this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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Technology

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Reposting this from here from 2023, after I stumbled across it tonight and it hits hard.

The text in the image:

I love my smart TV. I love the way it takes a long time to boot up because it’s trying to refresh the advertisements on the home screen. I delight in the way it randomly restarts because it’s downloaded an update without asking me, each of which makes the TV slower and slower with every subsequent install. I adore the way it buries the apps that I want to use, and that I use without fail every single time, below the apps that it’s being paid to promote and which I have never touched in my life and would never use without the cold metal of a glock pressed hard against my sweating temple. I am infinitely thrilled by the way the interface lags constantly, due to the need to have one thousand unnecessary animations rendered on hardware ripped wholesale from a ten year old phone. I feel myself borne aloft on wings of pure joy when I am notified that my data will be collected and analysed to determine my usage patterns. Even now I am writing this from a field of beautiful flowers and soft luscious grass as I lie and look up happily at the bright blue sky, smiling happily to know that this is the future of technology

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[–] N0body@lemmy.dbzer0.com 114 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I remember the ancient times when you could buy something, turn it on, then have it do what you want it to do. Setting the clock was the difficult part. Other than that, it just worked.

[–] SkyNTP@lemmy.ml 27 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Learning ESPHome has been the most liberating thing. Take back control of your home. Local first. Privacy respecting.

[–] renard_roux@beehaw.org 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I spy a research rabbit hole in my near future ... 🐰

Edit: ESPHome is a system to control your microcontrollers by simple yet powerful configuration files and control them remotely through Home Automation systems.

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[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 98 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Its only a matter of time.

[–] __init__@programming.dev 28 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Is Sony actually a good guy for holding this patent so that no one else can go and do this shit either?

[–] renard_roux@beehaw.org 17 points 1 week ago

either

Is there any indication that they won't implement this shit at some point?

Also, should we be trying to come up with the most insane "features" in this vein that we can imagine (knowing full well that some corporation will come up with them eventually), and then patent them to protect humanity from them?

Is there any organization that collects patents just to block them (in the consumer's favor)? A kind of white-hat patent troll? And, if not, should we create one?

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[–] Niiru@feddit.org 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Insert verification can copy pasta

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[–] beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org 49 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Last I looked, we could still buy commercial displays. They're dumb TVs. They cost more, of course.

[–] Pechente@feddit.org 22 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Can you give a recommendation? I too looked for big displays and found commercial ones to be used as digital billboards but the specs weren’t all that good (no oled, no hdr).

[–] renard_roux@beehaw.org 12 points 1 week ago

We have a Samsung "smart" TV, hooked up to an AppleTV box. The TV's original remote is in a drawer somewhere, forever unused.

I have the apps that I need, the tiny Siri Remote turns on the TV and handles volume, and, apart from the aggressively, insanely, mind-blowingly horrible on-screen "keyboard" / text input (we don't have Apple phones we can use to mitigate this, sadly. Also, what the fucking fuck, Apple?!) we're happy. For now. I trust Apple to make the experience incrementally worse as a fact of life.

Not perfect, but leagues better than dealing with Samsung's interface.

[–] Skunk@jlai.lu 31 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

Ah! I was reading that post yesterday https://lemmy.world/post/22309068 as I am looking for a 55’ 4K oled dumb display.

So far no joy.

Apparently some manufacturers makes internet mandatory at first boot and even if you block or disconnect it later it will nag you for firmware update every now and then.

The only possibility I have found for an EU customer at the moment is Sony Bravia. Yup Sony sucks but apparently Bravia’s let you choose to refuse the terms of service and not use the smart things, thus making them dumb tv.

But maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s not the case anymore or maybe they will decide to change that.

That sucks, if any of you knows about a commercial display/computer monitor/dumb tv in oled 4K hdr 55’ available in Europe, I might fall a little bit in love with you.

