I guess that doesn't make people keep buying TVs...
You can, they sell "just dumb panels" for commercial signage applications. They cost way more. Smart TVs selling your eyeballs and your data make them cheaper than dumb panels. And since most consumers buy on price, they also get the advantage of scale. So they're more expensive and they do less, their only market is a handful of privacy geeks who aren't going to just not connect it to the internet - a tiny market.
https://www.businessinsider.com/smart-tv-data-collection-adv...
> A January interview on The Verge's podcast with Vizio's chief technology officer, Bill Baxter, did a great job illuminating how this works.
> "This is a cutthroat industry," Baxter said. "It's a 6% margin industry. The greater strategy is I really don't need to make money off of the TV. I need to cover my cost."
> "It's not just about data collection. It's about post-purchase monetization of the TV."
> "You sell some movies, you sell some TV shows, you sell some ads, you know," he said. "It's not really that different than the Verge website."
- audio recordings (smart TVs have microphones)
- photos of your living room (smart TVs have cameras)
- still images of TV content
- SSIDs of neighbouring WiFi routers for geolocation
- data from scanning nearby smart devices Bluetooth
- daily/weekly usage data
- data from scanning USB devices plugged into the TV (e.g. list of filenames from your pendrive / USB HDD)
Yes, let's take long-lived hardware and embed short-lived networked software in it, and do so in an environment where there are no economic or regulatory incentives to keep them patched over the expected life of the hardware. Thanks for the innovation, tech industry.
The marketing shit getting people to buy 4K TVs when a 20 year old person struggles to see the difference from the other end of the room is literally producing unnecessary technology when the old stuff was just fine.
Add on artificial software breakage and it becomes even more extreme.
The vast majority of people buy the shit because it's pushed on them. My grandmother doesn't bloody need 4K.
I do dislike smart TVs however. Very thankful my dumb Samsung has lasted about 10 years and still going strong. Are there any dumb TVs left to buy?
Has never been updated but it's airgapped so who cares.
Of course if it gets on some open WiFi or has a sim card in it I'm knackered. Doh. Should probably crack it open and remove the antenna.
So yes, I would remove the antenna.
Someone somewhere probably thought, "Hey, let's help out our customers that may be too lazy or not smart enough to figure out how to connect, and do it automatically for them!"
People who remove antennae from their devices are doing so because the law is cold comfort after the fact. This is like telling a farmer they don't need guns because 911 will be there quickly enough. Nope.
It also seems unlikely that connecting to an unsecured access point can be said to be "unauthorized access". That would make like, free wifi essentially anywhere (hotels, fast food places, airports, coffee shops, libraries) illegal to access unless you like, asked someone first. It's in direct contrast with how probably 99% of people use WiFi.
Maybe you're talking about captive portals. Not all free wifi even has terms.
Laws don't stop crimes, they just allow crimes to be prosecuted.
(Otherwise there would be no more murders, drunk drivers, etc.)
Edit: just realized you meant the wifi antenna.
Manufacturers want larger margins for their shareholders.
Manufacturers see the data whoring, privacy violating business.
Manufacturers put in "smart" oses into TVs so they can begin recording what you are watching, saying (they have mics and you agree to the TOS they cna record your living room!) or even doing so they can whore out for more profit than they made on you buying the tv.
There's nothing stopping you from treating a smart TV like a dumb TV. Just don't configure the network.
I've read, but never confirmed that some smart TVs will queue data and then attempt to connect to unsecured networks to upload to the mothership.
...your TV? Are you going to hang out inside the cage with it? Or maybe watch it through the screen door? There's a use case for 4K, it has enough pixels so that even looking through the Faraday cage you still get 1080p.
You can still buy "non-smart" TVs and do this.
But I think most people want this functionality built in to the TV, for 2 reasons:
1. Aesthetics. For example, my TV is wall mounted, and I don't want a box strapped on the side of it with wires hanging out.
2. Ease of use. Most people want to plug it in and have it just work
Not sure if that would meet your requirements? But it sounds like it would. Just might be a bit more pricey depending on features.
I wish you could just buy modern TVs that are essentially just monitors.
I imagine you'll say something about watching TV with other people, which seems fair, but in my experience people don't watch TV "together". The TV is on, maybe one person is paying attention to it, most are just on their phone, or talking to eachother.
Maybe my experience is an outlier here.
I don't think there's much more a reason that, nor do folk need more reason than that.
In the past, I mainly just used a tablet to watch video.
Also, you might want to opt out of using an Amazon or Google HDMI dongle for privacy reasons. Another thing to consider is that dumb TVs traditionally have IR which has its pros and cons.
Seems obvious to me why they sell.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LW4G71Y/
I did precisely what you suggest: buy a TV and hook a streaming box to it.