There is a much better option for HN crowd:
Buy a large/modern computer monitor and connect it to your homelab’s media server.
Literally there is no need for a smart TV so long as you are capable of setting up a small homelab.
Buy a large/modern computer monitor and connect it to your homelab’s media server.
Literally there is no need for a smart TV so long as you are capable of setting up a small homelab.
https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-electronics-announce...
When i say 'TV' i also mean to include Netflix and Hulu and other services serving the same purpose.
Try Kingdom on Peacock.
What next the old Slashdot meme - “I haven’t owned a TV in 10 years. Do people still watch TV?”
Edit: The slippery slope: 95% of people are straight.
Also there are so many other types of media available, like video games, audio-books, podcasts, online articles, e-books. You can be just as informed and entertained without a TV.
Setting it up increases the transaction cost of watching a show/movie. The result is that we only put it up for the few cases when we deem it worth it.
And when we do, the experience is awesome.
I’ve done the homelab media server. I did my first one back in 2006 with a Mac Mini running Front Row. But this is 2022. If you want a set top box without tracking, just buy an AppleTV. It cost more because Apple makes money off of hardware and not advertising.
Yes I know the reports about Apple getting even deeper into advertising. Yes it saddens me.
Not cheap though.
And to add to this: There has been no proof ever that modern TVs do this, and it would be quite easy for anyone/journalists/reviewers to check this (just run an open wifi and monitor it).
And no, Facebook/Instagram aren't listening to users either, it would need too much bandwidth/server power to process all those conversations, and if you say "they can do the speech recognition on the users' phones", the majority of users use budget phones that don't have that sort of power.
I wonder what's easier to check and verify, a secret government tapping of the Internet, or if the TVs in millions of people's living rooms are trying to connect to open WiFi networks...
You’re right in that this should be easier to find. But I haven’t seen any concerted effort to buy N number of smart TVs and do security analysis on them in order to find something like this.
https://www.techradar.com/news/samsungs-5g-8k-tv-promises-to...
https://www.techradar.com/news/huawei-is-developing-a-5g-8k-...
And it will probably stay feasible as long as the number of people who do it is relatively miniscule. But economics being economics, we’re freeloading off the customers who hook their smart TVs up to the internet and provide manufacturers with enough revenue that they don’t care about us.
But should the practice become widespread and manufacturers notice a material impact on their revenues, or should growth stall and manufacturers start looking to squeeze more revenue out of customers, they will start embedding SIM cards in TVs that can’t be disabled, and work out deals with wireless carriers to have a private data channel as Amazon does with its kindles.
my 4K “smart” TV is the first I ever bought, and I believe the last. By the time I will want to replace it, I believe manufacturers will have closed this “loophole” and it will be impossible to keep a new TV from phoning home.
Open up the TV and solder the antenna to ground. If the TVs refuse to work when there is no Signal, good luck with customer complaints - here in Germany, we have huge black-spots with no reception whatsoever (mostly rural areas, but people still live in those).
Magnuson-Moss Waranty Act. It's the same law that allows you to use aftermarket parts without voiding your car warranty.
In the U.S., "Warrantly Void If Removed" stickers are lying, and potentially illegal.
The real reason we "need" 5G, instead of better 4G, isn't so our cars can suddenly drive themselves and every hospital with be magically populated with surgery robots. It's so that every item we ever buy can spy on us.
There’s no need to start jumping at shadows here.
https://www.techradar.com/news/samsungs-5g-8k-tv-promises-to...
The news of Samsung's upcoming TV will likely be a blow to Huawei, which is reportedly working on its own 5G 8K TV. Sharp is also working on its own 8K+5G initiative – both companies will need to hurry up if they want to beat Samsung to the punch, though.
5G TVs may not be in our homes yet, but they're on our doorstep.
And this comment is late to the conversation, but with 5G TVs, all of your streaming will go over 5G. No opportunity to use tooling to block ads or inspect what is being "phoned home." There are a good number of people whose primary uses for home internet are streaming and web browsing.
If these same TVs have a "WiFi hotspot app" that turns on a hotspot for an extra subscription, the TV manufacturers and their telecom partners will execute an end-around on the wired connectivity business.
Competition is good, but not when it's offering cheap internet in exchange for stripping consumers of any control whatsoever over their privacy.
The nice part is that I can control the tuner with the same remote as the TV.
The not so nice part: my TV is now connected to the internet.
It literally will not work for any input source -- including OTA TV -- until it has been hooked to a network where it can register itself.
It appears to work afterwards without a network connection... but I cannot recommend HiSense at all.
you see post after post of people complaining about things but doing little about it.
Returning products as "defective" is pretty hard on manufacturers as stores do not like this happening.
Only if you don't value quality.
A did a price comparison about a year ago, using Best Buy and B&H. The plain display panels from B&H were either the same, or only marginally more expensive than the equivalent "smart" televisions from Best Buy.
People on HN too often parrot that Vizeo CEO's claim that his TVs are only cheap because of all the spying they do. While true, it only holds up in you're interested in watching a Vizeo-quality TV.
These days there is nothing more than plug and play..
FWIW, mobile ads are worse. Avoiding them is easier, though. I almost always tell it when to show the ad and I can just look away with it muted for a while and do something else. I'm usually already watching TV while I play ad-based games anyhow. But if I had to actually watch the ads, I'd just stop playing those games.