[–] Pechente@feddit.org 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I recently got the Bravia XR-55A95L probably going through the same thought process as you. You can indeed just skip all the TOS and set it up as a Basic TV.

However: The software is crap. Complete garbage. Random reboots - I already had to reset it once completely because it no longer showed a picture (and then set it up again). Every day it will show you a notification that it’s not connected to the internet DESPITE having networking disabled completely.

I tried to update the TV from USB and it failed every time. I eventually gave in and connected it to the internet to update it only to see that I‘m already on the newest version (which I assume is also why updating from USB failed with a generic error).

I never had this much trouble with a device that costs as much as a MacBook or a high end gaming PC and I would’ve already returned if the competition wasn’t even worse.

[–] Skunk@jlai.lu 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Ah shit.

Thanks for the feedback, it is greatly appreciated as those things are expensive.

I guess we are fucked until the EU make a new pro-consumer law. But that would take years (if they ever make it).

Another possibility would be to use a projector (it is only for homelab NAS movies afterall). I have a xgimi in my bedroom and it is somewhat great once connected to the free AppleTV my ISP gave me. Otherwise the default google tv OS on it is pure shit.

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[–] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (9 children)

AFAIK, LG still do not require internet access on first startup.
At least on their medium/high end lines (C and G series).
This was a hard requirement for me. Mine has never been on the internet.

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[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 30 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I honestly wonder how hard it would be to do a full lobotomy on a smart TV and if there would be a big enough market for that kind of service.

[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 26 points 1 week ago (11 children)

best thing is to never hook 'em up to the internet. provided the manufacturers don't all start requiring internet to 'set up' a tv.

next best thing would be a revert of firmware or a full 'reset' of settings; if possible. to return it to an 'out of box' state--then above, never connect it to the internet.

replacing a cheap streaming device is a hell of a lot cheaper than replacing the tv once the software gets obsoleted for whatever reason.


my coworker (and boss, technically) just casually mentioned that her inlaws 'updated' their tvs when they were visting over the holidays. i cringed so fucking hard because i have the same model, just smaller--so i know what happens.

they had just recently hooked-up wireline internet and could actually stream stuff now.. so i had just given them a new streaming stick to use instead of connecting their now 3 year old tv to the wifi.

[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You'd still have the TVs default OS running on a potato. I'm thinking more along the lines of replacing that with a bare bones old school OS that was responsive.

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[–] perishthethought@lemm.ee 16 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I have mine disconnected from the network, but a certain non-techie member of my household (who doesn't understand this stuff) keeps re-connecting it when they want Netflix to work, even though I've shown them how to do this without connecting the TV to the network.

[–] elvith@feddit.org 29 points 1 week ago

I connected it once, then set it in the router as „enable child protection -> disable internet access“, gave it a static IP address and also blacklisted that address on my pi hole so that DNS won’t work for it. Then I immediately disconnected it. The router recognizes the TV with its MAC address when it gets reconnected and immediately bans internet access when it gets reconnected.

[–] VerPoilu@sopuli.xyz 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've set up mine to automatically start on a specific HDMI port, that fixed the issue for confused family members.

To find the feature though was not easy. Had to look up how to access the hotel mode hidden menu. Apparently LG has extra features it only wants hotels to be able to use.

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[–] COASTER1921@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 week ago

Generally it's not too hard to disable the smart TV part of it and just use HDMI for TVs running Android. But on Roku TVs for whatever reason you need to connect them to the internet and a Roku account at least once to unlock the picture settings. Hardware features of a TV like brightness adjustment have no business relying on some random server.

[–] tree@lemmy.ml 24 points 1 week ago (6 children)

I wish there was a company like Fairphone or Framework laptops but for TVs.

[–] Corgana@startrek.website 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'm surprised nobody has yet jail-broken Samsung and LG TVs and made a custom Tizen ROM

[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 week ago

Probably too many models with too many varying components for anyone to bother trying....

