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Comment by pwinnski | Hacker News Reader

Just last week I bought a TCL Roku TV. The price was right!

During setup, I declined to connect to WiFi and then set the TV to automatically switch to HDMI 1 when it turns on, and to honor CEC over HDMI so that my external AppleTV box can power it on and off. Taught the AppleTV remote how to handle the volume on the TV, and that's it. The Roku remote is in a drawer, and the TV behaves as a dumb monitor.

I'm not even sure whether it's possible to buy a large TV without software loaded on it, but you don't have to let that software run!

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I wonder how long not connecting it to wifi will be a viable option. I wouldn't be surprised if many devices today still attempt to connect to open networks even if you decline to connect it to your home network. Once cell modems are embedded in everything the only option to prevent it from phoning home will be to physically disable the modem or put it in a Faraday cage.

Fortunately, not connecting to wifi also means that my TV's software/firmware won't be updated, so for this particular device, I think it will be a viable option as long as it keeps operating.

Whether TCL will someday close that loophole for future models remains to be seen.

See tvupdate.roku.com; Roku posts USB-loadable firmware updates for all Roku TVs, although it's sometimes not as current as the network-delivered version.

>The price was right!

In my opinion, a "right" price would not encourage the kind of behavior that puts bullshit software on a device in the first place. Also, your TV could be connected to mobile networks and you would not know, although I'm not sure what information they can divine from the TV being on or off, other than the times someone is home or not.

If the TV demanded a network connection to operate, I would have returned it the next day.

My TV could have a secret mobile chip, it's true. So could literally anything brought into my house larger than a chip+antenna. I don't think that a TV would be the first thing I'd suspect.

Good to know. I've heard of some that will nag you to connect to WiFi.

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