I'd not buy a LG monitor | Hacker News Reader

I'd not buy a LG monitor

beko.famkos.net

217 pointsspeckx108 comments

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Hint for Microsoft:

- Display drivers don't need access to the network

- Display drivers don't need to write to the window manager

- Display drivers just need to display the data that needs displayed

- If you sign a driver, you take responsibility for it. Else just leave people run any driver they see fit

This is the MVP comment.

When you have a carpenter visiting you don't announce they can go into your kids' rooms (for reasons unrelated to the job is) and what not -- the [default] contract is they're there to do a job and their privileges go only as far as the job requires, they normally also ask you first time where your toilet is, although we all agree they can use it. It's a contract, formally and less so, and things work when the contract is abided by. The carpenter also can't say they had the right to the cookie jar on your kitchen counter just because they were working there.

By not implementing such a contract with code, Microsoft has shown negligence. And they have had _decades_, so it's likely a "business decision".

Given all the spyware MS has built into Windows itself, this is not negligence it’s what they want.

I doubt that giving up valuable advertising space and customer data to driver vendors instead of selling it themselves is what they want.

Whilst it's preaching to the choir, I would attribute 50% of the blame to Microsoft. Loading any old thing and running it is not very responsible.

I'd argue closer 75%. Vendor abuse of this is hardly restricted to monitors, even if this is one of the more egregious cases.

Microsoft started this really. In Windows 95, they built a filing system so that applications went in specific folders in the Start menu. MS Office installed all its icons in the root of the Start menu, because self-importance. Can't expect everyone else to respect the conventions after that.

It’s as if nothing was learned from AutoRun CDs and the like.

On the contrary, they learned to make malware authors pay them first before getting access.

Microsoft doesn't police IHVs -> Geeks: "MS is negligent!"

Microsoft does police IHVs -> Geeks: "MS is an evil monopolist!"

Poor Microsoft, what have they possibly done to deserve such lack of faith??

Well yeah, when you spend a significant segment of your corporate life being both negligent and an evil monopolist, people tend to assume the worst. Don't like it? Behave better.

No, it doesn't work that way. You can't blame someone for acting badly no matter what they do - the person who does that is the one acting badly.

It's called a reputation.

There are more than the two bad choices for behavior here.

It's not "no matter what they do" it's really that everything they do is wrong and there really are much better alternatives than the choices they continue to make.

Or they could bundle a basic driver or police the driver they're curating while allowing people to download and install drivers directly from the vendor website with no policing, no signature checks, etc.

Distributing malware is negligent or malicious, yes. Not stopping users from seeking out their own malware is neither. Nothing stops you from running malware on Linux. The curated repos are simply good enough that there's not much reason to go looking elsewhere.

That is really what everyone else does. When you get the auto downloaded Nvidia driver you get only the bare basics and it's not bugging you to install the GeForce experience stuff like they do if you download it from their website.

Well… they’re putting their signature on the stuff and blocking everything lacking it…

You forgot the 3rd current option: Microsoft does police HIV, but does it poorly -> "MS is a negligent evil monopolist"

Yeah nobody who's sane is calling them negligent for being able to run random .exes

No, policing viruses is McAfee's job. :-)

There's also the option of "MS asks you if you want to run stuff your monitor wants to run". It's not that hard.

The fault here is definitely LG's, though.

  [x] Yes
  [ ] Remind me later

You mean [Agree] ₘₒᵣₑ ₒₚₜᵢₒₙₛ

Where more options plus a couple more clicks eventually leads you to the remind me later equivalent.

Strawman

50% is a bit much. People do expect their hardware to just work. That means installing drivers and the like. And the act here is so egregious that I can't imagine being an LG engineer and living with the shame of being so incredibly despicable.

I'm disappointed with Microsoft, I'm incensed at LG.

I don't know that Microsoft is without significant blame here. They provided a mechanism for LG to do this without the necessary checks. They could just as easily make part of the WHQL process and related agreements state pretty clearly that such behaviour is forbidden and will result in anything from financial penalties to driver decertification.

If anything, as shitty as LG's behaviour is, Microsoft gave them the tools to eke out a little more money at the expense of the consumer, and a company like LG is not likely to leave that money on the table out of the goodness of their hearts. As the scorpion told the frog - "It's my character".

What part of "software needed to control a peripheral" could POSSIBLY be defined as: "software that shows you ads, and/or uploads private data to vendor without even asking for consent"?

Be glad they are not mining for crypto on baked in chips with the power they draw freely.. and have some logic to circumvent power drawing measurements.

Easy fix: freeze their developer signing accounts like they did with VeraCrypt and WireGuard, demand that they remove spyware to regain access to sign their future updates.

