My rule for modern TVs:
1. Never connect the TV panel itself to the internet. Keep it air-gapped. Treat it solely as a dumb monitor.
2. Use an Apple TV for the "smart" features.
3. Avoid Fire TV, Chromecast, or Roku.
The logic is simple, Google (Chromecast) and Amazon (Fire TV) operate on the same business model as the TV manufacturers subsidized hardware in exchange for user data and ad inventory. Apple is the only mainstream option where the hardware cost covers the experience, rather than your viewing habits subsidizing the device.
That's exactly my own thought process. I don't pretend that Apple is saintly, but their profit model is currently to make money through premium prices on premium products. They have a lot to lose, like several trillion dollars, in betraying that trust.
> I don't pretend that Apple is saintly, but their profit model is currently to make money through premium prices on premium products
Is this statement based on anything other than Apple marketing materials, perhaps a meaningful qualification from an independent third party? I worry this falsehood is being repeated so much it has become "truth".
Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but it certainly rhymes. Is there proof that Apple is monetizing our data with third parties? It's very clear how almost every other major company is, but Apple's been reasonably respectful about it.
My only * to this would be Google Chromecast devices directly if you already have them.
They have an option (buried way under settings) to make the home-screen apps only.
> Turn on Apps only mode
> From the Google TV home screen, select Settings Settings and then Accounts & Sign In.
> Select your profile and then Apps only mode and then Turn on.
It also makes the device significantly more performant.
Prompt for a login or to check for updates on every start or once a week. It wouldn’t be difficult to get the numbers up for the number of online devices.
If these things include WiFi hw it's not so simple.
You'd likely be surprised what proprietary WiFi-enabled consumer products do without your knowledge. Especially in a dense residential environment, there's nothing preventing a neighbor's WiFi AP giving internet access to everything it deems eligible within range. It may be a purely behind the scenes facility, on an otherwise ostensibly secured AP.
I don't have firsthand knowledge of TVs doing this, but other consumer devices with WiFi most definitely do this. If you don't control the software driving the TV, and the TV has WiFi hardware, I would assume it's at the very least in the cards.
It's rationalized by the vendors as a service to the customer. The mobile app needs to be able to configure the device via the cloud, so increasing the ability for said device to reach cloud by whatever means necessary is a customer benefit.
I thought it was relatively common knowledge within technical circles to never give smart TVs an internet connection, but I suppose not.
Also, it's worth noting that TVs built on Android TV have a massive advantage here in that you can plug them into your laptop and remove the content recognition package using adb (Android Debug Bridge) just like you might with a phone or tablet. This might be possible with Samsung Tizen and LG webOS devices too, but both are going to require more esoteric tooling.
The specs and quality of the panel, backlighting (if applicable), and image processing. These days, the few "dumb" TVs that are still sold are either cheap and bad or are designed for signage use and aren't well suited for TV/movies/games relative to their mass-market smart cousins.
A smart TV used as a dumb TV alongside a quality streaming box (Apple TV or Nvidia Shield TV) or console gets you the best overall experience.
To each their own, but the good ones last a long time even if they’re a little pricey. As an example, the original Apple TV 4K which was released in 2017 is still quite serviceable and continues to receive updates even now. A unit purchased in 2017 for $179 will have worked out to $18/year assuming they’re still using it in 2027.
You get a much cheaper TV. The folks who manufacture the TV expect to make a certain amount of revenue from your data, so they price this into the cost of the TV. This saves you from having to spend more money on a commercial display that often has a worse panel.
I don't use the Smart features and instead use a $30 Amazon Fire TV stick (for streaming services) and a Raspberry Pi (for torrents).
This has the major advantage that if the streaming hardware is ever obsoleted for any reason (ie, Netflix decides my TV is too old to support a compression codec they want to switch to), I only have to buy a new media player for $30 and not a whole new TV.
There's a variety of reasons, but many of us don't want any of the "smartness" and all of the stupidity that comes with "Smart TV's" these days, but don't really have comparable "dumb" options at similar or cheaper price points. The Telemetry (ACR), unremovable copilot app getting added to LG TV's, or all the Ad's Samsung are cramming into their "smart" garbage are three prime examples, but certainly not the only reasons I hate smart TV's (or really any device marketed as "smart") these days.
Most importantly though, can you even get non-smart TV's these days that aren't super budget items? To my knowledge that's pretty much not a thing anymore (yes there are presentation displays and large format monitors, but that gets into the weeds fast about feature/panel/spec differences, not to mention price differences)
Several Sony models are also very good, being built with Samsung panels and their own in-house image processing which is some of the best in the industry. Their TVs run Android and support offline firmware updates, too, which is why they're usually what I buy.
One answer is that all you wanted was bright, sixty inch monitor for your living room, into which you could plug your HDMI sources, but all you could get (subject to various other constraints: price, quality, availability, non-smart features you do care about, ...) was a smart TV, whose "smart" features you explicitly don't want.
You don't have to use every feature of something for it to make sense. I have a "dumb" TV. It has built-in speakers, but I don't use those. Volume is set to minimum. My streaming box connects to decent bookshelf speakers.
The point is I don’t want my TV, my refrigerator, my toaster, my dishwasher, or my washing machine to be “smart” or to have any AI or internet connectivity.
These all have a very simple job to do, and there’s absolutely zero value-add to the smart edge software nonsense.
