Samsung UK admits you can’t disable ads on Samsung smart TV

https://twitter.com/samsunguk/status/1453432765656059907

by NKosmatos • 5 years ago

231 194 5 years ago

twitter.com

rvz• 5 years ago

It has been painfully admitted and the confession is in public.

Samsung's smart TVs are watching you watch TV. Time to watch something else with a different brand?

AdmiralAsshat• 5 years ago

What's the alternative? Unless you're buying TVs specifically made for office meeting rooms or hotel lobbies, pretty much every major manufacturer makes exclusively "Smart" TVs on their higher-end models, and those smart TVs include various bits of ads/tracking.

jqpabc1236• 5 years ago

... hotel lobbies

Yes, this is what I look for --- a TV that is dumb as dirt and built to run 24/7 for years.

https://www.lg.com/us/business/hospitality-tvs/lg-40lt340h0u...

enragedcacti2• 5 years ago

Don't connect it to the internet? Not saying what they are doing isn't scummy as all hell, but aside from having to navigate to HDMI 1 when you turn on the TV (for the models who don't support setting a default on boot) that should work perfectly as a dumb TV.

raxxorrax• 5 years ago

Who even buys hardware like this?

garciasn3• 5 years ago

Most people. Why? A myriad of reasons, potentially, but here are two big ones:

1. Because ad-supported hardware makes for low prices and people prefer to pay less.

2. Most people are largely uncaring about seeing advertising on their devices. It's why less than 30% of US residents block ads on the web.

rolph• 5 years ago

i start caring when ads are blocking vital portions of video , example:

" here we, are opening the tomb of the lost king for the first time, what do you see howard?" " i see wonderfull things!"

except i instead see a big banner, and a logo and a popup from the side, and they have zero to do with archeology or science and the whole point of the program has been obliterated.

Ansil8495• 5 years ago

1. Because ad-supported hardware makes for low prices and people prefer to pay less.

Is this actually true though? I'd love to see an analysis of pricing in relation to the amount of adware a TV has. My gut instinct is that you would not see a significant price decrease for more adware-laden models.

mattnewton• 5 years ago

For #1 I’ve actually found it practically impossible to buy an equivalent consumer tv without “smart” features like this at any price. The only “dumb television” screens I have found are either large computer monitors or commercial panels with entirely different material tolerances and prices.

spywaregorilla2• 5 years ago

3. People don't know that it's there

afavour• 5 years ago

The vast majority of people. Because that’s what’s promoted, discounted and sold to them. It’s getting more and more difficult to find a smart TV that isn’t packed with shit like this.

chrisBob• 5 years ago

I purchased a similar product from TCL, and for me cost was the main factor. It got a decent 4k TV for $500 because it is supported by ads and data collection. I don't keep it connected to the internet, and all of the content comes from my AppleTV. I am ok with it in my house even knowing the business model since I keep it offline. If they added a cellular modem I would reconsider.

jqpabc1236• 5 years ago

"Smart TV" means "smart" for the manufacturer. For the user, it's pretty "dumb" to let the manufacturer invade your privacy on your TV.

Thank you Samsung but no thanks. Any "smarts" I need from my TV, I will add myself. This way, I know exactly what I am getting.

garciasn3• 5 years ago

Unless you're using a disconnected TV (i.e., no CATV/SATV/Internet), your viewing habits are being tracked and sold.

FabHK• 5 years ago

Can I assume that a modern TV I buy works without internet? (I'd just want it to display stuff I feed it via HDMI or whatever).

jqpabc1236• 5 years ago

A lot of what I watch is digital broadcast TV. And the only connection my TV has is through HDMI to my computer. Even my dual ATSC broadcast tuner is driven by my PC so I can do all sorts of "smart" stuff like picture in a picture, split screen or watch one channel while recording another.

Privacy is only half the issue. Freedom is the other half. Most manufacturers control what you're allowed to install on your "smart" TV. And most can't record either.