Why do monitors need drivers to work?

> People do expect their hardware to just work. That means installing drivers and the like.

A display, of all things, shouldn't require installing anything to make it "just work." It just needs speak standardized protocols over standardized cables. That should require no more than generic drivers shipped with the operating system.

No, this is LG making a choice to abuse an OS feature in order to shove ads down people's throats and spy on them.

What a dirty, scummy move. Never buying an LG product again.

(Also a Linux user, so this doesn't affect me, but this is gross.)

I have an LG TV that I've never allowed to connect to a network, and I'm definitely keeping it that way.

> No, this is LG making a choice to abuse an OS feature in order to shove ads down people's throats and spy on them.

Meh, give a company something they can feasibly abuse for money, and they'll probably do that. I'm not sure that this is practically feasible on Mac or Linux; Macs enable fairly constrained but powerful userspace drivers that generally need approval, and I've never seen a piece of hardware automatically download anything that can run in the background, but that could be an anecdotal experience. Maybe printers would be the exception.

The tradeoff is that even software like Zoom doesn't completely work by default

>I have an LG TV that I've never allowed to connect to a network, and I'm definitely keeping it that way.

I'm starting to think that is what I need to do with my computers.

It's what you need to do to all devices whose software doesn't respect your freedoms. Whether or not your computer is part of those is a choice.

The difference is you can remove the LG adware without any serious downsides. Removing auto-installing drivers would have serious downsides for the average person (meaning not cyberspace experts on forums such as this).

Surely Microsoft have the expertise and resources to make a platform of driver signing that separate addon software and basic driver needs? Why should a USB headset plugged in be allowed to auto install audio software, recording software, antivirus software and adware, and not even from the device itself but fetch it from Windows Update platform) without the users consent? Surely it would just install the needed audio driver to pass sound as signed by Microsoft, with an option for the rest?

The proposed solution to this huge issue in windows isn't to let average users fend for themselves, no one is arguing that.

That's a good middle position, but it's still not without drawbacks. The PC ecosystem has always been about Microsoft providing the OS, and a bevy of name brand vendors providing the hardware. Put Microsoft in an adversarial relationship with the hardware vendors, and the whole uneasy alliance falls apart.

Luckily, Microsoft doesn't have to do anything, and the free market is already solving this. Most people will buy hardware with annoying ads exactly once, then they'll find another alternative. This natural self-correction makes the tradeoffs above even more serious by comparison.

Over/under on the use of coinstallers as a mechanism with a "special" USB stick with a certain VID/PID pair to download a Microsoft-sanctioned "break into this machine" driver?

... to maybe go with that Yellowkey Bitlocker bypass?

Tinfoil hats, I know.

It's getting really hard to find a solid, reputable brand of screen manufacturers that don't pull this kind of crap. I swore off Samsung screens after their popup ads in phones and TVs. LG was my next choice but this is deterring me even further.

What about BenQ?

I am very happy with my BenQ monitors, they are great value and high quality.

BenQ is great. Been using a DesignVue for years. It is boring and just works. Doesn’t require any specialized drivers either.

What about DELL? The Dell UltraSharp lineup seems to be pretty solid. I am planning to get one once my LG Monitor dies.

I really appreciate that the Dell monitors don't have the stupid proprietary charging bricks. And fairly decent features.

I thought monitors lost those over 15 years ago, but a few years ago I got a Samsung gaming monitor that happened to come with a brick. Ugh.

Are they really proprietary or just not what you want? Most of these bricks just output a fixed voltage in a barrel jack.

Have to say, I've never been disappointed by a Dell monitor.

Honestly I was more thinking about TVs than monitors but I often forget Dell makes good monitors.

I work at an e-waste recycling company. We get Dell monitors all the time. Their basic office monitors seem fine (~24" 1080p), but all our clients are too cheap to go for the more expensive models.

That's because Dell monitors are extremely popular with businesses.

Dell ultrawide is the way to go!

Dell does the exact same thinghttps://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000325948/alienware...

I'm a happy dell monitor user as well

At what points do ads just stop being effective? We're so saturated with them in every part of our life that I wonder when we just stop noticing the contents

It depends on the type of ad and way they're being delivered. Advertisers do in fact highly value events like the Superbowl, Tour de France, Olympics and FIFA World Cup. Instagram influencers and podcast bros still focus a lot of time and energy on shilling products and supplements in an "honest" way to their uncritical audiences.

Meanwhile, junk food, tobacco, alcohol and gambling corporations are always willing to fight tooth and nail to block attempts at advertising restriction and bans. Advertising in the long haul will always work, especially if it manages to stand out in noisy but bland environments.