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[–] randomwords@midwest.social 24 points 1 week ago (30 children)
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[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Meanwhile, the marketing department reading this: "Boss! It's working! The people are actually enjoying it!!"

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

"Also, can someone get the engineering team on the phone to figure out that glock thing?"

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[–] Fridgeratr@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I have a Samsung smart TV and the operating system on it is so annoying. It's so slow, has dumb ads, and I can't cast to it like at all.

I'm even more pissed that they just disabled the Steam Link app for essentially no reason; it worked great for streaming games from my PC.

I've been thinking it would be cool to flash a different OS onto it, but I'm not sure if that's actually possible.

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[–] seemefeelme@infosec.pub 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I never understood why people hated smart TVs until one day mine decided to install an update that presents me with advertisements and a hub screen when I turn it on. If I don't select something in time, the screen disappears, which locks all of the controls, and I can only reset it by turning it off and on again. Why??? Just why?!?!

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 14 points 1 week ago

You know why.

[–] Onsotumenh@discuss.tchncs.de 17 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I'm in the market for a new tv and all this crap just makes me want to scream in frustration. But prolonging the decision will just make it even worse.

On top of that my 2017 shield is starting to show its age and there is really no comparable 4k (streaming) alternative thats not a security risk. I feel more and more pushed towards piracy, so that I can use my linux box and decide how and where to watch content. I hate it...

[–] sanzky@beehaw.org 13 points 1 week ago (5 children)

smart TVs mostly can be used as a dumb TV if you reject the terms of services when you set it up. I understand they are annoying, but people making such a big fuzz about them are clearly just fabricating drama.

[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 14 points 1 week ago (5 children)

You don't even have to reject the terms of services, just never connect it to the internet. Not even once.

Won't even be able to send rejections to a server.

I can recommend TLC, they can be used as a dumb TV and never need an internet connection if you just use it as a screen. Wouldn't recommend them with internet though since the remote literally has a microphone build-in.

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[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is why I am dreading when my 2017 dumb TV dies. It's really telling that dumb TVs, which should be cheaper to produce and sell, are either not available or very expensive (as in commercial displays). Really proves the point that the consumer is really the product.

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[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 week ago (4 children)

i haven't even turned on my tv in over a year because of that bullshit. i've just been using a monitor + laptop + 2.1 pc speakers.

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[–] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 14 points 1 week ago (3 children)

And it won't stay on the selected input. No signal? Gotta go back to the screen with ads.

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[–] Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Sounds like an obvious spot in the market for a bullshit-free smart TV. You'd just have to get the UX right.

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[–] OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 11 points 1 week ago

These fucking televisions have less ram than my fucking 8 year old phone

At some point it's just better to factory reset this bitch and paste an RPI in the back with my own android TV so it can actually run with 8gb ram 256gb space

[–] Engywuck@lemm.ee 11 points 1 week ago (6 children)

99.9% of all these "problems" can be solved by using an ablocker DNS and a couple of adb commands (on Android).

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[–] Steve@communick.news 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] late_night@sopuli.xyz 10 points 1 week ago
[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 week ago (15 children)

How about using computer for all the smart stuff and leaving all the visual stuff to the display? Besides, you can run Firefox and ublock origin to watch YT without ads, so what do you need a smart TV for?

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have a cheap N100 mini-PC with Lubuntu on it with Kodi alongside a wireless remote as my TV box, and use my TV as a dumb screen.

Mind you, you can do it even more easily with LibreELEC instead of Lubuntu and more cheaply with one of its supported cheap SBCs plus a box instead of a mini PC.

That said, even the simplest solution is beyond the ability of most people to set up, and once you go up to the next level of easiness to setup - a dedicated Android TV Box - you're hit with enshittification (at the very least preconfigured apps like Netflix with matching buttons in your remote) even if you avoid big brands.

Things are really bad nowadays unless you're a well informed tech expert with the patience to dive into those things when you're home.

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