How "dumb" is that?

gruez• 5 years ago

SATV

Do satellite TV boxes even have an uplink connection? AFAIK the satellite dish is one direction only.

enragedcacti2• 5 years ago

Roku TVs have this turned on by default but it is pretty easy to disable in settings.

Exercise to the reader to see what is still sent when it's disabled.

curryst• 5 years ago

Even then, I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if Google was selling Chromecast viewing data and similar for Amazon.

If not on the receiver, the client (likely your phone) may be reporting it.

And then if not that, wherever you're streaming from may be reporting viewing habits.

This seems like another one of those things that's just intractable because the overhead is too high. You can limit who gets your viewing habits, but preventing anyone from getting them is hard. Similar to tracking on the internet.

The solution is legislation, not playing cat and mouse with corporations.

gdulli4• 5 years ago

Is this a Samsung app that you would never see if you have no interest in smart apps and leave your TV off the internet? Because if so that's easily avoided, Netflix would also profile me and advertise content to me through its app, and I don't plan to ever open that one either.

This screenshot looks like a streaming content interface, and data mining you has been a fundamental part of all these services for years, right? Not saying it's great, just that this isn't new or unusual. Of course they're tracking what you watch for advertising purposes.

Or is this a fundamental part of the UI for a Samsung TV that you need to interact with for daily use even if you don't want content through Samsung? Because that would be unacceptable. I wouldn't buy a TV if it required an internet connection to function.

My favorite type of advertising is traditional TV commercials that can be fast forwarded or muted and fully skipped. There's never going to be a net decrease in advertising. Digital and streaming are just making it harder to skip, keep strictly separate from content, and receive anonymously.

Ansil8495• 5 years ago

Is this a Samsung app that you would never see if you have no interest in smart apps and leave your TV off the internet? Because if so that's easily avoided

So the problem with this approach is that, yes sure if you have the technical acumen you can prevent the TV from phoning home, but you are still giving money to the company that engages in this kind of behavior. And that money contributes to them developing more intrusive tools like this that target consumers of their products who do not have the requisite technical acumen to prevent the TV from phoning home.

In other words, by buying an adware TV and disabling the adware, you're still supporting the adware company instead of just buying a TV without adware in the first place.

gdulli4• 5 years ago

I have a Vizio TV that's never been on the internet. I've never opened its apps and don't know what it is I'm avoiding. Given my other product requirements for a TV, eliminating all that have smart apps would probably leave me with no choices.

Ironically I have a Samsung phone because I wouldn't give money to Google for hardware. We're just surrounded and choosing the lesser of various evils every day.

mithusingh322• 5 years ago

It's not.

For example when pausing a Hulu stream on my Samsung TV....I'll get an ad for random crap (sometimes for things placed in a show) ok my pause screen.

Samsung TVs are basically giant billboard you pay to have in your home.

Ansil8495• 5 years ago

Samsung TVs are basically giant billboard you pay to have in your home.

You say this, and yet you have one in your home. And this contradiction is why these things continue to thrive: because even people who care...also don't care.

gdulli4• 5 years ago

If that's Samsung interjecting onto other apps, that's horrible. I guess if it's Hulu it's still horrible, but feels less chaotic and it's easier to reason about whether the Hulu value prop alone is worthwhile given the price vs. ads.

senectus1• 5 years ago

Dunno if the UK version is different to the Aussie version... but a pi-hole stops adverts on my samsung TV

TakuYam• 5 years ago

A pi hole absolutely blocks all ads on Samsung smart TVs

L_2262• 5 years ago

This is absolutely false.

Source: I have a samsung smart TV and run a pihole

bennyp101• 5 years ago

Does that not depend on the ads?

Ads on the TV = yes

Ads on the individual streaming services = They change it around every month or so

drcongo3• 5 years ago

I wrote this [1] seven years ago and the future I feared is now here. I lucked out finding a 4K LG dumb TV about three years ago, but I've recently been trying to buy a larger screen for a new house and cannot find a single good, large, dumb TV for sale in the UK.

