Buy any tv with CEC support (almost all of them) and never connect it to the internet. Never. Never start any app on the tv. Hook a Kodi box to the hdmi port and use that, and only that.
For the Kodi box get series-7 Intel NUC with Kabylake-era processors, gen 7. They don't run Windows 11, so come very cheap second hand, but decode h264 and hevc in hardware and drive a 4K screen like charm. You can install a modern Wifi card in the NUC and a PCIe SSD.
- Buy an LG OLED TV. They're as gorgeous as they are notorious. I just got a 77" LG C6 and it is crazy good.
- Root it [0].
- Install Glasshouse [1] and disable all telemetry. YOU now own the glass. Now you can chromecast to the TV, use Adfree YouTube, access IP TV, etc etc etc. No point crippling your TV by pulling the wireless module and voiding your warranty.
- Install a bunch of cool apps to your TV [2] (there are many more out there besides those listed here)
- Restore to Factory Defaults if you ever want / need to unroot and get back to stock e.g. a warranty claim
The only issue is that LG recently closed the vulnerability that made rooting possible so you don't want any firmware released after 2026-10-10 like 43.21.84. Hopefully a new exploit is found that makes rooting possible once again.
BTW, you might have heard of Dev Mode on these TVs but they don't allow anywhere near the functionality that rooting provides.
make sure it’s a model where the latest firmware is rootable and never connect it to your WiFi until you have root
Everything you need to do to get root can be done with an Ethernet connected directly to the TV and your laptop. There may be modifications needed to the root toolkits but with good prompting, agentic Llm can figure it out.
If you bought one without root… you may have a chance never connecting it.
If it’s one on your WiFi that doesn’t have a root exploit the only safe thing to do is change your WiFi password.
I wonder if it’s possible to hack my LG remote to use local voice models like Parakeet hosted within the LAN…? To trigger home assistant light settings, adjust blinds, switch on and off AV devices etc
If I understand well the rooting process basically asks me to tell a website my ip and exploitable tv version... Is that not basically inviting them to make me part of a botnet?
Does this guide eliminate google play services? If not, then you still don't really control it. For reference, on my Pixel 6 Pro, GrapheneOS gets 2x the advertised battery life until you add Google Play Services back into a sandbox. At that point, it gets advertised battery life.
I assume the TVs Google backdoors are even worse (video scraping, etc, etc) since they are not power constrained.
If you'd never heard of WebOS (which sounds a bit like "eggs" in spanish), the story of how it was developed by Palm, then killed by HP and re-released as a TV OS after being acquired by LG is fascinating. It could do real multitasking on a tablet in 2010, years before either iPads or Android tablets could.
The root is transient, and Samsung TVs also have Knox security which I presume you really don’t want to trip. Some parts of the file system are protected by SMACK which even root can’t access.
I’m working on reverse engineering the applications that run in that SMACK context to see if there’s any way to gain access.
buying expensive equipment to deliberately take advantage of a now-exploit is such a bad idea, and it's bit me more than once in the past few decades.
and ethically, what's the point in giving hostile corporate groups any money ? I get that you're breaking out of their mega subsidized and profit-locked walled garden, but 'sold units' is still a metric they'll use to positively enforce their strategies going forward, and as with all goods the vulnerabilities will get more and more exotic until totally pushed out of public availability much like the newest console gens.
The manufacturer will price in the value of ads and the such. So if you never connect it to WiFi, you get a good deal on the hardware. The same is true if you buy a tv and connect it to a traditional antenna (all tv’s in America are required by law to support this). You can always take it back if the firmware is not the right version to root.
Vote with your wallet though. If the price is not an issue (like the OP seems to be saying "I don’t mind paying a premium"), then there's no point in encouraging these kind of practices, even if they're pretty common for these kind of device.
Unfortunately though I think you are right and the best thing to do is just get one that has the specs you want never connect it to the internet and just get a companion device for the connected stuff like a Shield Pro (aging device but I did not catch up to what was the cool new things for those)
> sold units' is still a metric they'll use to positively enforce their strategies
Exactly, if we want change the sales numbers have to go down. That means don't by LG, Samsung and who have you, it also means telling friends and family to go buy something else... but what?
It could be a loss leader where they make all their money with ads and spyware. I don't know if that's the case, but if it is, they'd lose money from the purchase and never make it back.
"Use some set top box and don't connect tv to internet" is a common advice, but what about ethernet through hdmi? Will the TV really not reach the internet through the box you use? If not, then what is the purpose of Hdmi HEC?
Recently I've had to deal with this same problem - get a new TV for living room. Personally, I do not watch TV at all, but kids want to see cartoons when having their breakfast. I spent a week reading forums and came to conclusion that best solution would be to buy a "dumb TV" and connect it to a PC I trust, but it appears there are no dump TVs in my rage of 55" and larger. So, I bought "Google TV" based TCL.
When I brought it home, I never connected it to Ethernet or WiFi. Instead, I connected it to my laptop over USB, then using adb I uninstalled almost every application from it. It took me quite some time to figure out what app is possible to remove and what should be kept to let TV functionality to work. I even had to factory-default it a couple of times because some random apps I removed were crucial for Android to work. :) I think it took me 5-6 hours to clean it. Now it has only basic TV functionality like any dump TV does, I can watch air and cable TV channels, watch movies and play music from USB storage. If there's a need to watch something online, I connect it over HDMI to my small mini-PC that runs FreeBSD. I think I'm satisfied with the result. :-)
PS: Yesterday I opened the case and disconnected WiFi antenna. Just in case.
This is not even a viable option these days: secondary processors, the potential for a backchannel to some installed app on a device in the home (this has not made headlines, but it’s possible), tying an account to the device proactively.. The TV industry really ran to collect “their” data
> PS: Yesterday I opened the case and disconnected WiFi antenna. Just in case.
While this couldn't hurt, it also won't stop the TV from being able to connect to wifi. I ran my desktop without an antenna attached for months. The speed noticeably improved when I attached an antenna but it was fine for browsing the web and downloading software updates without one.
If you know what you are doing and have explicitly disconnected/cut all antennas including entire MIMO arrays (many people miss one or more antennas) in the motherboard then the only remaining explanation is "accidental antennas".
This is only possible if the WiFi-chip has dangling metal pins/traces/joints whose length is comparable to that of its wavelength, in which case these will act as makeshift antennas. These will pickup ambient WiFi RF, but for this to work at all you need lots of RF power i.e. a very strong signal strength which means you have to be very close to the WiFi router.
The whole thing works because of Physics and not Engineering (the "accidental" part) and hence very iffy (may not work at all) and should not be relied upon.
You don't need an antenna. You can think of an antenna as simply being a signal booster.
That being said, without an antenna it is highly improbable that it could still find an open WiFi AP to connect to (especially if you don't have one in your house).
I would imagine the antenna just strengthens the incoming signal.
You could still get reception/communication if the gateway/router/modem was near enough and not a lot of electrical shit attached (I would imagine that would generate more noise that could interfere)?
As an example - if you have a motherboard on your computer that supports wifi and comes with a port/plug for an antenna, you could remove that antenna and still receive a signal (IDK about sending) but it would suffer more signal loss due to the lack of antenna.
All that is just a guess of course. People more knowledgeable than me could explain/clarify.
I am not the person you asked the question of, but here is the answer;
Smart TVs have a built-in "WiFi-Chip" on the motherboard and its antenna hidden in the TV frame itself, exactly like the antennas in a Smartphone. The different radios on a Smart TV viz. OTA, WiFi, Bluetooth, Satellite, Zigbee etc. all operate at different frequency ranges and hence need their own antennas. Many of these antennas are either a) etched on the motherboard b) hidden within the plastic back frame or c) directly taped to it.
Axiom of RF Wireless - There can be no transmission/reception without an antenna either external or internal.
PS: Since RF Wireless is everywhere today and most people do not have much of an idea of this technology, i very highly recommend the book The Essential Guide to RF and Wireless by Carl Weisman for study. Expressly written for a non-technical audience, it explains everything simply and beautifully. It really gave me the invaluable overview and the grounding i needed to understand this important science/technology.
The last TV I bought was a Kogan, and at first power up, or after a factory reset, it let you select where you wanted it to be a dumb screen with inputs only, or run the Google TV OS.
This is somewhat an option. I have this TV too and when you set it up, you can choose to have it be a dumb tv, and even avoid Google TV if you want. In the US.
Our TCL has this option, but there are multiple buttons on the remote that open youtube or ask zuck to club baby seal to death or whatever, and if you press those (i.e., sit on the remote), it goes into a labyrinth of google bullshit that complains about how you are missing important notifications and need to debug your wifi.
F--- Google, but at least the kids know those menus are bullshit, and do not have the wifi password at any rate.
Also, we're probably already to the point where I could just put it on a firewalled network, and have a [chinese open weight] LLM pop the factory android, get root, and reprogram the remote buttons to no-ops.
Or, I could open the remote up, physically cut out the spam buttons, then 3d print an alternative top-half of the shell without holes for them.
At least on our TCL (which has an array of thousands of back lights) some of the unhance options actually need to be turned on.
We bought it because it has crazy high brightness (it is in a bright room with direct sunlight hitting the panel while we are watching it), and while it can beat back the sun, it cannot do so by just turning all the zones on 100% because it would melt or something.
So, if all the image slopping were turned off, the contrast ratio would drop 100x, and the TV wouldn't really be fit for purpose.
(For when the sun is not actively trying to kill the panel, I have a de-slop shortcut setup. That also has the backlight enhance stuff turned on -- as low as possible -- to get true black on the LCD. It works OK. OLED is not quite there yet for this corner case.)
This kind of trade-off is often a dark pattern used when forced to offer a feature by regulators or by competitors offering it. The evil trick is complying with the regs or being able to advertise the feature but making it so unattractive users won't activate it, enabling the manufacturer to still earn that sweet $35-$60 / yr from advertising, app install payments, rev share and selling your viewing data.
> the image enhancements.
Having spent a couple decades working in and around digital video production tooling and engineering, as well as being a filmmaker and home theater enthusiast, it's worth mentioning that today almost all television image enhancement features are net negative, even if they make the image subjectively 'pop' or motion appear smoother on typical scenes, they'll introduce artifacts or trade-offs in other kinds of scenes.
In my experience doing a lot of testing over the years with objective signal analysis tools at work as well as subjectively across 7 generations of upgrades in my own home theater, the trade-offs aren't worth it. There are a few context and content specific exceptions but they're quite rare and usually involve slightly improving significantly degraded signals which no longer exist in most home theaters (eg noise reduction in analog sources like laserdisc, DCT macro-block smoothing in highly compressed old MPEG 1/2 sources or dynamic range expansion on legacy SD sources).
With today's 4K and HD digital sources encoded at high bit rates in modern codecs, the director, colorist and mastering engineer can finally deliver their precise intent all the way to your eyeballs. The ~$20 chip calculating synthetic frames and pixels in your TV introduces surface curb appeal at the cost of artifacts and a poorly integrated image. If it actually made the image look better, the director and colorist have more and better tools than that $20 chip that they're already applying to the source. You're just turning a $20 chip loose on 'full auto' to guess at (and often undo or muddy) intentional enhancements manually applied frame by frame over days by experts.
Do whatever you like but I encourage you to critically audition each of those enhancements across a range of source types (4K, HD, HDR, HDR10, SDR, 24, 30, and 60 frame) and diverse scenes (low-light, quick panning, smooth dollies, and synthetic test signals, etc). Once you compare the before/after across that breadth back-to-back you'll see what I mean. I run my calibrated, high-end 3-laser projector (150" screen) as close to neutral, native settings as I can get and it looks sensational. And to be clear I'm not being a purist, if 'enhancements' really improved some scenes meaningfully without degrading other scenes, I'd be "Fuck the director's intent, it's just better." But for every scene an enhancement improves, I can queue up a scene from another film it makes noticeably worse. Fortunately, on most high-end Sony TVs you can get an un-hyped, accurate image in the standard UX without going to the calibrator or factory menus.
> Having spent a couple decades working in and around digital video production tooling and engineering, as well as being a filmmaker and home theater enthusiast, it's worth mentioning that today almost all television image enhancement features are net negative
Yep, generally you don't want anything the TV manufacturer markets as "enhancements." They basically all add things to the signal that were not part of the director's or video editor's vision. Any cinephile will remind you that there is one correct setting for "brightness," "contrast," "color," and "tint". "Sharpness" should almost always be zero, and any other setting that claims to "enhance" the picture should be turned off for correct output.
The worst ones now are the "motion smoothing" modes that take your normal FPS movie and try to interpolate them up to 60FPS, 120FPS or even 240FPS, giving them that cheap, crappy "soap opera" effect. Turn it off as soon as you turn on your TV for the first time.
While this is generally true, there are some notorious cases where the director's intent was terrible, and the image definitely needs more contrast and brightness to see what's going on.
>motion smoothing works nice on my 30fps video games.
Of course a modern console only managing 30fps is the actual 'bug' :-). But I agree that's one of the narrow exception cases where an 'enhancement' might be a net benefit. Although if you're going to use synthetic frames, doing it in the console can be better because intra-frame motion hinting might be available and, even if it's not, the console's frame gen is trained on game content where a TV's chip is cross-function and far less capable (both in look-ahead and motion vector count). But I know some consoles don't have frame gen, so in that case it's a win.
1) Would you consider publishing which apps you removed? (A wiki on making smart devices dumb - cars, TVs, refrigerators, tractors ... - would be useful, though I'm not suggesting you make and manage it yourself.)
2) Why bother removing the apps if it has no network connection? Defense in depth is sensible to me, but maybe there's something else I'm missing ...
3) Why not buy a large desktop computer monitor, or are those no longer 'dumb' either?
1) All the google data gathering crap, and all the "give permission to garbage preload to turn on the microphone" bullshit (and look for a physical mic switch; ours has that. Also, turn off notifications, because, do you want notifications telling you the wifi does not work? If you have an android phone, do this on your phone first.
2) Less crap = less backlog of surveillance data if you ever accidentally need to put it online. Also, see (1).
3) You can't get a nice 55"-100" desktop monitor for < $2K.
What do you mean? Obviously consuming too much media, or consuming anything too much of it is not good, but how does that negate concerns about inadvertently inviting for-profit corporations to your breakfast and every intimate conversation at home?
Buy any TV, just don’t connect it to the internet at all, ever.
Plug in an Apple TV or any other streaming device if you want digital content.
If your want terrestrial content ensure the TV has the relevant input connections on the back.
No TV at all, for series and movies get at projector and some sound system, to keep update with the news, read or listen to newspaper in the morning and that is it.
First of all, open the TV and disconnect the wireless radio from the main board, on mine (Samsung) it was just unplugging one cable (AI or Google it). I dislike doing stuff like that, but it was easy in my case, maybe you'll be lucky, too.
Second, never use the "apps" built into the TV.
Next, don't plug Ethernet into the TV. Plug HDMI cables into the TV.
Use a box of your choice on the other end of the HDMI cables. This is now the box that you trust. (Roku? Shield? Blu-ray? MacBook? PC? Linux? Playstation? XBox? Whatever you want.)
The Smart TV itself is now fine. Choose the devices you plug into it to play content. The TV just shows it.
The thing I'd be worried about when doing this is spending $1000+ on a TV, then realizing it has some sort of pre-downloaded ads that it shows on the main screen ("sign up for your free six months of HBO Max!") or otherwise has a nag prompt that appears to tell you to connect to WiFi. I think that would be basically intolerable.
Been a few years since I had to get a new one, but I booted mine up, switched to the HDMI input for my AppleTV, and never looked back. Just boots straight into the AppleTV input when you use the AppleTV remote to wake it up.
We have to use the actual TV remote to debug some audio issues or disable the motion blur stuff again every once in awhile, but otherwise it might as well just be a display for the AppleTV. I’ve only seen the actual home screen of the TV a handful of times.
I guess it’s probably still spying on us somehow, and it seems like different models make using the AppleTV remote and booting right into the AppleTV harder than others, so your mileage may vary.
You have to be careful with this path. Some manufacturers embed LED's into the bezel and blink them at you (part of the IR sensor for the remote, to prevent you from taping over with electrical tape) if they do not have network.
I think the more logical concern would be that it would wait until it could find any potential unsecured wifi to use. I live in an apartment building and there a few wifi access points that I can reach from my apartment with no security. Though one of them appears to be an air conditioner??
Say the TV finds such an access point and uses it. It phones home and so now the manufacturer now knows that such and such serial # TV is located in that neighborhood.
They still need to tie it to you. If you've not given it a shred of personal information, it has to be fingerprinting via surreptitious audio/video recording, or else by obtaining the purchase info from the retailer (like the name and billing address from your credit card) and matching that by serial number (which would have to be recorded during purchase).
I wouldn't be surprised if they did audio fingerprinting. But even if they don't, the third parties who are buying the data can easily re-identify the users by doing data fusion with other sources (smartphone location data from other vendors)
Not that I have any evidence it's happening, but it'd be more likely for TV manufacturers to partner with ISPs that offer public WiFi using the access points they rent to their customers.
The low bandwidth always on kindle modems could also be feasibly built into TVs for telemetry, and may be cheaper than the money they could get from selling the data.
it's not just your wifi you have to worry about. neighbour can have insecure wifi. or deliberately open ones like coffee shops, free municipal hotspots, etc.
The one we have is even worse. It won't really work well outside of things like airplay or chromecast, and those require wifi. It was extremely cheap though.
(It has an HDMI port, but it's clearly a second class citizen in the menus, etc. Default to HDMI on power up is intentionally broken. It's also intentionally designed to turn into a brick if we ever lose the remote. At boot, it puts a screen up saying to press a button on the remote if you want it to display anything else, and that screen never times out. If you plug in an HDMI input, it says "HDMI input detected; press OK.". There's no "OK" button on the projector itself. You have to press the OK button on the remote.)
Not from privacy issues, but all the typical ones from projectors never went anywhere: low brightness, high heat, low maximum operating lifetime, fan noise, and hard to set up (impossible in some places).
I don't think this apply to most UST projector nowadays. I mean, operating lifetime is probably still an issue, fan noise while higher than a TV (which doesn't have it) is not an issue anymore, heat.. well, come close to my (old, ok) OLED LG TV and you can still warm your hands (although not like the previous plasma one I had, that's true).
For the setup I don't know exactly but there are online shops that gives you the 1st setup for free (at the cost of doing the unboxing for you). Also probably nowadays with an LLM almost anybody that care enough to research and buy a projector can do it, I guess.
Yes, I want to buy a projector this Black Friday (Hisense PX3-Pro).
> disconnect the wireless radio from the main board
Can you explain why you can't just not give the TV your Wi-Fi password?
Or are we worried about the case when the TV did have Wi-Fi (due to it being mandatory for some initial setup, say), but we don't trust that "Forget Network" and "Wi-Fi off" are actually honored?
Suppose the device surreptitiously reconnects to Wi-Fi in spite of being told to forget it. You may be able to block it in your router and failing that, change the access point password.
People believing even without proof that TVs connect to open WiFi. This would be trivial to prove if true, yet there is no evidence. In addition, it doesn’t make any sense for any of them to bother. 99% of consumers willingly connect their TV to WiFi because they want to use it with the built-in streaming apps. It wouldn’t make any sense for them to waste time capturing the 1% of users most likely to be evade them anyway just to cause a PR and/or legal fiasco.
Xfinity runs an open WiFi for its customers. If you instead their gateway and don’t change anything (which is 99% of users) any Xfinity customer can get online. Several of my neighbors have them, and you can’t walk around in my commercial district without seeing the “Xfinity WiFi” SSID. It would be smart for TV mfrs to do a deal with Xfinity and their equivalents world wide in order to sell viewer data to advertisers and receive “fresh” ads, even if the TVs are excluded from the residential network.
This is actually so very doable in US, cutting deal with those like XFinity.
But if the TV manufacturer is smart in their spying game, they could also be probing for any public SSIDs to connect to when no local internet access is setup.
It doesn't sound insane, actually. Keeping in mind, Windows XP did exactly that for a while until everyone realized, "hey, that's a security issue". I would swear MacOS too, but I wouldn't bet money on it.
>It would be smart for TV mfrs to do a deal with Xfinity and their equivalents world wide in order to sell viewer data to advertisers and receive “fresh” ads, even if the TVs are excluded from the residential network.
Doesn't exactly sound like a thing to be that concerned about if you never plug in your TV. If you buy a TV right now and never plug it in, how would it know about any future deal with Xfinity to connect to its open networks? And if it had a feature to connect to random open Wi-Fi networks right now, that wouldn't be hard to prove. My LG has never shown up in my Wi-Fi client list despite my open guest Wi-Fi. You can even test it by naming your guest network "Xfinity WiFi".
Taking apart your TV and pulling out the wireless radio sounds like absolute overkill to me. Feel free to do it if it makes you feel better. It will definitely not allow it to send data (over Wi-Fi) under any circumstance. I'm just not convinced that the alternative is that much riskier.
Our Samsung fridge will mesh network with any Samsung TV specifically to exfiltrate marketing info, at least according to the manual. (The fridge even has marketing surveillance cameras in it).
I assume at some point, appliance manufacturers will start "partnering" with things that actually need WiFi for exfiltration purposes. Phones would be a good place to start.
That way, we'd need to either Faraday cage our friends' phones, not invite them over, or send marketing pervs video feed of our moldy pickles.
We're worried about it connecting to a neighbor's unsecured network or some sort of unpublished mesh capability for exfiltrating your data and downloading ads.
Any chance the TV can phone home via that? One would have to make sure the HDMI cable physically doesn't have the Ethernet pairs, or set the trusted box to filter the traffic.
The HDMI standard defines an Ethernet channel as an optional feature. Approximately zero consumer products have ever implemented it. There's no need to worry about an unsuspecting consumer having supporting devices at both ends of the cable.
I don’t know of any consumer laptops or tv boxes like shield/Apple TV that implement that so that. It’s basically a non-issue unless it’s implemented on the HDMI devices.
If you use something you can control, like a Linux box, this isn't an issue. Even if the device did get added, and then udev or network manager auto configured, a firewall script should protect you.
So, I have an Nvidia Shield TV Pro. I dislike how Google had to put ads on the homescreen (ads which are not suitable for my children), and I just checked: it has Android patch level Jan 2026. It is, as of today, Nov 2026. 10 months without patches. So no patch for eMudhra, no patch for Brotli, and you name it.
Other than that, I agree regarding TV, with one caveat: you might want to update the firmware right away, or at some point. The device might need to phone home for that. In order to achieve that, you can put up a temp WLAN AP with your smartphone.
With regards to my STB: I am considering cancelling all my subscription services and simply downloading everything to my NAS. This already runs Jellyfin. Then all I need is a Jellyfin client and HDMI. Perhaps a RPi 4 or RPi 5 would be suffice there.
While practical advice its just odd to me there's no major legislation or movement or activism or boycotts about this. We just accept our TV might be silently recording everything we say in our home and the fix is to not plug it into the internet.
Even if you never connect the TV to your WiFi network it will constantly scan for public networks and also scan for any devices that will respond. “Off” doesn’t actually mean off anymore. :(
Do you have any specific examples of devices where this has been implemented? Because I've heard this idea thrown around a lot as a hypothetical, but never any concrete evidence that it's been done.
Hypothetical is beside the point. The hardware is there, the software is closed and you can't verify what is really happening, so the potential threat exists.
Connecting to open wireless networks is exactly the sort of behavior that would be trivial to confirm the presence of, if it were actually present. You wouldn't even need any unusual tools - just set up an open access point and see if the TV connects to it.
