The solution for smart TVs is to not connect it to the Internet and attach an Apple TV. Sure they’ve gotten expensive, but how much is your privacy worth?
Once awareness of this side-loaded crapware gets out, I'd expect the community to come up with fixes to ensure it doesn't get loaded. In the meantime, this should blow up in the faces of MS, LG, etc. just like things blew up for Sony when they put root-kits on CD's.
Unless you are trying to pass through lossless audio the AppleTV 4k is one of the best streamers you can buy right now
Chromecasts seem to at least have reduced ads, but I'd do almost anything to be able to stream youtube (or ideally any webpage) to an arbitrary screen with functional adblocking.
Personally I don’t watch enough YouTube to bother with that. I pretty much just close the app if they force me to watch more than 5s of an ad.
Most of my watching is plex and appleTV. The appleTV device has a better privacy policy than most and zero ads on the launcher
Literally just now it went jamming some Ford 150 ad on me, auto repeating. On the f’ing Home Screen!!
I don’t know what I’ll replace it with, but it sure AF won’t be some corporate owned ad riddled POS like this.
Doesn't solve the malware on Windows PCs installed by LG monitors problem. My only solution to that remains to not buy Lucky Goldstar ever since their 14" 640x480 VGA monitor died inside of warranty but they refused to fix it.
But I have a thousand times more confidence that MS will keep the signed, auto-distributed periodic xbox series x operating system updates 'secure' than I do that some random smart tv manufacturer will implement a proper operating system.