I finally bought my first new TV in 2020, a Sony with Android TV. I have never connected it to the Internet. Instead, it displays an AppleTV or a gaming machine.
It has been an amazing reliable display at a reasonable price, every bit as good as the imagined ideal dumb TV.
So why all the pearl clutching? Do other brands require Internet to turn on and display HDMI?
On initial power-on, the TV aggressively pushed me to set up internet access and accept a terms & conditions statement. It took some degree of dancing to find a way past the setup wizard without completing these.
I am very careful when I select inputs. If I hit the Input button on the remote to switch between devices, I need to make sure I go no further than one step left or right to select the other input. If I go too far, the next selections will tell me that I have still not set up internet and accepted the t&c's and I must do so before I use the feature. This happens regardless of whether I press 'Enter' to actively select them.
I've actually had much your opinion for years, but the TV manufacturers really are stepping up their game. My previous Samsung smart TV I was able to use the "just don't configure it" approach and everything was peachy. The landscape is changing.
Even if you do accept the terms the conditions, it comes back as soon as you are disconnected from the internet. I am extremely disappointed with the experience.
So, yes, the pearl clutching is for a reason.
Because it's part of a trend of our possessions turning hostile to us. It's hardware that you pay for and supposedly own, that betrays you, spies on you and acts against your interest, covertly or at least discreetly.
That you are for now able to prevent it is besides the point. An implementation detail, that will change as soon as our corporate masters want it to.
Unfortunately, it seems to be working. Younger people see being measured, tracked, and advertised to as table stakes for having access to anything.
I don't blame the younger folks for this, as much of the motivation for acceptance is the economics involved. They may not be able to afford all the 'requirements' of modern living if they had to pay the 'i am not the product' premium.
In discussions with the client they explained that it was impossible to get lower than about double the cost of a comparably-powerful Roku and still turn a profit, without supplementing with income from spyware, advertising, and various "partner programs" on the box. Which makes it damn hard to sell the things unless you've got some other angle to work (so, Apple can pull off $250 streaming boxes, but some new company? They better have a really good pitch, and they're gonna struggle more than they otherwise might to get on store shelves, which is a whole other thing). In our case they did have a niche they were targeting that meant they didn't want or need advertising and such, but the price point still hurt, and they couldn't do better without getting into adware and spyware.
These traits are slowly but surely becoming unavoidable if you're looking for a higher quality screen.
Cached ad insertion in front of the video signal from connected devices is inevitable.
That is not true. For TVs is an inverse relationship between quality and how aggressive the "smart" parts are.
The open WiFi thing was some low end Samsung, and it's been a long while since I've seen an open WiFi network that doesn't have a captive portal that would block the connection.
And I've never seen a TV that would refuse to work without an internet connection, and I can't imagine anything but the most bottom end no-name TV trying to pull that.
Don't bring it to the airport or out shopping? Who has an open wifi network in range of their home? (I'm out of touch though, I live in the woods, and can only occasionally see my neighbor's networks, I get to use all the channels for myself, muhahaha)
> Cached ad insertion in front of the video signal from connected devices is inevitable.
Nobody is willing to run an ad program with cached ads. I tried to set one up at my previous job, because it made more sense than live ads, but nope... not going to happen; advertisers want real time control and stats.
for surface-mount antennae (which cant be used for 5g or 5ghz wifi) you would just brush the same metallic fingernail polish on the trace :)
Those people deserve a solution, too.
I've bought smart TVs, not connected them to WiFi, and that was the end of it.
You can hear whispers about all kinds of sneaky things like refusing to work, but some of the best TVs out right now are LG smart TVs that will function completely identically to a dumb TV if you don't connect them to the internet.
Here's the thing: At the end of the day, a smart TV has capabilities that I don't need or want, including to change how it functions without warning or consent. However unlikely the possibility is, a smart TV still has the capability to connect to an open network, phone home, and start doing shit I don't want, which means I have to trust it to not do that.
On the other hand, my old dumb TV has none of those capabilities, so I can trust it precisely because I don't need to trust it. I know it can't do anything except display what it receives on its inputs.
Therefore, any time I've considered replacing my TV with a newer one, I've always weighed predictability against uncertainty and opted in favor of the predictability of what I own.
Maybe that's overly paranoid of me, but at the end of the day, I just haven't wanted a new TV as much as I've wanted something I can trust.
#anecdata
So any 2 bit hacker wannabe in an apartment complex? I mean if I was a teenager in the wifi days I would have been playing games like that.
Or buy an older used TV
Why should I destroy my property?
Why Isn't, for exanple, using my property to spy on me a criminal offense?
What happens when the same practices filter through to cars? Oh, wait, they already have.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-9526109/Is-...
What happens when the same issues filter through to bionic eyes? Oh, wait, they already have!
https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete
We are going back to feudalism
There is zero evidence of this ever happening.
Before that, when it was connected, it would show me advertisements over top of my TV signal occasionally.
My vehicle has a cellular internet connection that I cannot easily disable. My insurance company is among the many that would love to get at that data. TV's are valuable enough that such a connection will be coming to them too eventually.
Because the idea that a TV can spy on me is pretty repulsing. To be in compliance with the GDPR I suppose it should be pretty easy to disable, but the fact is that some moron thought that this was ever a good idea to begin with is infuriating. I don't think it's pearl clutching, it's anger, directed at both the manufacturer and the rest of the population that either doesn't know or care that they viewing habits are being tracked.
Still I just take the same route as you, my TV is just never going to touch the internet. The angry part in me just want the EU to force TVs to display a small blink light in the corner of the screen anytime viewing data is leaving the TV.
I bet all the people crying here would agree to sell their info for tracking for $20 amazon gift card.
That's a foolish bet you would loose then. Some of us already directly pay extra for privacy.
It's not just TVs, it's tracking in general for ad or for anything else. If you want to be tracked then I have no problem with that but I just want to be left alone.
If you want to be left alone then start using usb drives and air gapped laptops. Still you can't stop your personal data like bank details,addresses,SSN etc to not be available since you probably use a public/private banking system.
Once people figured out they can become billionaires off of other peoples data and governments got involved for national security the individuals privacy online is all but a myth.
I think most people just balk at the price of an external media device when their TV has “it” (but of course not the same quality “it”) built in, and so they end up with a crappy, data-mining, ad-riddled, experience. You get what you pay for.
https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smar...
I am in UK and don't even need live TV and pay its licencing fee. Smart TV where I can watch movies, songs, play videos from my phone or computer is the TV i need.
Because we are going back to feudalism in terms of personal rights and freedoms.
In 15 years will own no major possessionns - your electronics, car and appliances can be shut down remotely at any time because you make a tweet elon musk didn't like. And Asset Inflation will ensure noone owns a house. Na dyour door lock will be smart, so if you are behind on rent they will lock you out same day.
And people on here will be chanting 'they are a private conoany they can do what they want'
This severely vexes people with OCD, who want their TV set up "correctly" and maybe to receive updates, but also not to spy on them.