Why would I care that some device to which I never gave a shred of my personal information of any kind (e.g. not logging it into any online account) found an open public network that I don't use and that has no connection to me?
Sure, I would be disturbed that it's doing that sort of thing in spite of Wi-Fi being explicitly turned off.
Because it's acting with your IP address, so attempts to prevent whatever shady botnet things it gets up to may also interfere with legitimate use by humans on your network.
They have your location, and can detect your interests from what you watch, and fingerprint you. Things like this are pieces of a larger, comprehensive picture of your life.
Also, how do you pay for streaming channels, etc., if you don't give it any information?
The assumption here is that we don't give the TV any personal information; it's just used as a monitor. The content comes from some other device connected to an input (e.g. HDMI1). (That device may raise privacy issues, but we are concerned with the TV).
Without either doing the fingerprinting from surreptitious audio recording in the room that other commenters mention, or else matching the unit serial number to the purchaser (requiring the retailer to leak personal info to the manufacturer), they can't match the unit's location to our identity.
I see. Roku, for example, takes screenshots of the TV N times per second (and sends them home).
Remember that it doesn't take much to identify someone: Gender, birthdate, and (zip code?) uniquely identify ~80% of Americans. From viewing habits, it should be easy to fingerprint someone - Chicago Bears fan; strong technology interest; on your city block; likes AI porn with Lara Croft; home during day Sa, Su, Tu, Th; watches YouTube videos about ...
Samsung TVs were literally recording people with microphones and doing voice recognition. Unless you don’t speak in your home, it will have you identified quite quickly.
If we want privacy, should we be buying a TV which has these peripherals? I don't think a TV should have such things, so I would sooner rip out or damage the microphone and camera if I had to get such a TV. The ability to connect to a network could be useful; I'd not mess with it.
Because the TV is recording your voice, what you watch and possibly taking pictures, depending on the brand, and it needs a connection to send that information to whoever will pay for it.
So your idiot brother doesn't connect your spy TV to the WiFi when he comes to visit, instead of using the goddamn Chromecast that is already plugged into it. >:(
This. I've had this happen with relatives who come to visit. It's unkind to tell them "Don't fuck with the TV" or "Ignore the TV if it tells you it wants to connect to something."
They want to be "helpful" and show me they can "work tech" by doing stuff like this. They don't understand that the TV is manipulating them. I don't want to have to explain to them that I'm basically a neurosurgeon and they just tried to impress me by drilling a hole in somebody's head. Because the TV told them to.
Disconnecting the wifi avoids the need for unpleasant conversations.
While I've certainly heard plenty of theorizing about the possibility of this happening, I have yet to see any conclusive evidence that it has ever been done.
EDIT: What I am referring to here is the specific allegation that smart TVs will connect to open wireless networks without being commanded to do so. It's not a catch-all for any nefarious thing involving TVs or wireless networks.
And that isn't even the same thing either! (This seems to be a recurring theme.) If it were true that LG TVs "spy" on ambient audio, that would certainly be bad, but it wouldn't also establish that the TVs were connecting to open wireless networks to exfiltrate that data.
Comcast runs a separate "Xfinity WiFi" on all their routers, any Comcast user can connect to it with their credentials. Would they strike a deal with TV manufacturers to let them use it? It would not surprise me.
Pretty sure this is a known offering from Comcast, you just have to talk to the right sales rep... I haven't yet seen any evidence of a TV using it (yet), but hve been told they will sell a company IoT or fleet device access to their wifi endpoints for enough money. I'm not sure it would be cost effective for mass market device surveillance, though.
Also Amazon does this same model with their Sidewalk service, which can run over bluetooth or lora, instead of wifi... and is specifically priced to be usable for large numbers of devices.
All the TV manufacturers have to do is make a deal with Xfinity to jump on their AP, and you're toast. I don't know why anybody would defend them or give them any bit of slack on this. Once they figure this out, they will do it.
No, it doesn’t in any real sense. Nothing ever implemented it and the channel was reallocated to eARC with different encoding so they couldn’t even co exist.
> Use a box of your choice on the other end of the HDMI cables. This is now the box that you trust. (Roku? Shield? Blu-ray? MacBook? PC? Linux? Playstation? XBox? Whatever you want.)
If they choose a Firestick or Roku what's the difference? XD
>I went and researched this, and found that basically none of the TV brands were anything but creepy on privacy.
Yeah they do. Go to your shopping center or airport and you'll see LG and Samsung displays everywhere. And that's the key word, 'displays' not 'TVs'.
Both sell large displays meant for 100% user ownership with no spyware or mandatory internet connection, you just have to buy those and not their TVs.
The catch? They come at steep prices compared to consumer TVs, unless you can land a deal on the used market. But that's the cost of turning a profit on screens with no spyware and ads.
The other catch is that those displays are built for heavy duty use, not for picture quality, and as such aren’t going to look as good as even a budget consumer OLED TV.
Disagree. They look more than fine, much better than the budget TV with their fake saturation turned to 11 out of the box. If you think that looks good you might have gotten used to it.
Hotel TVs, same panels as consumer models with different supporting hardware and stock calibrations. These are actually dimmer than the consumer models to increase panel longevity.
They tend to lack gaming features like high/variable refresh rate but they're more functional as normal TVs than digital signage displays.
They have similar OSes as the consumer models and can run the same apps but don't have ads unless the operator wants them to and can be centrally managed, support internal IPTV networks, etc.
The ones the serve menus and the ones that serve eye-level video ads are definitely also built for picture quality. Still IPS for the most part, but uniformity and colour calibration can be movie-worthy
Are you sure those displays have everything needed for a smooth TV experience? Do they have eARC to connect a sound bar, and stuff like that? Modern TVs are also quite good at upscaling 1080/720p content, screens often aren't.
it's funny, I used to think and care about this (or thought I did) back when 1080 was the common thing and 4k was new and exotic, but now I really don't care.
I think what changed was the realisation that even with 4k hardware in theory, what you're actually seeing is so variable based on bandwidth and different services' support for different shows you basically don't know anyway and thus it doesn't really make much sense to care about it.
Besides which, you realise that things that are made to be more enjoyable on 4k, like where that would actually make a difference to how good it is, are probably not that much worth watching anyway outside of demos. Certainly it's not, for example, a factor on which you want to be choosing what series to watch.
Or jailbreak/defang the consumer TVs to have privacy anyway, and teach others how, and screw over the entire profit model of the surveillance-subsidized TVs to force things to be sold at a real cost.
>Or jailbreak/defang the consumer TVs to have privacy anyway
And how will my 50 year old mom and 70 year old grandpa know how to do that? "Hey Claude scan the wifi for a LG TV, hack it, root it and give me the keys to install what I want, then lock out LG from access it?"
As always, the sane fix is in government legislation and enforcement of privacy regulations. But this isn't happening since knowledge of smart device spyware across politicians and the voting population is small and governments want to use that data dragnet that smart devices enable for their own means.
I have bad news for you. Those commercial TV-s also phone home if connected to the internet. For software updates, analytics regarding digital signage usage etc.
For a long time they haven't been just dumb displays. They also run Tizen or WebOS for digital signage applications.
> that's the cost of turning a profit on screens with no spyware and ads.
I don't think that the cost of TVs has gone down when they added spyware and ads.
You could say that that's the cost of turning less profits, rather, and I suspect that TV manufacturers keep the costs of normal displays high just to discourage their purchase by normal people.
> Amazon Sidewalk[0] is a low-bandwidth long-range wireless communication protocol developed by Amazon. It uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for short distance communication, and 900 MHz LoRa and other frequencies for longer distances.
In reality that'll never work because the front of the tV needs to be exposed. At best you can make your whole room/house a faraday cage, but that'd be insanely expensive to do correctly. You might think a microwave is a faraday cage, but a phone can still get calls even if you put it inside.
Our TV remote can actually control our Apple TV. It's definitely good enough, and through some witchcraft, it works when the TV is not connected to WiFi.
> It’s a bit annoying if I want to switch to a game console
Yes because you have to fetch a shitty TV remote with buttons inspired by a Boeing 747 cockpit, which must be aimed directly at the TV because it uses shitty infra-red.
TV manufacturers are not just creepy on privacy. They are outright stalkers.
The whole TV medium was fully and expertly enshittified by advertising decades ago.
The next level is today: Now you buy a giant plastic browser that includes a fully enshittified surveillance OS.
There is even a spec (as yet unused...) for Ethernet over HDMI (HEC , HDMI 1.4). Silicon Image (founder of HDMI) and Broadcom demonstrated the capability to TV manufacturers behind closed doors (says $searchEngine).
Whatever screen you use to watch movies, you will inevitably find your captain's log will contain more joy for the crew by discovering Jellyfin and sailing into deeper waters.
Completely wrong. Apple goes to extraordinary lengths, to the point of harming the usability of their products, to protect user privacy and avoid collecting user data.
Apple could easily make tens of billions dollars extra if they spied more on their users.
Not completely, not anymore. Apple's gotten a taste of advertising dollars via the App store. Search for product A and product B will pay money to come first. Apple TV advertises for the shows they've made in the Apple TV app instead of going to your library. Same for Books.app.
The biggest indightment of Apple in my mind is the copy and pasting of links into iMessage. iMessages "helpfully" renders a preview so a dumb consumer doesn't have to see an ugly long text of a url. But in doing so, it also happens to hides the utm code that is used for tracking by marketers.
They've got their eye on that tens of billion dollars extra.
While I dislike Apple’s move to ads, I’m at a loss how accepting money to degrade search results is a privacy issue rather than just a UX quality issue. What information is Apple sharing with advertisers?
What the parent is saying is that the desktop versions of those programs are not remote friendly and the interface is not ideally scaled for 10-foot use. What you want are the Android TV versions, running on Waydroid or an x86 build of Android TV. See my other reply.
Jellyfin and Plex cannot stream from major streaming providers. Yes, I know the answer is pirating content but that’s a complete paradigm shift compared to what most people are used to. It’s an absolutely enormous extra requirement when you’re suggesting someone switch their TV to Linux.
No one seems to have a problem dealing with multiple streaming providers. They’re essentially just different submenus on the TV app.
Compare that to setting up a home server with a ton of storage, setting up torrenting/newsgroups, software to check for new releases and automatically download them, probably a VPN too… it’s a whole different world.
You know why. Nobody wants to sysadmin their “friendly Linux distro” just to watch shows. Kodi is amateur hour compared to tvOS. Nowhere do people care more that it “just works” than the thing their TV remote talks to.
Nobody in the general public wants to do that, but I'd think some in the HN audience might feel differently (I mean, setting this up is part of the fun).
Personally, I use an RPi4 with libreelec, and it works great - including responding to my remote via HDMI-CEC. (There's also no need for any sysadmin with libreelec, which is designed to work out of the box.)
You don’t have HDR and can’t pair and then send audio to bluetooth speakers via only the remote in 100 seconds. These basic things are table stakes. It does not “just work”.
The standard that the comment you're responding to is that the whole solution must be effortless even for someone with an IQ of 75. Don't try to stoop to their level, no amount of freedom or control justifies any level of effort to people like that. They'd rather have a system that forces them to view and verbally respond to ads every 10 minutes than one that requires them to learn anything more complex than what a toddler can figure out.
Even smart people have limited time and limited capacity for effort. Failure to Just Work is sand in their gears. Hand-rolled Linux TVs are a nonstarter.
Buy any TV you want, ignore all instructions to connect it to the internet, then look for an HDMI port on the back. Plug an HDMI cable into one end, and in the other end plug in a cheap Linux computer like a used Intel NUC from ebay. Then use a nice air-mouse remote like the Pepper Jobs W10.
I watch any movie or TV show I want in 4k via Kodi, but then can alt tab to a Terminal or a real web browser.
Privacy, and dramatically more functionality than any TV would ship with anyway.
Using this setup to type this message right now on pc hooked to a projector in my garage from my couch.
It turns out we never needed Smart TVs in the first place. Just treat it as a screen for a desktop computer.
Samsung TVs (and probably others) will connect to other Samsung TVs in range and exfiltrate data via that route… merely not connecting the TV doesn’t present data harvesting
Iirc, Amazon uses a tool they call “sidewalk” for this purpose
There’s something called Wi-Fi Direct but it requires explicit pairing. And Sidewalk isn’t on TVs. There’s no evidence of Samsung TVs trying to use each other as relays.
In that case, jailbreak it, or open it and unsolder the wifi antenna, or put some well placed copper tape until you no longer see any wifi traffic from the TV from other wifi capable devices running a wifi packet inspector.
The TV belongs to you and it will obey you with modest effort.
I want to know how to disable their external communication via wifi, I'd like to see how they are exfiltrating info. If I don't connect them to my wifi, apparently they connect to Xfinity wifi at your neighbors house.
Sony has treated me well and I don’t have it internet connected. It’s the one brand I haven’t seen nag when you have the internet disconnected. Was also easy to just opt right out of connecting it. Pretty standard google tv too.
Or use something Kodi as the OS and just have a TV like interface. You can also run a Jellyfin client on linux or with Kodi and have that as a reasonable interface for the TV too.
VA panels aren't great (they're fine, just not great). 350 nits also isn't great. Most people are probably looking for more. It's also pretty overpriced, but I guess that's the price of privacy?
If you are open to projectors they still make “home cinema” projectors that don’t have any smart features or connect to the internet.
I have a BenQ (710tki iirc) that is like this and I believe it meets all your stated requirements (size, resolution, etc). I’ve been very happy with it.
This is what I landed on as well - projector connected to an Apple TV. It cost a bit more, and there’s some extra setup, but the results are excellent.
The main issue switching to a projector is figuring out where you are going to position it (different projectors have different throw distances).
More money and more setup, but very worthwhile in the end IMO.
The best privacy method is to completely disconnect the TV from any wired or wireless network, and like you suggested to use it as a dummy display with the Apple TV (or whichever your favorite media player is). So in that sense you could just go to Costco (or any major electronics retailer if not in US) and pick one that you like the image & price.
I guess I am more concerned about random devices at home that need internet to work yet I have no idea what data they send where.
Not sure about the US experience, but here in Australia there are no dumb TVs for sale in our retail electronics stores. Every TV comes with some sort of "smart" OS.
It's the same way in the US. That's why they were saying to just buy any TV (which will almost certainly be a smart TV), then just treat it like a dumb TV by not connecting it to the internet.
I was able to disable a bunch of stuff on my LG so I never actually see the WebOS interface anymore.
I would disconnect the WiFi antenna as well and hope it doesn’t connect to nearby WebOS TVs via Bluetooth to pass telemetry so that the other TV uploads it to their mothership.
LG makes the best panels, in my opinion, but they’re also the most customer-hostile when it comes to privacy.
The easiest solution is to never give the TV network access at all (no WiFi, no Ethernet) and only drive it over HDMI, via an Apple TV for example. The onus then shifts to how much you trust Apple, and the TV becomes mostly a dumb display. That still isn’t a 100% guarantee, though, since the TV has radios and could potentially talk to other networks or devices without your knowledge. If you want certainty, the only real option is to remove the radios entirely, which can have side effects, like the remote no longer working if it relies on BLE.
Personally, I don’t like LG’s “smart” apps, so never using them isn’t much of a loss.
But if you’re more technically inclined and want to use a product you paid for the way you want, you can do what I did with my C1:
Root it, put it on a restricted VLAN with no WAN access and no outbound privileges to any device on the LAN, and enable SSH. These displays run webOS, which is Linux-based. Yes, you can literally SSH into your TV. :)
That let me deploy my own custom app that I drive over the network. My display also never actually turns “off”. I just paint black pixels when I’m not using it, so it’s very snappy when I want something on the screen. It works as a spare data and metrics display while I’m working, and as a media player (a simplified DIY Plex) when I’m not.
So I get the “smart” part of the TV without the privacy concerns.
The crown has changed hands most years since QD-OLED came out. I appreciate the citations. I wasn’t up to date on the 2026 models, but in 2025 both flagships were very close. Many reviewers called it a draw, iirc. That’s partly why I said “in my opinion”. Mine is also based on the general design of the sets. I’ve found the port placement, bezel, and stand design more to my liking on LGs, but that’s entirely subjective. I also cannot speak to how rootable Samsung sets are, since I don't own one.
I’m glad to see the crown change hands, though. It’d be ideal if there were more contenders.
Boycotting them is a completely reasonable response. Their stance on privacy is beyond ridiculous. Something right out of 1984.
The problem is that if you want a good OLED, there isn’t much of an alternative. Even if you don’t buy from LG or Samsung directly, they make essentially all the OLED TV panels on the market. A Sony or Panasonic OLED is still built on an LG or Samsung panel. So if you truly want to boycott them, your options for a quality modern display are very limited.
I bought my C1 before I was aware of how bad LG’s privacy posture was. The point of my comment is that you can still get the panel quality, and even some of the “smart” capability, without feeding them data, as long as you’re willing to treat the TV as a display and nothing else.
We have to block our TV from dialling home (there just aren't any privacy oriented 'smart' TVs). We chose to go down the DNS filtering route and pay for https://nextdns.io/ - it turns out it super helpful for a whole host of home network privacy jobs (ad blocks, kids safety filtering, security posture etc.). I can't stop recommending it to people.
Sceptre, in southern California, has a line of dumb displays.[1] HDMI/HDCP in, and that's about it. Walmart sells them, and of course they're on Amazon.
You buy a TV, NEVER connect it to the internet and set up small computer next to it. Obviously not Android based as it is spyware on its own.
Then use it. It is that simple. No special methods, software, whatever needed, tv becomes only a large monitor for your computer conveniently placed in living room.
As others have said, buy whatever you want just never connect it to the internet.
Now many people are also claiming that TVs will surreptitiously connect to an open network, but as far as I can tell, there is no evidence of this actually happening [0]. Of course it’s technically possible, but until a researcher actually observes this behavior I would not lose sleep over this.
Monitors are no longer safe. Bought a new monitor 2 years ago (Samsung) after many many years of not upgrading.
Turn it on and it wants me to make an account, agree to a new TOS update once a month, comes with the full smart TV interface junk. Had no idea that was even a thing they were doing to monitors when I bought it.
I recommend a projector. When we moved into our current place, I considered a TV and went with the projector instead. Because:
- A TV has a backlight. It doesn't feel as 'natural' to the eye when watching because you are staring directly at an LED.
- A TV is smaller than a projector.
- A TV, when it is off, imposes itself on the room. It's a large plastic/glass object which is obviously electronic. It invades the space.
- Most TV's are full of surveillanceware.
- A TV can be watched even during the day, when it's bright outside. The projector, by contrast, is much less pleasant during the day; I consider this a feature - I should be doing something else when the sun is out. (The only time this kinda sucks is sports. We make do with closing the curtains).
- Movies were made for the silver screen, imho. This might be a hipster opinion but in my view, the medium really does make a difference in this regard; the moviegoing experience is better.
To specifically answer your question - most projectors are just a dumb HDMI cable. Computer, media center PC, apple TV, etc. None (unless I'm not aware of newer models) have an app store, tracking, or other garbage.
I've wanted a projector for so long, and had the chance to borrow a friend's high quality one to test it out. It absolutely elevated the movie experience and - depending on the viewer's preferences - could be worth it for that alone.
However, this:
> The projector, by contrast, is much less pleasant during the day
Was a significant enough drawback to me that it ruled it out as a daily driver. Although I do like the way you framed it.
That's not really an issue if you get an Ultra Short Throw laser projector and pair it with a high quality UST-optimised (like a lenticular/sawtooth) Ambient Light Rejection screen. A setup would reject something like upto 95% of ambient light, so the screen looks good even in bright rooms.
In saying that, even this setup won't be able to match the deep blacks of a modern OLED TV in bright environments, but if you haven't been spoilt by OLEDs already, then a USTLP + UST-ALR is a really good alternative.
Any TV as long as you don't connect it to the internet in any way, shape or form.
Then connect either your computer directly to it or if you want something fancier, use an Apple TV.
Anything else is just too much pain - you can spend a lot of time debloating your TV, but then you either break updates (not good) or the updates will revert it and you are back on the square one. Not fun unless it is your hobby somehow.
Modern TV is just a hidden computer with quite a significant computing power. And those can be leveraged further - HackingTeam from Italy got owned by an embedded device (printer if I remember correctly).
And as a bonus, these devices are almost never monitored - you probably don't monitor it's CPU or network usage which makes it a good candidate for this sort of things.
Sadly the Samsung TV I have was the best display for the price by a mile, so I've done what i can to balance usage and protection. Its connected to the wifi to allow for AirPlay natively.
The tv has a fixed IP at the router to block all traffic in and out of the network, and as a visibility layer its DNS'd through a PiHole too.
Its unbelievably talkative over the network! In the 7 days just passed, its been 90% of the blocked requests by volume (there's no allowed domains from that IP).
I'm still not convinced it isn't sneaking out data somehow - piggybacking off a connection somewhere to the neighbors TV. Its HDMI runs through a stereo amplifier, so it can't piggy-back off the connected PC that runs it.
Maybe the PC (Mint) can run AirPlay somehow and I can disconnect it entirely from the internet?
I feel overly paranoid about this device relative to everything else in the house, I'm not sure how justified that is.
> I'm still not convinced it isn't sneaking out data somehow - piggybacking off a connection somewhere to the neighbors TV
I think we've overshot the mark a bit about TVs' connection abilities. A built-in SIM was one early conjecture. And while it hasn't been seen in the wild, it is often assumed to exist.
More to your point, we've not seen connections (assumedly ad-hoc wifi) to a neighboring device and uploading data to manufacturer, partner, etc.
We have recently seen a case of data collection, that included wifi scans. What we have not seen is a device that connects to other APs on it's own.
I saw 1 redditor claim that this occurred but it was not substantiated. Lots of folks are looking for this behavior but it hasn't been found.
This tells me that our existing methods of self-protection are effective.
I got an old gigantic monstrosity of a DLP tv off facebook marketplace for free then plugged an old Intel NUC into it. It's not for everyone, but I think that it's great, partly because the facts that it was free and that it's stupidly big give me joy.
More practically, when I am not using that, I just watch tv shows and such on my desktop computer running NixOS with a nice and modern (1440p 170Hz high quality but not highest possible end IPS) monitor over displayport.
Other options include a projector, buying a very large computer monitor marketed panel, or using something that is modern enough to be fine, but not so new that it has malware in it (like a friend who was moving gave me a very heavy but also very nice plasma tv, with zero malware on it).
Basically, anything except something marketed as a consumer grade TV. The last time that I had to displeasure of dealing with that it was when my parents bought one and asked me to set it up, and the built-in Roku software refusde to even display from an HDMI or DP input unless it was logged in and connected to WiFi! Alas, I was not able to convince them to return it, but I did decline to have anything to do with it.
I would go one step further and recommend a router with a customizable, Linux, firmware (OpenWRT, Tomato, DDWRT, etc).
Your TV is probably just one of the many devices that sends a scary amount of requests to a bunch of shady servers. With a firewall + DNS server that you control and a decent blocklist you should be able to block most requests and you won't be exposed if a new device connects to your network (for whatever reason).
> I would go one step further and recommend a router with a customizable, Linux, firmware (OpenWRT, Tomato, DDWRT, etc).
Yes, those are good options, but in true HN spirit, my suggestion is a plain Linux distro. The firewall/router is just a few iptables lines, which AI can now provide in a few seconds.
OpenWRT is a Linux distro. Just one optimized for embedded devices. If don't like the very utilitarian web UI can connect over ssh and use iptables or whatever else you want.
