These TVs can capture and identify 7,200 images per hour, or approximately two every second. The data is then used for content recommendations and ad targeting, which is a huge business; advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads in 2022, according to market research firm eMarketer.
Obviously
Honestly the least I’d expect of a smart TV.
… but it isn’t able to tell anyone, as it is not connected to the Internet. Poor smart TV.
If there are any unsecured networks in your vicinity it might be telling on you without you knowing.
Pull one of your old routers from the back of closet, and use it to make a completely new network just for your TV. If you don’t connect the router to the rest of the internet, your TV is happy to connect to something, and you get to keep your privacy a little bit longer.
Not everyone has an old router. I do, but not everyone.
Why do I keep an old router?
Cause it still works, doesn’t take up much space, and doesn’t really eat a whole lot just siting there.
Also, 2 is one, 1 is none. Good to have a fall back in case hardware dies
This is the way.
If you have a nice enough router you could connect your TV to it and block its Mac address maybe.
Or maybe configure the firewall to block/allow only very specific things. It’s a bit more technical than just plugging in an Ethernet cable though…
I’m a little surprised we haven’t heard about one of these smart TV brands using something like Amazon Sidewalk yet to communicate the analyzed data:
https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Sidewalk/
A popular brand could totally set up their own network like this and with apartments there would probably be sufficient density to ensure that there’s always at least one connected device nearby to act as a bridge.
Well that’s pretty terrifying.
Need to figure out how to block that now. Sigh
Faraday cage.
Open it up and desolder the wifi module/antenna
if you’re this paranoid, just buy one of those mcdonalds menu screen tvs or just rip out all of the wifi electronics. i can imagine it being one of those standard modules like in laptops.
Until it doesn’t work at all since the wifi chip is integral to boot up.
Just make your own TV
What’s the funny-to-serious timeline for this comment, fifteen years?
Any evidence of that or are you just speculating?
Pure speculation.
I don’t think so. The first step when connecting to WiFi is to agree to the terms of service that allow the manufacturer to legallly spy on you. Without agreeing to that, they’d be breaking the law.
I’m too skeptical to default to the whole “corporations will abide by the law” thing anymore. I’m willing to accept that I might be wrong though. There have just been too many times where I’ve pessimistically remarked on a situation like this as a sort of half joke only to find out that I was right and it was actually worse than I initially assumed.
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I am nearsighted and wanted a ~75” tv for the bedroom so I don’t have to lay sideways on my glasses while watching and cuddling.
I could not find a single non-smart tv in that size. Nobody is interested in selling dumb TVs because there is money to be made :/
The price of TVs is heavily subsidized by the “smart” features. Same way that PCs are subsidized by having Windows pre-installed.
Nice setup. You could try Radarr and Lidarr, and Plex. Plex would probably work with your tv card and bring all your media together.
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The trouble is you can’t find decent sized monitor panels at reasonable prices. Frankly your most practical bet is to buy a TV with minimal smart functions and never connect it, then use that for your media PC. Also maybe hack the TV, that should be far more common IMO.
I’m pretty sure my Android TV powered by Google™ knows more than what I’m watching. It could probably give me therapy if I threw a LLM on there.
Good to know I’m not paranoid enough tho.
Yep.
I got a Fire Stick early on, ditched it after a year.
Have a Samsung smart TV now, working to stop using the smart part and run more self hosted, and isolate apps like Netflix and Amazon.
Worst part about this is I have an OLED, if I use a different device for features I risk burn. Netflix on the tv will show a screensaver and go black after 2 minutes. Pressing pause on Netflix on the ps5 or appletv means you get a static screen until you return.
I wish we could get what we pay for and not be products ourselves.
You could always turn the screen off
My two smart TV’s are the most blocked devices by my network’s pihole. It’s not even close.
The first two are my two TVs, (one is a Samsung, the other is a Roku,) and the third is my phone that I’ve been doomscrolling on all day. The “better” TV has almost 3x as many blocked requests as my phone, even though I only used my TV for about an hour today.
yeah lol, no real need to obfuscate those ip fyi
I tried using free tier NextDNS on a network with 2 Samsung TVs hooked up and hit the threshold of 300k requests within a week. It’s mad how much data Samsung is collecting from their smart devices. Even when not using any features, the TV may stay with a screensaver and still send lots of data.
I have my old (stupid) tv from like 2013, works perfectly fine. No apps, no firmware, no ads, no tracking. Never felt the need to buy a smart tv, but I’m afraid it’d be near impossible to find a new one that isn’t nowadays I’d mine broke down.