[1] https://andybeaumont.com/post/dumb-tv/

humps• 5 years ago

On the Samsung TVs I own, when you first set it up there's a yes/no agreement screen and if you choose "no" none of the smart features are accessible and you don't get any phoning home or ads by simply not entering Wi-Fi details. I haven't bought a new TV for a few years, though. So this may be different now, but the best way I found to create a dumb TV experience.

gpvos2• 5 years ago

Which features are still accessible? Only HDMI input, or more?

wombat-man2• 5 years ago

yeah you should be able to still watch OTA tv channels. Hdmi cable boxes should of course work. same with picture adjustment

tomc1985• 5 years ago

I do this with my several-years-old Samsung as well. Inputs, menus, TV tuner, and the OTA program guide all work. No smart apps and no ads.

wombat-man2• 5 years ago

yeah I have a cheaper vizio and I found that just not connecting it to wifi is a much better experience. the 'smart tv' features are not very good compared to a dedicated chromecast anyways.

bsd44• 5 years ago

I recently bought a Samsung 4K TV and it came with a "free tv" service (that's also crammed with ads). It's intrusive, it auto-plays and can't be disabled and I just don't want it. I've never owned a TV as an adult before and was interested in buying a video console to play some games, so it's kind of my fault for not understanding how these modern TVs work. But even so, if I'm paying £600 for a TV how is it acceptable to have all this nonsense pre-installed on it that can't be disabled or deleted? Nowhere on the sales page does it mention any of that and all the reviews seems to be from happy people on day 1 of purchase. The only way around it is to connect up a third party receiver to it such as Amazon Fire TV or Apple TV...but still feel cheated as a consumer if I have to do that.

intricatedetail2• 5 years ago

People should start making complaints to trading standards and simply return these as not fit for purpose.

throw109202• 5 years ago

This is what I did for my TV, as well. Unfortunately, they'll eventually do something about it - they'll make pop-ups that appear continually until you sign in, or straight-up disable critical features. Just like jailbreaking, this is just a hack that happens to work for the time being - the only long-term solution is to vote with your wallet, lobby for regulation, or (ideally) both.

httgp• 5 years ago

My LG TV wouldn’t upgrade without me consenting to it.

sebazzz• 5 years ago

Same on my LG OLED with latest WebOS. It starts with the six buttons on my remote for Disney, Netflix, Prime, etc that also immediately install the associated app [even when earlier uninstalled] when accidentally touched and cannot be remapped. Next, on the home screen you're always greeted with a list of movies from all those streaming services without the ability to turn this list off.

gjsman-1000• 5 years ago

The ^HA (laughing at the image above) is just... wow, even the person running the Twitter account thinks it's bad.

deergomoo6• 5 years ago

Apologies if you're joking but that's how they sign off their tweets—HA is the initials of the person replying.

greenshackle2• 5 years ago

I believe those are the initials of the rep who answered.. their reply tweets have a few different ones like ^NR, ^CM, ^SK.

https://twitter.com/SamsungUK/status/1453740985763106823

jonatron• 5 years ago

There's a hidden "Hotel Mode" on many TVs. I don't know if that would disable ads?

effingwewt• 5 years ago

Hotel mode disables options you don't want some random person messing with(inputs, language, etc).

'Smart' TVs are a perfect example of everything wrong with the business/consumer relationship.

We are paying for the privilege of being spied upon more intrusively than ever, and the companies see us using workarounds and rather than stop their behavior they double down because what recourse does the customer have?

We need fines over all of this shit. As long as it makes them money rather than costing them, this will continue.

cryptodan• 5 years ago

Use pihole?

deergomoo6• 5 years ago

My recommendations for how to deal with this shit, in decreasing order of effectiveness:

1. Don't buy a Samsung or LG TV. Unfortunately, if you're in the market for a real high-end TV, you often don't have another option

2. Never connect it to the internet and use a dedicated streaming box/stick instead. If you don't have one, or don't want to give up a HDMI port...

