Customers of various smart television brands have, over the past few years, reported that their newly acquired television will, given power, connect to nearby open wireless networks without user intervention or permission.

My uncle recently got a smart TV (cuz it was on sale) but never uses the "smart" features, so as I was setting it up I declined to connect it to his wifi. The TV only showed the cable channels; trying to switch to HDMI, open the menu to change settings, etc were all locked out unless you logged onto a wifi network.

Yes, with LG, you can apparently still avoid connecting it with recent models, which gives you have effectively a dumb monitor with (for OLED) a glorious picture. Can’t vouch for other makes.

In the days of 5G this is no longer a guarantee.

I don’t know if any tvs include this kind of thing yet but 5G modems and service are cheap enough for devices to not need your network to phone home.

If it were as simple as just not connecting to the internet as is often suggested, I'd have done that already! Also yeah, it can be a bit of diminishing returns on the privacy front when it comes to the things we do use to drive our media consumption haha

Go find a TV a few years old with android or whatever 'smart' OS on it and tell me how long it takes to boot and be meaningfully interacted with (like opening an app, like the TV app). What about how many times it randomly reboots in the span of an hour and loses all configuration including selected time and time zone configuration which in the case of a TV renders the electronic program guide literally unable to function (oddly specific, but bear with me...) or how many really weird bugs you run into like the top of the line Samsung 'smart' TV I once borrowed (which did lose time and time zone setting when it rebooted) where when you tried to set the time or time zone, it would set the time an hour or two wrong in a completely unpredictable pattern. Using it felt like I was living in The Good Place when Eleanor was making it all topsy-turvy, I swear

I was so lucky that I found a 4K TV with a big enough screen with absolutely NO 'smart' features. None. It has what appears to be the same firmware as the old cheapo 720p TV I got to replace my old faux wood panelled thing that was so old it needed a chain of adapters to run a PlayStation (1). The EPG just ...works. Not that I watch TV any more; it's always on HDMI. It boots up in seconds. It doesn't randomly restart. I don't have to tell it to not connect to the internet cos it doesn't know that the internet exists! Glorious. I might also have a chance in hell of repairing it if (fine, when) it does die. I'll have saved up enough by that point to afford one of those big screens meant for advertising displays or whatever that doesn't even have a TV tuner either lol.

Please excuse my light hearted rant on the plight of my OECD nation problem (it's a real burden /s), but temporarily borrowing a 'smart' TV drastically reduced how much I watched and played because it was TORTUROUS to just get the stupid thing to turn on and show the HDMI1 input. I really do mean torturous. The extra privacy that comes with not having an internet TV is obviously a bonus, but I run all my media off my laptop anyway (I use my consoles for games only).

I just don't want software like that existing on a device where all it does is cause complications that just don't need to exist (for me). The built-in obsolescence of these TV OSes is just awful. If it were as simple as just not giving it access to the internet (ignoring the general availability of open wifi or the potential of 4/5G shipping with the TV itself so it can always phone home anyway) I'd love that and I'd do that but good lord I will stop having a TV before I use a 'smart' TV ever again.