But that means custom per-device firmware builds, that in my experience with every router I tried it on means they lag months/years behind security patches. Is there some way to stay patched without building from source and reflashing every time a patch to something upstream happens? (almost daily, now, I guess that means?)
IIRC, IPFire is more or less that. I control my Debian router/home server using SSH and have no GUI at all. It's largely set and forget, and don't recall last time I touched the firewall.
The Apple TV itself might be more privacy friendly or open about policies, but I have no reason to believe that any streaming app you’d install on it would provide for more privacy than the app installed directly on the TV.
I rooted my LG C1 and honestly I can't go back to an unrooted TV. Game streaming works so much better(I can actually install the apps). I can control everything so Home Assistant automations are much better. Internet is blocked so no nagging or ads, But they are turn off via root just in case.
Now I have a weekend project in the future, assuming I can find a compatible process for my hardware. Never connected to the network, but the thing makes a few ever annoying popups I would love to disable. Or at least ensure that no "helpful" guest fills in the wifi information when I am not looking.
Nope! I can turn of personalised ads. But the homescreen is filled with recommended apps, recommended shows, popups about added subscription functionality, or straight up banner ads if it feels like it.
Samsung the frame 65" for $2000 constantly pesters about $15 monthly subscription to change the art on the display to their selection of public domain historical artworks. Otherwise you're stuck with the default slideshow, which you're now forced to see since the whole sales pitch of the display is showing art when turned off.
atleast they had the decency to not show ads as default art instead... but i wouldn't put it past them
I allow my Samsung to connect to my local network, but then use openwrt and refuse to allow any outbound data from any IP using the MAC address of the television set. It cant update itself and no traffic suggests it can do anything regardless of what it might be collecting. Rooting it to prevent it from connecting to other wifi AP’s is probably the only better thing.
Don't smart TVs (of LG or others?) connect to open networks of neighbors, like Vodafone hotspots? That was told to me at least.
So only disconnecting the antenna or destroying it would work, unless you live remotely.
Ah, here:
> DiabloD3 43 minutes ago | unvote | parent | next [–]
Doesn't work, all the spyware modules connect to open Wifi of neighbors, and soon, LTE.
reply
> nvme0n1p1 37 minutes ago | root | parent | next [–]
This is repeated every time this topic comes up, but so far it's just a conspiracy theory. An urban legend. An old wives' tale. Are there any documented cases of this happening?
> Don't smart TVs (of LG or others?) connect to open networks of neighbors, like Vodafone hotspots?
I can find no verified reports of this behavior. People are looking for it.
> all the spyware modules connect to open Wifi of neighbors, and soon, LTE.
I can find no verified reports of this behavior. People are looking for it. Cellular connections have been theorized since the beginning but have not been discovered.
Given the number of qualified people seeking out these behaviors, if they appear we will know it - with certainty.
Unsolicited advice, with a different approach, from personal preference / experience:
Sitting screens considered harmful.
Treat them as a liability and "trash"-adjacent, no matter the actual display technology or whether you can remove the spyware.
That goes double for TVs, so don't buy one.
Re-invest the time and attention you save in a good projector and a generally "invisible" screen / room setup.
I'm a happy owner of a $1000 DLP LED projector and a similarly priced motorized 150" screen. Do look into laser projection, which has been getting steadily more affordable for a while now.
Disclaimer: I've never subscribed to the "maximum screen size" formulas. As long as my own nose isn't in the way when I look to either end, it's fine, and inching towards that range is exactly what I'm deliberately going for. So yes, I'm one of those people who sits in the front rows at the movies.
I keep filler-free shows (TNG, anyone? :') movies and game time strictly out of band. So to me that's even more enjoyable in an immersive and optimally shareable setup whenever I do purposefully take the time.
More reading, as well as a nudge towards doing stuff, is probably the main side effect I'm after here, as you can tell.
There are several videos on YT regarding removing all this Ad/Spy/Bloatware from "smart" TVs using Claude and only a few prompts:
Actually, it should be very easy for most poeple here on HN to do this as Ive found some videos which seem to be done by "non techies" and they were successful.
I like LG OLED quality. My lg tv has never been connected to the internet and connects to a avr that handles inputs and 5.1.2 speakers Nvidia shield with hdmi-cec to turn on/off the receiver and tv. Jellyfin, android tv app for cable company, YouTube sans ads and projectivy launcher (Google one sucks). You can update firmware via usb stick. Would get an Apple TV if it died but like my Dolby vision HDR10 and atmos. Highly recommend.
Imagine you wouldn’t have this but technically the front two speakers are on a much higher end naim amplifier (connected to my audio stuff) but it has avr pass through. Sometimes an extra button to switch it to turn the front two speakers back to avr mode.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Gamersnexus investigation show that even un-connected LG TVs will still scan for open WiFi networks to clandestinely upload their spy data?
I have a TCL QM8, which until recently I was using for its full smart-TV capabilities, and always feeling rather icky about all of the stuff it was sending. I would keep getting notifications about the microphone being turned on even when I had explicitly disabled it at every level.
I eventually got an NVIDIA Shield Pro, for which I:
1) Blew away the default launcher and installed Projectivity
2) adb disabled nearly all of the background Nvidia/Google services, following a guide
3) Removed all of the preinstalled streaming apps and added back the ones I use, opting for more privacy-respecting alternatives like Smarttube over YouTube standard.
Finally, I then factory reset my TCL TV and put its Google TV into "Basic" mode, which makes it a dumb TV for all intents and purposes. The TV itself is not allowed to connect to the internet anymore for any reason--everything goes through the set-top box.
The skeezy thing is the TV still tries very hard to get you to enable regular mode. Like if you try to launch ANY app of ANY kind, it will throw some pop-up about needing to connect to the internet to do so, and then flashing some fine print about how this will revert the TV to normal Google TV/Android TV mode. I had a guest in my house using the TV while I was in another room and suddenly asking me for my WiFi password, and when I went to see what was up, saw that they were halfway through opening the floodgates again before I stopped them.
I have a Sony Bravia Google TV, but did not want to sign in with a Google account. I also use it in ”basic mode” with Samba Interactive TV disabled. I used to sideload streaming apps with adb, but have switched to Obtainium now. After a software update the TV started to suggest signing in, but at least they did not opt me in automatically like Apple used to do with iCloud after iOS updates.
I’ve done this. My new LG C5 has no ads or anything. I have (software) disabled all spyware, though most of them were already pre-disabled.
Nothing has changed after connecting it to the internet (fuck me right), except downloading apps, which i removed. No performance/ad hits, yet.
I got 2 of these, Amazon, 65inch. When I purchased (years ago) Amazon said "only 8 left". This TV is so dumb its clock is still in 1989. Three HDMI so it's got a Sworch2, Roku and a vSee box on it.
I was so/so on the purchase but after watching all the heck around 'smart" TVs I'm wondering what I'll do when these die. They were like 50% cost of the industrial display category, which seems my only option in the future.
Sadly they no longer make or restock their dumb TVs. They're desktop monitor only.
I bought one of their TVs in 2019, it's fabulous if your criteria is "turns on, displays what is connected to its inputs, and has decent video quality", and nothing more. I would recommend them heartily, if you can get access to one.
Which is interesting, since the E247BD-FSRD is a TV and one of the first ones mentioned on their web site. It does not seem to be available anywhere, though. (The Sceptre web site says Amazon and Walmart; but, neither carries it.)
The monitors lack the tuner and the cable/antenna connector; so, if you're only playing of a computer, they should work fine.
I have two Sceptre TVs and I recommend them, as well, if you can find them.
I've been on the projector train for many years. In addition to their being awesome for the home theater experience (they're not for everyone or every environment), I've yet to read about a manufacturer engaging in the bs happening on TVs.
The video is pretty cool. The guy flashes his tv with a custom firmware with a look/feel and elements he chose, plus a feature he created to leave handwritten notes for his girlfriend on the home screen of the TV, remotely from his laptop
The tv doesn’t matter much. Don’t connect it to the internet, set it to remember the hdmi port when it powers on. Then plug it in to an older laptop and you can control everything that way, play media locally, block ads. An Apple TV would be fine too
Digital signage displays might be the only out of the box solution at this point. I wish there were more open source TV firmware options in the spirit of dd-wrt
If you want 55", this is the way. Otherwise just buy a computer monitor and use it as a TV. I bought a 55" digital signage display a month ago on sale for AUD$400, that's about USD$280.
I got a 2025 Bravia because after some research it may not have the best panels, but it's the least likely to pull shannigans around snapshotting your viewing and forcibly connecting to a open wifi and that sort of thing. I connected it, updated the bios, immediately killed the wifi and I've been happy with an Apple TV ever since.
Unless the Apple TV decides to be evil, I feel safe.
I have a Sony Bravia that I've never connected to the internet, only to an Apple TV and a Steam Deck. It makes a noise when you turn it on or off, and sometimes it makes that noise all by itself while turned off. Makes me feel like it turns itself on to try and collect audio data periodically. But! I think since the TV itself is never going to have direct internet access, I'm not that worried about it sending my data.
Get a big monitor with all the specs you want and connect it to an old laptop. You can watch whatever you want on there. You can even play video games on your Playstation or XBox if it has an HDMI port.
Not sure where you're getting those requirements. OP said 60-80 inches, 4k with at least 60hz, and they said "I don’t mind paying a premium". They also never mentioned a VESA mount or "infinite" contrast ratio.
There are lots of monitors that fit OP's description.
I was going to write buy Apple TV and never ever connect the actual TV to the internet, but:
- I am unsure whether modern TVs utilize ethernet over HDMI to connect to internet through Apple TV (I have no idea why Apple TV should allow this, but I don't trust Apple to not accidentally enable this)?
- I can only imagine nefarious five eyes reasons for why Apple released Apple TV that plays 4k60 exactly like the previous models, but now has 8 GB RAM, powerful machine learning CPU, and built-in microphones that are impossible to disable
So, apart from getting used prev gen Apple TV (and still having to trust company whose leader has to accept Trumps's lunch invite), I have no good advice.
Personally I opt for projectors; but similar problems arise with the built-in apps. They're just rubbish. My personal preference is to use no abuiltin apps, just use a laptop to access Jellyfin with a Logitech K400 (keyboard with inbuilt trackpad) sitting on my lap.
The next step for me will be setting up a Raspberry PI with Plasma Bigscreen.
Some good answers here already. Step 1 is always not to connect the TV to the Internet. You can go further and remove the WiFi daughterboard and/or desolder the chip.
Step 2 is to connect a TV box, but if you replace Samsumg, LG, or Google by Apple or Amazon, you have made no progress at all towards privacy.
Having researched this topic extensively, there are two main options for real user control and privacy. First, you can run an ordinary Linux distro on a mini PC, with a "launcher" such as Plasma Bigscreen. It's fine with an airmouse, but you will be mostly running upscaled desktop apps that aren't remote or controller friendly.
The best solution is actually to keep the mini PC and compile Lineage OS (Android TV 17) for a generic x86 target. This is a true degoogled Android TV distro that can, with some more hacking, run any ARM TV app from F-Droid, Aurora or other source. It is by far the best solution in that it is a true 10-foot UX and is compatible with almost all TV apk apps out there. The downside is that this not exist off-the-shelf. I spent a couple of days putting this together with Claude and it takes several hours to compile. I also found several upstream bugs in the process and will be submitting patches to the AOSP and Lineage.
There's a big gap between LG and Samsung, whose terms of service states that they sell your data to advertisers, and Apple, whose privacy policy states that they don't do that. Of course, there's an even bigger gap between Apple who can access your data if they wanted to or were told to and a home brewed Linux media box.
Unless you view privacy as all or nothing, I'd say replacing Google with Apple is progress. I think the majority of people are more upset at the idea of how their data is being sold for advertising than they are concerned about being able to act completely out of sight of any actor.
> There's a big gap between LG and Samsung, whose terms of service states that they sell your data to advertisers, and Apple, whose privacy policy states that they don't do that.
This may be true, but Apple can change that policy overnight. Apple also won't let you run programs that are not on its store, and won't even give you a Web browser. It's shocking people that people are willing to accept such restrictions. It isn't my hardware if I can't decide what runs on it.
It's not hard to find options if you stop looking in stupid places with bad search terms. "TV" on Amazon is literally the innermost circle of consumer hell.
I don't know how true it still is, but dumb TVs have traditionally been marketed as "commercial displays". You'll pay more and have to bring your own media, of course.
I believe those displays intended for static advertising etc are not set up for good refresh rate or cinema viewing, so they'll have very poor e.g. ghosting during action sequences, low contrast ratios, a lot like a LCD TV from the early 2000s.
This is repeated every time this topic comes up, but so far it's just a conspiracy theory. An urban legend. An old wives' tale. Are there any documented cases of this happening?
Some do this (Samsung), but the more common tactic is to throw constant nags up if the telemetry is not being sent to the manufacturer.
I did my research and bought one that does not do this (2025 TCL), but, if it turned out that it did, I'd have shamelessly returned it. I'd also have issued a chargeback if the store gave me any crap.
Even with all that, if you install firmware updates over the network, then disconnect WiFi, the TV becomes unusable until you factory reset it. (I did this because its EDID is corrupted, and I have to override it with a linux cmdline. The update did not help.)
With TV makers having recently destroyed trust and there not being a good way for consumers to force trust it makes little difference whether they are doing it or not.
If you can't tell whether your disconnected TV is spying on you but you know that you cannot trust it, it's better to treat it as compromised.
probably, but I'll let gp answer. But I want guarantees that they don't do that, until them I'll consider the fact that if they can and it's profitable they will do it
If you want a guarantee, that's a conservative threat model and a fair position. What's not fair is GP saying "doesn't work, all the TVs do XYZ", when not a single TV in the real world has ever actually done XYZ.
Ultimately I'll need to find data to settle how paranoid I might be. I'm still leaning on not enough. But isn't it also not fair to claim not a single tv has done it? Proving an universal is not easy for gp but the inverse of forall is not a not exists.
And I know the world of middle management profit optimization.
I indeed cannot prove it. I also can't universally prove that wombats don't have telekinesis. But the preponderance of the evidence points to neither being true.
I know there are lots of advocacy groups and youtube channels that are testing TV models and would LOVE to be the first to break this story and publicly shame Samsung or whoever. But it simply hasn't happened.
Some TVs will refuse to work if you don't create an account and connect them to internet. They won't usually advertise this. You may have to repeatedly return those TVs as defective as you find them.
An interesting question is why aren't there companies in the same vein as AMG was for Mercedes, that buy the product, modify and resell them? In this case, buy the factory LG and using expertise, lobotomize it and resell it people here? If this post shows the demand the where is the supply?
It doesn't seem that it's a DCMA limitation, yet at least. Would it fall under "right to repair"?
Aside from getting a "dumb" tv, your best bet right now is to get a tv running google/androidtv and run a script like https://github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv against it to remove all of the tracking etc. from it.
Roku TVs are really easy to turn into dumb TVs. Don’t connect the WiFi, and set it to always turn onto the HMDI input your PC/device is connected to. No tracking, ads, or extra steps.
Best setup is buying whatever tv, never connecting it to internet, and connecting to an external device running whatever os flavor you prefer. I have setup using bazzite with a steam controller and an old laptop, and added non-steam games for YouTube and jellyfin, works great for my needs and I play a few small steam games on the tv aswell
Few years back, I bought two TVs: 65" LG latest at the time TV ($2k) and a 55" Sceptre tv from Walmart for $200. The TV from Walmart is a dumb TV with terrible speakers. So, in addition to tv I got a $150 soundbar and an Apple TV. I almost don't watch the LG one and daily watch the Walmart tv. It’s good enough in this setup.
Got a Bravia TV for cheap back in 2014 that happened to be pre-Android TV (and pre-Google TV) so Android TV was just released and those something-else-os were "outdated".
Sony stopped releasing security patches a while back and there are no longer apps whatsoever and they all were crap - the youtube one was pure torture because of how slow it was and the web browser was just as miserable as ie6.
But besides that I can send it commands to it via its IP and control it, consume stuff via a DLNA daemon, do screen mirroring, and all the usual tv stuff. The image quality and sound are still great after 10+ years though I can't care less about oled 4k 120Hz and all that stuff. So it's no longer a "smart" tv but it's not also so "dumb" for a now dumb tv.
My in-laws have a Bravia of the same era. The image quality is amazing and it sounds great. The apps were never really any good, but now they are all outdated and doesn't work. They just hooked up a ChromeCast, and it's perfect for their use.
I was able to root my Samsung TV easily with Codex, disable updates and spyware, MITM everything with the eMudhra certs. The problem is no one really knows what these TVs do, they're all liars with 100 page privacy policies that will legally allow anything, and encrypted HTTPS communications that we can't even ordinarily monitor what they're sending. They can be updated at any time to start sending more or less data without your knowledge. So I feel the only realistic option is find a TV that can be rooted and do that. If you root a TV, you can fully disable network access and then use an Apple TV, or use the TV's software with MITM and deeper analysis with AI to disable snooping.
Use any screen or projector connected to a linux box or AppleTV for streaming. Personally I use an old laptop running Kodi.
What sort of screen? Well, whatever you can tolerate. I use a very old commercial display I got through an e-waste reseller. It’s not great, but it was cheap ans has worked fine for years.
If you insist on a “TV” screen or any monitor/projector with connectivity, pick one you can root. As other users have pointed out, simply “don’t connect to the Internet” unfortunately isn’t enough to guarantee your data stays private.
Does anyone make TVs with Opera/Vewd (rythmes with lewd) anymore? That's what mine is running, and it supports Netflix and whatnot, but doesn't show ads or spy.
Also, Android TV boxes sometimes have shenanigans installed by the manufacturer, but they are easy to customize to only run what you want, and they run fine without a Google account.
As far as I can tell, there's no way to use an Apple TV box without linking it to an Apple account and letting them spy on you.
Ok I'm cheating, it's a monitor. Only it's the size of a TV and there's a remote.
But no tuner and no ARC.
But I don't care.
Zero smarts, boots in a millisecond, auto-wakes on device power-up, input switching just works, no half-baked HDMI-CEC hell. No wifi. No network. Nothing to spy on me because it's a FUCKING MONITOR and THAT'S IT.
I get that they’re not equivalent, price wise, but have you tried searching for “55 inch computer monitor”? They sell large ones for use in video conferencing rooms for example.
Out of curiosity, do these “smart” TV features even matter if you’re just switching to one of the HDMI inputs? I’ve used an external device to drive my TV for years, and I honestly have no idea what is installed on the TV itself.
They don’t. My Hisense doesn’t nag me at all. I just use my Apple TV and 4k player and PS5 without issue. It’s not nearly as hard as all the comments here have made it out to be.
Similarly, my Hisense TV never gets a chance to show the VIDAA interface. It just displays the HDMI input and I switch that between Kodi running on a Raspberry Pi and a VirginMedia TV box.
I shop for elite televisions at the “reuse” center, my latest score was a 2013 Panasonic plasma which is a perfectly good dumb TV hooked up to an XBOX ONE and a home theatre. Downstairs I have a big curved Samsung 4K attached to my big PC. Someday I’ll see the high end OLED that I crave.
If you have the room and price is no object you definitely want at least 5.1 theatre, both movies and TV programs sound great in 5.1. The next step up is a second subwoofer, even for music subwoofers take a load off your other speakers and reduce distortion.
As everyone is saying: just don't let it on the network. It's a little annoying because you can't have smart home stuff like "turn off the TV when I leave the house" working, but that's it.
My thing is, don't use an Apple TV. For the last 15 years or so I've just used a Mac Mini plugged into a big TV, and it's perfect. Get a wireless keyboard and trackpad and one of the many available trays that will hold them together. I'm literally typing this right now on this exact setup.
It should mostly work with HDMI CEC. My Android TV (Nvidia Shield) will turn my TV on and off. I only use the LG remote to adjust the volume although if you're using an AVR, it should do everything.
Personally, I used to be very privacy-conscious, but have given up on enforcing it everywhere over the years. I still care, more than most people I know in real life, but when it comes to stuff like TV's I just get whatever has the best panel for the lowest price. Last time I bought a TV, that was an LG TV running WebOS, which is not exactly the best from a privacy standpoint. Initially I used it with an Apple TV, but now I just use the native apps and try to disable the telemetry that I can in the settings panel.
Disconnect the TV from internet and use a solution like Apple TV for apps you would like in TV. Even better is a Mini PC connected to the TV if you are savvy enough.
I bought a Hisense TV three years ago. I do not connect it to the Internet. I use an Apple TV for streaming. I went with Hisense because it was well reviewed.
I think you'll be fine with whatever TV you buy as long as you follow this strategy.
Any AndroidTV and then run CleanYourTV [1] on it, gets completely rid of all Google ads and additional bloatware by the manufacturer. Maybe run Claude against the repo first to check for malware but going by the number of stars it seems to be solid.
Samsung is the worst by far. Samsung (TizenOS) does not respect even privacy opt outs. It seems like LG, Google TV OS (Sony) and Fire TV OS (Amazon) and VidaaOS at least do that.
The consensus thus far appears to be that all modern TVs wipe their ass with user privacy.
Given what happened with games very recently, perhaps the question should be rephrased to: "Which modern TVs support flashing unsigned/self-signed firmware?"
Sceptre. They have okay 4K panels at ludicrously cheap prices at Walmart that don’t have WiFi or a network port or any smarts at all. HDMI goes in, rendered images come out, end of story.
9 years ago I got a hisense 65h8c for around $800, at the time it seemed like the dumbest tv I could get (all new tvs, that now-old one included, are advertised as 'smart') that still hit other criteria. It has only ever connected over HDMI to a PC or an AV receiver. Still works great, used mostly for gaming, occasionally movie or show watching. It has weaker blacks and some edge bleeding, but meh; I'll never buy an OLED TV since at some point I'd play a game on it and soon enough after get burn-in from static UI elements.
You can literally just buy any Sony and turn it onto dumb TV mode and not connect it to a network.
That's it, that's all you need to do, and the level of crazy over engineering and spend by some people below achieves literally nothing more at great difficulty.
Anybody has experience with TCL and Spectre? I'm seeing them a lot, even saw one really big TCL TV in a local shop and loved the colors and the FPS, but no idea how good are they really, are they longer-lasting, are they annoying if you don't give them network access etc.
I have a TCL that I'm happy with. I followed 'some instructions somewhere' to use adb to disable the default launcher and replace it with the ProjectIvy launcher, which is nice and clean and has no ads or promotions (ads by any other name).
Mine _is_ connected to my network, but I have DNS blocking via self-hosted Adguard along with specific SmartTV block lists and regular expressions, plus a firewall for the 'entertainment' VLAN that's fairly tight. I'm also monitoring (and recording to a database) all outgoing traffic on the entertainment VLAN so I can add further firewall restrictions - once I have the time to analyse the logs, maybe after I've retired...
One of the supermarket chains here have their own line of TVs. They are dirt cheap, absolutely fine quality. Some of them do run Android, or GoogleTV, so you'll get whatever tracking that may yield, but they certainly don't have the resource or infrastructure to run their own separate tracking and spying on those units.
It's probably pretty easy to explain it to somebody from the 80s.
"Remember that discussion we had about phones? Yeah, so TVs are kinda like that except they're really big so we stick them in a room instead of taking them with us".
One of my best scores at Radio Shack in the late 1980s was an LCD TV. The screen was about 2.5", black and white. It was powered by 4xAA or AAA batteries. It featured a single-knob tuner, an FM-like telescoping mast antenna, a speaker, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The screen would snap down for carrying, and it was reflected for viewing in a mirror, so it required a strong light from above to shine through the LCD panel. There was an accessory backlight with its own batteries to snap on top.