3. Block the following domains on your router or via a free OpenDNS account:

- ads.samsung.com

- config.samsungads.com

- doubleclick.net

- gpm.samsungqbe.com

- log-config.samsungacr.com

- samsungacr.com

- samsungads.com

- samsungosp.com

- samsungotn.net

- samsungrm.net

- tvx.adgrx.com

No more ads.

This shit makes my blood boil. I have a laundry list of issues with this TV, which is a shame because when it's not actively trying to make me hate the company it's actually a very nice display. LG pull this shit too, but I think they're slightly less awful than Samsung. I didn't particularly want an OLED panel which is why I went for a Samsung LCD, and I regret that decision regularly.

mikeryan• 5 years ago

The problem with trying to avoid the current smart TVs is that the industry has started to subsidize the pricing by selling viewing data. It’s going to be harder moving forward to compete on price without having “smart” features that are really a shim for getting the analytics and tracking packages in there.

I’ve been running a pihole on my home network which also actually removes a lot of client side inserted ads during video playback which is another huge upside.

deergomoo6• 5 years ago

What frustrates me is the lack of options and lack of transparency. Amazon do it right with the Kindle imo—you can get it with ads or pay slightly more and get it without.

My other issue is that I find ads on something that costs > £1000 to be incredibly distasteful. If it was some bargain basement thing fine, but this is meant to be top tier.

azemetre• 5 years ago

There is away around this, consistently pressure and lobby our governments to make this illegal or mandate that they provide dumb TVs as well.

Change doesn't happen instantly but a dedicated lobbying campaign and activism will yield results.

kloch• 5 years ago

Is HDMI-CEC (Anynet+ on Samsung) a security/privacy risk also? I remember reading something about it being able to leverage connected devices Internet access a long time ago but I can NOT find anything to substantiate that now.

I do disable HDMI-CEC anyway just to stop user-hostile features like Hulu on Roku disabling the input select button on the TV remote.

deergomoo6• 5 years ago

Ethernet over HDMI is totally a thing but I have no idea if the ports in their TVs are wired for it.

antihero10• 5 years ago

Is there a UK available streaming device that supports:

- AirPlay (audio/video)

- Spotify Connect

- YouTube 4K

- USB MP4 (& MKV)

- Netflix 4K

- Amazon Prime 4K

And is super polished & responsive? If so I'd be interested, but my LG TV, crummy as its ads are, does all this out the box. I'd happily pay some money to have more control.

neilalexander2• 5 years ago

Aside from USB playback, an Apple TV 4K can solve most of this. (I don’t know about Spotify Connect but assume it works with AirPlay if not).

deergomoo6• 5 years ago

As others have said the Apple TV gets you most of the way there—presumably you can do USB playback from the TV without connecting to the network?

LeoPanthera2• 5 years ago

You can do it all with two streaming devices, an Apple TV, and a Raspberry Pi running LibreElec:

https://libreelec.tv

And the Raspberry Pi is $35 so it's not a hugely expensive addition.

devmunchies2• 5 years ago

I’m using a Mac mini. Just have a wireless mouse and keyboard. Much more versatile than a streaming device. It’s nice being able to zoom from it with family or coworkers.

Mindwipe4• 5 years ago

I don't think so, but a Sony Android TV would also meet these requirements.

HN is generally down on integrated TVs, but the truth is that they're honestly fine nowadays, and much more likely to have robust integration of services than boxes are. And if support goes downhill after a while, you can buy a box then when there will maybe be better options.

gmac• 5 years ago

I think maybe a Roku Streaming Stick 4K will do everything there except the USB? (I don't have one but have been considering one; I have a 5-year-old LG Blu-Ray player that covers USB and DLNA pretty well).

OnlyMortal• 5 years ago

Roku, I believe, would be something to look at.

breakingcups• 5 years ago

With the exception of AirPlay, the Nvidia Shield seems to fit the bill.

