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I seem to recall that Vizio was added to my "do not buy" list quite a long time ago, when it turned out they were monitoring your watching habit (https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/7/14527360/vizio-smart-tv-tr...).

This seems to be more of the same I guess. Choice text from the link above:

Q: Why did I see an ad in Scenic Mode?

A: After Scenic Mode launches to full screen, you may see ads. We offer free, scenic content by supporting it with ads. These ads allow VIZIO to offer enhanced, built-in Smart TV features, 300+ live channels, and 15,000+ movies and shows at no cost through WatchFree+ while also helping keep the price of our TVs accessible and competitive.

Q: Can I turn Scenic Mode ads off?

A: No, not at this time. These ads allow VIZIO to offer enhanced, built-in Smart TV features, 300+ live channels, and 15,000+ movies and shows at no cost through WatchFree+ while also helping keep the price of our TVs accessible and competitive.

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Sure seems like a "wonderful" company. Their Wikipedia page lists the personal data collection lawsuit and them also likely being GPL violators at that with a court date in September this year:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vizio#Legal_issues

All that plus they expect to run JavaScript on my computer to show any of this page content.

To addon to this they are also owned by WalMart

That's actually normal

I understand that.

I disagree that it should be normal.

JavaScript features are supposed to enhance a document that primarily communicates via text. The text should be readable, and not withheld, without it.

They're owned by Wal-Mart....so yeah. You get what you pay for.

To be honest, this is part of why TVs can be offered for so cheap these days. Same reason really cheap phones are stuffed with bloatware.

Luckily with TVs you can freeload: just never connect it to the internet and only apply updates via USB. Stick an Apple TV / Chromecast / console into it for playback. This might even become standard operating procedure considering Samsung is getting into the ad game, and LG and Sony likely to follow.

Or take the back off and remove the WiFi module

Or just don't give it your Wifi password...

I recall reading a few years back about some crapware that opportunistically would attempt connecting through any available AP (e.g. your neighbor) and smuggle data that way.

The rumor was not only that, but also peering through neighbors devices from the same company.

I recall the same, and that there was evidence. Anyone bother digging up a source?

What nearby available AP could possibly have open access in 2025?

For real, I haven't seen an "Open" Wifi network that wasn't a Coffee shop or Airport in over 10 years.

Yes, it's insidious and evil, but I'd argue the attack surface is almost nonexistent in 2025.

I don’t know how much longer that will be possible with how cheap 5G is getting. Sooner or later they’ll be able to install a $10 part and make a deal with wireless carriers as backhaul for unconnected TVs. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has already made a deal with Spectrum or XFinity to use those open wifi networks that are open to customers via their account signin.

The best solution is commercial displays but those can be quite a bit more expensive and hard to pick out.

> I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has already made a deal with Spectrum or XFinity to use those open wifi networks that are open to customers via their account signin.

I’m skeptical an arrangement like this could work. The authentication mechanism would be interesting enough to attract security researchers and likely open anonymous Internet access that may undermine any potential benefit gained from viewer data. I could be wrong but I hope not.

Definitely a risk.

I knew a guy who basically got internet access at his apartment in college via his local DOT. The message signs on the boulevard he worked on were just cellular mifi units with open or default credentials. Not super fast, but the price was right.

Tangental story about free Internet.

I once got a few years of free broadband Internet because I signed up for broadband plus basic cable, but they never put broadband on my bill. They came and did the installation and everything. Then when it eventually shut off, I called them back to complain and they said they had no record of me being a broadband customer, so I was able to sign up for the lower new customer rate.

At the same time, my TV had a built in digital tuner that could tune into the on-demand streams of other people in my neighborhood. I could watch as the paused/rewind/etc. The watching trends were interesting. Late nights you'd see soft-core adult movies, Saturday mornings you'd see lots of kid's shows.

> The message signs on the boulevard he worked on were just cellular mifi units with open or default credentials. Not super fast, but the price was right.

That's more clever than my reuse story. I repurposed an outdoor AP into a client bridge and pointed at the nearby walmart. I had it feeding an unlocked AP and a yagi pointing into the neighborhood.

I ran it for a year without getting my door kicked in.

There's already Amazon sidewalk and other IoT networks where they can dump data if any neighbor or passerby has a connected device.

> I don’t know how much longer that will be possible with how cheap 5G is getting. Sooner or later they’ll be able to install a $10 part and make a deal with wireless carriers as backhaul for unconnected TVs.