This is the only reason I have a smart TV. I didn’t want one, in fact it prompted me to make an SSID and VLAN just for it, then applied a bunch of DNS blocks. Unfortunately my old 2012 TV wasn’t worth shipping across the country and the image was getting pretty dim and it had started developing dead pixels.
If you want anything above 1080p that’s a dumb TV you have to go commercial like the hospitality market and they charge you way more for it. And they won’t even sell it to you without a corporate account in most places.
The only way to get 4K and HDR without the smarts as a consumer is to buy a giant gaming monitor… and those too ask for quite a premium, because gamers.
Have you tried just not connecting it to the internet, and using a streaming box?
I opted to connect it because it’s the only device in the house Netflix is willing to give more than 720p. I hate DRM.
That’s just some epic bullshit. Netflix’s tiering is just asinine.
☠️
They come with the crap built in these days.
I know. Don’t connect it to the internet, and don’t use the crap
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Yeah but they do still end up pretty expensive. I was able to score a black friday 65" 4K HDR 1000 nits 120 Hz FreeSync TV with local dimming for $700. Not the best but given I don’t use it that often or for very long I didn’t want it to turn into a big investment.
I’m sure it’s pretty average but for my use case it worked out pretty good.
Yeah, I’m waiting for the death of my current TV. A LG that’s plain old LCD, but HDR and 4k, no smart shit. Luckily I know hardware and can physically disable things. I break and remove things so hardware is physically incapable of connecting.
“Are you watching the TV, or is the TV watching you?”
laughs in crtv and dvd player
Good. Have fun uploading any information about me without wifi or an ethernet cable. Smart TVs were a mistake, even the most expensive ones are slow and trash.
Yeah, I needed some 70" for work displays had to spend like hell to go top of the line to get half assed quad cores.
Couldn’t you use a raspberry pi or something? My point was that a $50 android tv box beats the absolute top TVs both in terms of speed and compatibility with apps.
I dont need them for the smart, I need their menus to be consistently fast for automation. Response time for input changes, menus disappearing timely after boot.
When we buy $300 50" ‘specials’ and I start pumping IR at them for timed remote automation they always get hung up and start missing steps.
So… Can someone explain how this is legal if you’re watching DRM content? Capturing and uploading copyrighted, protected content doesn’t seem very kosher.
advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads
Jesus. Spend a fraction of that developing good products that people will actually want to buy so you can end this unethical, scumbag way of making a buck.
It’ll never tell anyone because it’ll never be hooked up to the internet.
I really likr the last few firmware updates that my TV received. But apart from checking for updates every few months, I agree that keeping it blocked in my router settings is ideal.
Doesn’t that kind of beat the purpose? The device can just store telemetric data and send them in batches whenever you connect it.
My Sony runs AndroidTV and uses NextDNS to block telemetry and the like. The features that I received with the last few updates enabled VRR, improved clarity and Dolby Vision, etc. So it was definitely worth it.
I had read a story once that if I recall correctly, one manufacturer would send the signal back thru the coax cable to the cable box just in case to make sure your data was captured somehow.
My smart TV is blocked from the internet. It doesn’t know shit.
oh it knows. it just can’t tell anyone!
I am so glad I don’t have a TV. It’s just the Internet with even more ads, minus the Internet.
It doesn’t have to be. I get everything for free, no subscriptions, no ads. I’m pretty happy with the deal.
surprisedpikachuface.webp
God damn webp, why is support so inconsistent?
Next up: Televisions that don’t have off switches and never go to sleep.
We could call them telescreens maybe
They could have a built in alarm clock that starts your day with a mandatory workout and the latest news telling us what to believe
Ones with voice activation & stuff do this already. TVs will pull a lot of power when ‘off’ since they’re not off.
Yup. A lot of folks don’t seem to understand that this is the case, though.
Pretty soon, there won’t even be soft-off switches anymore.
Check this out: https://www.freetelly.com/
This thing gives me serious 1984 vibes. I hadn’t read the book when I first heard of this, but I now realize the name is pretty much and open play on the tellyscreens in the book. Reminds me of the black mirror episode where you have to pay to stop watching.
Since I didn’t comment elsewhere on the thread, my plan of attack for now is usually older TVs (even just a few years old are still really good quality), even if they are smart but not ever connected. Apple TVs on each one, also buy the 2-3 year old version of this used for about $40-$50 not any more then I used to spend buying Roku sticks. Gives me a good enough balance for now, and before Apple haters pile on, yes it’s not perfect, but there have been some studies showing these are some of the best behaved streaming devices. More importantly than what the streaming device is, I have the ability to chuck them and add a PC or whatever else without having to replace the actual TV.