There are AirPlay receivers for the Shield IIRC but they are unofficial and unsupported.

short12• 5 years ago

A large amount of Kodi/android based tv boxes support that. For example pentoo devices

namlem• 5 years ago

A Windows PC?

bobsmooth• 5 years ago

Nvidia shield pro should be able to do all that with some finagling for airplay.

tristor• 5 years ago

4. All of the above.

Ironically, Vizio TVs (one of the budget brands) seem to be one of the least aggressive about trying to display ads in ways which are difficult to bypass. That's what I bought and I don't connect it to the network, and I block these ad domains (among others) network-wide.

snug2• 5 years ago

Where does LG do it? Honestly I've had two LGs for about 4 years now and have not noticed any ads, maybe some in their content store, but that's about it. Overall pretty happy with LG

fy20• 5 years ago

I have a LG C7 and haven't seen any ads. Maybe it's newer versions or certain regions.

deadmutex2• 5 years ago

For #1, maybe these can be good substitutes:

https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm...

zeusk• 5 years ago

Absolutely not, their panels suck.

The only budget manufacturers that give two shit about quality seem to be Hisense, TCL and Vizio.

TonyBagODonuts• 5 years ago

I bought the 65" dumb panel TV from them because I refuse all this be, it's fine, and I feel like it's mine, I'm not renting it by constantly paying with ad watching.

MomoXenosaga• 5 years ago

I have an LG TV and never seen an ad. Just don't go into their store or home screen. Launch the app you want directly.

acoard• 5 years ago

My understanding is this is what Amazon Sidewalk is, at least in part, about. Your TV could easily bypass your network, and connect through your neighbours Echo. If I understand, it's opt-out and enabled by default. So, essentially Samsung will pay Amazon a few bucks a months to show you ads regardless of how you've locked down your network, because your neighbour hasn't locked down his.

https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/b?ie=UTF8&node=213281...

paulryanrogers3• 5 years ago

This is my greatest fear, that I'll have to resort to wrap around Faraday cages for each of my should-be-dumb devices.

darkteflon4• 5 years ago

This is excellent advice. Shit makes my blood boil, too. I do this for my LG TV but have had a hard time getting a definitive list of domains to add to my blocklist. Does anyone have a lead on this?

yumraj• 5 years ago

Some person maintains this Smart TV focused list for pihole. Most of the domains above are there, and more.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/m...

And, there's one for FireTV

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/m...

Krisjohn• 5 years ago

I have a Samsung smart TV. I was using Pihole before I got it. I also had to implement a rule on my Mikrotik router to force all DNS queries on my network to go through th Pihole. Then the ads on the Samsung disappeared. Unfortunately, it also broke the OS updates and app store, but all I have to do is disable the pihole filter for 10 minutes to do those jobs and I'm good.

worrycue• 5 years ago

Unfortunately, if you're in the market for a real high-end TV, you often don't have another option

What about Sony?

deergomoo6• 5 years ago

I will admit I haven't checked very recently, but when I was looking earlier in the year, Sony's offerings were a good bit more expensive than Samsung or LG for an equivalent panel and lacked some features important to me like VRR.

Plus, doesn't Android TV have ads anyway? I haven't used it extensively but a quick search seems to suggest it does.

LinAGKar• 5 years ago

Or Philips

ryanlol2• 5 years ago

Why would you not want an OLED panel? Are you using the TV for signage or something?

beerandt2• 5 years ago

When I shopped TVs a few years ago, Sony was the only consumer brand that didn't have ToS that included language about this type of advertising. I'm not sure if that's changed. They still spy on you plenty, though.

That's what we bought, but we still don't connect it to a network and only use hdmi inputs. Plus disabled quite a few apps via adb, and don't update the software.

It's sad that this is what it's come to.

I also suspect that at least Android devices are starting to use other (Android) network devices as proxies to get data to Google when they've been firewalled with only LAN access.

