How to Turn Off Smart TV Snooping Features.
Manage your own DNS. Problem solved.
Disable those non connected options
You don’t really believe that companies actually stop monitoring the shot out of you, right?
Just don’t connect your smart TV to the Internet. Instead get some opens source TV stick, dump jellyfin on it, make your own little library and go nuts
Don’t connect them to the Internet.
Done.
Not done, they have shown to jump on unsecured networks to phone home. That coulr be a neighbour or a guests hotspot.
Welk then at least they’re monitoring the neighbors, not you, and if you still have an unsecured hotspot in 2026 you’re just asking for trouble
Don’t reward shitty practices with your money. Just don’t buy them.
Where can you buy a non-smart TV ? I searched a lot, there is nowhere to buy such TV for private consumers. I could find some Hotel or Hospital TVs on eBay, they are all expensive and shit specs.
There are several dumb tvs, such as the Samsung BEFX-H series and the LG UN640S. Yes, they are more expensive for the same specs, because they don’t make money with ads and paid services.
Very large computer monitors.
Oof, I haven’t had to shop for a tv in over a decade, so I assume it will be worse when it’s my time.
I got rid of my old TV that was developing purple spots when I moved to another apartment. I ended up going for a smart LG OLED tv with the specs I was looking for. Available at a good price. It’s not connected to the network and boot straight to my Nvidia shield.
This is the reason I have a 20+ year old plasma TV. Absolutely nothing smart and still somewhat thin. Also the picture is sometimes better for movies because of how it handles blacks and contrast.
Burns more electricity I guess. But most plasmas should be around the time of the flat TV crazy started before LED took off. Before they started making them cheaper by stuffing them full of spy software.
Genuinely zero idea how people use TVs on their own, with wi-fi connected, and no HTPC. Not only is it mostly spyware, it’s a horrendous experience too.
Just get a tiny pc with a wireless keyboard + touchpad combo, and use that instead of a Smart TV’s built-in OS. More secure, more private, more feature-rich, more convenient. If you watch TV (I can’t see why anyone would), then you can even watch that online.
I can’t stand “smart” TVs. I’d choose a Raspberry Pi and huge monitor over one any day
Except maybe the Nvidia Shield; it’s genuinely pretty good. I have Retroarch installed on it, but I don’t use it much (no monitor for it lol).
I’ve been rocking a 46 inch Sony xbr 1080p tv for like 22 years. It just broke last week :(
That thing was awesome. It had nine types of inputs, DisplayPort, hdmi, super video, dvi, rca. It even had optical audio in and out. It was a $10,000 tv when it came out and I watched it for a while until it was something like $3300 and I bought it.
I replaced it with a 55inch Samsung for $300. The picture is 22years better :) but the rest of it is throw away junk. It will never get connected to the internet and it will never get a software update. I think this is the logical conclusion to cheap tvs, they just become 100% enshittified.
Is the picture really better though? All the new stuff has image processing crap due to refresh rate mismatches and loads of older content never got a HD release, let alone 4k. I’m never gonna stop watching stuff like Star Trek, and voyager looks like dogshit given it never got a release beyond DVD because of how they did the editing.
Don’t get me wrong, I know you can modify all kinds of settings to minimize the impact of the image processing. Turning off the processing gives you a ton of problems, and enabling the processing can work in some media but doesn’t work quite right in others.
With my home setup the difference between plex, netflix and other streaming services can be pretty big depending on the formats supported by the specific show even. It’s all a mess and if you want it to be right odds are you need to really mess with it and even then you only have so many options. Getting a new TV has not been as positive as I hoped for, but i’ve gotten used to it and just accept that some things look kinda garbage because tweaking one thing often makes one show better, but others might not be as good as a result.
You should maybe connect it once for update. At least check firmware update changelogs to see if anything is relevant.
I have an LG and experienced a weird picture problem for over a year… it was infuriating. Firmware update fixed it.
You should have just returned it. If it doesn’t work out of the box, you don’t need it.
I only have 1 smart tv. I use andriod boxes with productivity launcher…and one firestick that needs to go. I like to taunt amazon that they aint getting a penny.
The start tv is set up as dumb but it still has the stupid interface from the time it was bought. The poster of wicked. I have it setup that the box launches first but sometimes i land on there instead and it pi$$$$$es me right off. Any way to somehow disable that crap?
I really hope there are wifi dummy boards that allow you to fake your device being connected despite not being able to connect to any network. Warranty be damned, I’d be more than willing to cut open a TV to either replace the board or just completely disconnect it.
Limit, not disable.
Correct.
Never connect it to your wifi and use an open source Linux or android media box instead. If you can buy a tv or projector without any smart device baked in.