As for the ones that we deem to be the most useless ads, perhaps they still serve an Overton Window purpose in maintaining a level of chaos and confusion along with keeping a marketing manager occupied with busywork (or ad fraud) until they have a real campaign to impress their boss with.

The fact that I still semi-regularly encounter "tech literate" people who refuse or are slow to learn to use uBlock Origin (or similar) says a lot about how accepting many people actually are when it comes to noise.

Discussions:

LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956688

Update: Microsoft responds to LG monitors installing McAfee ads on Windows

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/07/microsoft-responds-t... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49028024)

I decided I would never buy an LG monitor after mine broke and I had it shipped back three times for diag and repair. Each time it broke again soon after. They finally agreed to RMA it, but that didn’t mean a new replacement, it meant a refund, and not even for the whole price I had paid. Unfortunately the price had gone up a few hundred dollars since then, so I couldn’t even buy a replacement. This basically means they sold me a junk monitor I had to deal with for a year and then tried to get me to give them an extra $300 to roll the dice that the next one would work properly. I bought a BENQ instead, and it’s been solid.

That sucks. I've used an LG UltraFine 5K with my Mac Studio for years and still consider it one of my favorite tech purchases ever, so I feel lucky I've never needed their support services.

Yep. Their hardware can be good. Their software sucks. Their customer service is even worse.

> I decided I would never buy an LG monitor after mine broke ...

Sheesh it's bad luck.

I've got an ultra-wide 38" LG monitor since 2017. Nearly 10 years and that thing is used daily and still running strong.

10 years is a long time to enshittify.

However an anecdote of one doesn't say much about the current quality either, even if the support experience after problems turned up was particularly shitty.

They for a few years had 4K panels that would “blow out” in the corners over time, worse they where a panel supplier to other vendors (including Dell), of the three 4K lg monitors I had two had it happen but the last one I bought didn’t and they apparently fixed the issue at some point.

It was super annoying because their support was useless.

It put me off LG but as they do make panels for others they are hard to avoid.

I would simply disable windows update. It always seemed insane to me that the solution to preventing RCE was to open an RCE channel to basically every provider that has installed a driver or an application on your machine.

Each auto-update is by definition remote code execution.

Just stay on Windows 10 and it will be disabled for you!

You can always https://0patch.com!

Oh wow. Are they just repackaging official Windows patches or are they patching vulnerabilities themselves?

I've disabled Windows updates since 2017. Occasionally, I'll hit a feature I have to update for, like Windows Mixed Reality, and then pull that specific feature update. I think back in 2021 I had to update to the 2019 version of Windows 10 for that. I used uupdump to download what I needed and install it offline.

All the fiascos lately about Microsoft completely bricking and destroying systems with terrible updates just reinforce my original decision.

Note that I'm not at all hostile to updates in general. I'll update my Mac as soon as one's available, even to unstable betas, because it automatically reopens my apps and doesn't lose a bunch of state like Windows does. I'll also update my iPhone and iPad. It's really just Microsoft that I don't trust and never have.

When I got a new PC desktop, I decided to give Windows 11 a chance, and it's not bad. I hated for a while that the UI feels like just a ripoff of ChromeOS, but eventually I got used to it. I only update the minimum amount necessary when anti-cheats decide my old files are no longer trusted (looking at you, ARC Raiders).

If only disabling windows update were simple nowadays. This isn't the sort of thing that should require people to have to mess around in the registry just to not get spied on

So: Dell, BenQ, Asus (ProArt/ROG)?

* https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-monitors/

Choosing wisely doesn't prevent any given manufacturer from adding crap like this in the future. They might not push out adware today, but nothing seems to stop them from doing so in the future.

That's what makes the LG controversy uncomfortable to me: the McAfee ads were pushed out years after some owners purchased their monitors.

Which is something that should just be jail-time-for-decision-makers illegal. That tech companies think they retain some kind of ownership over things they have sold needs to end.

I was about to comment in wonder that people deliberately download and install hardware-related craplets deliberately, which is something my parents would do. (Creative Labs used to be very bad about this.) Then I realized there's now a (MS-approved!) mechanism by which devices can just ask Windows "Hey, mind installing this silently for me?".

Ghastly.

I have an LG monitor... and while running Linux, will definitely not be buying another... this is ridiculous. I've been weary of "smart" TVs for a long while, WTF do you need a microphone on a TV?!?

If I buy a TV and it doesn't work without connecting to the internet, I'm simply going to return it. Changing this after the fact should mean a class action lawsuit. It's ridiculous, and MS should absolutely restrict this kind of crap... They (Microsoft) auto-load the software for Logitec mice and cameras as well, but at least they (Logitech) aren't injecting ad/spyware.

