I couldn't recommend enough to buy an Apple TV (or equivalent) and block all Internet access to your "smart" TV. I did this and everything was instantly better.
Note that unless you're running Windows or Mac, 4k from Netflix is not available anyway. In fact, 1080p would not be available, according to their system requirements. Linux tops out at 720p on both Chrome and Firefox. I have to assume this would extend to Kodi on whatever platform you're running Kodi on.
Meanwhile torrents are a search away and they give me a no-nonsense .mkv file in 5 minutes, to watch wherever and whenever I want: phone, PC, TV, internet or no internet. The choice is easy.
Not sure about this. Firefox and Opera both support 720p.
But, because of their choices here - or the terms of the content deals they've signed, idk - Netflix doesn't get as much money from me as they could. 720p is not sufficiently better than 480p (to me) to warrant paying them for 'standard' service, let alone their premium tier at $20/mo. So I just get their basic service.
Their loss, really, although collectively the Linux customer base is probably tiny enough that it's inconsequential to them.
Don't you have to enable widevine to get Netflix in Firefox?
Needing the latest an greatest or not being able to wait a year to watch something means they already have you firmly in their grip.
Just pay the media troll toll if you can't wait.
I also stopped pirating music the day iTunes was introduced
What if your CC on file expires?
Well I guess you can just ask (beg) if you need assistance accessing 'your' music library
I've never heard of issues of having to wait any significant amount of time from an official release on the streaming companies.
Torrenting is great but TBH I'm not going to waste my time setting up Sonarr/Radarr and maintaining tracker accounts to torrent stuff that I can watch through services I already have access to.
New gear usually needs time to marinate before it gets some hacking freedom.
New media is best ignored -- if you are always waiting with baited breath for 'the next new thing (TM)' they already have you and you will pay happily.
I personally ignore all new content and the odd time I want to see what's new there is more than enough waiting for me to download...
I'm not consuming every new song or film as they are released or even within a year of release because that is a waste of your attention and it's controlling you like a dog begging for treats.
The intention of the comment was -- if you just can't wait.. then pay your master. Seems you made your choice.
I'd be worried that's a losing battle long term though (maybe even short/medium term?), same with other hacks like running your own DNS and blackholing ad stuff that way. At the ultimate level, cellular modules and fixed data plans are getting real cheap, and for that matter for those living in denser urban/suburban areas I've heard people saying some stuff seems to be extremely aggressive about grabbing onto any WiFi they can find. But I could definitely see a point where everything comes with its own 4G module just for advertising usage (and maybe firmware updates so they can hang a fig leaf of "easier, no configuration!" over it). If we start having to talk Faraday cages for our TVs that's really hard to get around. Even purely in software they could use fixed DNS IPs to bypass simple user DNS, DoH to bypass users then trying to force all DNS traffic through their own, VPNs, and all the other ways everyone normally try to punch through aggressive firewalling with.
You're right that at present it's often still feasible to get a hostile TV then neuter it. But I think it's better to just not have a fundamentally malicious device inside your setup at all if it can be helped. To me that's worth some money up front, and I appreciate that it exists.
At the core and unfortunately it appears data harvesting and advertising really is quite profitable, and in a further grim twist those trying to avoid it might be even more valuable than the average. Which means the margins may exist on something like TVs to make it worth it to amoral manufacturers to get fairly nasty. That's a hard race as everything gets more and more integrated, vs just rewarding those who don't do it. Or else get laws passed with enough fines to change the equation!
I guess those Google Maps cars can hook up to everything they can while driving around your block without the need for sim cards.
The options are thus
1) Pay big bucks to avoid it (buying 42" monitors rather than 42" TVs)
2) Do clever things to work around it via cat and mouse (pihole, blocking traffic, wire mesh, desolder the 5g modem, etc)
3) Persuade people to care, so that a company starts building TVs at more reasonable prices but without the data capture
This is a consequence of the fully optimised state of capitalism we live in
At least with my objection to shoving ice cream cake into my 1 year old they listen. With electronics I might as well speak Swahili.
Like "my Samsung TV" <--> "neighbors Samsung TV" <--> 'neighbors Samsung Smartphone" (or skip the Smartphone if their TV is already connected without a properly set up firewall)
Why then is Amazon building out its parasitic WiFi network, if not to give unmediated access to its devices. I bet Amazon FireOS devices will do this very thing in the next 2 years, and not get into any trouble for it in the US
1) will it bounce between open wifi points if one does not allow internet access (set up a honeypot)
2) will it try open wifi if you join it to a secured wifi and block that traffic
3) can you send de-auth packets to any open wifi the tv's radio connects to
4) can you desolder the wifi antenna completely
At some point everything will be internet connected just because the tech will cost pennies. We're not there yet, but for a big ticket item such as a TV or a car it's either already there or about to happen.
Haha, joke's one them. I live in a nice apartment in the middle of a major US city, and in my last 3 apartments, cell signal reception was ranging between 1 bar and no signal reception at all. Good luck with a built-in cell modem here.
Thankfully, wifi calling is a thing working by default. So having almost no cell reception at home has exactly zero effect on my phone usage.
EDIT: I stand corrected, Sidewalk isn't a wifi network, it is it's own LoRa network that's limited to barely 1Kbps (which, imo, only strengthens my original point). Thanks for pointing out that technical detail in the replies.
when I check cheapest/mainstream 65-75" TVs (wouldn't buy smaller nowadays considering cheapest 75" TV, which is Samsung here cost like 680 USD), all of them are smart
The Amazon Sidewalk or whatever they had planned would be an example of this that might be less obvious than your neighbor just being bad at IT.
Do they, or do the consumer TVs come with a decreased price to make them more tempting as the manufacture knows they will make up that discount in selling the collected analytics?
There was an article back some time now that showed how one brand was making more from the data sells than from the TVs themselves.
Edit: It didn't take as long to find an example:
https://www.extremetech.com/electronics/328967-vizio-makes-2...