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Comment by DavidSJ | Hacker News Reader

And on top of that, your TV manufacturer gets to spy on you. It’s win-win-win.

My old dumb tv is failing. After looking online, it seems the only dumb TVs left are in the US (Spectre and very little else) and not available in Germany. At least the spying is removed by not connecting it to the internet, though I still get the great full OS experience :/

At least the spying is removed by not connecting it to the internet, though I still get the great full OS experience :/

I have a smart TV not connected to the internet, just a HDMI connection to another box. Then I learned that IP-over-HDMI is a thing!

In the very near future this will be even more futile - the TV will have it’s own built-in cellular connection just for telemetry. Anyone who objects will be shouted down as a 5G conspiracy nut, but this is exactly what 5G is designed for.

That’s horrible, I hadn’t even looked at it like that.

But it will actually work better with 3/4G because 5Gs range is so short and it would be easy to block with just a little tinfoil.

5G has a lot of bands. Most of them are close to the 3G/4G bands, so it should have the same signal as 3G/4G.

Also, new IoT technologies use techniques allowing them to operate at a much weaker signal.

But you can always just destroy the antenna.

> Then I learned that IP-over-HDMI is a thing!

While it’s in the spec, I’m not aware of a single piece of consumer electronics that actually support it. The standard is an utter failure.

In HDMI 2.1 the wires previously used for Ethernet-over-HDMI are now used for eARC making these two features mutually exclusive.

I believe some higher end residential automation automation software support it?

Anecdotally, the first Sony smart tv my grandma got (after her old tube TV died) managed to receive a firmware upgrade over the antenna cable (don't remember if it was cable TV or satellite). She certainly didn't have any internet in her home. Of course that led to a fun episode of "My TV is broken" (actually just showing a prompt to start the firmware upgrade), in general she got very confused by the smart TVs UI often...

Take a look at NOGIS [0]. They were primarily designed to avoid Austrian GEZ but should work fine as dumb tv's as well.

[0]https://nogis.at/

Tried to check out, their shop only ships to German and Austrian addresses :(

Maybe try Swedx [0]. I dont know how good their TV's are but I know they have some dumb one available and should ship to more locations.

[0]https://www.swedx.se

Isn't it the opposite of a dumb tv?

AFAIU it has no TV tuner, so no air/cable/sat reception, while having full "smarts" with built-in internet and apps.

We bought a larger monitor for the computer and have it placed where we can watch movies from the sofa. It's not as nice as a real dedicated TV, but saves space and avoids the headache of modern TVs.

depending on your budget, you could look for "digital information displays" which are displays that are meant for advertising in shops/malls/storefronts, and most of them are literally 'giant monitors" with no smart features. Expect it to be pricier though.

Don't know about you, but when my 2017 Sony (not so smart, but starts fast and doesn't call home) will die, I'm not going to buy a regular TV set anymore but just a monitor, like I used to with my old PS3 and PlayTV. What's left of free-to-air TV (state broadcasters on DVB, if the signal is even strong enough) frankly feels like religious programs played in prisons. It's caustic and depressive social-pedagogical palliative crap, during coronavirus more than ever. Someone from Hollywood should come over and teach about the concept called "entertainment".

Nextdns is the best solution I found to this problem (they have a smart TVs blocklist) along with a firewall rule that blocks all port 53 traffic except to approved dns.

Shame this stops working with the next firmware update that switches your TV to DNS-over-HTTPS. Because then, just like google ads switching to the main google.com domain, you will have to choose to block either every service from your tv manufacturer (including firmware security updates) or allow it all through.

My next TV is going to be a dumb one with a bespoke HTPC...

I use Pi-hole (https://pi-hole.net) to block my Roku TV from sending out analytics (and from displaying ads).

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