Lots of unexplained data getting transferred on my home network between firewalled Android devices.

But maybe the state of things just has me being overly paranoid.

Scoundreller7• 5 years ago

While it will hopefully remain one way, it’s a matter of time the TV will receive updates and ads over DVB or other broadcast mediums.

Could even geo-target ads. TV could figure out its location by GPS, multilateration of DVB signal strengths, what wifi is around, or purchase/delivery information (you didn’t stupidly get your 85” TV delivered to your own house, did you???).

Would be cool to have on-demand TV or other data distribution given how much spectrum is available on DVB-T.

Just like satellite Set top boxes.

beerandt2• 5 years ago

Yeah- I suspect the push for Ethernet over hdmi has a lot to do with getting all these "unplugged" smart devices reconnected to a network.

orev• 5 years ago

This is the holy grail for mobile carriers — have enough bandwidth in 5G where devices will come with mobile data already activated without user intervention at all.

post_break• 5 years ago

I have a 2020 high end Samsung TV. I haven't agreed to the TOS since taking it out of the box and it still works just fine.

ssully• 5 years ago

I got a Sony 2 years ago and haven't had any add issues.

Outside of being picky on what brands to choose from, the next best thing is to just never use the "smart" features and rely on a third party box like Roku/Apple TV/Pi/Etc. I know some smart TV adds will still throw ad's in the menus, but you shouldn't have to use the menu's that frequently.

darkteflon4• 5 years ago

I bought a high-end Sony LCD in 2016. The picture (still) looks great but the UX was awful. Laggy trash Android TV build with a manifestly underpowered CPU. It’s not connected to the internet these days - just to an Apple TV and game consoles - but the user experience is still awful - changing inputs, adjusting image settings, etc - all painful and a world away from the LG C9 upstairs.

LG has plenty of its own problems, but I’d never buy another Sony TV and take every opportunity to shout it from the rooftops.

beebeepka• 5 years ago

I feel there must be a non insignificant market for TV sized monitors, or something like dumb TVs with high end panels.

Industrial offerings were severely overpriced last time I checked.

I know I am hardly in the majority but having an actual computer hooked to your big panel is so much better than dealing with "apps" and ads.

How hard is it to make a profit selling a TV sized monitor?

pessimizer• 5 years ago

This can't be true. I've been assured that if you pay for something, it won't track you or advertise to you.

bhaile• 5 years ago

I use this [1] and never seen an ad on my LG TV. Its only for Smart TVs. It blocks all the major TV ad networks too but can't tell how successful it is on other TVs since I only have LG.

[1] https://github.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist

djbusby• 5 years ago

Lots of these panels have no "smarts" https://m.alibaba.com/showroom/4k-display.html

gizdan• 5 years ago

It's not just Samsung. My parents just bought an LG TV without consulting with me, and it's the same thing. They spent close to £1000, and now they have all sorts ads on the home screen that are impossible to remove, plus tracking that cannot be disabled.

JokerDan• 5 years ago

Are there any open source hardware TVs or OSS TV OS to load on Samsung/LG/other smart TVs that have some (if any) traction?

dehrmann• 5 years ago

Are there any open source TV firmware projects? Think OpenWRT for your TV.

Mindwipe4• 5 years ago

It wouldn't have any of the DRM keys for mainstream services.

bitwize• 5 years ago

My girlfriend likes to watch ALL the streamers. I have a "no smart TVs" rule for our home because of shit like this.

We made it work by buying an Apple TV and a Sceptre dumb TV off Walmart's web site. Sceptre allegedly has picture quality problems, but the picture looks great; if certain shades of blue turn up 5 nits too dim I haven't noticed.

KingOfCoders3• 5 years ago

My next TV will be a Samsung or LG.

Is there a Pi-hole version running on a something that I can PoE plug into the ethernet port of a TV?

mdoms2• 5 years ago

I never even look at the menu/home screen on my TV. I plug in a Chromecast, set it to the right HDMI input and cast everything I want to watch. Wouldn't have a clue if my TV is displaying ads in the menus.

intricatedetail2• 5 years ago

Why is that legal?