It had a pocket-size form factor, and I carried it around to Disneyland so we could watch TV while we waited in line, and it could receive any OTA TV channel in VHF or UHF.
A solid late 80s RCA Colortrak 2000 with down-converter is a solid choice and excellent conversation piece. Hardwood finish, or go for the full console experience. Best part is it can't call anything.
The Russian user manuals for LG OLED TVs list the exact part numbers for the WiFi and Bluetooth modules. Search the PDF for IEEE and it will be listed. The English manuals omit this information!
I think desoldering the WiFi antennas and leaving the Bluetooth antenna connected is also a viable option. Although I think a 50 Ohm dummy load is needed if doing that(?).
I recently was stressed about the same & ended up buying an LG C6, sticking it on an isolated VLAN, rooting it, then just letting it hit my NAS for jellyfin.
Finding and watching some Youtube repair to figure out where the parts are and learning to do it is cheaper than buying anything that isn't spying on you. It's just depressing this is what we have to put up with.
The one with the best looking picture at the store. Don't connect it to Internet and use your own streaming box (that you trust).
Really I think in store is the way to go. Some "low" and "mid" tvs look identical to me. Some "high end" are meh. Some other "low end" look great. I think it's a bit of a crapshoot. Not sure currently but Samsung QLED used to be rated well but I always thought LG OLED looked worlds better. I've always liked LG OLED although I've heard their firmware has gotten pretty predatorial...
Agreed, some LG TVs even hardcode the DNS these days. A simple cron job that resolves the hostnames and blocks the IP on a firewall level is very hard to bypass though ;)
buy projector, laser one are good, some of them are quite dumb in a good way. mostly US owned, or Japanese. Any chinese one are full of "android tv with their own flavors of spyware"
Another slightly pricier option is buy a digital signage display. These are screens intended for use in like retail floors or even outdoors. They tend to be extra durable, resistant to burn-in, very bright and devoid of most fluffy end user features.
I second this. Both my TVs at home are previous signage from my work. Samsung panels and the one that does have smart features is from the far flung past.
Well, I have CRTs in most of the rooms in my home. That's because of an unrelated condition for which I refuse to be treated, but they are great for privacy!
Plasmas are great, and I have one - and our main screen in the living room is just a bog standard Sony...I just love CRTs, but I'm a retro gaming nerd.
Rather than trying to get a TV which doesn't have blatant spyware (when in all likelyhood, they all do, or will get one in a software update), I would suggest solving the problem the other way around - get a TV you know you can disable that functionality in. Trusting the manufacturer is a recipe for disaster.
I stripped out the bluetooth+wifi module from my TV and keep it disconnected from ethernet. Now it doesn't matter what it tries to collect, it can't send it anywhere.
(Assuming you've already bought one and have been using it for a while)
Have you tried using the built-in speakers or have you been using external speakers the entire time you owned it?
I'm curious if the (specs say 10watt) built-in speakers are in any way usable -- my criteria would be, can you easily hear dialog at the normal viewing distance; I wouldn't hope for hi-fi sound suitable for music.
A lot of the advice here seens to be "disable wifi, don't plug in ethernet, use a computer or similar to provide content".
This is good advice. But I'd consider it the absolute baseline. I'd be much more interested in hearing about TVs that'll still try to get to the internet (neighbor's badly secured IoT network, bluetooth, 5G) or ones that cripple themselves when you tamper with wifi.
Don’t connect it to the internet, only to your lan (on a separate vlan) connecting to your jelly and *arr setup, or, you can get a tv box, flash it with vanilla android, have kodi and addon pointing to your jelly server, and from that tv box is an hdmi to your TV, same is also doable with a rpi.
It won’t be plug and play but it’s a weekend project, because there are no tv manufacturers who cares about privacy, or get a dumb tv and connect an hdmi to your pc but you will lose new features.
Only the one you gut with LLM first. Even when you disconnect it from the internet these devices often connect to unsecured WiFi's around you and snitch about you. There could be more tricks they do.
I recently picked one up at Sam's Club. Since my use was only to display an external HDMI source, I never even configured Wifi. Unfortunately, they're now wise to this. If it detects its been offline for ten or so start-ups, the TV will 'helpfully' force you into the Wifi config workflow on the next start. It seems to keep an internal counter in flash memory which nothing but a factory reset will clear. In my tests, it seemed like it can be kept offline forever but at the cost of manually dismissing the Wifi config workflow with three clicks on the remote every ~10 power-ons.
The TV also will not turn on and just display an external HDMI source even though it has a "Remember Last Source" feature. That feature does work as expected with any internal streaming source but external sources must first be manually selected with the remote after each power on (also undocumented in the manual).
I figured this out because I bought this small TV to be a wall-mounted screen in the dedicated bathroom of our home theater room. It's only job is to turn on while someone is in the little bathroom and display a copy what's on the main 150" projector screen in the next room, then turn off when they leave. The on/off is handled by a motion sensor and standard Home Assistant automation but after power on it correctly shows the Last Selected external HDMI source for 1 second, then blanks the screen. The source is already selected and working but being blacked out until you manually re-select the same source with the remote (only if it's external). This is clearly an undocumented anti-pattern added specifically to prevent the TV being used unattended as a display screen, picture frame, digital sign etc. Why? Because Vizio (now owned by WalMart) doesn't get rev share if it's: 1) Not online, and 2) Only displaying external sources. That's why it demands manual "proof-of-life" before it'll grudgingly deliver the basic functionality it claims on the box.
This made me angry - and the TV was otherwise the perfect size and feature set for my use case. So I programmed an ESP32 with an IR emitter so that every time the TV powers on it sends the remote presses to manually clear the "Please Connect Internet" message and re-select the already-selected external HDMI. Very annoying to be forced to figure this out but now it works fine and no one even sees the annoying messages as they're already gone before by the time we enter and see the screen. So, fuck Vizio :-). Although, I'm pretty sure almost all current consumer TVs now sell all your data exactly the same. The only differences may be the depth of dark patterns they deploy to resist offline usage.
To be fair, aside from all the super evil dark patterns, it's a shockingly good quality small TV (24-inch) for $88. Although it's obviously not a high-end display (no native HDR or 24fps), the chipset does do a decent job tone mapping external HDR (and HDR10) sources to SDR and it does proper 3:2 pull-down to display 24 frame external sources at 60fps - which very few TVs in this size do well (or at all). This is why I kept it and spent the time 'fixing' it. Of course, this is only because the TV is subsidized by the $35-$60 avg yearly revenue TV manufacturers reportedly can collect from advertising, app install payments, rev shares and selling all your viewing data. For $88 at local retail, it's probably being sold at a small loss. What's sad is I would have paid double that for the same TV without the dark patterns (in fact, I did buy and return two 24" TVs before this one for $160 and $200 but they couldn't even display external HDR or 24fps sources at all - which was a requirement since this secondary display has to display sources configured for the main projector).
lol, I Ctrl+F'ed for this brand after having pointed my agent at it. There's some pretty bad stuff on there, some of which I've already reported to Vizio.
If you wanted to give your coding agent a crack at the internet connection thing and patching that out, there's some sort of pairing you can do over LAN to allow access to launch web content, this can be chained with old Chromium RCEs to gain root access.
I'm not sure they'll care about any of the issues I had since they were clearly put there on purpose. Kinda like complaining to the concentration camp guards about the poor service and lumpy bedding... :-)
> If you wanted to give your coding agent a crack at the internet connection thing
Good to know but I've got the IR commands and timing working to nullify the dark patterns and I'm not going to touch it. To Vizio we're not the customer, we're the product. I wish the community godspeed in pwning Vizio TVs as they've certainly 'earned' the attention through bad behavior. :-)
Frankly, I've never used any apps in a smart TV nor have I ever allowed a TV internet access. I always feed my displays via external HDMI because our main viewing room is a custom-built, fully sound-proof, tri-level screen room with elevated stage and motorized curtains. All walls & ceiling are 100% fabric over acoustic padding (no windows), separate snack bar and dedicated restroom. Seats 17 in matching, reclining theater loungers. The sources are mounted inside three in-wall sliding racks and include UHD disc, PS5 Pro, 3 older consoles, media server, satellite, cable, vintage LaserDisc and cloud streaming multiplexed through dual AVRs with separate amps driving 9.2.4 sound (B&W THX speakers + subs the size of 55 gal oil drums backstage).
I just needed to make that little 24-inch Vizio work because that's how big the in-wall display cutout in the restroom is (the screen cutout is integrated into the interior design). Finding a secondary display that small able to at least display via conversion every format all those sources can throw was challenging. :-)
Just get any old TV and use the HDMI input and don’t connect it to the internet. The fears of it phoning home anyway even when you don’t configure wifi are overblown (almost no TVs can do this), as are the privacy implications. Nobody cares that you watch Severance and MCU movies. It’s sort of like people who tape over their laptop camera but leave the mic alone, as if 86400 photos of your face are somehow private and sensitive but all of the conversations in the room are not.
When it comes to TVs you can buy in a big box store today, I'm not sure there are any TVs that fulfil your requirements. Everything's more or less on a scale of privacy to quality, where on one side you have the panels of 10 years ago with dumb electronics from brands you've never heard of, and on the other side are the LG panels, but with LG non-privacy. The other notable brands you've probably heard of fall closer to LG than to the no-name brands.
You can probably scrounge up a decent modern-ish panel on the used market that's old enough to not have been shipped with malware, but then you're betting on it not having been updated to receive the malware, or relegating yourself to rooting it the instant you get it home.
My unspoken assumption is that you don't want to give money to evil companies. If you yourself are fine with giving your money to evil people, then you can Just™ buy an LG panel and root it.
I have not checked the details recently, but it should still be possible to get an aftermarket "dumb TV" generic controller board to fit the panel, as LCD panels have a somewhat standardised controller-panel interface.
Buy any tv with CEC support (almost all of them) and never connect it to the internet. Never. Never start any app on the tv. Hook a Kodi box to the hdmi port and use that, and only that.
For the Kodi box get series-7 Intel NUC with Kabylake-era processors, gen 7. They don't run Windows 11, so come very cheap second hand, but decode h264 and hevc in hardware and drive a 4K screen like charm. You can install a modern Wifi card in the NUC and a PCIe SSD.
Then buy one of these: https://www.pulse-eight.com/p/154/intel-nuc-hdmi-cec-adapter and put it in your NUC, so you can use the TV remote to control Kodi.
That's it.
Bonus, you can take your TV with you when travelling.
- Buy an LG OLED TV. They're as gorgeous as they are notorious. I just got a 77" LG C6 and it is crazy good.
- Root it [0].
- Install Glasshouse [1] and disable all telemetry. YOU now own the glass. Now you can chromecast to the TV, use Adfree YouTube, access IP TV, etc etc etc. No point crippling your TV by pulling the wireless module and voiding your warranty.
- Install a bunch of cool apps to your TV [2] (there are many more out there besides those listed here)
- Restore to Factory Defaults if you ever want / need to unroot and get back to stock e.g. a warranty claim
The only issue is that LG recently closed the vulnerability that made rooting possible so you don't want any firmware released after 2026-10-10 like 43.21.84. Hopefully a new exploit is found that makes rooting possible once again.
BTW, you might have heard of Dev Mode on these TVs but they don't allow anywhere near the functionality that rooting provides.
[0] https://tv.slada.sk/guides/rooting-guide
[1] https://github.com/rorygallagher2024/glasshouse
[2] https://www.webosbrew.org/
Agree … but the part that needs to be remembered
make sure it’s a model where the latest firmware is rootable and never connect it to your WiFi until you have root
Everything you need to do to get root can be done with an Ethernet connected directly to the TV and your laptop. There may be modifications needed to the root toolkits but with good prompting, agentic Llm can figure it out.
If you bought one without root… you may have a chance never connecting it.
If it’s one on your WiFi that doesn’t have a root exploit the only safe thing to do is change your WiFi password.
If you don’t own your TV assume it’s pwnd.
I wonder if it’s possible to hack my LG remote to use local voice models like Parakeet hosted within the LAN…? To trigger home assistant light settings, adjust blinds, switch on and off AV devices etc
If I understand well the rooting process basically asks me to tell a website my ip and exploitable tv version... Is that not basically inviting them to make me part of a botnet?
If you really have root access, you can check for yourself.
Check what exactly? Run wireshark 24/7 and inspect every network packet for the malicious bits?
Thanks for that first link, was finally able to root my B4, took less than 10 minutes.
Does this guide eliminate google play services? If not, then you still don't really control it. For reference, on my Pixel 6 Pro, GrapheneOS gets 2x the advertised battery life until you add Google Play Services back into a sandbox. At that point, it gets advertised battery life.
I assume the TVs Google backdoors are even worse (video scraping, etc, etc) since they are not power constrained.
LG Web OS is not android based, so that should be no concern
Good for them!
If you'd never heard of WebOS (which sounds a bit like "eggs" in spanish), the story of how it was developed by Palm, then killed by HP and re-released as a TV OS after being acquired by LG is fascinating. It could do real multitasking on a tablet in 2010, years before either iPads or Android tablets could.
Just install microG or Mind the Gapps
I had no idea google play services uses that must power. Another good reason to get rid of it.
Thanks for this rooting guide
Is it possible to root a Samsung?
Yes, but the ecosystem is far less mature. I managed to dump the contents of my S90F using this repository: https://github.com/chris-ritsen/samsung-tv-root/releases
The root is transient, and Samsung TVs also have Knox security which I presume you really don’t want to trip. Some parts of the file system are protected by SMACK which even root can’t access.
I’m working on reverse engineering the applications that run in that SMACK context to see if there’s any way to gain access.
buying expensive equipment to deliberately take advantage of a now-exploit is such a bad idea, and it's bit me more than once in the past few decades.
and ethically, what's the point in giving hostile corporate groups any money ? I get that you're breaking out of their mega subsidized and profit-locked walled garden, but 'sold units' is still a metric they'll use to positively enforce their strategies going forward, and as with all goods the vulnerabilities will get more and more exotic until totally pushed out of public availability much like the newest console gens.
The manufacturer will price in the value of ads and the such. So if you never connect it to WiFi, you get a good deal on the hardware. The same is true if you buy a tv and connect it to a traditional antenna (all tv’s in America are required by law to support this). You can always take it back if the firmware is not the right version to root.
Vote with your wallet though. If the price is not an issue (like the OP seems to be saying "I don’t mind paying a premium"), then there's no point in encouraging these kind of practices, even if they're pretty common for these kind of device.
Unfortunately though I think you are right and the best thing to do is just get one that has the specs you want never connect it to the internet and just get a companion device for the connected stuff like a Shield Pro (aging device but I did not catch up to what was the cool new things for those)
> sold units' is still a metric they'll use to positively enforce their strategies
Exactly, if we want change the sales numbers have to go down. That means don't by LG, Samsung and who have you, it also means telling friends and family to go buy something else... but what?
It could be a loss leader where they make all their money with ads and spyware. I don't know if that's the case, but if it is, they'd lose money from the purchase and never make it back.
A lot of people didn't know and already own this stuff. We can always buy second hand.
Yeah, step 1, buy a TV with this firmware version... As if they told you in the store before you purchase it.
Mostly had success by buying it second hand and checking the firmware version
How does the "chromecast" work as you described? Is it just DLNA/DIAL?
This is so cool! My next TV is definitely going to be a rootable one.
"Use some set top box and don't connect tv to internet" is a common advice, but what about ethernet through hdmi? Will the TV really not reach the internet through the box you use? If not, then what is the purpose of Hdmi HEC?
Recently I've had to deal with this same problem - get a new TV for living room. Personally, I do not watch TV at all, but kids want to see cartoons when having their breakfast. I spent a week reading forums and came to conclusion that best solution would be to buy a "dumb TV" and connect it to a PC I trust, but it appears there are no dump TVs in my rage of 55" and larger. So, I bought "Google TV" based TCL.
When I brought it home, I never connected it to Ethernet or WiFi. Instead, I connected it to my laptop over USB, then using adb I uninstalled almost every application from it. It took me quite some time to figure out what app is possible to remove and what should be kept to let TV functionality to work. I even had to factory-default it a couple of times because some random apps I removed were crucial for Android to work. :) I think it took me 5-6 hours to clean it. Now it has only basic TV functionality like any dump TV does, I can watch air and cable TV channels, watch movies and play music from USB storage. If there's a need to watch something online, I connect it over HDMI to my small mini-PC that runs FreeBSD. I think I'm satisfied with the result. :-)
PS: Yesterday I opened the case and disconnected WiFi antenna. Just in case.
This is not even a viable option these days: secondary processors, the potential for a backchannel to some installed app on a device in the home (this has not made headlines, but it’s possible), tying an account to the device proactively.. The TV industry really ran to collect “their” data
Though he didn't connect any network.
Don't give them ideas
To put a finer point on it: these are ideas they had long ago and already ran with…
And I think there’s Ethernet over HDMI to consider too.
That was never implemented in any devices and is now a vestigal limb of the HDMI spec.
> PS: Yesterday I opened the case and disconnected WiFi antenna. Just in case.
While this couldn't hurt, it also won't stop the TV from being able to connect to wifi. I ran my desktop without an antenna attached for months. The speed noticeably improved when I attached an antenna but it was fine for browsing the web and downloading software updates without one.
Better to replace the wifi antenna with a dummy load.
OP means that some WiFi antennae are soldered to the motherboard and cannot be easily removed.
When building my PC, I got a PCI WiFi card but it turns out there was also a direct WiFi network interface built into the motherboard somehow
They would be traces with pretty obvious patterns and easy to cut.
But I don't the GP comment was talking about that; I have also used WiFi without an antenna (PCB or otherwise), and it was also slow for me.
A dummy load is probably the best idea: an impedance mismatch would obliterate any chance of anything working (including Bluetooth fwiw).
RF wireless always needs an antenna somewhere - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50333679
If you know what you are doing and have explicitly disconnected/cut all antennas including entire MIMO arrays (many people miss one or more antennas) in the motherboard then the only remaining explanation is "accidental antennas".
This is only possible if the WiFi-chip has dangling metal pins/traces/joints whose length is comparable to that of its wavelength, in which case these will act as makeshift antennas. These will pickup ambient WiFi RF, but for this to work at all you need lots of RF power i.e. a very strong signal strength which means you have to be very close to the WiFi router.
The whole thing works because of Physics and not Engineering (the "accidental" part) and hence very iffy (may not work at all) and should not be relied upon.
The point of a dummy load is to match the impedance so that all the radiative energy gets turned into heat and the transmitter is none the wiser.
Wouldn't reflections be worse (genuinely asking)?
No. Reflections happen with unmatched impedance.
Just wrap it in tinfoil like the cool kids
You didn’t explain your point. How does a tv connect to WiFi without a WiFI antena
You don't need an antenna. You can think of an antenna as simply being a signal booster.
That being said, without an antenna it is highly improbable that it could still find an open WiFi AP to connect to (especially if you don't have one in your house).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50333679
I would imagine the antenna just strengthens the incoming signal. You could still get reception/communication if the gateway/router/modem was near enough and not a lot of electrical shit attached (I would imagine that would generate more noise that could interfere)?
As an example - if you have a motherboard on your computer that supports wifi and comes with a port/plug for an antenna, you could remove that antenna and still receive a signal (IDK about sending) but it would suffer more signal loss due to the lack of antenna.
All that is just a guess of course. People more knowledgeable than me could explain/clarify.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50333679
>How does a tv connect to WiFi without a WiFI antena
Exactly the same way their PC did; re-read what they said.
Valid question.
I am not the person you asked the question of, but here is the answer;
Smart TVs have a built-in "WiFi-Chip" on the motherboard and its antenna hidden in the TV frame itself, exactly like the antennas in a Smartphone. The different radios on a Smart TV viz. OTA, WiFi, Bluetooth, Satellite, Zigbee etc. all operate at different frequency ranges and hence need their own antennas. Many of these antennas are either a) etched on the motherboard b) hidden within the plastic back frame or c) directly taped to it.
Axiom of RF Wireless - There can be no transmission/reception without an antenna either external or internal.
PS: Since RF Wireless is everywhere today and most people do not have much of an idea of this technology, i very highly recommend the book The Essential Guide to RF and Wireless by Carl Weisman for study. Expressly written for a non-technical audience, it explains everything simply and beautifully. It really gave me the invaluable overview and the grounding i needed to understand this important science/technology.
The last TV I bought was a Kogan, and at first power up, or after a factory reset, it let you select where you wanted it to be a dumb screen with inputs only, or run the Google TV OS.
Did the TCL not have this option?
This'll be something only relevant to Australians, but it's amusing to see you reply to Ruslan to tell him about your Kogan!
> Kogan TVs are produced by Kogan.com, an Australian company founded by Ruslan Kogan in 2006.
That's not me for sure. :) But what I'm sure about it that their TVs are made either by Haier or TCL.
Hah! The odds of that feel extraordinarily small. This Australian is amused, at least.
This is somewhat an option. I have this TV too and when you set it up, you can choose to have it be a dumb tv, and even avoid Google TV if you want. In the US.
Mine did not have that option. There was some "demo" mode though, but it was useless.
Our TCL has this option, but there are multiple buttons on the remote that open youtube or ask zuck to club baby seal to death or whatever, and if you press those (i.e., sit on the remote), it goes into a labyrinth of google bullshit that complains about how you are missing important notifications and need to debug your wifi.
F--- Google, but at least the kids know those menus are bullshit, and do not have the wifi password at any rate.
Also, we're probably already to the point where I could just put it on a firewalled network, and have a [chinese open weight] LLM pop the factory android, get root, and reprogram the remote buttons to no-ops.
Or, I could open the remote up, physically cut out the spam buttons, then 3d print an alternative top-half of the shell without holes for them.
So many options, so much enshitification.
[delayed]
IIRC if I do this on my Bravia I also lose the image enhancements.
You mean you turn off slopping up your image? The kind of person who wants a dumb TV probably wants any "enhancements" off too.
At least on our TCL (which has an array of thousands of back lights) some of the unhance options actually need to be turned on.
We bought it because it has crazy high brightness (it is in a bright room with direct sunlight hitting the panel while we are watching it), and while it can beat back the sun, it cannot do so by just turning all the zones on 100% because it would melt or something.
So, if all the image slopping were turned off, the contrast ratio would drop 100x, and the TV wouldn't really be fit for purpose.
(For when the sun is not actively trying to kill the panel, I have a de-slop shortcut setup. That also has the backlight enhance stuff turned on -- as low as possible -- to get true black on the LCD. It works OK. OLED is not quite there yet for this corner case.)
This kind of trade-off is often a dark pattern used when forced to offer a feature by regulators or by competitors offering it. The evil trick is complying with the regs or being able to advertise the feature but making it so unattractive users won't activate it, enabling the manufacturer to still earn that sweet $35-$60 / yr from advertising, app install payments, rev share and selling your viewing data.
> the image enhancements.
Having spent a couple decades working in and around digital video production tooling and engineering, as well as being a filmmaker and home theater enthusiast, it's worth mentioning that today almost all television image enhancement features are net negative, even if they make the image subjectively 'pop' or motion appear smoother on typical scenes, they'll introduce artifacts or trade-offs in other kinds of scenes.
In my experience doing a lot of testing over the years with objective signal analysis tools at work as well as subjectively across 7 generations of upgrades in my own home theater, the trade-offs aren't worth it. There are a few context and content specific exceptions but they're quite rare and usually involve slightly improving significantly degraded signals which no longer exist in most home theaters (eg noise reduction in analog sources like laserdisc, DCT macro-block smoothing in highly compressed old MPEG 1/2 sources or dynamic range expansion on legacy SD sources).