I had a really snarky reply to this, about how I'd just crack it open and remove the sim card, warranty be damned. Then I realized that even sim cards are going away, that's all done in software on the latest phones (no doubt an option soon for everything). Sorta fucked, I wish you were wrong.

It's called eSIM and has been around for a while.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESIM

it has to have some kind of modem/antenna that you can cauterise.

But the TV functionality does not have to work if one does that? We should really have laws that makes it illegal to not function without connectivity.

correct. that's why I have an old and dumb projector instead of a TV.

This idea doesn't bother me at all. I won't buy any TV for which I cannot disable the 5G antenna with basic tools by following a simple procedure described on some website.

If said TV won't work without 5G connectivity, it goes on my "Do Not Buy" list.

Good for you? What if you won't be able to find any tv that works without cryptographically signed periodic online check-ins.

Sure we could all try to ignore the horrors of modern society and move to a cabin in the woods (and then get to know our local mailmen when we find out that even that isn't enough) but perhaps it would be better and take a stand now while we can.

Adding 5G today increases the BOM by 10$-30$ in volume production.

Keep in mind that the tv already has ethernet and wifi to ISP controlled networks. Basically almost every consumer ISP offer mandatory includes an ISP managed gateway, that can pre-certify your appliances or operate hidden ssid networks or "public" wifi access point to the ISP's network. So "smart" appliance operators only need deals with a few big ISPs to get this reach, no 5G required.

With less than a dozens deals you would cover most of the US and EU.

> Basically almost every consumer ISP offer mandatory includes an ISP managed gateway

Is that really true? I never thought Internet subscriptions would require use of ISP's own device. I for sure have been using my own DSL modem/router/wlan device for my own connections (EU).

East Coast US here, I can bring my own cable modem with any cable ISP I have had in the past 10 years.

I imagine fiber is a different story.

Well, yes and no.

Providers are (I believe) required to let you bring your own equipment. Every DSL or cable service I've seen has allowed this.

However, it is also required that the modem you plug into the network accepts and runs firmware provided solely by the network operator. They can update your device at any time and there's nothing you can do about it.

So yeah, you can run your own hardware if you want, but the ISP will run their software on it whether you like it or not.

Definitely not the case. How would the firmware even end up in the device, which protocol delivers it? And which ISP would have the expertise to patch a collection of random devices in the network?

See TR-069

Thanks for the pointer, today is another day when I'm learning something new.

I fathom with 5G RedCap you can drive a low cost BOM and pair it with a "reduced capacity" yet still fairly moderate speed (up to 100mbps) 5G service.

Market the 5G as "always connected" to the customer. Free 720p streaming, a "plus" OTT platform that costs $10/mo that gives 1080p streaming over cellular (and 4K on traditional internet - advertise the 5g as a backup in this case).

Ads sold at an upcharge to the advertiser to reach the "always targetable" smart TV. Hit 'em hard with the ads to pay it.

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/devices/tcl-and-t-mobile-launc...

T-Mo's already running RedCap in the states, so it's a matter of time...

If they added 5G I'd buy one, just for the free service. Old Amazon kindles came with SIM cards you could put in your phone for free data service.

> To be honest, this is part of why TVs can be offered for so cheap these days

I spent $3,000 on a Samsung Smart TV -- and all I got were ads and unwanted content - https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/home-entertainment/i-s...

It'll be a cold day in hell when I believe corporate lies that they're doing all of this for my benefit. Especially when they neither clearly disclose all the ads and spying before purchase, nor offer an option without it at any price.

Also when they add these "features" to TVs that were purchased without them.

Like how would it be received if the builder of your house could come in and put up ad murals on your walls without asking? Would we accept "it subsidizes costs" as an answer?

If I were in real estate, I’d be grateful for this idea right now.

I bought a Philips many years ago, and it was perfect until an update suddenly gave me a lot of crap (ads) on the home screen.

Ironically they also provided a button where I could "adjust what you see on the home screen", but it turned out I could only add more crap. Not take anything away.

It's annoying, because it is not the same product I bought. It's worse.

Allowing consumer devices to connect to the internet does users more harm than good these days.

No it’s not. The cost dropped because new tech became cheaper over time.

(4 years ago) I guessed that Amazon was going to sell access to its Sidewalk network to tv manufacturers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27358758

If they do that, they’re not going to be very upfront about it.

don't buy Chromecast, updates/resets will brick them.

> Luckily with TVs you can freeload: just never connect it to the internet and only apply updates via USB. Stick an Apple TV / Chromecast / console into it for playback

With things like Amazon sidewalk, Samsung smartthings network, etc. it can still get data out

Wouldn't the data be a lot less useful to them? Instead of 'customer watched X show for Y minutes' it'd be 'customer X watched Y minutes of unknown on HDMI1'.