I think it’s important to note that most of the devices you’ll find if you just search for a cheap and generic “Android media box” are not going to be any better for your privacy. Even if you ignore the data collection you subject yourself to with Android, you might be purchasing a botnet node or a backdoor into your home network.
A docked Steam Deck works for this. It even has HDMI-CEC
Most definitely, it’s essentially a full Linux PC. You could do a lot of things with it.
So 720p streaming and a lot of maintenance.
I so very much want to ditch closed source but then i’m limited to piracy really, and any setup really requires hours of maintenance here and there at minimum.
Hours? Running Fedora and enabling DRM on Firefox ain’t that complex, neither is installing the waydroid flatpak. I think you’re really blowing the situation out of proportion. Assuming you already have the iso probably like 30 minutes to get set up including a full install.
where/how do you get an open source android media box?
You buy one from the internet, any hardware that can run Android Open Source Project (AOSP) like the Ugoos AM8 Pro, Generic Amlogic Boxes. You could use certain arm and x86 hardware and run waydroid on top of Linux or install android like LineageOS, BlissOS, PrimeOS AndroidTV-x86_64, and FydeOS. You can use like an SBC like a raspberry pi or an old laptop or something. In short there’s. A lot of pathways to get this done that doesn’t involve sending all your data back to the TV or streaming box manufacturer.
I read that put those things on a separate guest WiFi is a good option for better security too ?
True, it is more secure with a secondary guest network. But I doubt it stops data from being sent back in this case. A strong Wi-Fi password is always recommended too with a guest network.
Just don’t connect them to the internet, then it doesn’t matter.
There was some sort of scandal a few years back that some smart TVs (Samsung?) were using not just open networks (let’s be honest, there usually aren’t any), but other smart TVs if the same manufacturer to be able to send their telemetry. I don’t know what game of that, or if that was ever made illegal (probably not).
What features does a smart TV provide when not connected to the internet? (serious question, I’ve never had a smart TV)
I’ll tell you what my 2 “smart” tvs do as they are not connected to the internet, they act as a slow to turn on display of my desktop. 27" monitor press power button, less than 10 seconds looking at desktop, 40" samsung smart tv 15-20+ seconds to see the desktop without a stupid overlay, 65" samsung 4k smart tv 30-45 seconds till desktop is fully visible.
TL:DR NONE! Use as a monitor
None? The idea is not to get more features, it’s to take it offline so it can’t send data about you back home. Plug in another smart device into the TV and use that for streaming and such.
Dumb tvs are still sold in some places. If it’s impossible to get a dumb TV and have a pc, at that point it makes more sense to get a simple monitor and use the pc as the smart device so you actually have full control. The android boxes you connect to tvs are not the epitome of privacy either.
This is true. Almost every streaming box sells your data out of the box. Roku is one of the worst. Nvidia Shield is pretty bad too.
“Dumb TVs” are extremely rare. You can buy most TVs and just not connect them to the internet and achieve the same thing.
Probably none, but it’s getting harder to buy a non-smart TV
I still got a 720p TV, LOL!
Hasnt there been claims of the smart tv’s automatically connecting to open WiFi to update and or send data.
I don’t think this is real, but if it is can you provide a link? I’m not finding anything easily with a search and randomly throwing out claims like this is not productive.
That’s why I called it a claim, I never found evidence myself, it just wouldn’t surprise me if it was true.
So you’re just spreading misinformation.
There’s claims about this, connecting automatically to open wifi is a “feature” of Android, any smart bullshit based on android can have the same behaviour.
1 person posting on reddit isn’t enough for me to believe they didn’t simply misunderstand what happened. There are a lot of tech-illiterate people out there and if this was a thing I’m pretty sure we’d see people reproducing the results and posting procedures to do so.
Yeah I also don’t think this hold much water, even if the TV automatically connect to the wi-fi, turn the wi-fi feature on/off automatically seems unlikely.
People connect them to the internet to use YouTube or something, and then just forget that it is still online. This is for those people who are unaware.
If those people are unaware, then make them aware. Telling them to disable telemtry instead of taking them offline completely is simply bad advice.
Turning off those features still help. That is why I posted, so some are aware… People have smart TV’s to use the internet. That is kind of the whole point of having them. Most people just don’t disconnect their TV from the Wi-Fi every time they are done streaming. Which, that would be a GOOD IDEA idea.
That is why I posted, so people are aware…
You’re making them aware of the wrong things, as I just finished saying.
People have smart TV’s to use the internet
You can still use the internet without connecting their TV to it. You just plug another device into it.
I know what a TV does, smart TV’s enables more features when it is online. SOME people just have a smart TV and that is it.
No they don’t.
Yes they do! People for sure just have smart TV’s, and they have tons of apps when connected online. Load up Netflix and then they are done. Old people especially, do it all the time. That is all they use. That and probably just a phone. Shit, some still have landlines. They live alone and had somebody set it up for them.