With today's 4K and HD digital sources encoded at high bit rates in modern codecs, the director, colorist and mastering engineer can finally deliver their precise intent all the way to your eyeballs. The ~$20 chip calculating synthetic frames and pixels in your TV introduces surface curb appeal at the cost of artifacts and a poorly integrated image. If it actually made the image look better, the director and colorist have more and better tools than that $20 chip that they're already applying to the source. You're just turning a $20 chip loose on 'full auto' to guess at (and often undo or muddy) intentional enhancements manually applied frame by frame over days by experts.
Do whatever you like but I encourage you to critically audition each of those enhancements across a range of source types (4K, HD, HDR, HDR10, SDR, 24, 30, and 60 frame) and diverse scenes (low-light, quick panning, smooth dollies, and synthetic test signals, etc). Once you compare the before/after across that breadth back-to-back you'll see what I mean. I run my calibrated, high-end 3-laser projector (150" screen) as close to neutral, native settings as I can get and it looks sensational. And to be clear I'm not being a purist, if 'enhancements' really improved some scenes meaningfully without degrading other scenes, I'd be "Fuck the director's intent, it's just better." But for every scene an enhancement improves, I can queue up a scene from another film it makes noticeably worse. Fortunately, on most high-end Sony TVs you can get an un-hyped, accurate image in the standard UX without going to the calibrator or factory menus.
> Having spent a couple decades working in and around digital video production tooling and engineering, as well as being a filmmaker and home theater enthusiast, it's worth mentioning that today almost all television image enhancement features are net negative
Yep, generally you don't want anything the TV manufacturer markets as "enhancements." They basically all add things to the signal that were not part of the director's or video editor's vision. Any cinephile will remind you that there is one correct setting for "brightness," "contrast," "color," and "tint". "Sharpness" should almost always be zero, and any other setting that claims to "enhance" the picture should be turned off for correct output.
The worst ones now are the "motion smoothing" modes that take your normal FPS movie and try to interpolate them up to 60FPS, 120FPS or even 240FPS, giving them that cheap, crappy "soap opera" effect. Turn it off as soon as you turn on your TV for the first time.
While this is generally true, there are some notorious cases where the director's intent was terrible, and the image definitely needs more contrast and brightness to see what's going on.
Mostly agreed. However, I find the motion smoothing works nice on my 30fps video games.
>motion smoothing works nice on my 30fps video games.
Of course a modern console only managing 30fps is the actual 'bug' :-). But I agree that's one of the narrow exception cases where an 'enhancement' might be a net benefit. Although if you're going to use synthetic frames, doing it in the console can be better because intra-frame motion hinting might be available and, even if it's not, the console's frame gen is trained on game content where a TV's chip is cross-function and far less capable (both in look-ahead and motion vector count). But I know some consoles don't have frame gen, so in that case it's a win.
1) Would you consider publishing which apps you removed? (A wiki on making smart devices dumb - cars, TVs, refrigerators, tractors ... - would be useful, though I'm not suggesting you make and manage it yourself.)
2) Why bother removing the apps if it has no network connection? Defense in depth is sensible to me, but maybe there's something else I'm missing ...
3) Why not buy a large desktop computer monitor, or are those no longer 'dumb' either?
Not the person you are responding to but:
1) All the google data gathering crap, and all the "give permission to garbage preload to turn on the microphone" bullshit (and look for a physical mic switch; ours has that. Also, turn off notifications, because, do you want notifications telling you the wifi does not work? If you have an android phone, do this on your phone first.
2) Less crap = less backlog of surveillance data if you ever accidentally need to put it online. Also, see (1).
3) You can't get a nice 55"-100" desktop monitor for < $2K.
> Yesterday I opened the case and disconnected WiFi antenna. Just in case.
I'm sure it won't be long before these bastards embed a cell phone modem deeply into the device :(
What a crazy world we live in.
Ppl worry so much about privacy, but are fine having kids watch TV when they eat breakfast.
What do you mean? Obviously consuming too much media, or consuming anything too much of it is not good, but how does that negate concerns about inadvertently inviting for-profit corporations to your breakfast and every intimate conversation at home?
Those are completely unrelated concerns.
Buy any TV, just don’t connect it to the internet at all, ever.
Plug in an Apple TV or any other streaming device if you want digital content. If your want terrestrial content ensure the TV has the relevant input connections on the back.
No TV at all, for series and movies get at projector and some sound system, to keep update with the news, read or listen to newspaper in the morning and that is it.
First of all, open the TV and disconnect the wireless radio from the main board, on mine (Samsung) it was just unplugging one cable (AI or Google it). I dislike doing stuff like that, but it was easy in my case, maybe you'll be lucky, too.
Second, never use the "apps" built into the TV.
Next, don't plug Ethernet into the TV. Plug HDMI cables into the TV.
Use a box of your choice on the other end of the HDMI cables. This is now the box that you trust. (Roku? Shield? Blu-ray? MacBook? PC? Linux? Playstation? XBox? Whatever you want.)
The Smart TV itself is now fine. Choose the devices you plug into it to play content. The TV just shows it.
The thing I'd be worried about when doing this is spending $1000+ on a TV, then realizing it has some sort of pre-downloaded ads that it shows on the main screen ("sign up for your free six months of HBO Max!") or otherwise has a nag prompt that appears to tell you to connect to WiFi. I think that would be basically intolerable.
Been a few years since I had to get a new one, but I booted mine up, switched to the HDMI input for my AppleTV, and never looked back. Just boots straight into the AppleTV input when you use the AppleTV remote to wake it up.
We have to use the actual TV remote to debug some audio issues or disable the motion blur stuff again every once in awhile, but otherwise it might as well just be a display for the AppleTV. I’ve only seen the actual home screen of the TV a handful of times.
I guess it’s probably still spying on us somehow, and it seems like different models make using the AppleTV remote and booting right into the AppleTV harder than others, so your mileage may vary.
You have to be careful with this path. Some manufacturers embed LED's into the bezel and blink them at you (part of the IR sensor for the remote, to prevent you from taping over with electrical tape) if they do not have network.
Others just overlay banners on top of the video.
Caveat emptor.
That hasn't been my experience so far.
If its an Android TV, you can use an alternate launcher to avoid home screen ads.
Oh the horror!
> First of all, open the TV and disconnect the wireless radio from the main board
This. Never trust software switches. See my other reply for what I suggest instead of "streaming boxes" that aren't any better than the TV firmware.
So you think that if the TV doesn't have your Wi-Fi password, it surreptititously turns on Wi-Fi and runs cracking software to obtain it anyway?
I think the more logical concern would be that it would wait until it could find any potential unsecured wifi to use. I live in an apartment building and there a few wifi access points that I can reach from my apartment with no security. Though one of them appears to be an air conditioner??
Say the TV finds such an access point and uses it. It phones home and so now the manufacturer now knows that such and such serial # TV is located in that neighborhood.
They still need to tie it to you. If you've not given it a shred of personal information, it has to be fingerprinting via surreptitious audio/video recording, or else by obtaining the purchase info from the retailer (like the name and billing address from your credit card) and matching that by serial number (which would have to be recorded during purchase).
I wouldn't be surprised if they did audio fingerprinting. But even if they don't, the third parties who are buying the data can easily re-identify the users by doing data fusion with other sources (smartphone location data from other vendors)
Not that I have any evidence it's happening, but it'd be more likely for TV manufacturers to partner with ISPs that offer public WiFi using the access points they rent to their customers.
No but things like Amazon sidewalk exist
The low bandwidth always on kindle modems could also be feasibly built into TVs for telemetry, and may be cheaper than the money they could get from selling the data.
Thank you. This is exactly what I was thinking reading people who think you need to do more than simply never connect it to your wifi.
it's not just your wifi you have to worry about. neighbour can have insecure wifi. or deliberately open ones like coffee shops, free municipal hotspots, etc.
That sounds like a TV manufacturer is going to be having one hell of a lawsuit if they're breaking into other peoples wifi networks.
Wasn't this exactly what happened in the LG exposé that just came out? It connects to any WiFi network it can, your will be damned.
There are available IoT networks it could use, though I don't think all of them run over Wifi.
Honest question. Do projectors also suffer?
The one we have is even worse. It won't really work well outside of things like airplay or chromecast, and those require wifi. It was extremely cheap though.
(It has an HDMI port, but it's clearly a second class citizen in the menus, etc. Default to HDMI on power up is intentionally broken. It's also intentionally designed to turn into a brick if we ever lose the remote. At boot, it puts a screen up saying to press a button on the remote if you want it to display anything else, and that screen never times out. If you plug in an HDMI input, it says "HDMI input detected; press OK.". There's no "OK" button on the projector itself. You have to press the OK button on the remote.)
Not from privacy issues, but all the typical ones from projectors never went anywhere: low brightness, high heat, low maximum operating lifetime, fan noise, and hard to set up (impossible in some places).
I don't think this apply to most UST projector nowadays. I mean, operating lifetime is probably still an issue, fan noise while higher than a TV (which doesn't have it) is not an issue anymore, heat.. well, come close to my (old, ok) OLED LG TV and you can still warm your hands (although not like the previous plasma one I had, that's true). For the setup I don't know exactly but there are online shops that gives you the 1st setup for free (at the cost of doing the unboxing for you). Also probably nowadays with an LLM almost anybody that care enough to research and buy a projector can do it, I guess.
Yes, I want to buy a projector this Black Friday (Hisense PX3-Pro).
Faar less. A larger fraction of projectors remain dumb HDMI to light converters. Tis been my own plan if i settle on wanting a tv.
If it has any kind of in-built smart TV style OS - then yes.
> disconnect the wireless radio from the main board
Can you explain why you can't just not give the TV your Wi-Fi password?
Or are we worried about the case when the TV did have Wi-Fi (due to it being mandatory for some initial setup, say), but we don't trust that "Forget Network" and "Wi-Fi off" are actually honored?
Suppose the device surreptitiously reconnects to Wi-Fi in spite of being told to forget it. You may be able to block it in your router and failing that, change the access point password.
No?
People believing even without proof that TVs connect to open WiFi. This would be trivial to prove if true, yet there is no evidence. In addition, it doesn’t make any sense for any of them to bother. 99% of consumers willingly connect their TV to WiFi because they want to use it with the built-in streaming apps. It wouldn’t make any sense for them to waste time capturing the 1% of users most likely to be evade them anyway just to cause a PR and/or legal fiasco.
Xfinity runs an open WiFi for its customers. If you instead their gateway and don’t change anything (which is 99% of users) any Xfinity customer can get online. Several of my neighbors have them, and you can’t walk around in my commercial district without seeing the “Xfinity WiFi” SSID. It would be smart for TV mfrs to do a deal with Xfinity and their equivalents world wide in order to sell viewer data to advertisers and receive “fresh” ads, even if the TVs are excluded from the residential network.
This is actually so very doable in US, cutting deal with those like XFinity.
But if the TV manufacturer is smart in their spying game, they could also be probing for any public SSIDs to connect to when no local internet access is setup.
They don't have to cut direct with the operator. They can go up a little higher in the chain to a global "wifi offload" operator like Wefi.
https://www.wefi.com/wifi-offload
Then they can just get Passpoint access through a shitton of various endpoints.
Why make it so complicated? Just include an IoT cell modem with an esim.
So your TV just connects to random wifi networks? That sounds a bit insane.
That example isn't a random wifi network, it's the Xfinity network.
But also, you think tv manufacturers are sane? They have proven that they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt, in my opinion.
It doesn't sound insane, actually. Keeping in mind, Windows XP did exactly that for a while until everyone realized, "hey, that's a security issue". I would swear MacOS too, but I wouldn't bet money on it.
>It would be smart for TV mfrs to do a deal with Xfinity and their equivalents world wide in order to sell viewer data to advertisers and receive “fresh” ads, even if the TVs are excluded from the residential network.
Doesn't exactly sound like a thing to be that concerned about if you never plug in your TV. If you buy a TV right now and never plug it in, how would it know about any future deal with Xfinity to connect to its open networks? And if it had a feature to connect to random open Wi-Fi networks right now, that wouldn't be hard to prove. My LG has never shown up in my Wi-Fi client list despite my open guest Wi-Fi. You can even test it by naming your guest network "Xfinity WiFi".
Taking apart your TV and pulling out the wireless radio sounds like absolute overkill to me. Feel free to do it if it makes you feel better. It will definitely not allow it to send data (over Wi-Fi) under any circumstance. I'm just not convinced that the alternative is that much riskier.
Our Samsung fridge will mesh network with any Samsung TV specifically to exfiltrate marketing info, at least according to the manual. (The fridge even has marketing surveillance cameras in it).
I assume at some point, appliance manufacturers will start "partnering" with things that actually need WiFi for exfiltration purposes. Phones would be a good place to start.
That way, we'd need to either Faraday cage our friends' phones, not invite them over, or send marketing pervs video feed of our moldy pickles.
To prevent RF transmission.
We're worried about it connecting to a neighbor's unsecured network or some sort of unpublished mesh capability for exfiltrating your data and downloading ads.
Setup an unprotected network that is isolated and you fully control, see if it connects at all.
That’s what is so insane about this conspiracy theory. It would be trivial to prove yet somehow no one has ever gotten around to it.
Because you can't possibly prove it won't happen in the future...
Easiest rule in security is to just disable unnecessary services. If you are never using the WiFi, you might as well disable the hardware completely
It may be trivial to prove again and again, but it is even more trivial to just disconnect it
It might connect to a neighbor's WiFi if it has no password.
HDMI has an Ethernet channel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#HEC
Any chance the TV can phone home via that? One would have to make sure the HDMI cable physically doesn't have the Ethernet pairs, or set the trusted box to filter the traffic.
The HDMI standard defines an Ethernet channel as an optional feature. Approximately zero consumer products have ever implemented it. There's no need to worry about an unsuspecting consumer having supporting devices at both ends of the cable.
And the channel they allocated for it was reallocated with different encoding for eARC.
I don’t know of any consumer laptops or tv boxes like shield/Apple TV that implement that so that. It’s basically a non-issue unless it’s implemented on the HDMI devices.
If you use something you can control, like a Linux box, this isn't an issue. Even if the device did get added, and then udev or network manager auto configured, a firewall script should protect you.
So, I have an Nvidia Shield TV Pro. I dislike how Google had to put ads on the homescreen (ads which are not suitable for my children), and I just checked: it has Android patch level Jan 2026. It is, as of today, Nov 2026. 10 months without patches. So no patch for eMudhra, no patch for Brotli, and you name it.
Other than that, I agree regarding TV, with one caveat: you might want to update the firmware right away, or at some point. The device might need to phone home for that. In order to achieve that, you can put up a temp WLAN AP with your smartphone.
With regards to my STB: I am considering cancelling all my subscription services and simply downloading everything to my NAS. This already runs Jellyfin. Then all I need is a Jellyfin client and HDMI. Perhaps a RPi 4 or RPi 5 would be suffice there.
I use ProjectTV as an alternative launcher. No ads.
same
While practical advice its just odd to me there's no major legislation or movement or activism or boycotts about this. We just accept our TV might be silently recording everything we say in our home and the fix is to not plug it into the internet.
Remember this when you vote. A progressive swing is coming, and if we will ever regain privacy rights, it'll be when the next swing hits.
> disconnect the wireless radio from the main board
Why?
Even if you never connect the TV to your WiFi network it will constantly scan for public networks and also scan for any devices that will respond. “Off” doesn’t actually mean off anymore. :(
Do you have any specific examples of devices where this has been implemented? Because I've heard this idea thrown around a lot as a hypothetical, but never any concrete evidence that it's been done.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/may/15/google-ad...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2011/apr/25/goog...
https://theweek.com/tech/wifi-signals-now-tracking-users-at-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlbjUvkoyBA
https://wigle.net/
And here's the opt-out steps to get Google to stop scanning your Wifi: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/1725632#how_opt_out&z...
None of those links involve smart TVs at all, let alone smart TVs which connect to open wireless networks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9uefFYe6bM
Hypothetical is beside the point. The hardware is there, the software is closed and you can't verify what is really happening, so the potential threat exists.
Connecting to open wireless networks is exactly the sort of behavior that would be trivial to confirm the presence of, if it were actually present. You wouldn't even need any unusual tools - just set up an open access point and see if the TV connects to it.
Why would I care that some device to which I never gave a shred of my personal information of any kind (e.g. not logging it into any online account) found an open public network that I don't use and that has no connection to me?
Sure, I would be disturbed that it's doing that sort of thing in spite of Wi-Fi being explicitly turned off.
What is the threat to me though?
Because it's acting with your IP address, so attempts to prevent whatever shady botnet things it gets up to may also interfere with legitimate use by humans on your network.
It can record audio, sometimes video, and fingerprint what you watch on it. Proximity can be enough to identify you.
They have your location, and can detect your interests from what you watch, and fingerprint you. Things like this are pieces of a larger, comprehensive picture of your life.
Also, how do you pay for streaming channels, etc., if you don't give it any information?
The assumption here is that we don't give the TV any personal information; it's just used as a monitor. The content comes from some other device connected to an input (e.g. HDMI1). (That device may raise privacy issues, but we are concerned with the TV).
Without either doing the fingerprinting from surreptitious audio recording in the room that other commenters mention, or else matching the unit serial number to the purchaser (requiring the retailer to leak personal info to the manufacturer), they can't match the unit's location to our identity.
I see. Roku, for example, takes screenshots of the TV N times per second (and sends them home).
Remember that it doesn't take much to identify someone: Gender, birthdate, and (zip code?) uniquely identify ~80% of Americans. From viewing habits, it should be easy to fingerprint someone - Chicago Bears fan; strong technology interest; on your city block; likes AI porn with Lara Croft; home during day Sa, Su, Tu, Th; watches YouTube videos about ...
Samsung TVs were literally recording people with microphones and doing voice recognition. Unless you don’t speak in your home, it will have you identified quite quickly.
If we want privacy, should we be buying a TV which has these peripherals? I don't think a TV should have such things, so I would sooner rip out or damage the microphone and camera if I had to get such a TV. The ability to connect to a network could be useful; I'd not mess with it.
Is that even legal? It shouldn't be.
ACR
Because the TV is recording your voice, what you watch and possibly taking pictures, depending on the brand, and it needs a connection to send that information to whoever will pay for it.
So your idiot brother doesn't connect your spy TV to the WiFi when he comes to visit, instead of using the goddamn Chromecast that is already plugged into it. >:(
This. I've had this happen with relatives who come to visit. It's unkind to tell them "Don't fuck with the TV" or "Ignore the TV if it tells you it wants to connect to something."
They want to be "helpful" and show me they can "work tech" by doing stuff like this. They don't understand that the TV is manipulating them. I don't want to have to explain to them that I'm basically a neurosurgeon and they just tried to impress me by drilling a hole in somebody's head. Because the TV told them to.
Disconnecting the wifi avoids the need for unpleasant conversations.
This seems very specific.............you wanna talk about it? /hug-offer
Dogsitter in my case.
Happened to elderly relatives. I had it set up so nicely and someone 'helped', and then it seems rude to disconnect what they did.
Yours too? Dang.
I’ve heard the TV’s will try to connect to any passwordless, public access point it can reach even without your approval.
While I've certainly heard plenty of theorizing about the possibility of this happening, I have yet to see any conclusive evidence that it has ever been done.
EDIT: What I am referring to here is the specific allegation that smart TVs will connect to open wireless networks without being commanded to do so. It's not a catch-all for any nefarious thing involving TVs or wireless networks.
It's been confirmed in the recent LG scandal.
The denied ones that have yet to be proven?
LG denies TV spying claims, says tracking and snooping concerns 'not true' (635 points, 2 months ago, 494 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49645480
And that isn't even the same thing either! (This seems to be a recurring theme.) If it were true that LG TVs "spy" on ambient audio, that would certainly be bad, but it wouldn't also establish that the TVs were connecting to open wireless networks to exfiltrate that data.
LG scans the list of nearby networks. It does not automatically connect to any.
You still run the risk of a software update doing a tv to tv mesh network. You gotta own the software or remove the radio.
How many open WiFi networks are there within range of your TV?
Comcast runs a separate "Xfinity WiFi" on all their routers, any Comcast user can connect to it with their credentials. Would they strike a deal with TV manufacturers to let them use it? It would not surprise me.
Pretty sure this is a known offering from Comcast, you just have to talk to the right sales rep... I haven't yet seen any evidence of a TV using it (yet), but hve been told they will sell a company IoT or fleet device access to their wifi endpoints for enough money. I'm not sure it would be cost effective for mass market device surveillance, though.
Also Amazon does this same model with their Sidewalk service, which can run over bluetooth or lora, instead of wifi... and is specifically priced to be usable for large numbers of devices.
It would however surprise many.
I guess for people living in cities where different neighbours move in and out and have open WiFis.
If the devices still scan all the time...
Living on the countryside there is no such problem.
Even ISP routers come with a default password now. I can't remember the last time I found an actual open WiFi.
All the TV manufacturers have to do is make a deal with Xfinity to jump on their AP, and you're toast. I don't know why anybody would defend them or give them any bit of slack on this. Once they figure this out, they will do it.
unfortunately ethernet capable hdmi exists
No, it doesn’t in any real sense. Nothing ever implemented it and the channel was reallocated to eARC with different encoding so they couldn’t even co exist.
> Use a box of your choice on the other end of the HDMI cables. This is now the box that you trust. (Roku? Shield? Blu-ray? MacBook? PC? Linux? Playstation? XBox? Whatever you want.)
If they choose a Firestick or Roku what's the difference? XD
I went and researched this, and found that basically none of the TV brands were anything but creepy on privacy.
What I’ve ended up doing was I got an LG and never hooked it up to Wifi/internet, and then use an Apple TV to watch things on.
It’s a bit annoying if I want to switch to a game console as Apple TV can’t control the TV’s input channel, but otherwise works very well.
Make sure the TV supports HDMI CEC.
>I went and researched this, and found that basically none of the TV brands were anything but creepy on privacy.
Yeah they do. Go to your shopping center or airport and you'll see LG and Samsung displays everywhere. And that's the key word, 'displays' not 'TVs'.
Both sell large displays meant for 100% user ownership with no spyware or mandatory internet connection, you just have to buy those and not their TVs.
The catch? They come at steep prices compared to consumer TVs, unless you can land a deal on the used market. But that's the cost of turning a profit on screens with no spyware and ads.
The other catch is that those displays are built for heavy duty use, not for picture quality, and as such aren’t going to look as good as even a budget consumer OLED TV.
Disagree. They look more than fine, much better than the budget TV with their fake saturation turned to 11 out of the box. If you think that looks good you might have gotten used to it.
Post specs, in my research these types of displays universally prioritise brightness over all other specs.
https://solutions.lg.com/us/hospitality-tvs/lg-55am960h0ud
Hotel TVs, same panels as consumer models with different supporting hardware and stock calibrations. These are actually dimmer than the consumer models to increase panel longevity.
They tend to lack gaming features like high/variable refresh rate but they're more functional as normal TVs than digital signage displays.
They have similar OSes as the consumer models and can run the same apps but don't have ads unless the operator wants them to and can be centrally managed, support internal IPTV networks, etc.
The ones the serve menus and the ones that serve eye-level video ads are definitely also built for picture quality. Still IPS for the most part, but uniformity and colour calibration can be movie-worthy
Not a problem, coming from a 1080p unit haha
Are you sure those displays have everything needed for a smooth TV experience? Do they have eARC to connect a sound bar, and stuff like that? Modern TVs are also quite good at upscaling 1080/720p content, screens often aren't.