There's ways to fingerprint the content.

A low res, low quality jpeg once a minute or N seconds into a scene transition is quite small. I think audio fingerprinting can be effective and very low bandwidth as well.

As edge AI gets better they will be able to send smaller textual descriptions of the screen content.

Something like color histogram data is probably enough for fingerprinting known content.

I think it’s only a matter of time until TVs refusing to work without internet or randomly interrupting your watching experience to ask you to connect to the internet. Heck, they can even learn from Microsoft now and demand a Vizio account, iPhone apps, etc.

Additionally they could start producing them without HDMI or other ports to prevent Apple TV or other similar devices from connecting.

What I’m trying to say is that corporate greed is limitless and the only thing that can prevent abuse will be strict regulations at the end of day.

I hate this as much as you, but don't agree regulation is the only solution. In part because it tends to get things wrong, skew markets, favour incumbents and ultimately retard innovation by startup efforts like mine.

When a company treats its customers like crap, that opens an opportunity for someone else to come along and do better.

Corporations are copying each other's bad habits right now, the kind of behavior you've described is a trend and the ones partaking in this race to the bottom will fail. I'm looking forward to a "revolution" when one rediscovers there's actually a market for quality consumer electronics that treat you decently and are a joy to use (think Apple's earlier iPhone models, auto manufacturers going back to knobs and buttons, etc) and might pursue this myself if nobody else does.

To be clear, I'm not opposed to legislation enforcing some basic, much-needed principles (like privacy preservation, requiring opt-in consent, attaching more liability to collected user data even to the point of establishing fiduciary-like duty on the sensitive stuff, stricter transparency and better user controls promoting consumer choice). I just think you need to be careful about getting too prescriptive on the "how".

You can however turn scenic mode off which I would do immediately. That said, probably would never consider a Vizio tv.

Yeah, looks like all they’re saying is that you can’t use scenic mode without ads. They even promise it won’t turn itself back on after an update, which is a surprising yet refreshing thing to see.

> They even promise it won’t turn itself back on after an update

The cynic in me thinks that they've tried that and only after it backfired they created the promise (and they'll silently revoke their promise in the future)

I simply don’t believe such a promise. Maybe that’s their intention now, but such companies subsequently change their minds all the time, and so not seem to feel any obligation to uphold former “promises”.

They even have a habit of blatting miscellaneous user preferences in updates by accident just because they’re careless.

promises should come with contracts that they will pay you something like the median salary per year if they change their mind.

You could find their ad server and just do a rewrite in your router for that ip address.

Or.. just don't connect the TV to the frigging internet in the first place.

It’s tempting sometimes. I recently bought a 43 inch 4K unit for 99 dollars, to use as a monitor for an Apple TV unit. I’m pretty sure it must be heavily subsidized. … but if it’s not, and tech has gotten that cheap, that’s actually pretty awesome! I’ve been working on a project with a hardware element and it is impressive how cheap commodity stuff can be when you buy it on the reel.

It never got hooked to the internet, and it never will. Hopefully network over hdmi doesn’t become a thing lol.

I am paranoid about these things starting to…(oh, wait, there is a great y combinator-able business idea in there that will make life suck a little bit more, never mind)

The inevitable wave of enshitification is real. We need to learn to surf.

I believe a Roku does the same kind of TV fingerprinting, and probably so do the other streaming hardware devices. So, not sure there is any relief anywhere? You can run your own linux HPC, but those get locked to 720p quality.

Apple TV is pretty good and not very pricey. It’s a good value

Apple TV has to be one of my favorite purchases over the last five years. It just does what it says on the tin and gets the hell out of the way otherwise. I've bought three of them and disconnected all our tvs from wifi in favor of using these devices.

they are great little devices. Has its own tailscale app too and can be used as an exit node! useful for me as the TV is pretty close to the fiber box on the wall.

I struggle a bit with the remote control and UI in several apps

The remote control is definitely hit or miss. I don't have any trouble with it, but I swear my wife has ten thumbs when she's using it. She hates that thing.

Great device, if only they could make a decent remote. The older silver one was like a slippery soap in the palm, while the next (black) one was hopeless to figure which side was up or down.

My newer 4K controller started acting up recently and I had to ifixit.

Starting at $130 is kind of pricey. A Roku Ultra isn't as capable, but is $80, and a Roku Express 4K+ (no wired ethernet, no dolby atmos) is $30. Roku likes to snoop and push ads too, of course.

