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Never attach a "Smart TV" to WiFi. As a rule of thumb, they'll only get worse.

Once the manufacturer sells the TV, they don't give a fuck about you anymore, they're already paid! Though they would like to push updates to send you more ads and track you.

I've never attached my 2020 LG 4k 65" to any network and it works great. I did pay $50 to add a GoggleTV CrapCast thing, it works fine for watching movies.

I was doing something similar, except I went for an LG tv for Web OS in the hopes something good would come out of it being open source.

As luck would have it, https://rootmy.tv came out for Web OS. It's still in a very basic stage, but it's better than nothing!

I'm a HomeAssistant user, so I do want my TV connected to my network.

I don't want the TV itself to be connected to the network. It should be a dumb display device. The less brains it is supposed to have, the better. I've got an old Samsung 1080p HDTV that still hasn't needed upgrading all these years, and the more shit I hear about what is going on with 4k TVs, the less I want anything to do with them.

Now, the equipment that takes that display device and actually connects it to things like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, etc.... that IS a device that I want connected to my network. It's called an Apple TV, and definitely is connected to my network. And it connects to the Samsung TV over HDMI.

Awesome! I had no idea this existed. Look forward to giving it a try.

Does anybody know if there are any resources for tampering with the hardware itself to remove networking capabilities from a smart TV? I'd like to just use it as a big monitor, but if there's still a possibility of automatic network activity without my consent then I'd rather just rip out that functionality entirely

Well, you could always investigate how to detach the wifi antennas, though it’s possible your Bluetooth will also stop working, and most TV remotes are Bluetooth these days.

Maybe broadcast a WiFi SSID that blackholes everything?

I don't understand... why don't you just not connect it to your network?

> I've never attached my 2020 LG 4k 65" to any network and it works great.

I guess that would work as long as you move to a place far away from humanity. It definitely won't work if a neighbour runs a WiFi hotspot without password protection.

What would happen if you configured manual network and gave it a fake DNS or sent it over to PiHole for example? Wouldnt there be plenty of ways to capture the traffic and stop it from going where it wants to go? I would think the tech savvy folks on this site would be able to figure something out if it is a big enough concern of theirs.

I have not come across a working password free residential wifi hotspot in almost a decade - because routers have had passwords by default.

I live in an apartment building downtown adjacent to other buildings. They are all around me.

My observation is the open wifi's are much more prevalent in dense living situations like apartments, condos, townhomes, and shared work spaces.

Aren't the newer smart TVs equipped with a cell modem so they can phone home without wifi, or they stop working after not being updated for x days?

Can you name some models? Between that, and user-space wireguard, I think, there might be a bleak future ahead for ad-blocking.

There is no evidence of this and we would know. Its not easy to hide wireless signals.

No, but there are definitely ones that will try to randomly connect to any open wifi networks if left unattended.

Since you claim "definitely" can you point to one?

I hear this claim a lot but have never actually found even a single one that does.

I don't think there are any? This is always a wild speculation about the hellscape to come in the future in these threads, but as far as I know nothing like this actually exist. My TV I bought last year has never been connected to WiFi and never will be.

At least in Europe having a cell modem would ruin the company, who would pay phone bills? Sure as hell not me.

> who would pay phone bills

Advertisers or data brokers? They’re already subsidizing the purchase price of TVs.

Neither of these things are true.

Disconnect the TV from wifi and enable GameMode to bypass most of the post processing. Disable HDR on the OS. On some TV models, there is an additional trick to rename the input port to "PC" and it reduces input lag even more. Use a good web app that guides you to some basic calibration, especially brightness/contrast/gamma. Those 3 things can be changed in your display driver's control panel and TV. So fiddling with both to get a "perfect" image goes a long way. Once you have the configs you like, take some pics or save them in a note somewhere in case you need to restore.

I play Steam Games on a 77" OLED like this and the only reason I dont use it for normal day to day development is I dont have a suitable recliner keyboard/mouse setup. Got the TV for $2,000 from Woot a year ago and it is the VRR model.

Why are monitors with similar capabilities at a third of the size so expensive?

Disabling HDR is akin to buying a sports car and throwing your hands in the air when you can't figure out how to start it outside of eco mode. The same for any tweaking on the driver's control panel instead of on the display. Ultimately though the truth is when you go through all of that hassle (special input ports, special input names, advanced/hidden input settings, image adjustments) it still somehow comes out worse than it should be in terms of input latency and image accuracy.

I always have 2 wishes:

- For TVs to have a mode that just displays the signal according the reference mode of that signal (particularly for HDR) and not fuck with it to make it "better".

- For a decent selection of monitors that come with larger panels.

I can't relate to any of this at all. My Smart TV (LG) is not slow or unresponsive. It doesn't show any ads and the picture control is easy to understand.

Well done picking a good TV. Unfortunately even other LG TVs are doing this: https://twitter.com/chriswelch/status/1369733357756686349

Many, many smart TVs send analytic data to marketing companies. Some even send full snapshots of the screen. https://archive.ph/DWTGC

> When tracking is active, some TVs record and send out everything that crosses the pixels on your screen. It doesn’t matter whether the source is cable, an app, your DVD player or streaming box.