Keen to hear other recommendations. My DELL screen is working quite nicely but has weird burn in problems when connected through a Thunderbolt dock. What other brands (apart from the insanely priced Apple screens) still make high quality, reputable screens?

I have had good success with my dell montiors over the years. Only problem is they are not created equal, they sell to every level, entry/cheap office/gamers/high end docks/color calibrated/etc. I have stuck to the ultrasharps (and paid for it) but have been happy. Check out https://www.rtings.com/

Is there any hdmi dongle that can be used to mitigate this?

Would it be as simple as spoofing the EDID manufacturer/product to something generic? I naively assume DCC/CI would all still work?

I’d certainly expect so.

There are cheap dongles that spoof the EDID for a fixed 4K or HD monitor with fixed settings. Not sure what they do about DCC/CI, might just disconnect it.

Linux mitigates this ;)

There's this:

https://goldilocklabs.com/products/silentglass

And this:

https://git.cuvoodoo.info/kingkevin/board/src/branch/hdmi_fi...

But I'm not sure they would block it, and the latter is not plug-and-play.

I expect it wouldn't be especially hard to make one though.

The issue here isn't unwanted communication between the monitor and PC but rather the PC doing unwanted things in response to a specific model/brand of monitor. To work around this you would have to change what model the PC thinks the monitor is.

I never liked LG, but I had to buy from them. They're the only ones that make (made) monitors in this format. 2560x2880 (16:18)

LG 28MQ780

https://image.coolblue.nl/624x351/content/8841411d2a3b31f142...

Huh, why not just rotate a normal 16:9 monitor? Not quite the same but do you really need exactly that aspect?

Most 16:9 can't be rotated and even if they can, horizontal resolution would be low.

Good for coding, good for reading documentation, good for writing, good for browsing. It's only bad for gaming and traditional widescreen videos, unless multitasking at something else below the video.

I would totally prefer to buy something without spyware. But so far I have not found a good alternative to my 42" C-series OLED. You do have to carefully configure it to not phone home, but besides that (and some minor problems with peak brightness), it's great. If there was a non-spyware replacement, I'd buy it.

Best thing I've done - monitor wise - is buy a 2019 iMac 5k and convert it to work as an external display. Such a beautiful display. Only downside is once you go 5k it's very hard to go back to any lower resolution. I ended up converting a (much cheaper) 2015 iMac 5k for use in the office.

how did you convert them? Was it a software or hardware thing?

I think there's a software route you can go, but I went the hardware route. Essentially requires opening up the iMac, gutting out all the internals, and replacing it with a display driver board (from AliExpress, eBay, etc).

The display driver board has various inputs like HDMI, Thunderbolt, USB-C etc so it ends up acting like any other external monitor. It has a remote you control the brightness/contrast etc settings.

I've got my Mac and PS5 hooked up to it. Love it!

LG monitor works perfectly fine on my mac studio. Feels like Microsoft should be doing business differently.

Same day after I saw this story, I noticed a new unfamiliar system tray icon, and it was the installer for this thing! It hadn't installed yet, and I was able to remove it, but I guess I have to replace one of our house monitors now.

I'm in the same boat. Given many of the other brands do this as well, what options do we have for monitors and TVs?

In fact, what I really want is just a display. They can keep their “smart” stuff; I'm not interested.

Wasn't it LG that got caught uploading viewing behaviour/stats to a unsecured FTP server from their TVs?

They are one of the cheapest somewhat ok brand for a reason I guess..

Why analog monitors is better. Harder to install spyware. So called by the industry "Smart devices" are dumb for privacy reasons.

Misplaced rant. The monitor isn't installing anything, the PC is based on the monitors EDID - and analogue ones also have an EDID.

I have the same dual 32" LG setup at home and the dayjob, and have never had any issues or any requirements to install anything for them to work. That said, they're QHD, not 4k or 5k, and probably 6 years old. I'm not a gamer or a high-fidelity consumer, needing the displays to be dumb and reliable at rendering text and the web.

This is at the driver level, just like when you plugin new webcam, keyboard, gpu, etc. Windows will automatically install a default driver for that device. Now, instead of a driver, Windows will happily install some random craps that the hardware asks it to without needing any input from the users. Totally BS from Microsoft.

I’d not use Windows

This comes down to shitty vendors.

LG monitors are not behaving idiotically on Linux. Just saying.

> In what timeline is this acceptable behaviour by a fucking monitor to tell it’s manufacturer what [naughty] video you’re currently watching?

But LG already did that 10 years ago. If you didn't care then, why do you care now?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6778397

This is such a bad faith argument.

"Smart" = "Ads"

Smart = surveillant

Remember "smart" has a double meaning. It also refers to pain as in "smarting".

Aah yes Temufication.

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