(I don't care about integrated speakers though)
1080 (even 720 really) is absolutely fine at normal viewing distances for most streaming content.
If you're a videophile you might care. Most people would not notice.
The pattern of "is feature X supported?" being responded to by "don't worry you don't need it" is so common in tech/OSS forums, and so awful.
it's funny, I used to think and care about this (or thought I did) back when 1080 was the common thing and 4k was new and exotic, but now I really don't care.
I think what changed was the realisation that even with 4k hardware in theory, what you're actually seeing is so variable based on bandwidth and different services' support for different shows you basically don't know anyway and thus it doesn't really make much sense to care about it.
Besides which, you realise that things that are made to be more enjoyable on 4k, like where that would actually make a difference to how good it is, are probably not that much worth watching anyway outside of demos. Certainly it's not, for example, a factor on which you want to be choosing what series to watch.
Exactly, streaming video is so compressed that 4k will just let you see all the compression artifacts more clearly.
Or jailbreak/defang the consumer TVs to have privacy anyway, and teach others how, and screw over the entire profit model of the surveillance-subsidized TVs to force things to be sold at a real cost.
>Or jailbreak/defang the consumer TVs to have privacy anyway
And how will my 50 year old mom and 70 year old grandpa know how to do that? "Hey Claude scan the wifi for a LG TV, hack it, root it and give me the keys to install what I want, then lock out LG from access it?"
As always, the sane fix is in government legislation and enforcement of privacy regulations. But this isn't happening since knowledge of smart device spyware across politicians and the voting population is small and governments want to use that data dragnet that smart devices enable for their own means.
"Hey Claude...."
Well, why not?
"your account has been terminated for violations of our T&Cs"
I have bad news for you. Those commercial TV-s also phone home if connected to the internet. For software updates, analytics regarding digital signage usage etc.
For a long time they haven't been just dumb displays. They also run Tizen or WebOS for digital signage applications.
> that's the cost of turning a profit on screens with no spyware and ads.
I don't think that the cost of TVs has gone down when they added spyware and ads.
You could say that that's the cost of turning less profits, rather, and I suspect that TV manufacturers keep the costs of normal displays high just to discourage their purchase by normal people.
With Amazon Sidewalk I don't think not hooking it up to the internet is an option anymore, unless you live out in the boonies
> Amazon Sidewalk[0] is a low-bandwidth long-range wireless communication protocol developed by Amazon. It uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) for short distance communication, and 900 MHz LoRa and other frequencies for longer distances.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Sidewalk
>With Amazon Sidewalk I don't think not hooking it up to the internet is an option anymore
"Anymore"? So far there's no evidence any TVs are using it, so you're safe for now.
There was no evidence about all the spying until 200,000,000 LG displays were sold.
it's harder to disguise 900mhz radios in devices because it'll be in the FCC listing.
"for now"
Boonies? No. Literally EVERYONE has a damn Alexa and it's on the network. The coverage map is staggering. https://coverage.sidewalk.amazon/
New business idea: fitted faraday cages for smart tvs
In reality that'll never work because the front of the tV needs to be exposed. At best you can make your whole room/house a faraday cage, but that'd be insanely expensive to do correctly. You might think a microwave is a faraday cage, but a phone can still get calls even if you put it inside.
Some well placed copper tape on the back of the tv will likely get the job done in many cases.
Or just rm the nic
Great idea, assuming that doesn't disable the entire system
Our TV remote can actually control our Apple TV. It's definitely good enough, and through some witchcraft, it works when the TV is not connected to WiFi.
For those of us that are pickier about UX, even a basic A/V receiver solves this problem.
> It’s a bit annoying if I want to switch to a game console
Yes because you have to fetch a shitty TV remote with buttons inspired by a Boeing 747 cockpit, which must be aimed directly at the TV because it uses shitty infra-red.
Am I close? :)
Better hope that no guest connects the TV to their phone hotspot to watch their Netflix like one user in a previous post reported happened to them.
TV manufacturers are not just creepy on privacy. They are outright stalkers.
The whole TV medium was fully and expertly enshittified by advertising decades ago.
The next level is today: Now you buy a giant plastic browser that includes a fully enshittified surveillance OS.
There is even a spec (as yet unused...) for Ethernet over HDMI (HEC , HDMI 1.4). Silicon Image (founder of HDMI) and Broadcom demonstrated the capability to TV manufacturers behind closed doors (says $searchEngine).
Whatever screen you use to watch movies, you will inevitably find your captain's log will contain more joy for the crew by discovering Jellyfin and sailing into deeper waters.
Just configure your game console to turn on the TV/set the input.
You avoided hooking your TV to a surveillance capitalism company that trains on your data to manipulate you. Great!
Then you hooked it to an external device of a surveillance capitalism company that trains on your data to manipulate you. Why?
Or plug in a cheap mini PC running a TV friendly Linux distro and give your data to no one.
Completely wrong. Apple goes to extraordinary lengths, to the point of harming the usability of their products, to protect user privacy and avoid collecting user data.
Apple could easily make tens of billions dollars extra if they spied more on their users.
Not completely, not anymore. Apple's gotten a taste of advertising dollars via the App store. Search for product A and product B will pay money to come first. Apple TV advertises for the shows they've made in the Apple TV app instead of going to your library. Same for Books.app.
The biggest indightment of Apple in my mind is the copy and pasting of links into iMessage. iMessages "helpfully" renders a preview so a dumb consumer doesn't have to see an ugly long text of a url. But in doing so, it also happens to hides the utm code that is used for tracking by marketers.
They've got their eye on that tens of billion dollars extra.
While I dislike Apple’s move to ads, I’m at a loss how accepting money to degrade search results is a privacy issue rather than just a UX quality issue. What information is Apple sharing with advertisers?
Where do they get the data to target the ads?
Please tell me it’s the search query.
It is.
Does Apple sell data on what I’m watching to third parties?
Linux is not a viable option for TV for the vast majority of users. There are no sit back, remote driven apps for the services they use.
KDE Plasma Bigscreen?
JellyFin or Plex. Personally i just use a Linux Mint desktop connected to the TV instead. Web browser for streaming and VLC for downloaded videos.
But JellyFin and Plex exist for people who don’t want that.
What the parent is saying is that the desktop versions of those programs are not remote friendly and the interface is not ideally scaled for 10-foot use. What you want are the Android TV versions, running on Waydroid or an x86 build of Android TV. See my other reply.
Jellyfin and Plex cannot stream from major streaming providers. Yes, I know the answer is pirating content but that’s a complete paradigm shift compared to what most people are used to. It’s an absolutely enormous extra requirement when you’re suggesting someone switch their TV to Linux.
Kind of simpler in a way wouldn't it be? One provider vs 8 different streaming providers.
No one seems to have a problem dealing with multiple streaming providers. They’re essentially just different submenus on the TV app.
Compare that to setting up a home server with a ton of storage, setting up torrenting/newsgroups, software to check for new releases and automatically download them, probably a VPN too… it’s a whole different world.
Apple is not a “surveillance capitalism company that trains on your data to manipulate you”. The exact opposite, actually.
Source: I work at Apple. The privacy story isn’t just marketing, it’s very real and part of every discussion.
You know why. Nobody wants to sysadmin their “friendly Linux distro” just to watch shows. Kodi is amateur hour compared to tvOS. Nowhere do people care more that it “just works” than the thing their TV remote talks to.
Nobody in the general public wants to do that, but I'd think some in the HN audience might feel differently (I mean, setting this up is part of the fun).
Personally, I use an RPi4 with libreelec, and it works great - including responding to my remote via HDMI-CEC. (There's also no need for any sysadmin with libreelec, which is designed to work out of the box.)
I literally bought a mini PC, installed Arch with KDE via archinstall, installed chromium, and haven't done any "sysadmin" since.
Yes, it "just works". Why wouldn't it?
You don’t have HDR and can’t pair and then send audio to bluetooth speakers via only the remote in 100 seconds. These basic things are table stakes. It does not “just work”.
Oh no! It might take more than a minute to connect to my brain rot!
The standard that the comment you're responding to is that the whole solution must be effortless even for someone with an IQ of 75. Don't try to stoop to their level, no amount of freedom or control justifies any level of effort to people like that. They'd rather have a system that forces them to view and verbally respond to ads every 10 minutes than one that requires them to learn anything more complex than what a toddler can figure out.
Even smart people have limited time and limited capacity for effort. Failure to Just Work is sand in their gears. Hand-rolled Linux TVs are a nonstarter.
The fact that Linux is a huge inconvenient waste of time to use for normal tasks has nothing to do with brainrot. You’re moving the goalposts.
You must realize there are things like 3blue1brown, Veritasium, and Numberphile on YouTube, right?
Buy any TV you want, ignore all instructions to connect it to the internet, then look for an HDMI port on the back. Plug an HDMI cable into one end, and in the other end plug in a cheap Linux computer like a used Intel NUC from ebay. Then use a nice air-mouse remote like the Pepper Jobs W10.
I watch any movie or TV show I want in 4k via Kodi, but then can alt tab to a Terminal or a real web browser.
Privacy, and dramatically more functionality than any TV would ship with anyway.
Using this setup to type this message right now on pc hooked to a projector in my garage from my couch.
It turns out we never needed Smart TVs in the first place. Just treat it as a screen for a desktop computer.
Samsung TVs (and probably others) will connect to other Samsung TVs in range and exfiltrate data via that route… merely not connecting the TV doesn’t present data harvesting
Iirc, Amazon uses a tool they call “sidewalk” for this purpose
They don’t do that. Do you have a source?
There’s something called Wi-Fi Direct but it requires explicit pairing. And Sidewalk isn’t on TVs. There’s no evidence of Samsung TVs trying to use each other as relays.
In that case, jailbreak it, or open it and unsolder the wifi antenna, or put some well placed copper tape until you no longer see any wifi traffic from the TV from other wifi capable devices running a wifi packet inspector.
The TV belongs to you and it will obey you with modest effort.
Alternatively, don't give your money to e-waste vendors.
Sure when the choice exists, but we should encourage de-fanging the hardware that is already purchased.
I want to know how to disable their external communication via wifi, I'd like to see how they are exfiltrating info. If I don't connect them to my wifi, apparently they connect to Xfinity wifi at your neighbors house.
Basically don’t buy Samsung or LG if you really care.
But that's the OP's question isn't it? What brand can you buy that isn't outright evil?
Especially considering some models now refuse to work without seeing an internet connection during the setup procedure
Sony has treated me well and I don’t have it internet connected. It’s the one brand I haven’t seen nag when you have the internet disconnected. Was also easy to just opt right out of connecting it. Pretty standard google tv too.
Better hope that no guest connects the TV to their phone hotspot to watch their Netflix like one user in a previous post reported happened to them.
Or use something Kodi as the OS and just have a TV like interface. You can also run a Jellyfin client on linux or with Kodi and have that as a reasonable interface for the TV too.
Yes. Or you can do the same thing with a regular monitor that has no wifi capabilities at all. Some are quite large, good quality and good price.
LG’s monitors were caught installing adware on Windows computers recently…
Through an HDMI connection?
Through Windows automatic driver downloads.
The problem here is Microsoft as much as LG. The same monitor on Linux wouldn't download anything. This would require root anyway.
Did this for years when I was single living in a tiny room. Nothing wrong with this either!
$1050:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1828914-REG/samsung_q...3 HDMI ports. Any downsides using as a TV?
Yours is the first comment in the hundred I've read that links a concrete product. I can't vouch for it, but kudos to you.
Looked a bit more closely, says it has an embedded signage player running on tizen, wonder the privacy implications. :-/
Unless you connect it to a network, you should be fine. The 3 HDMI ports give me the impression you’d be using it as a dumb monitor.
Yes, it doesn't have a TV tuner
This is something I haven’t used in more than ten years. Are you sure you need it?
VA panels aren't great (they're fine, just not great). 350 nits also isn't great. Most people are probably looking for more. It's also pretty overpriced, but I guess that's the price of privacy?
It’s built to run 16 hours a day, the specs probably derive from that.
If you are open to projectors they still make “home cinema” projectors that don’t have any smart features or connect to the internet.
I have a BenQ (710tki iirc) that is like this and I believe it meets all your stated requirements (size, resolution, etc). I’ve been very happy with it.
This is what I landed on as well - projector connected to an Apple TV. It cost a bit more, and there’s some extra setup, but the results are excellent.
The main issue switching to a projector is figuring out where you are going to position it (different projectors have different throw distances).
More money and more setup, but very worthwhile in the end IMO.
...and when you drill the holes in the wall, remember the lens is often to one side, and NOT dead centre to the projector.
Not that I would forget that tiny detail when I mounted mine. Of course not.
The best privacy method is to completely disconnect the TV from any wired or wireless network, and like you suggested to use it as a dummy display with the Apple TV (or whichever your favorite media player is). So in that sense you could just go to Costco (or any major electronics retailer if not in US) and pick one that you like the image & price.
I guess I am more concerned about random devices at home that need internet to work yet I have no idea what data they send where.
Not sure about the US experience, but here in Australia there are no dumb TVs for sale in our retail electronics stores. Every TV comes with some sort of "smart" OS.
It's the same way in the US. That's why they were saying to just buy any TV (which will almost certainly be a smart TV), then just treat it like a dumb TV by not connecting it to the internet.
I was able to disable a bunch of stuff on my LG so I never actually see the WebOS interface anymore.
I would disconnect the WiFi antenna as well and hope it doesn’t connect to nearby WebOS TVs via Bluetooth to pass telemetry so that the other TV uploads it to their mothership.
I assume that, in Europe, they’d need to be GDPR compliant, so that is a layer of protection the manufacturer can’t skip.
LG makes the best panels, in my opinion, but they’re also the most customer-hostile when it comes to privacy.
The easiest solution is to never give the TV network access at all (no WiFi, no Ethernet) and only drive it over HDMI, via an Apple TV for example. The onus then shifts to how much you trust Apple, and the TV becomes mostly a dumb display. That still isn’t a 100% guarantee, though, since the TV has radios and could potentially talk to other networks or devices without your knowledge. If you want certainty, the only real option is to remove the radios entirely, which can have side effects, like the remote no longer working if it relies on BLE.
Personally, I don’t like LG’s “smart” apps, so never using them isn’t much of a loss.
But if you’re more technically inclined and want to use a product you paid for the way you want, you can do what I did with my C1:
Root it, put it on a restricted VLAN with no WAN access and no outbound privileges to any device on the LAN, and enable SSH. These displays run webOS, which is Linux-based. Yes, you can literally SSH into your TV. :)
That let me deploy my own custom app that I drive over the network. My display also never actually turns “off”. I just paint black pixels when I’m not using it, so it’s very snappy when I want something on the screen. It works as a spare data and metrics display while I’m working, and as a media player (a simplified DIY Plex) when I’m not.
So I get the “smart” part of the TV without the privacy concerns.
I think you'll find most experts now agree that Samsung's QD-OLED panels have surpassed LG's WOLED panels.
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...
https://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/samsung-s-s99-h-qd-oled-tv-w...
The crown has changed hands most years since QD-OLED came out. I appreciate the citations. I wasn’t up to date on the 2026 models, but in 2025 both flagships were very close. Many reviewers called it a draw, iirc. That’s partly why I said “in my opinion”. Mine is also based on the general design of the sets. I’ve found the port placement, bezel, and stand design more to my liking on LGs, but that’s entirely subjective. I also cannot speak to how rootable Samsung sets are, since I don't own one.
I’m glad to see the crown change hands, though. It’d be ideal if there were more contenders.
Don't give LG your money. Jesus people stop it.
A real shame, BTW. WebOS is a very nice OS and their TVs could be perfect if they were more open.
Think of running emulators directory on the TV, or turning it into a VNC/RDP/X terminal.
Boycotting them is a completely reasonable response. Their stance on privacy is beyond ridiculous. Something right out of 1984.
The problem is that if you want a good OLED, there isn’t much of an alternative. Even if you don’t buy from LG or Samsung directly, they make essentially all the OLED TV panels on the market. A Sony or Panasonic OLED is still built on an LG or Samsung panel. So if you truly want to boycott them, your options for a quality modern display are very limited.
I bought my C1 before I was aware of how bad LG’s privacy posture was. The point of my comment is that you can still get the panel quality, and even some of the “smart” capability, without feeding them data, as long as you’re willing to treat the TV as a display and nothing else.
We have to block our TV from dialling home (there just aren't any privacy oriented 'smart' TVs). We chose to go down the DNS filtering route and pay for https://nextdns.io/ - it turns out it super helpful for a whole host of home network privacy jobs (ad blocks, kids safety filtering, security posture etc.). I can't stop recommending it to people.
Sceptre, in southern California, has a line of dumb displays.[1] HDMI/HDCP in, and that's about it. Walmart sells them, and of course they're on Amazon.
[1] https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV/U650CV-UMS-65-4K-UHD-TV...
Call your representative and talk about privacy and right to repair.
Vote for politicians who fight for privacy and right to repair.
Move to Europe ;-)
The simple answer is: any
Smart TVs are just a normie alternative for what tech enthusiasts were doing for 30ish years: put a computer next to the tv and use it.
Alternative, get yourself something capable of running Moonlight (https://moonlight-stream.org/) and run Sunshine (https://app.lizardbyte.dev/Sunshine/) on your workstation, I am even playing games this way. RPI 5 works great, also libreelec (https://libreelec.tv/) is excellent and has Moonshine plugin.
You buy a TV, NEVER connect it to the internet and set up small computer next to it. Obviously not Android based as it is spyware on its own.
Then use it. It is that simple. No special methods, software, whatever needed, tv becomes only a large monitor for your computer conveniently placed in living room.
> NEVER connect it to the internet
Weren’t there reports of smart TVs that connected to nearby unsecured TVs of the same manufacturer so they could download firmware and send telemetry?
As others have said, buy whatever you want just never connect it to the internet.
Now many people are also claiming that TVs will surreptitiously connect to an open network, but as far as I can tell, there is no evidence of this actually happening [0]. Of course it’s technically possible, but until a researcher actually observes this behavior I would not lose sleep over this.
[0]: https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/how-to-use-smart-tv-offline
Don't buy a TV. Buy a monitor.
https://www.bestbuy.com/product/samsung-65-inch-commercial-4...
Monitors are no longer safe. Bought a new monitor 2 years ago (Samsung) after many many years of not upgrading.
Turn it on and it wants me to make an account, agree to a new TOS update once a month, comes with the full smart TV interface junk. Had no idea that was even a thing they were doing to monitors when I bought it.
Which model exactly is that?
One thing I know for sure, is never Samsung.
I have a few year old LG oled and keep it offline.
I recommend a projector. When we moved into our current place, I considered a TV and went with the projector instead. Because:
- A TV has a backlight. It doesn't feel as 'natural' to the eye when watching because you are staring directly at an LED.
- A TV is smaller than a projector.
- A TV, when it is off, imposes itself on the room. It's a large plastic/glass object which is obviously electronic. It invades the space.
- Most TV's are full of surveillanceware.
- A TV can be watched even during the day, when it's bright outside. The projector, by contrast, is much less pleasant during the day; I consider this a feature - I should be doing something else when the sun is out. (The only time this kinda sucks is sports. We make do with closing the curtains).
- Movies were made for the silver screen, imho. This might be a hipster opinion but in my view, the medium really does make a difference in this regard; the moviegoing experience is better.
To specifically answer your question - most projectors are just a dumb HDMI cable. Computer, media center PC, apple TV, etc. None (unless I'm not aware of newer models) have an app store, tracking, or other garbage.
I've wanted a projector for so long, and had the chance to borrow a friend's high quality one to test it out. It absolutely elevated the movie experience and - depending on the viewer's preferences - could be worth it for that alone.
However, this:
> The projector, by contrast, is much less pleasant during the day
Was a significant enough drawback to me that it ruled it out as a daily driver. Although I do like the way you framed it.
That's not really an issue if you get an Ultra Short Throw laser projector and pair it with a high quality UST-optimised (like a lenticular/sawtooth) Ambient Light Rejection screen. A setup would reject something like upto 95% of ambient light, so the screen looks good even in bright rooms.
In saying that, even this setup won't be able to match the deep blacks of a modern OLED TV in bright environments, but if you haven't been spoilt by OLEDs already, then a USTLP + UST-ALR is a really good alternative.
Any TV as long as you don't connect it to the internet in any way, shape or form.
Then connect either your computer directly to it or if you want something fancier, use an Apple TV.
Anything else is just too much pain - you can spend a lot of time debloating your TV, but then you either break updates (not good) or the updates will revert it and you are back on the square one. Not fun unless it is your hobby somehow.
What's wrong with breaking updates if you never access the open internet from the TV? Genuine question
Modern TV is just a hidden computer with quite a significant computing power. And those can be leveraged further - HackingTeam from Italy got owned by an embedded device (printer if I remember correctly).
And as a bonus, these devices are almost never monitored - you probably don't monitor it's CPU or network usage which makes it a good candidate for this sort of things.
Sadly the Samsung TV I have was the best display for the price by a mile, so I've done what i can to balance usage and protection. Its connected to the wifi to allow for AirPlay natively. The tv has a fixed IP at the router to block all traffic in and out of the network, and as a visibility layer its DNS'd through a PiHole too.
Its unbelievably talkative over the network! In the 7 days just passed, its been 90% of the blocked requests by volume (there's no allowed domains from that IP).
I'm still not convinced it isn't sneaking out data somehow - piggybacking off a connection somewhere to the neighbors TV. Its HDMI runs through a stereo amplifier, so it can't piggy-back off the connected PC that runs it.
Maybe the PC (Mint) can run AirPlay somehow and I can disconnect it entirely from the internet?
I feel overly paranoid about this device relative to everything else in the house, I'm not sure how justified that is.
> I'm still not convinced it isn't sneaking out data somehow - piggybacking off a connection somewhere to the neighbors TV
I think we've overshot the mark a bit about TVs' connection abilities. A built-in SIM was one early conjecture. And while it hasn't been seen in the wild, it is often assumed to exist.
More to your point, we've not seen connections (assumedly ad-hoc wifi) to a neighboring device and uploading data to manufacturer, partner, etc.
We have recently seen a case of data collection, that included wifi scans. What we have not seen is a device that connects to other APs on it's own.
I saw 1 redditor claim that this occurred but it was not substantiated. Lots of folks are looking for this behavior but it hasn't been found.
This tells me that our existing methods of self-protection are effective.
I got an old gigantic monstrosity of a DLP tv off facebook marketplace for free then plugged an old Intel NUC into it. It's not for everyone, but I think that it's great, partly because the facts that it was free and that it's stupidly big give me joy.
More practically, when I am not using that, I just watch tv shows and such on my desktop computer running NixOS with a nice and modern (1440p 170Hz high quality but not highest possible end IPS) monitor over displayport.
Other options include a projector, buying a very large computer monitor marketed panel, or using something that is modern enough to be fine, but not so new that it has malware in it (like a friend who was moving gave me a very heavy but also very nice plasma tv, with zero malware on it).
Basically, anything except something marketed as a consumer grade TV. The last time that I had to displeasure of dealing with that it was when my parents bought one and asked me to set it up, and the built-in Roku software refusde to even display from an HDMI or DP input unless it was logged in and connected to WiFi! Alas, I was not able to convince them to return it, but I did decline to have anything to do with it.
I would go one step further and recommend a router with a customizable, Linux, firmware (OpenWRT, Tomato, DDWRT, etc).