> Many of the TV companies say they aren’t violating our privacy, because ACR data technically isn’t “personally identifiable information.” TVs, they say, are shared by an entire household.

Don’t connect it to WiFi and update. 2020 LG CX OLED TV randomly started to play ads after update:

https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2021/3/10/22323790/lg-oled-tv-...

>"Interesting. I find innovation in TV's to be opposite of my desired direction. Smarts that make them slower, wifi, ads, slowness,forced firmware updates, slowness, unfathomable picture controls and auto magic colour correction that's Gawd awful, unresponsiveness and slowness."

Maybe just do not connect it to a network ever. At least I don't. I've used TV as a monitor for a while but after some time strain in the neck showed up I downsized to 32" 4K monitor

In one sense, yes, but if you live somewhere where energy is expensive why have not only my TV (~30W) on but also the PS5 (~100W+ + ~30W) or gaming PC (~200W+ + ~30W) just so I can watch Netflix?

I'll choose to use the TV's app every time.

I have a higher-end LG 4K OLED with WebOS which is extremely responsive compared to others I've had, also it's rooted to block any ad-crap, but also you can do most of that at the DNS/Network/Router level if you have an issue.

Then there's the fact that the non-tech family members don't want to use more than one remote or fiddle with channels etc, my wife can press the Netflix button in the remote from TV off and have instant Netflix and tue surround sound on too.

Younger me would have agreed with you, but as a parent and husband, in my mid 30s, I just want an easy life.

Just use a Roku, why use a video game console? The energy is negligible and you only ever use one remote. The Roku works with most TV remotes, although since I rarely watch broadcast TV I use the much better Roku remote typically. My Switch automatically changes inputs when I turn it on, so don't even need to switch inputs usually.

For me, the Roku's killer features is its app that lets me instantly stream the audio to my phone/airpods so i do not disturb anyone else while still watching tv. All others require me to pair my headphones with the tv or some other painful process.

> Maybe just do not connect it to a network ever.

This is slowly but surely not becoming an option. Beyond automatically connecting to any open networks, some models already will stop working until you give them a network connection to perform a 'necessary' periodic update.

Wait, what TV’s are doing this?

Automatically connecting to open networks sounds like a potential legal quagmire, since aiui I’m not legally allowed to just use my neighbor’s wifi without permission.

Hopefully not all the models will stop working. But we will see. I am an old fart and hate all this sneaking in my backyard. I am fiercely independent and trying to stay this way as much as reasonably possible. Alexa has no place in my life. It can go fuck somebody else.

I think it would be shocking to todays people to see a TV from 20 years ago, before all that digital funkiness. Instant switching between channels.

I certainly don’t miss switching channels.

TV experience 20 years ago sucked. Now I can have all the content I could ever want immediately accessible via Plex, no need to fiddle with DVDs or gasp VHS tapes. Commercials? hah. Unskippable anti-piracy warnings? nope.

Imagine if they were exposed to a laser disk fast forward / skip. Gasp

Or an old copper phone line before cellular ruined call quality.

Maybe he got a large but shitty quality TV? I got an OLED 2 years ago and none of this rings a bell.

Possible. But this thread is a comparison of tv vs monitor. If we are talking 5000$ tv, that's no longer a relevant comparison.

(Fwiw though my impression was that it was a mid grade brand name tv. Certainly not a no name bottom tier).

Software is too much. But OP is talking a lot hardware.

Yes, where are the quantum dots, the local dimming, the mini leds that TVs have?

New models of monitor have released with quantum dot OLED which are brighter than traditional OLEDs. This is not to be confused with QLED which is simply LED not OLED.

I think better examples would be the lack of motion control, unlike computers the bulk of content experienced on TVs expects to run at specific refresh rates. Innovations like OLED which offer instantaneous response rates cause issue for that media when expected pixel dimming latency is expected. Causing motion like pan shots to appear jittery. TVS need innovation that focuses on feathering motion, since it's clear the TV and Movie industry have no plans to bump frame rate.

OLED doesn't have any new issues here compared to LCD. Both sorts of TVs will often have "black frame" insertion options, but I've never found the flicker worthwhile.

Smooth panning would be fixed by content being shot at something higher than 24fps, like you say; but I've seen that same jitter in theater screens for decades, it wasn't something that was designed to depend on CRT tech or such (like videogame lightguns).

TVs have been doing tons of "smart" picture processing to try to smooth out motion since so much content is so low frame rate. It just often looks fake!

This is why I passed on an OLED when upgrading my TV. OLED is definitely the future, I just have little desire to beta test it with jittery panning. I’m sure they’ll sort it out.

My 2017 OLED looks fantastic.

Movie cinemas are dead to me now. I would never switch back to a shitty LCD. Or even a "good" LCD.

I'm super sensitive to jitter as well, so your information about OLEDs being jittery is wrong.

Thanks for the correction. I may wish I purchased a C1 after all!