Comment by blacklight | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blacklight | Hacker News Reader

Just install a PiHole in your home network.

I've got a Samsung smart TV I purchased a couple of years ago. I've never seen a single ad on it (the drawback is that the TV's app store doesn't work either as it belongs to a domain also used for ads).

When I tried to disable the PiHole for a couple of minutes, I couldn't recognize my TV anymore. Ads in the menu, ads popping up in the corners of the TV, ads everywhere.

It's no coincidence I guess that my smart TV is the main offender when it comes to requests to blocked domains on my PiHole.

Just get a PiHole, and, unless the TV manufacturer refuses to pick the DNS server used in your network, or they've found ways to inject ads without hosting them on blocked domains, you won't get a single second of harassment.

>I've got a Samsung smart TV I purchased a couple of years ago. ... When I tried to disable the PiHole for a couple of minutes, I couldn't recognize my TV anymore. Ads in the menu, ads popping up in the corners of the TV, ads everywhere.

I recommend TCL TVs running GoogleOS (aka Android). I got one a couple of years ago, and honestly it's fine, even without any ad-blocking. The only ads I see are a still ad on the main screen for some new local TV show, and this ad (just a still picture) changes every 5 seconds or so to another one in sequence). It's not even annoying really, and it's the only one. Under this picture is a bar with all the installed apps, so I just hit down-arrow twice to go to there and select either SmartTube or Jellyfin and run that.

Of course, they could send an update later that adds a bunch of really annoying ads, but I haven't seen it yet. It's also possible there's spyware on there capturing my viewing habits, but I'm not sure what it's going to see when all I do on it is use the two apps above.

Anyway, the other nice thing about Android on your TV is that since it's Android, you can pretty easily side-load apps of your choice, including alternative YouTube clients like SmartTube, ReVanced, etc., instead of being limited to apps from the manufacturer's store.

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