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Comment by fredley | Hacker News Reader

Don't buy a smart TV, don't let your family/friends buy smart TVs. Buy a dumb screen and hook it up to an Apple TV, Chromecast etc. The 'smart' software is a privacy nightmare over which you have very little control. And sure, so is the Chromecast, but I at least have more faith that wherever that data's going it's going there securely and is relatively unlikely to be breached. Also, the software on your smart TV will age much faster than the screen itself.

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Is it even possible to buy a dumb screen anymore?

Probably not, but you don't need to give it your wifi password.

Discussion of this on reddit leads me to believe that at least some Samsung TVs would connect to any available open wifi networks.

I purposefully didn't give my Sony tv (android) my wifi password. A few weeks later it prompted me to install a firmware update, and I saw it was connected to my home wifi. How? Best I can guess is another android device shared credentials with the TV.

I blocked that stupid thing at the router. I don't need firmware updates for my TV.

Is there anyone else in your house who might have put in the credentials? That seems like a big security hole if Android will just share wifi credentials with other random Android devices.

Why would you have open networks? Anyone can monitor their traffic.

I can't exactly control my neighbors.

Right. The only thing I've ever done using my Sony smart TV's native interface is to go into settings and turn off WiFi. It isn't a dumb TV, but might as well be.

Just don't connect it to the internet. The Apple TV experience is way better anyway.

Oh how times have changed.

Behold, my Software Processes textbook in college (< 10 years ago):

https://imgur.com/a/IOibz79

"Commercial displays" are the answer. A TV without a tuner or any of the bullshit. Just HDMI.

Any recommendations for what vendor and what line to go with?

NEC E series for cheap, P series for the pro grade stuff.

In a past theme park life we setup our outdoor TVs for showing queue line content and they used NEC P430(? It's been years) both outside in a case and inside for digital menu boards in restaurants.

I was thinking about going this route, but the best TVs on the market are OLEDs, the only game in town is LG, and the "sale" price was over $2k. I couldn't imagine what the "commercial display" tax would be.

I ended up just blocking LG's servers on my network.

Actually, commercial displays are not that expensive.

As you see in retail and airport settings, these displays are bought by the thousand and are often configured in 6/9/18 screen "display walls" ... and therefore the purchasers are price-sensitive.

Yes, they are more expensive than a TV from Best Buy, but only about 2x - not 5x.

Yes. I bought one this year and I love it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07C2N7DKG

>Buy a dumb screen and hook it up

where do we find these 65inch 4K "dumb screens" for purchase?

I disagree, I got a nice 3D "smart tv" it has all the goodies that I need (plays mp4, avi, mkv, mp3, etc.)

I just make sure one thing happens. It stays offline :)

When someone asks me if they can watch something from YouTube, I add 5mins in the process, I download it on a USB flash disk on my PC, stick it on the TV, and presto!! YouTube-on-the-TV!

You do this for every single request? that sounds like a pain in the ass.

I don't watch that many YT videos on my TV, most stuff I watch are from my cable provider. I use YT on my large PC screen (cat videos etc.)

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