeR CoUnTRiEs. I’m not american, I don’t live in america, and I cannot remember the last time I set foot in america. Shut the fuck up, nobody asked you.
In other words, you wish we lived in a democracy instead of a plutocracy. 'Cause that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work. This thread is squarely about the FTC failing to do its goddamn job, because this should not be legal.
We can you idiots just keep voting Republican
This kind of fucking attitude is why Dems always have sand in their potato salad. "This wouldn’t happen if democrats never lost an election :( " Miss me with that shit. Trump is talking about using military force to annex Panama and Greenland and making Canada the 51st state and you’ve got online Democrats sitting in the corner timidly and indirectly suggesting that maybe ads wouldn’t be so bad under them. The Democratic party deserves to get bullied until they grow a spine and start giving people a real reason to vote for them besides “republicans bad”. Call me when we get AOC hopped up on barely sub-lethal amounts of cocaine and she bites Gavin Newsom’s head off like a praying mantis.
Are you sure. Maybe if we lean in a little further right these “moderates” who are considering authoritarian rule might just change their mind.
Also commas
Consumer rights is a bipartisan issue, Dems fuck us over too.
Just look at the printer situation. It’s gonna get worse. Much worse.
As long as brother b&w laser printers are still not enshittified, everything’s right in the printer world.
Books it is then
We do have that in other countries (so in this world), and you’re going to laugh, but the Dutch one is literally called the Consumentenbond.
They cost like 5x more because they’re marketed toward businesses. https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/pro-tv/bh-series/65-bht-series-qled-4k-uhd-hdr-pro-tv-terrace-edition-lh65bhtelgfxgo/
They are also capable of running 24/7 without ever overheating, no matter the location. And have extra software specialized for signage.
It isn’t just a marketing gimmick.
Yeah sounds perfect for my living room. I’ll definitely pay an extra $3k for those features.
Recommending digital signage for personal TVs is still a bad recommendation.
Sceptre is the GOAT. I’ve got a 4k dumb panel for cheap during Black Friday a year or two back. It’s fantastic. No WiFi on it (because it is a dumb TV) but a streaming device like nVidia Shield is perfect.
My understanding is that TV prices are subsidized by bloatware. No bloatware, no subsidy.
If they were, they should be free. Yet there’s still triple and quad digit prices on these things that probably cost like 8% of that to build (because of slave labor probably), and the subsidy on top should mean they’re literally paying us monthly to have their screen.
Plus side there though… Like most devices marketed towards enterprise, once they hit the used market, the price drops dramatically. You can get a pretty good deal on a used one.
There’s other business oriented tvs that aren’t just for signage. It’s more for conference rooms.
Or just don’t buy Samsung. Never had this kind of trouble with any other brand except Samsung. Because of this, I’ll never ever buy another Samsung product.
The smart stuff isn’t the issue. It is all the connected shit.
There are plenty of smart TVs that you just don’t have to connect to the internet. Then it can’t download ads, be laggy or reboot because of updates, send all your data to the manufacturer, …
Just connect a small PC over HDMI like you would a dumb TV, and other than a slow boot it will work the same.
I can recommend TLC as a TV that doesn’t require an internet connection. But I would steer clear of ever connecting it to a network, the remotes have microphones in them.
There are plenty of smart TVs that you just don’t have to connect to the internet
AFAIK many of them will continue to nag you to connect them to the Internet if you don’t do it. Those nags can be just as bad as ads.
Yes, just don’t buy those brands.
TVs are a minefield, but one that can be navigated.
How does one do that? Which brands are dangerous?
My Samsung tv also has microphones for voice control.
Yes, that is most likely what they were designed for.
But I wouldn’t trust these brands to not misuse them for other things.
Take a crayon, jam it in the pinhole for the mic, then scrape the excess off the surface. Problem solved.
Verification can when?
Ads and bloat are the main reason I still use my 1080p Bravia from 15 yrs ago, which btw still looks great.
Well, that and that I have better uses for 1k usd
I bought a 47" or 49" tv for a few hundred AUD - it was a dumb TV - 1080p from memory. Thing lasted 10 + years, reasonable picture quality and only needed a Chromecast and eventually got a ShieldTV.
That TV since died after 4 moves, two of which were 350km+ but man it was money well spent.
We’ve now got a 60something" Hisense which is a bloated crapware box, it’s not allowed on the network; same with the reverse cycle dryer, or any “smart” home appliance. The volume of traffic these devices send wherever is absurd.
I don’t know if it’s something you want to tackle, but making a separate VLAN on your home LAN and shifting all the IoT/smart devices to that network can keep them from whatever snooping or spying these devices might do on your LAN that you work and live on. Plus you can more easily monitor the unreasonably chatty ones and block them or at least prune off their ad-seeking IP addresses. PiHole for a home LAN can help a lot too, but that’s another discussion.
Oh I do have a VLAN for my reolink cameras and some other home built iOT devices with adguard running on my primary LAN (two adguard instances for redundancy).
But I’d still not want to waste any bandwidth on “smart” devices.
Nice. Totally understandable. We have unlimited DL/UL, but I don’t support leeches on our LAN.