Your TV is probably just one of the many devices that sends a scary amount of requests to a bunch of shady servers. With a firewall + DNS server that you control and a decent blocklist you should be able to block most requests and you won't be exposed if a new device connects to your network (for whatever reason).
> I would go one step further and recommend a router with a customizable, Linux, firmware (OpenWRT, Tomato, DDWRT, etc).
Yes, those are good options, but in true HN spirit, my suggestion is a plain Linux distro. The firewall/router is just a few iptables lines, which AI can now provide in a few seconds.
OpenWRT is a Linux distro. Just one optimized for embedded devices. If don't like the very utilitarian web UI can connect over ssh and use iptables or whatever else you want.
But that means custom per-device firmware builds, that in my experience with every router I tried it on means they lag months/years behind security patches. Is there some way to stay patched without building from source and reflashing every time a patch to something upstream happens? (almost daily, now, I guess that means?)
[delayed]
Is there any good GUI for a vanilla Linux networking stack, to your knowledge?
IIRC, IPFire is more or less that. I control my Debian router/home server using SSH and have no GUI at all. It's largely set and forget, and don't recall last time I touched the firewall.
The Apple TV itself might be more privacy friendly or open about policies, but I have no reason to believe that any streaming app you’d install on it would provide for more privacy than the app installed directly on the TV.
At least they won’t record you, which is something others won’t promise, and, if they did, I wouldn’t trust them.
I rooted my LG C1 and honestly I can't go back to an unrooted TV. Game streaming works so much better(I can actually install the apps). I can control everything so Home Assistant automations are much better. Internet is blocked so no nagging or ads, But they are turn off via root just in case.
Now I have a weekend project in the future, assuming I can find a compatible process for my hardware. Never connected to the network, but the thing makes a few ever annoying popups I would love to disable. Or at least ensure that no "helpful" guest fills in the wifi information when I am not looking.
You could also just turn ads off in settings
Nope! I can turn of personalised ads. But the homescreen is filled with recommended apps, recommended shows, popups about added subscription functionality, or straight up banner ads if it feels like it.
Samsung the frame 65" for $2000 constantly pesters about $15 monthly subscription to change the art on the display to their selection of public domain historical artworks. Otherwise you're stuck with the default slideshow, which you're now forced to see since the whole sales pitch of the display is showing art when turned off.
atleast they had the decency to not show ads as default art instead... but i wouldn't put it past them
You could, but it won't do the job.
I allow my Samsung to connect to my local network, but then use openwrt and refuse to allow any outbound data from any IP using the MAC address of the television set. It cant update itself and no traffic suggests it can do anything regardless of what it might be collecting. Rooting it to prevent it from connecting to other wifi AP’s is probably the only better thing.
Don't smart TVs (of LG or others?) connect to open networks of neighbors, like Vodafone hotspots? That was told to me at least.
So only disconnecting the antenna or destroying it would work, unless you live remotely.
Ah, here:
> DiabloD3 43 minutes ago | unvote | parent | next [–]
Doesn't work, all the spyware modules connect to open Wifi of neighbors, and soon, LTE.
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> nvme0n1p1 37 minutes ago | root | parent | next [–]
This is repeated every time this topic comes up, but so far it's just a conspiracy theory. An urban legend. An old wives' tale. Are there any documented cases of this happening?
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> Don't smart TVs (of LG or others?) connect to open networks of neighbors, like Vodafone hotspots?
I can find no verified reports of this behavior. People are looking for it.
> all the spyware modules connect to open Wifi of neighbors, and soon, LTE.
I can find no verified reports of this behavior. People are looking for it. Cellular connections have been theorized since the beginning but have not been discovered.
Given the number of qualified people seeking out these behaviors, if they appear we will know it - with certainty.
Unsolicited advice, with a different approach, from personal preference / experience:
Sitting screens considered harmful.
Treat them as a liability and "trash"-adjacent, no matter the actual display technology or whether you can remove the spyware.
That goes double for TVs, so don't buy one.
Re-invest the time and attention you save in a good projector and a generally "invisible" screen / room setup.
I'm a happy owner of a $1000 DLP LED projector and a similarly priced motorized 150" screen. Do look into laser projection, which has been getting steadily more affordable for a while now.
Disclaimer: I've never subscribed to the "maximum screen size" formulas. As long as my own nose isn't in the way when I look to either end, it's fine, and inching towards that range is exactly what I'm deliberately going for. So yes, I'm one of those people who sits in the front rows at the movies.
I keep filler-free shows (TNG, anyone? :') movies and game time strictly out of band. So to me that's even more enjoyable in an immersive and optimally shareable setup whenever I do purposefully take the time.
More reading, as well as a nudge towards doing stuff, is probably the main side effect I'm after here, as you can tell.
Idk why (apparently) no one has mentioned it yet.
Forget consumer TVs.
Get a commercial "display".
That's it. That's the solution.
Pros: dumb display. Longer warranty.
Cons: more expensive.
Am i wrong if I say: get a simple PC screen, or a beamer without android ?
OT:
There are several videos on YT regarding removing all this Ad/Spy/Bloatware from "smart" TVs using Claude and only a few prompts: Actually, it should be very easy for most poeple here on HN to do this as Ive found some videos which seem to be done by "non techies" and they were successful.
I like LG OLED quality. My lg tv has never been connected to the internet and connects to a avr that handles inputs and 5.1.2 speakers Nvidia shield with hdmi-cec to turn on/off the receiver and tv. Jellyfin, android tv app for cable company, YouTube sans ads and projectivy launcher (Google one sucks). You can update firmware via usb stick. Would get an Apple TV if it died but like my Dolby vision HDR10 and atmos. Highly recommend.
Imagine you wouldn’t have this but technically the front two speakers are on a much higher end naim amplifier (connected to my audio stuff) but it has avr pass through. Sometimes an extra button to switch it to turn the front two speakers back to avr mode.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Gamersnexus investigation show that even un-connected LG TVs will still scan for open WiFi networks to clandestinely upload their spy data?
From what I remember, they only mentioned that was technically possible and never actually tested or proved it.
I’ll look into it. Thanks!
I have a TCL QM8, which until recently I was using for its full smart-TV capabilities, and always feeling rather icky about all of the stuff it was sending. I would keep getting notifications about the microphone being turned on even when I had explicitly disabled it at every level.
I eventually got an NVIDIA Shield Pro, for which I:
1) Blew away the default launcher and installed Projectivity
2) adb disabled nearly all of the background Nvidia/Google services, following a guide
3) Removed all of the preinstalled streaming apps and added back the ones I use, opting for more privacy-respecting alternatives like Smarttube over YouTube standard.
Finally, I then factory reset my TCL TV and put its Google TV into "Basic" mode, which makes it a dumb TV for all intents and purposes. The TV itself is not allowed to connect to the internet anymore for any reason--everything goes through the set-top box.
The skeezy thing is the TV still tries very hard to get you to enable regular mode. Like if you try to launch ANY app of ANY kind, it will throw some pop-up about needing to connect to the internet to do so, and then flashing some fine print about how this will revert the TV to normal Google TV/Android TV mode. I had a guest in my house using the TV while I was in another room and suddenly asking me for my WiFi password, and when I went to see what was up, saw that they were halfway through opening the floodgates again before I stopped them.
I have a Sony Bravia Google TV, but did not want to sign in with a Google account. I also use it in ”basic mode” with Samba Interactive TV disabled. I used to sideload streaming apps with adb, but have switched to Obtainium now. After a software update the TV started to suggest signing in, but at least they did not opt me in automatically like Apple used to do with iCloud after iOS updates.
Simple answer that no one seems to suggest:
--> Buy a TV in Europe.
Regulation blah blah slowing down innovation also does that: it protects your privacy.
So, get the TV of your choice but European version.
We have bastards trying to sell us stuff and steal our info over here, too. And political bastards that let them.
I’ve done this. My new LG C5 has no ads or anything. I have (software) disabled all spyware, though most of them were already pre-disabled. Nothing has changed after connecting it to the internet (fuck me right), except downloading apps, which i removed. No performance/ad hits, yet.
https://www.sceptre.com/ seems to be pretty much the only remaining brand of non-smart TVs left. However, I have no experience of them.
I got 2 of these, Amazon, 65inch. When I purchased (years ago) Amazon said "only 8 left". This TV is so dumb its clock is still in 1989. Three HDMI so it's got a Sworch2, Roku and a vSee box on it.
I was so/so on the purchase but after watching all the heck around 'smart" TVs I'm wondering what I'll do when these die. They were like 50% cost of the industrial display category, which seems my only option in the future.
Hoping these LLMs get us to jailbroken TVs soon.
There's something so reassuring about seeing that "12:00AM Jan-06-1980 (Sun)" on mine whenever I power it on.
It's just a big HDMI display device (and audio pass-through) and that's all I want or need of it.
Sadly they no longer make or restock their dumb TVs. They're desktop monitor only.
I bought one of their TVs in 2019, it's fabulous if your criteria is "turns on, displays what is connected to its inputs, and has decent video quality", and nothing more. I would recommend them heartily, if you can get access to one.
Which is interesting, since the E247BD-FSRD is a TV and one of the first ones mentioned on their web site. It does not seem to be available anywhere, though. (The Sceptre web site says Amazon and Walmart; but, neither carries it.)
The monitors lack the tuner and the cable/antenna connector; so, if you're only playing of a computer, they should work fine.
I have two Sceptre TVs and I recommend them, as well, if you can find them.
I have a 27 inch monitor and a 50 inch TV from Sceptre, and they are great. No apps, no OS, and no connectivity other than common A/V cables.
Keep the glass disconnected from the network forever and it will solve the vast majority of your concerns.
Jellyfin is the answer if you are looking to spend a premium on a privacy-focused media experience.
Better hope that no guest connects the TV to their phone hotspot to watch their Netflix like one user in a previous post reported happened to them.
I was thinking about buying this ViewSonic CDE65G3:
https://www.cdw.com/product/viewsonic-cde65g3-65-inch-4k-uhd...
It's damn near impossible to find an OS-free TV that is actually for sale like this.
I've been on the projector train for many years. In addition to their being awesome for the home theater experience (they're not for everyone or every environment), I've yet to read about a manufacturer engaging in the bs happening on TVs.
The other day I saw this project to flash your TV with custom software: https://www.tiktok.com/@itstundealao/video/77013919041931215...
Here are the repos mentioned: https://github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv
https://github.com/simbasjungles/free-my-tv
The video is pretty cool. The guy flashes his tv with a custom firmware with a look/feel and elements he chose, plus a feature he created to leave handwritten notes for his girlfriend on the home screen of the TV, remotely from his laptop
The tv doesn’t matter much. Don’t connect it to the internet, set it to remember the hdmi port when it powers on. Then plug it in to an older laptop and you can control everything that way, play media locally, block ads. An Apple TV would be fine too
Digital signage displays might be the only out of the box solution at this point. I wish there were more open source TV firmware options in the spirit of dd-wrt
If you want 55", this is the way. Otherwise just buy a computer monitor and use it as a TV. I bought a 55" digital signage display a month ago on sale for AUD$400, that's about USD$280.
I got a 2025 Bravia because after some research it may not have the best panels, but it's the least likely to pull shannigans around snapshotting your viewing and forcibly connecting to a open wifi and that sort of thing. I connected it, updated the bios, immediately killed the wifi and I've been happy with an Apple TV ever since.
Unless the Apple TV decides to be evil, I feel safe.
I have a Sony Bravia that I've never connected to the internet, only to an Apple TV and a Steam Deck. It makes a noise when you turn it on or off, and sometimes it makes that noise all by itself while turned off. Makes me feel like it turns itself on to try and collect audio data periodically. But! I think since the TV itself is never going to have direct internet access, I'm not that worried about it sending my data.
Get a big monitor with all the specs you want and connect it to an old laptop. You can watch whatever you want on there. You can even play video games on your Playstation or XBox if it has an HDMI port.
Show me an example of this monitor. Table stakes to compete with a midrange TV:
- >= 85"
- VESA mount
- 4K @ 120Hz (or better)
- < $2K
- "infinite" contrast ratio
Not sure where you're getting those requirements. OP said 60-80 inches, 4k with at least 60hz, and they said "I don’t mind paying a premium". They also never mentioned a VESA mount or "infinite" contrast ratio.
There are lots of monitors that fit OP's description.
There are a dozen TVs at any decent big box store that meet those specs, and roughly zero monitors, even if you look online.
Seriously: Name one counterexample.
Here's a 75" monitor after 1 single search: https://www.dell.com/en-gb/shop/monitors/apd/dell-pro-p-75-4...
Yes, it's only 60Hz, but again, 1 search.
Paul Graham in his keynote speech at PyCon[1] bolted an iMac to the wall as TV.
I use a Mac Mini M4 and a huge 300 euro 4K screen as my TV. much better than an Apple TV and no spying or ads at all.
Best TV in my life, a user friendly computer.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI
I was going to write buy Apple TV and never ever connect the actual TV to the internet, but:
- I am unsure whether modern TVs utilize ethernet over HDMI to connect to internet through Apple TV (I have no idea why Apple TV should allow this, but I don't trust Apple to not accidentally enable this)?
- I can only imagine nefarious five eyes reasons for why Apple released Apple TV that plays 4k60 exactly like the previous models, but now has 8 GB RAM, powerful machine learning CPU, and built-in microphones that are impossible to disable
So, apart from getting used prev gen Apple TV (and still having to trust company whose leader has to accept Trumps's lunch invite), I have no good advice.
There are retail displays that don't have the ad/nag/crap-ware of home TVs.
Personally I opt for projectors; but similar problems arise with the built-in apps. They're just rubbish. My personal preference is to use no abuiltin apps, just use a laptop to access Jellyfin with a Logitech K400 (keyboard with inbuilt trackpad) sitting on my lap.
The next step for me will be setting up a Raspberry PI with Plasma Bigscreen.
The answer is really simple and this gets asked a lot.
Buy any TV, don't connect it to the Internet. Then connect the HDMI or DP to Apple TV and you're good to go.
Some good answers here already. Step 1 is always not to connect the TV to the Internet. You can go further and remove the WiFi daughterboard and/or desolder the chip.
Step 2 is to connect a TV box, but if you replace Samsumg, LG, or Google by Apple or Amazon, you have made no progress at all towards privacy.
Having researched this topic extensively, there are two main options for real user control and privacy. First, you can run an ordinary Linux distro on a mini PC, with a "launcher" such as Plasma Bigscreen. It's fine with an airmouse, but you will be mostly running upscaled desktop apps that aren't remote or controller friendly.
The best solution is actually to keep the mini PC and compile Lineage OS (Android TV 17) for a generic x86 target. This is a true degoogled Android TV distro that can, with some more hacking, run any ARM TV app from F-Droid, Aurora or other source. It is by far the best solution in that it is a true 10-foot UX and is compatible with almost all TV apk apps out there. The downside is that this not exist off-the-shelf. I spent a couple of days putting this together with Claude and it takes several hours to compile. I also found several upstream bugs in the process and will be submitting patches to the AOSP and Lineage.
There's a big gap between LG and Samsung, whose terms of service states that they sell your data to advertisers, and Apple, whose privacy policy states that they don't do that. Of course, there's an even bigger gap between Apple who can access your data if they wanted to or were told to and a home brewed Linux media box.
Unless you view privacy as all or nothing, I'd say replacing Google with Apple is progress. I think the majority of people are more upset at the idea of how their data is being sold for advertising than they are concerned about being able to act completely out of sight of any actor.
> There's a big gap between LG and Samsung, whose terms of service states that they sell your data to advertisers, and Apple, whose privacy policy states that they don't do that.
This may be true, but Apple can change that policy overnight. Apple also won't let you run programs that are not on its store, and won't even give you a Web browser. It's shocking people that people are willing to accept such restrictions. It isn't my hardware if I can't decide what runs on it.
I have an LG OLED. It's gorgeous, but
- It's MAC address is blocked from the network
- It's never had WIFI credentials
- It's ONLY ever used with an Apple TV or PlayStation
A Benq gaming monitor with an android box, chromecast tv, nvidia shield, etc, with a soundbar.
Buy any TV you like, never connect it to the internet.
Get a cheap open source media box and attach it to the TV.
It's not hard to find options if you stop looking in stupid places with bad search terms. "TV" on Amazon is literally the innermost circle of consumer hell.
> I don’t mind paying a premium
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1916990-REG/lg_65ep5q...
I’m sticking with my 2010 Toshiba REGZA until it dies. 1080p is fine for me.
I don't know how true it still is, but dumb TVs have traditionally been marketed as "commercial displays". You'll pay more and have to bring your own media, of course.
> commercial displays
These are generally meant to display (static) advertisement media, you'll have a false experience watching movies or playing games on them.
What is "a false experience"?
I believe those displays intended for static advertising etc are not set up for good refresh rate or cinema viewing, so they'll have very poor e.g. ghosting during action sequences, low contrast ratios, a lot like a LCD TV from the early 2000s.
Ah, I see. I saw some do that in front of fashion shops or jewelries, yep.
I use a projector plugged into a tiny Linux box.
- Buy any TV you want
- Don't connect it to the network
Doesn't work, all the spyware modules connect to open Wifi of neighbors, and soon, LTE.
This is repeated every time this topic comes up, but so far it's just a conspiracy theory. An urban legend. An old wives' tale. Are there any documented cases of this happening?
Some do this (Samsung), but the more common tactic is to throw constant nags up if the telemetry is not being sent to the manufacturer.
I did my research and bought one that does not do this (2025 TCL), but, if it turned out that it did, I'd have shamelessly returned it. I'd also have issued a chargeback if the store gave me any crap.
Even with all that, if you install firmware updates over the network, then disconnect WiFi, the TV becomes unusable until you factory reset it. (I did this because its EDID is corrupted, and I have to override it with a linux cmdline. The update did not help.)
Agree that it should be observed before assumed. Would a software-defined radio and a packet capturing mechanism be sufficient?
With TV makers having recently destroyed trust and there not being a good way for consumers to force trust it makes little difference whether they are doing it or not.
If you can't tell whether your disconnected TV is spying on you but you know that you cannot trust it, it's better to treat it as compromised.
Amazon Sidewalk is a real life product that offers this over bluetooth
Just because something exists as a product, doesn't mean it exists inside your TV.
probably, but I'll let gp answer. But I want guarantees that they don't do that, until them I'll consider the fact that if they can and it's profitable they will do it
If you want a guarantee, that's a conservative threat model and a fair position. What's not fair is GP saying "doesn't work, all the TVs do XYZ", when not a single TV in the real world has ever actually done XYZ.
Ultimately I'll need to find data to settle how paranoid I might be. I'm still leaning on not enough. But isn't it also not fair to claim not a single tv has done it? Proving an universal is not easy for gp but the inverse of forall is not a not exists. And I know the world of middle management profit optimization.
I indeed cannot prove it. I also can't universally prove that wombats don't have telekinesis. But the preponderance of the evidence points to neither being true.
I know there are lots of advocacy groups and youtube channels that are testing TV models and would LOVE to be the first to break this story and publicly shame Samsung or whoever. But it simply hasn't happened.
Some TVs will refuse to work if you don't create an account and connect them to internet. They won't usually advertise this. You may have to repeatedly return those TVs as defective as you find them.
Better hope that no guest connects the TV to their phone hotspot to watch their Netflix like one user in a previous post reported happened to them.
Until we learn they Bluetooth beacon and do mesh to find some Internet connected LG fridge.
An interesting question is why aren't there companies in the same vein as AMG was for Mercedes, that buy the product, modify and resell them? In this case, buy the factory LG and using expertise, lobotomize it and resell it people here? If this post shows the demand the where is the supply?
It doesn't seem that it's a DCMA limitation, yet at least. Would it fall under "right to repair"?
Aside from getting a "dumb" tv, your best bet right now is to get a tv running google/androidtv and run a script like https://github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv against it to remove all of the tracking etc. from it.
Roku TVs are really easy to turn into dumb TVs. Don’t connect the WiFi, and set it to always turn onto the HMDI input your PC/device is connected to. No tracking, ads, or extra steps.
One that can be purchased and shipped from the EU.
They have the strongest consumer protections and guarantees.
I'd go for a Sony.
Huge fan of "never give it wifi, hook it up to a little linux box, remote control it via input leap" myself
Not input-leap, nowadays you'd use lan-mouse (wayland!) or, i was as much surprised as anybody, kde connect
I mean I'm still on cinnamon and thus X11 and thus input-leap, but good to know what the wayland stack is like
I just dont connect mine to the internet, hook up an Apple TV to it.
Best setup is buying whatever tv, never connecting it to internet, and connecting to an external device running whatever os flavor you prefer. I have setup using bazzite with a steam controller and an old laptop, and added non-steam games for YouTube and jellyfin, works great for my needs and I play a few small steam games on the tv aswell
Few years back, I bought two TVs: 65" LG latest at the time TV ($2k) and a 55" Sceptre tv from Walmart for $200. The TV from Walmart is a dumb TV with terrible speakers. So, in addition to tv I got a $150 soundbar and an Apple TV. I almost don't watch the LG one and daily watch the Walmart tv. It’s good enough in this setup.
Got a Bravia TV for cheap back in 2014 that happened to be pre-Android TV (and pre-Google TV) so Android TV was just released and those something-else-os were "outdated".
Sony stopped releasing security patches a while back and there are no longer apps whatsoever and they all were crap - the youtube one was pure torture because of how slow it was and the web browser was just as miserable as ie6.
But besides that I can send it commands to it via its IP and control it, consume stuff via a DLNA daemon, do screen mirroring, and all the usual tv stuff. The image quality and sound are still great after 10+ years though I can't care less about oled 4k 120Hz and all that stuff. So it's no longer a "smart" tv but it's not also so "dumb" for a now dumb tv.
My in-laws have a Bravia of the same era. The image quality is amazing and it sounds great. The apps were never really any good, but now they are all outdated and doesn't work. They just hooked up a ChromeCast, and it's perfect for their use.
I had my old Bravia TV, but the screen has issues like half turning into black or random colors through it. I'll try to fix it and use it again!
I ran into issues with only the smart TV apps being able to provide certain formats like Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, etc.
Err - dont connect your tv to internet ?
I was able to root my Samsung TV easily with Codex, disable updates and spyware, MITM everything with the eMudhra certs. The problem is no one really knows what these TVs do, they're all liars with 100 page privacy policies that will legally allow anything, and encrypted HTTPS communications that we can't even ordinarily monitor what they're sending. They can be updated at any time to start sending more or less data without your knowledge. So I feel the only realistic option is find a TV that can be rooted and do that. If you root a TV, you can fully disable network access and then use an Apple TV, or use the TV's software with MITM and deeper analysis with AI to disable snooping.
My three Sony Bravias from 2010 are still going well - LCD 1080p, no screen wear at all (a later Sony I bought ~2017 has already worn to buggery)
Not sure if there’s even a used market for older TVs, though
I buy the best tv that satisfies my needs. I will not handicap my viewing pleasure reading chicken little stories of the paranoid Internet.
Use any screen or projector connected to a linux box or AppleTV for streaming. Personally I use an old laptop running Kodi.
What sort of screen? Well, whatever you can tolerate. I use a very old commercial display I got through an e-waste reseller. It’s not great, but it was cheap ans has worked fine for years. If you insist on a “TV” screen or any monitor/projector with connectivity, pick one you can root. As other users have pointed out, simply “don’t connect to the Internet” unfortunately isn’t enough to guarantee your data stays private.
Does anyone make TVs with Opera/Vewd (rythmes with lewd) anymore? That's what mine is running, and it supports Netflix and whatnot, but doesn't show ads or spy.