Scorpiion• 5 years ago

Does anyone know if newer Philips smart TVs have this type of ads? I have one that's around 4 years old and it doesn't have it, not sure with newer ones.

tonyedgecombe• 5 years ago

It’s a shame Apple won’t enter this market.

junon• 5 years ago

I called Samsung once for my smart TV that was showing ads that slowed everything down when they rotated out. Told them I just spent north of a grand on their TV (circa 2016) and that I didn't pay for ads.

Lo and behold, the service technician suggested I simply disable the internet on the TV and that they'd happily help me with that. Of course I didn't (I hung up on them), but out of curiosity I disabled the WLAN on it anyway and restarted it just to see what happened.

The ads were cached. There is absolutely no way to escape the ads on Samsung's TVs. I'll never buy another Samsung product again - it's my belief those sorts of practices are indicative much more sinister, less obvious anti-consumer practices.

908B64B197• 5 years ago

Just charge it back and return it.

dethos• 5 years ago

This makes me sick. LG seems to do the same.

At this day and age, it's getting harder and harder to buy a TV, that is just a that, a TV. Now you have to agree to ToS and as soon as you connect it to the internet to access any service you subscribe, your data is sent to the manufacturer so it can be sold or monetized through ads.

Not everyone is able to block this (with a PiHole or with other tools). Does anyone know of a brand that sells quality displays but doesn't have this kind of "crap"?

kjaftaedi• 5 years ago

I'm extremely satisfied with my Philips smart TV.

cronix• 5 years ago

I think the only way to sanely and safely use a modern "smart" tv is to use it as a "dumb" monitor. How ironic. Never use the software, except once to select HDMI 1 as the input, or whatever. That's the last time you'll see their cumbersome interface, or ads, or anything else that you didn't explicitly send to it.

egberts1• 5 years ago

LG smart TV, situated behind a DMZ firewall with only update server open works for me.

Nextgrid2• 5 years ago

I've recently been in the market for a display and had good luck with Sony's professional displays. I ended up going for this one: https://pro.sony/en_GB/products/pro-displays/fw-65bz40h which was very competitive on price with consumer-grade models of similar spec despite being a professional display.

It's just got a stock Android TV, a Sony privacy policy popup which you can decline (no idea what I'm missing out on - declining skips some steps during set up) and some professional apps such as Crestron screen sharing, Airplay, etc.

It's not a TV and doesn't have any consumer-grade apps preinstalled, but there is a Google Play store icon so I'm pretty sure you can install Netflix on it if you wanted to.

paulryanrogers3• 5 years ago

Would be ideal if there were some alternative ROMs for TVs. Something more customized for the owner's desires.

avmich• 5 years ago

If the hardware is subsidized - can the device then be used for parts? Weren't some game consoles used for computational tasks, as they were quite competitive there? Or I'd assume a company can emerge which would gladly take a fee for removing hardware - and software - limitation of such products; I'm sure the concept of ownership would serve everybody well here?

windex• 5 years ago

If these companies could stop you from blinking, they would.

footlose_3815• 5 years ago

never ever ever connect a smart TV to the internet directly. Use a chromecast or something.

the updates ARE ads

ddingus• 5 years ago

Those of you struggling with newer devices may want to do some digging to understand what service options may be available.

I have not explored this much, but I recently bought an older Samsung plasma panel used. I want it for parts, but it does work somewhat poorly.

While experimenting with it, I found a few modes in the service menu: Demo, Kiosk, Hotel, etc...

Be sure and keep a settings record and or find the factory reset option before just changing stuff. It is possible to get sets into weird modes that are not easy to get out of.

My current main display is a big plasma panel that I love. And it is smart, but not too smart. No Internet = no ADS.

Samsung UK admits you can’t disable ads on Samsung smart TV

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