And how usable are they if you're outside of the Apple ecosystem (i think I saw an article recently that someone was stuck and needed to use a mac or an iPhone to get unstuck).

I haven’t had any issues with mine yet but I have lots of Apple devices so I am not the best to answer this question.

But, as far as Roku they are subsidized by selling your data and pushing ads as you call out above. Not really a fair comparison. Just like you have to pay more everywhere for the ad free tier you end up paying more for Apple TV.

I will say though that the Apple TV handles 4K flawlessly. I am willing to bet that it has quite a bit more power than any of roku’s offerings.

> You can run your own linux HPC, but those get locked to 720p quality.

That is demonstrably not true.

If you run Jellyfin and pirate using thepiratebay and yandex searches, you can get 4k 7.1 audio shows.

It's not the OS but the streamimg sites, like netflix and others are locked to 720p.

My point exactly.

Why would I pay to be abused and treated like a potential theif if I pay for services, but if I pirate I do get the best quality and experience?

If the company's paid experiences were top notch, I'd have stayed.

But it turns out 40TB, 20 cores, and an Intel Arc for high speed transcoding easily handles 200 shows, 3000 movies, and more. And the big upside? No more 'killed by Netflix' or trying to figure out what streaming platform has THIS show today.

Come on, they are obviously talking about streaming services. Everybody knows you can pirate anything at any quality.

The bigger problem with running on a PC is UI. No longer will it work well with a simple remote that only needs 10 buttons.

It's definitely less ergonomic but I successfully trained my extremely non-technical wife to use a VNC client on her phone to control the media center PC so she can watch streaming/youtube with an adblocking browser.

If you go to the trouble of setting up a media server and Kodi/Plex on the TV, and install a barebones launcher that avoids all the ads on the official launcher, the remote still works well. I don't know whether to blame Sony or Google but every system update brought bigger and bigger ads to the point that I took an afternoon off to sideload an extremely plain ad-free launcher.

I had a media center PC that was usable with a remote control in 2008.

Choke full of XVID cams, I bet

> when it turned out they were monitoring your watching habit

I think every single smart tv manufacturer does this today.

At least I know LG, Samsung, Sony, Amazon, Philips, Sharp and Vizio does.

Since your smart TV is on your same domestic IP, there's a market for getting data on your watching habits to combine with your browser habits collected elsewhere.

The advertisers know more about you by now than you do.

That's why AppleTV is the best option for the moment.

AppleTV is full of ads in its app store, is there any streaming device where it doesn't track you and doesn't put ads over your search intent?

Sure, one you install your own OS on.

Comparing full screen ads on systems like smart TVs with the ads you get on Apple TV seems like a long shot.

The time you spend installing apps is minuscule compared to using them. And after that it is Netflix or google tracking you. Not Apple.

Bonus points: users are reporting that the ads it starts playing include political nonsense.

"I left the tv idle while I went to the other room to play with my dog. After about a half an hour, I started hearing Kristi Noem praising Trump and telling immigrants to get out of America, over and over.

I went in to check, and caught this video looping 3 more times before it went back to the nature clips."

https://old.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/1jkwcbx/if...

There's a reason their TVs are basically free.

I will leave them to those interested in trading their attention in lieu of money.

It’s funny because I always remember the one time Vizio tried to become the Apple of PCs

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4123166

(the actual Verge link needs to have mobile. removed or changed to www.)

We need a FairTV, like Fairphone etc.

Many Android TVs do this, including Hisense, and they try to mask it with dishonest verbiage about what the feature is doing. It's definitely not just a VIZIO thing.

The android ones are just pictures with no ads

I was unclear. I meant monitoring what you watch. Basically all of them do it. Samsung, LG, Sony, etc [1].

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/home-entertainment/how...

All TVs at home are blocked by MAC on the wifi router, so there's definitely a way to turn off this bullshit.

Out of curiosity, do you simply not use streaming services, or do you get them on the TV some other way?

I plug a mini PC into my TVs and use them that way. Works out better because the TV apps run way slower than even the cheapest mini PCs.

TV here - have 4 of them now, one for each TV, one for the portable projector, and one for music in the workshop.

Fabulous boxes - I’m still running a 4 generation old one and they just work.

Apple TV.

Why is it on the network at all if it’s blocked?

Streaming content on the LAN.

They’re not but they were in the past so who knows if they kept the password.

Probably better to put in a separate restricted vlan. Who knows, maybe one day some piece of firmware code will kick in to start rotating MACs to lie who the device is to get a connection.

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