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Comment by rapnie | Hacker News Reader

It gives me the impression that, even though I paid good money on it, Samsung doesn't see me as owner and will leech as much private data off me as they possibly can.

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This is my impression as an unhappy Samsung smart TV owner, despite being a happy owner of an older Samsung "dumb" TV; the reason I bought their crappy smart TV.

LG does the same.

I bought good OLED and still, I had to connect pihole to block ads...

New LG's are even worse. I don't know what I do if my current TV will stop working.

I want only display, I don't want any additional features (ads, personalization etc.).

I have two new LG TVs, never connected them to the internet. I do all my media consumption via a ATV and rpi

My new Sony TV wouldn't allow me to do anything without connecting it to the internet during initial setup. I just wanted to use it as a dumb screen to show HDMI signal. But even that wouldn't work without initially connecting it to the internet. I haven't connected it to the internet since and so far it hasn't stopped working, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it does as some point and forces me to reconnect and update it.

Did you return it? All manufacturers should be punished for requiring an internet connection for basic features.

I find it hard to believe there wasn't a work around for your tv to be set up without Internet.

For example the Sony web site doesn't seem to support what you are saying

https://www.sony-asia.com/electronics/support/articles/00113...

I set up my grandmothers sony tv last year without Internet.

I was trying to avoid it. I am tech savvy. I could not find a workaround. There was no way, at least none I could find despite my efforts, to skip the screen requiring you to connect without connecting.

That's very strange. I'm too lazy to factory reset the Sony tv I bought this year to try it, but here's a link to a "q and a" from Best Buy saying someone set up my model without Internet during a hurricane, and Sony themself indicating it works without Internet.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/questions/sony-77-class-bravia-...

So assuming you are software savvy enough to not have missed the correct prompt, I have to assume there was a bug with the firmware version you recieved.

Some people like my 92 year old Grandmom don't have internet, and it would make no sense for Sony to have to deal with returns from them.

That is strange. I have a different model (KD65X80J), but it seems to have all the same options and software. Yet, even though I chose Basic TV instead of Android TV, the internet connection page did not have the option to skip. It might be a bug, as you suggest.

I wanted to do a firmware update over usb but LG requires NTFS for it to work so I gave up.

Is there a computer monitor that would satisfy your needs? That would spare you the ads. I use a 32” monitor that I found too big for computing as a TV (with external speakers and roku).

TCL and many other manufacturers use Roku For their OS. I’m on my second tv with it, and have never connected either to the internet, without any issues.

That’s what you want.

Sencor used to offer big (as large as 58'') TVs, some of them even dumb as bricks

I'd argue this is what parent wants instead...

Happy owner of a modern Samsung vacuum cleaner, very unhappy owner of a Samsung smart TV.

Samsung makes perfectly good hardware. They just destroy it with their software.

I have never had any other impression of any smartphone.

Probably why I don't carry one.

unironically, the Huawei p30 is a great android phone. Stable software, not a lot ofbloatware, and acceptably fast security updates.

Real shame they are not allowed to make Android phones anymore. I genuinely believe Samsung is a bigger security and data leakage threat nowadays than Huawei was a few years ago

> Real shame they are not allowed to make Android phones anymore.

Harmony OS for phones is a fork of Android.

They mean Google Play certified phones, not Android.

I wouldn't buy a model that is not supported by LineageOS. There are just two from Huawei.

https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/#huawei

You’re rewriting history. Huawei was blocked from Android access due to it being deemed an asset of the Chinese government. Not because it was leaking any data.

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