The ability to own a TV at all, since even the cheaper sets now have this nonsense built right in. Loosely I think the idea is to subsidize the cost of the hardware with the marketing deals, but I don't actually know.
What you do is you should never do is connect your tv to the internet. You connect something you control and can turn off if you don't like it, like say a google youtube tv dongle, or apple tv. You can unplug them if you don't like them.
If you connect your tv to wifi, it can spy on you all the time. It can upload info on what you watch even if you used an external google tv puck to watch tv. It can see what you type on the screen if say you use it for say a monitor. There are reports of people deleting networking info but the tvs occasionally connecting back even though they deleted wifi info. You have to get a new network name to block them.
It's much much better to connect an external device, and if not that then use an ethernet cable to connect, because you can physically remove it.
Because the vast majority of people use whatever their tv came with these days in terms of smart tv connections, they don't set privacy settings. There's every reason for the tv makers to keep spying on you. If you have an external device their is motivation for them to not make you angry - but it's true that they can spy on you.
it's a feature on LG smart TVs that uses ACR (automatic content recognition)
to analyze what's displayed on your screen. LG then uses that data to offer
"personalized services," including content recommendations
and advertisements.
Interesting, ill go down a rabbit hole on this, ACR to detect commercials and activate mute? Or play some spa music, then back to main audio when commercials are over, that would be pretty cool use of ACR
>> When I first set up my LG TV, my main focus was ensuring the picture quality was perfect.
First things I did when I got a new LG TV:
* Turn off auto-smoothing
* Turn off high dynamic range
* Turn off audio processing
First things I did when I got my Apple TV:
* Turn off auto-smoothing
* Turn off high dynamic range
* Force everything to play at 1080p (delete all other resolutions)
There is a sharp cultural line between people who can't stand UHD/4K/48fps and want everything to look like pre-HD cinema, and people who love all the post processing. I'm on the wrong side. Which side are you all on?
How is it that it's been well known that smart TVs will show ads and spy on you for over 10 years, and yet people are still connecting their TVs to their WiFi rather than get a separate dedicated streaming device?
I just don't get it. How are people still surprised to find their TV is spying and will show ads?
Most people have not been paying much attention, and while I do remember some reporting of this on other tech news sites at the time, it was (understandably) mainly ignored by the mainstream media.
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TV manufacturers' interests are not perfectly aligned with users'. They may want to wow you with the picture, but definitely would like to monetize the heck out of the access to your viewing habits, and the internet connection you might mistakenly allow them to have.
Same applies to basically anything connected to the internet. Can it collect data useful for advertising, or otherwise legally saleable? If so, deny it access to the internet if you value your privacy. Or, when possible, replace its firmware / software with a reputable open-source version.
Follow the money. Can any money be made inconspicuously off you after a sale of the device? Are you happy with the way it would be done? Do some minimal research, and scratch your head.
How do you know turning it off really turns off the spying? Maybe it just turns off the overt behaviors like recommendation based on the spying, while continuing to collect data.
You really have to disconnect it from the network, or find out what "phone home" connections it is making and block some of them.
Alternatively block it from the internet at the router, or connect to a LAN-only subnet. Keeps the benefits of local AirPlay, Chromecast, and HomeKit without being able to phone home.
> To LG's credit, the TV automatically detected all of my devices -- my PC, PS5, Switch 2, and Fire TV Stick 4K Max -- and applied the best settings for each.
So.. they can take the time to do this properly.. but won't bother to ask you privacy preferences out of the box.
This should be illegal. If you collect data from customers then you need to be up front about that and the setting must be opt in. They clearly have the capability to do this. Their products need to be taken off the market if they can't act in a civilized manner.
When I helped a friend set up his LG C2, we plugged it into Ethernet just long enough to update its firmware, then promptly disconnected it, never to even set up WiFi.
Have you turned off this setting too? Just curious if you’ve tried messing with the settings, and whether they actually change the TV’s traffic patterns you see in the DNS sinkhole. Good experiment at the very least
LG also has a setting for "Wi‑Fi Direct / Wi‑Fi Screen Share". Can the TV connect to LG servers via that route? (Even if LAN and regular Wi-Fi are not configured?)
It’s not just smart TVs—pretty much every internet-connected device or service today seems to follow the same playbook: wrap a tracking mechanism inside a “convenient” or “personalized” feature. Whether it's TVs, phones, assistants, or even fridges, it’s becoming harder to tell what’s genuinely useful vs what’s just surveillance in disguise. The normalization of this design pattern feels more concerning than any single instance. Anyone else feel like this is just the default architecture of the modern consumer web now?
> Fortunately, once you've toggled Live Plus off, you no longer have to worry about your TV screen constantly being read to see what you're watching and to give you targeted ads.
Eh, I wouldn't be so quick to let my guard down. Even if you trust that that toggle actually turns the functionality completely off, there's no guarantee that it won't be enabled again in the next update.
Just keep your TV offline, as it always should be, and use it as a dumb display for trusted devices.
2. Use an Apple TV for the "smart" features.
3. Avoid Fire TV, Chromecast, or Roku.
The logic is simple, Google (Chromecast) and Amazon (Fire TV) operate on the same business model as the TV manufacturers subsidized hardware in exchange for user data and ad inventory. Apple is the only mainstream option where the hardware cost covers the experience, rather than your viewing habits subsidizing the device.
[Copied my comment from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46268844#46271740]
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