Also, Android TV boxes sometimes have shenanigans installed by the manufacturer, but they are easy to customize to only run what you want, and they run fine without a Google account.
As far as I can tell, there's no way to use an Apple TV box without linking it to an Apple account and letting them spy on you.
> run fine without a Google account
But you still need to accept Google TOS, before being allowed to do anything
A RPI 5/4 with a basic TV works really good !
LG Ultragear 48GQ900-B
Ok I'm cheating, it's a monitor. Only it's the size of a TV and there's a remote.
But no tuner and no ARC.
But I don't care.
Zero smarts, boots in a millisecond, auto-wakes on device power-up, input switching just works, no half-baked HDMI-CEC hell. No wifi. No network. Nothing to spy on me because it's a FUCKING MONITOR and THAT'S IT.
https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-48gq900-b-gaming-monitor
I get that they’re not equivalent, price wise, but have you tried searching for “55 inch computer monitor”? They sell large ones for use in video conferencing rooms for example.
Is this really more complicated than just never connecting it to wifi and then using a dedicated device like AppleTV only?
Out of curiosity, do these “smart” TV features even matter if you’re just switching to one of the HDMI inputs? I’ve used an external device to drive my TV for years, and I honestly have no idea what is installed on the TV itself.
They don’t. My Hisense doesn’t nag me at all. I just use my Apple TV and 4k player and PS5 without issue. It’s not nearly as hard as all the comments here have made it out to be.
Maybe it’s more of a factor for people who watch over the air broadcasts or use cable TV. I haven’t used either in years.
Similarly, my Hisense TV never gets a chance to show the VIDAA interface. It just displays the HDMI input and I switch that between Kodi running on a Raspberry Pi and a VirginMedia TV box.
They will probably find an open (or semi-open, like the comcast ones) to connect to.
ACR also notes what you're watching even on HDMI and will upload it if given a chance.
A lot of people are saying to not connect an ethernet cable to the TV, but what about if I want to connect the TV to LAN for my Jellyfin server?
Buy an Apple TV.
But I have zero interest in using Apple services though.
I shop for elite televisions at the “reuse” center, my latest score was a 2013 Panasonic plasma which is a perfectly good dumb TV hooked up to an XBOX ONE and a home theatre. Downstairs I have a big curved Samsung 4K attached to my big PC. Someday I’ll see the high end OLED that I crave.
If you have the room and price is no object you definitely want at least 5.1 theatre, both movies and TV programs sound great in 5.1. The next step up is a second subwoofer, even for music subwoofers take a load off your other speakers and reduce distortion.
As everyone is saying: just don't let it on the network. It's a little annoying because you can't have smart home stuff like "turn off the TV when I leave the house" working, but that's it.
My thing is, don't use an Apple TV. For the last 15 years or so I've just used a Mac Mini plugged into a big TV, and it's perfect. Get a wireless keyboard and trackpad and one of the many available trays that will hold them together. I'm literally typing this right now on this exact setup.
It should mostly work with HDMI CEC. My Android TV (Nvidia Shield) will turn my TV on and off. I only use the LG remote to adjust the volume although if you're using an AVR, it should do everything.
you can let it on the network, just block it from leaving the network. Lets you have the remote control features but without the risk.
Better hope that no guest connects the TV to their phone hotspot to watch their Netflix like one user in a previous post reported happened to them.
I recommend turn off tv via home automation involving smart plug thingy, and tv set to turn on on each power cycle return
Personally, I used to be very privacy-conscious, but have given up on enforcing it everywhere over the years. I still care, more than most people I know in real life, but when it comes to stuff like TV's I just get whatever has the best panel for the lowest price. Last time I bought a TV, that was an LG TV running WebOS, which is not exactly the best from a privacy standpoint. Initially I used it with an Apple TV, but now I just use the native apps and try to disable the telemetry that I can in the settings panel.
sorry to interject on your experience, but this sounds really bleak
I read this as piracy and I was so confused.
Thread-adjacent question: who is running REA against these tv firmwares so anyone can root their TV?
Disconnect the TV from internet and use a solution like Apple TV for apps you would like in TV. Even better is a Mini PC connected to the TV if you are savvy enough.
I bought a Hisense TV three years ago. I do not connect it to the Internet. I use an Apple TV for streaming. I went with Hisense because it was well reviewed. I think you'll be fine with whatever TV you buy as long as you follow this strategy.
no, if you're plugging something in just pick a good tv and never connect it to internet :p
Gamers Nexus has a good discovery video on how extensive smart TVs are snooping on people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA
Any AndroidTV and then run CleanYourTV [1] on it, gets completely rid of all Google ads and additional bloatware by the manufacturer. Maybe run Claude against the repo first to check for malware but going by the number of stars it seems to be solid.
[1] https://github.com/Gathin23/cleanyourtv
Samsung is the worst by far. Samsung (TizenOS) does not respect even privacy opt outs. It seems like LG, Google TV OS (Sony) and Fire TV OS (Amazon) and VidaaOS at least do that.
https://allaboutcookies.org/smart-tv-tracking-privacy-opt-ou...
Never connect to internet is the best option.
The fact that we even need to have this conversation is messed up...
Thanks everyone for more practical comments, definitively bookmaking this post.
The consensus thus far appears to be that all modern TVs wipe their ass with user privacy.
Given what happened with games very recently, perhaps the question should be rephrased to: "Which modern TVs support flashing unsigned/self-signed firmware?"
Sceptre. They have okay 4K panels at ludicrously cheap prices at Walmart that don’t have WiFi or a network port or any smarts at all. HDMI goes in, rendered images come out, end of story.
Do they sell them in stores, because they seem to always be sold out on the website every time I check?
9 years ago I got a hisense 65h8c for around $800, at the time it seemed like the dumbest tv I could get (all new tvs, that now-old one included, are advertised as 'smart') that still hit other criteria. It has only ever connected over HDMI to a PC or an AV receiver. Still works great, used mostly for gaming, occasionally movie or show watching. It has weaker blacks and some edge bleeding, but meh; I'll never buy an OLED TV since at some point I'd play a game on it and soon enough after get burn-in from static UI elements.
I just had claude connect to my Android TV over adb and rip out all of the spyware it could find.
LTT did a video not too long ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJh72_O4pXE
Do local repair shops offer aftermarket “TV lobotomy” services these days?
You have local repair shops?
I was thinking about the places that repair phones, but was deliberately vague because I’m not sure what’s out there these days.
I think the answer now changes with ability to root some of these tvs.
Still, might be best to run an android tv box yourself, and plug hdmi.
You can literally just buy any Sony and turn it onto dumb TV mode and not connect it to a network.
That's it, that's all you need to do, and the level of crazy over engineering and spend by some people below achieves literally nothing more at great difficulty.
Does anyone trust hdmi cables anymore?
Sceptre dumb TV. Failing that, large computer monitor or digital signage display. You WILL pay a premium.
Anybody has experience with TCL and Spectre? I'm seeing them a lot, even saw one really big TCL TV in a local shop and loved the colors and the FPS, but no idea how good are they really, are they longer-lasting, are they annoying if you don't give them network access etc.
I have a TCL that I'm happy with. I followed 'some instructions somewhere' to use adb to disable the default launcher and replace it with the ProjectIvy launcher, which is nice and clean and has no ads or promotions (ads by any other name).
Mine _is_ connected to my network, but I have DNS blocking via self-hosted Adguard along with specific SmartTV block lists and regular expressions, plus a firewall for the 'entertainment' VLAN that's fairly tight. I'm also monitoring (and recording to a database) all outgoing traffic on the entertainment VLAN so I can add further firewall restrictions - once I have the time to analyse the logs, maybe after I've retired...
Spectre is the only manufacturer I'm aware of still mass producing non-smart consumer TVs.
Where are you buying them? I can't find them and other users seem to reporting the same. I'm thinking they are silently discontinued.
Many TVs are advertised with features (even local features) that don't work until the first firmware update.
So plug it in, and update it once.
Then you can do all the things these other comments suggest.
I have a 42” tv from this cheap brand i found in MediaWorld in italy (i guess it’s called MediaMarkt in Germany and Switzerland): it’s called Ok.
It’s just great. Besides decoding digital tv it does essentially nothing.
If i want smart features i plug in an amazon fire stick.
I had it for six years now, i still love it.
One of the supermarket chains here have their own line of TVs. They are dirt cheap, absolutely fine quality. Some of them do run Android, or GoogleTV, so you'll get whatever tracking that may yield, but they certainly don't have the resource or infrastructure to run their own separate tracking and spying on those units.
I'm in Brazil, so I'm going to get Smart TV TCL 50 inches. It comes with Linux and you can manage it via adb.
Hotel/Business Signage TV may be a good options, but they may lack speakers and be considerably more costly and harder to procure
A TV should just be a display. If I already have an Apple TV or a mini PC, I don't need another smart OS tracking my activity.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate how absurd it is that our world regularly manufactures TVs that we have to be worried spy on us?
Can you imagine explaining that future to someone in the 80s? They would not believe that our society let it happen
It's probably pretty easy to explain it to somebody from the 80s.
"Remember that discussion we had about phones? Yeah, so TVs are kinda like that except they're really big so we stick them in a room instead of taking them with us".
One of my best scores at Radio Shack in the late 1980s was an LCD TV. The screen was about 2.5", black and white. It was powered by 4xAA or AAA batteries. It featured a single-knob tuner, an FM-like telescoping mast antenna, a speaker, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The screen would snap down for carrying, and it was reflected for viewing in a mirror, so it required a strong light from above to shine through the LCD panel. There was an accessory backlight with its own batteries to snap on top.
It had a pocket-size form factor, and I carried it around to Disneyland so we could watch TV while we waited in line, and it could receive any OTA TV channel in VHF or UHF.
I kind of miss that little guy!
A solid late 80s RCA Colortrak 2000 with down-converter is a solid choice and excellent conversation piece. Hardwood finish, or go for the full console experience. Best part is it can't call anything.
The Russian user manuals for LG OLED TVs list the exact part numbers for the WiFi and Bluetooth modules. Search the PDF for IEEE and it will be listed. The English manuals omit this information!
I think desoldering the WiFi antennas and leaving the Bluetooth antenna connected is also a viable option. Although I think a 50 Ohm dummy load is needed if doing that(?).
Just use a desktop computer.
Just get a big monitor or projector and whatever TV box you want.
If you really want privacy there's always the NUC running youtube.com in a browser
I just rooted my LG in about 30 seconds [using claude] and disabled all the junk. can also run own apps / homebrew.
I recently was stressed about the same & ended up buying an LG C6, sticking it on an isolated VLAN, rooting it, then just letting it hit my NAS for jellyfin.
Don't connect it to a network, buy a mini pc and install Linux on it. Get a Logitech k400 keyboard with an integrated touchpad to control it remotely
just pick a PC screen with TV sizes, although they might max out at 55 inches. displayspecifications.com has many hits for what has no FRC then.
Just open up whatever you buy and pull the networking components, microphones, and covert cameras. Leverage HDMI after that. Problem solved.
Yep, that solves the problem for 95+% of the population that barely knows how to use a screwdriver. /s
Finding and watching some Youtube repair to figure out where the parts are and learning to do it is cheaper than buying anything that isn't spying on you. It's just depressing this is what we have to put up with.
The one with the best looking picture at the store. Don't connect it to Internet and use your own streaming box (that you trust).
Really I think in store is the way to go. Some "low" and "mid" tvs look identical to me. Some "high end" are meh. Some other "low end" look great. I think it's a bit of a crapshoot. Not sure currently but Samsung QLED used to be rated well but I always thought LG OLED looked worlds better. I've always liked LG OLED although I've heard their firmware has gotten pretty predatorial...
Buy something used that was manufactured before ca 2018. Or get a projector that doesn't have any smart stuff built in.
You could just use something like adguard to block DNS requests for telemetry endpoints.
DNS layer blocking is very coarse and easily bypassed.
Agreed, some LG TVs even hardcode the DNS these days. A simple cron job that resolves the hostnames and blocks the IP on a firewall level is very hard to bypass though ;)
Any TV if you disconnect from the network and stream via HDMI instead.
Better hope that no guest connects the TV to their phone hotspot to watch their Netflix like one user in a previous post reported happened to them.
I just buy any TV, never allow it anywhere near the WiFi network, and attach an Apple TV
Unless… they’re not putting SIM cards in modern TVs or anything right?
Stop connecting TVs to the internet.
buy projector, laser one are good, some of them are quite dumb in a good way. mostly US owned, or Japanese. Any chinese one are full of "android tv with their own flavors of spyware"
You can use a Sony Bravia connected to an Apple TV without connecting the Sony to the internet.
Digital signage displays are dumb PC screens in giant sizes, like you are looking for.
Samsung Frame is esthetically pleasing, high picture quality.
That old kind that just had a VCR slot on the front.
Or a projector against a wall.
Find an old projector TV
buy a big monitor and hook whatever you want to it. samsung sells them and theyre about the same price as a tv, if not cheaper
I'd recommend a search, this gets asked at least once a year
Another slightly pricier option is buy a digital signage display. These are screens intended for use in like retail floors or even outdoors. They tend to be extra durable, resistant to burn-in, very bright and devoid of most fluffy end user features.
I second this. Both my TVs at home are previous signage from my work. Samsung panels and the one that does have smart features is from the far flung past.
Well, I have CRTs in most of the rooms in my home. That's because of an unrelated condition for which I refuse to be treated, but they are great for privacy!
Do crts make you better, or lcds make you worse? What about plasma?
Plasmas are great, and I have one - and our main screen in the living room is just a bog standard Sony...I just love CRTs, but I'm a retro gaming nerd.
I love all these people spending money and tearing apart their TVs instead of changing their WiFi password and not giving the new one to it
Rather than trying to get a TV which doesn't have blatant spyware (when in all likelyhood, they all do, or will get one in a software update), I would suggest solving the problem the other way around - get a TV you know you can disable that functionality in. Trusting the manufacturer is a recipe for disaster.
I stripped out the bluetooth+wifi module from my TV and keep it disconnected from ethernet. Now it doesn't matter what it tries to collect, it can't send it anywhere.
SOFTWARE SWITCHES CAN NEVER BE TRUSTED!
A "Dumb TV" that doesn't have any Android / set top OS on it. Plug a debian box into it via HDMI, and you're all set.
At this point I'd just hooking up a gaming monitor (a very large one) with separate speakers and low-spec computer to run it.
I researched a bit for business displays from Samsung and these also have enshittified with "smart" features, so it lost my trust as well.
just be careful to not buy a gaming monitor with Smart TV features (yes, those exist)
A large format monitor that does not connect to the Internet nor has any smarts at all.
Also, do not plug any Internet-facing devices into it, have a captive SBC that connects to a LAN server hosting (legally owned) videos.
What my own research led me to: https://www.viewsonic.com/global/products/commercial-display... (OS-Free Commercial Display, all sizes available) + HTPC.
(Assuming you've already bought one and have been using it for a while)
Have you tried using the built-in speakers or have you been using external speakers the entire time you owned it?
I'm curious if the (specs say 10watt) built-in speakers are in any way usable -- my criteria would be, can you easily hear dialog at the normal viewing distance; I wouldn't hope for hi-fi sound suitable for music.
Next TV I buy im connecting to to Claude code and lobotomizing it...
It's like every 3 months someone asks some variant of this question.
There are certainly new TV models coming out almost constantly, do it seems warranted? I see no problem with "duplicated" questions?
What I find amusing is people asking for advice on buying an appliance on this site. Not bad, just an unexpected pattern to my eyes at least.
My honest answer at this point is none.
A lot of the advice here seens to be "disable wifi, don't plug in ethernet, use a computer or similar to provide content".
This is good advice. But I'd consider it the absolute baseline. I'd be much more interested in hearing about TVs that'll still try to get to the internet (neighbor's badly secured IoT network, bluetooth, 5G) or ones that cripple themselves when you tamper with wifi.
Absolutely every single TV that you don't hook up to your wifi. Easy.
Don’t connect it to the internet, only to your lan (on a separate vlan) connecting to your jelly and *arr setup, or, you can get a tv box, flash it with vanilla android, have kodi and addon pointing to your jelly server, and from that tv box is an hdmi to your TV, same is also doable with a rpi. It won’t be plug and play but it’s a weekend project, because there are no tv manufacturers who cares about privacy, or get a dumb tv and connect an hdmi to your pc but you will lose new features.
Only the one you gut with LLM first. Even when you disconnect it from the internet these devices often connect to unsecured WiFi's around you and snitch about you. There could be more tricks they do.
I love this: Just hook up your Apple TV for streaming.
Do you really need a propaganda box? Connect with family or friends
A monitor. You will lose some controls over color & clarity (motion smoothing). But it will provide the best “dumb TV” experience.
I use my monitor with a fire TV stick and it renders very well. LG 4k panel.
Tvs can themselves have their privacy improved by never connecting it to WIFI, except, maybe for software updates, if needed (rare).
The smarts you connect to the TV can vary.
Apple Ts manage things in some good ways.
NVidia Shields are good in others for Android TV.
The Android TV platform is likely more customizable (check youtube the past few weeks) to get it how you want.
Last, but not least, some poeple may just hook up a web browser to the TV and then contain that.
get a projector? or don’t get a tv at all
That's not the problem space. There are lots of "smart" projectors now, too. Unless you mean overhead.
Honestly, anything pre-2020.
Read a paperbook
Avoid Vizio at all costs!
I recently picked one up at Sam's Club. Since my use was only to display an external HDMI source, I never even configured Wifi. Unfortunately, they're now wise to this. If it detects its been offline for ten or so start-ups, the TV will 'helpfully' force you into the Wifi config workflow on the next start. It seems to keep an internal counter in flash memory which nothing but a factory reset will clear. In my tests, it seemed like it can be kept offline forever but at the cost of manually dismissing the Wifi config workflow with three clicks on the remote every ~10 power-ons.
The TV also will not turn on and just display an external HDMI source even though it has a "Remember Last Source" feature. That feature does work as expected with any internal streaming source but external sources must first be manually selected with the remote after each power on (also undocumented in the manual).
I figured this out because I bought this small TV to be a wall-mounted screen in the dedicated bathroom of our home theater room. It's only job is to turn on while someone is in the little bathroom and display a copy what's on the main 150" projector screen in the next room, then turn off when they leave. The on/off is handled by a motion sensor and standard Home Assistant automation but after power on it correctly shows the Last Selected external HDMI source for 1 second, then blanks the screen. The source is already selected and working but being blacked out until you manually re-select the same source with the remote (only if it's external). This is clearly an undocumented anti-pattern added specifically to prevent the TV being used unattended as a display screen, picture frame, digital sign etc. Why? Because Vizio (now owned by WalMart) doesn't get rev share if it's: 1) Not online, and 2) Only displaying external sources. That's why it demands manual "proof-of-life" before it'll grudgingly deliver the basic functionality it claims on the box.
This made me angry - and the TV was otherwise the perfect size and feature set for my use case. So I programmed an ESP32 with an IR emitter so that every time the TV powers on it sends the remote presses to manually clear the "Please Connect Internet" message and re-select the already-selected external HDMI. Very annoying to be forced to figure this out but now it works fine and no one even sees the annoying messages as they're already gone before by the time we enter and see the screen. So, fuck Vizio :-). Although, I'm pretty sure almost all current consumer TVs now sell all your data exactly the same. The only differences may be the depth of dark patterns they deploy to resist offline usage.
To be fair, aside from all the super evil dark patterns, it's a shockingly good quality small TV (24-inch) for $88. Although it's obviously not a high-end display (no native HDR or 24fps), the chipset does do a decent job tone mapping external HDR (and HDR10) sources to SDR and it does proper 3:2 pull-down to display 24 frame external sources at 60fps - which very few TVs in this size do well (or at all). This is why I kept it and spent the time 'fixing' it. Of course, this is only because the TV is subsidized by the $35-$60 avg yearly revenue TV manufacturers reportedly can collect from advertising, app install payments, rev shares and selling all your viewing data. For $88 at local retail, it's probably being sold at a small loss. What's sad is I would have paid double that for the same TV without the dark patterns (in fact, I did buy and return two 24" TVs before this one for $160 and $200 but they couldn't even display external HDR or 24fps sources at all - which was a requirement since this secondary display has to display sources configured for the main projector).
lol, I Ctrl+F'ed for this brand after having pointed my agent at it. There's some pretty bad stuff on there, some of which I've already reported to Vizio.
If you wanted to give your coding agent a crack at the internet connection thing and patching that out, there's some sort of pairing you can do over LAN to allow access to launch web content, this can be chained with old Chromium RCEs to gain root access.
> some of which I've already reported to Vizio.
I'm not sure they'll care about any of the issues I had since they were clearly put there on purpose. Kinda like complaining to the concentration camp guards about the poor service and lumpy bedding... :-)
> If you wanted to give your coding agent a crack at the internet connection thing
Good to know but I've got the IR commands and timing working to nullify the dark patterns and I'm not going to touch it. To Vizio we're not the customer, we're the product. I wish the community godspeed in pwning Vizio TVs as they've certainly 'earned' the attention through bad behavior. :-)
Frankly, I've never used any apps in a smart TV nor have I ever allowed a TV internet access. I always feed my displays via external HDMI because our main viewing room is a custom-built, fully sound-proof, tri-level screen room with elevated stage and motorized curtains. All walls & ceiling are 100% fabric over acoustic padding (no windows), separate snack bar and dedicated restroom. Seats 17 in matching, reclining theater loungers. The sources are mounted inside three in-wall sliding racks and include UHD disc, PS5 Pro, 3 older consoles, media server, satellite, cable, vintage LaserDisc and cloud streaming multiplexed through dual AVRs with separate amps driving 9.2.4 sound (B&W THX speakers + subs the size of 55 gal oil drums backstage).
I just needed to make that little 24-inch Vizio work because that's how big the in-wall display cutout in the restroom is (the screen cutout is integrated into the interior design). Finding a secondary display that small able to at least display via conversion every format all those sources can throw was challenging. :-)
Just get any old TV and use the HDMI input and don’t connect it to the internet. The fears of it phoning home anyway even when you don’t configure wifi are overblown (almost no TVs can do this), as are the privacy implications. Nobody cares that you watch Severance and MCU movies. It’s sort of like people who tape over their laptop camera but leave the mic alone, as if 86400 photos of your face are somehow private and sensitive but all of the conversations in the room are not.
Use dumb.tv
I tried the URL and got this:
I'm a big fan of my Sony KV-25C5E. /s
When it comes to TVs you can buy in a big box store today, I'm not sure there are any TVs that fulfil your requirements. Everything's more or less on a scale of privacy to quality, where on one side you have the panels of 10 years ago with dumb electronics from brands you've never heard of, and on the other side are the LG panels, but with LG non-privacy. The other notable brands you've probably heard of fall closer to LG than to the no-name brands.
You can probably scrounge up a decent modern-ish panel on the used market that's old enough to not have been shipped with malware, but then you're betting on it not having been updated to receive the malware, or relegating yourself to rooting it the instant you get it home.
My unspoken assumption is that you don't want to give money to evil companies. If you yourself are fine with giving your money to evil people, then you can Just™ buy an LG panel and root it.
Get a panel and controller from China
I have not checked the details recently, but it should still be possible to get an aftermarket "dumb TV" generic controller board to fit the panel, as LCD panels have a somewhat standardised controller-panel interface.
6 years ago, discussion of an article about such: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24877363 (site hasn't survived, but article can still be found in archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20190511065920/http://redlightgre...)