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Comment by adamsmark | Hacker News Reader

There are stupid TVs but they're more expensive since they don't have an ad subsidy.

I'm doing what you are - just don't connect it and you can enjoy ridiculously low prices on TVs.

Other than commercial panels, I think buying a non-smart TV with decent picture quality is verging on the impossible now.

Yep. I wanted a decent sized OLED with good image quality. Couldn't find anything remotely like what I was looking for in a commercial option, so I said screw it, cashed out some credit card rewards, and bought a spyware LG TV that never gets connected to the internet. Display itself is gorgeous. Set it to start up on the last used input (the AV receiver). Video sources connect to the AVR and those get managed individually depending on what access they need to function.

It could still be connecting anyway and using its microphone and using content recognition on what you watch. I am surprised how few people in this set of threads read about the LG spy TVs.

On my LG TV, which is pretty old, the wifi module is just a standard m.2 e-key that I can remove. I wonder if that is still the case or if they are integrated now.

There is zero evidence of this happening. There are tens of thousands of people who have posted about devices doing sketchy things who monitor their network and yet this has never been demonstrated.

Anything you own could also have a secret 5G radio built in spying on you, but that's reasoning via Russell's Teapot and pointless except to baselessly spread paranoia.

Even if they do not currently do it they very easily could add it silently in the next TV software version you buy in the store...

The next best thing I wish I could do is root my TV and install an OS that makes the experience less painful.

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