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Comment by ornornor | Hacker News Reader

Samsung does that too and use it to sell you stuff, show you ads, and retarget you across devices! (Not saying it’s a good thing, but rather pointing out how common this is)

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I'm really sick of the enshittification of smart TV's.

A while after I've had my LG TV, and found every arcane different menu you need to remove all the ads. They started sending me ads via the notification pop-up.

This continued even after finding and removing the consent for advertising (that I'd missed in one of the consent pop-ups.)

I've considered and looked into "dumb" TVs, but I don't think they're for me. I just want one that's not enshittified!

I just don't bother with television full stop.

I can't say I have either since they tried to change the format to cinema from electronic theatre.

This is not "enshittification". That implies it's gotten worse over time. Smart TVs have been doing this from the beginning.

Smart TVs are the enshittification of regular TVs. An attempt to extract more money from the customer without providing a useful benefit.

I disagree. It's definitely gotten worse, notification ads for my TV for example.

LG also didn't used to have home screen ads, but that's a long time ago now.

FWIW I’m pretty happy with my Panasonic OLED (2019 model), it has totally optional smart features (ie it has a Netflix app), works well offline, and turns on instantly.

Why not disconnect your smart TV from the internet and use [insert favorite streaming box]?

I use Apple TVs on all my smart TVs and none of them have ever been connected to the internet. No ads with consistent interface across TV brands.

the only good smart tv is one with no network connection. As long as the manufacturer has any control of the compute on your device they will always be pressured to abuse it to grow revenue. You need to budget 200 to 600 additional dollars for a linux box and use that

That's still not good. I recently switched from a Sceptre dumb TV to a top of the line LG OLED model, and it is sooooo slow. Everything takes forever because it's got to wait for the network connection which doesn't exist, play all its stupid animations, run the "AI" bullshit, and attempt an internet connection again.

Then you did it wrong. The tv should be turned on and set to display one port, say hdmi1 then never touched again until its time to shut it off. Volume should be handled through hdmi-cec from the tvs perspective it should get an on or off signal and maybe some volume signals and it should display hdmi and that is the entorety of its existence.

I guess that's fine if you only have one device connected to your TV, and it supports CEC.

That is not my use case though.

then put something like the OREI 8k HDMI 5 in 1 switch in front. Costs less than 60 dollars, you can control it with whatever universal remote you want or the remote it comes with. If I needed that I would just map it on my flirc skip remote and continue operating my whole setup from that one remote very easily with the tv only ever getting on/off and maybe volume signals. The nice thing about this solution is it lets you run everything at hdmi 2.1, which is often impossible on even newer tvs because only one or two of the ports are hdmi 2.1 on many tvs.

So your answer to "TVs suck these days" is "lol just buy more crap."

You are exactly why TVs continue to suck.

No, my response is protect yourself from the reality of the market via mitigation because you and i cant affect change because the incentive is to get worse for the corporation and minimum efficient scale is too high to have enough competitors to change the benefit math

Is it really enshittification if it was shit from the beginning?

I disagree. I much preferred it when they didn't pretend that TV should be the same as cinema. Even the mistakes are entertaining whereas on modern TV, they tend to stand out.

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