I'm getting from context that this is a smart tv displaying an advertisement, but what the fuck is it even advertising here? A baseball game? Why is the countdown to-the-hour? Why does the player look like a drawing instead of a photo? Why is it specifically that player and not just 'dodgers game tomorrow!"..? It almost looks as if it's an in-game notification for an MLB-Manager game.
If it were a burger-king commercial I'd be upset, but the inscrutability of this as an ad at all actually infuriates me.
Is there an open-source version of Google TV and similar smart TV software? I feel like i read about one quite recently.
Connecting a Raspberry pi or a Linux computer into the HDMI port. And not connecting the TV to WiFi.
Smart TV's can be used as dumb TV's by not connecting them to the internet. Likewise the HDMI port can connect your own device for the smart functionality.
Yes, im aware of those ways. I remember reading that there was a replacement that was specifically emulating the look and feel of Google TV, but simpler and better. You could install it on Chromecast etc.
Depends on the TV. Some can't be used unless internet connected. Roku TVs are especially bad about this
Yeah but is there an OS or a Linux distro specifically geared for use with a "surrogate SmartTV"?
It could also be used by connecting the device to a large monitor, as those are cheaper than SmartTVs. No point paying a premium for features you don't intend to use.
On a related point, what would you do for a remote control in such a setup?
when i order a screen in asia to germany i pay a lot less taxes than when ordering a tv or smarttv. so buying a smartTV is kinda dumb anyways.
Yeah; it’s always better to buy a display instead of a TV
SmartTV, dumb owner.
I just bought this dumb tv. Couldn't be happier.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CJV6722?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title
It's not a good tv, but it's the biggest one I could fit on my desk and it has absolutely no "smart" features.
Just don’t connect smart TVs to the internet. That’s all you have to (not) do
Many smart TVs have firmware that interfere with your ability to switch sources using the remote for your cable service provider, or causes it to default to a specific source menu or app, or auto-switch between sources when it thinks it's "detecting" them, even if you were actually using the other one.
And older people don't know how to navigate the new user interfaces that come pre-installed on these smart TVs, especially if they have several connected devices on different ports. Have you had to walk a customer over the phone through using the Video Input button on their cable service remote, only to discover the TV software doesn't allow 3rd party remotes to access the video input menu; because only the TV remote they lost is able to access that menu?
Or had to look up an article on a customer's brand of smart TV, and walk them through disabling specific tv settings buried in their menu that prevent the TV from properly detecting and switching between sources, or having to mess with the TV closed captions, because they're somehow interfering with the closed captions settings on their cable box.
I have. SmartTV software is occasionally a nightmare to negotiate with when trying to get it to work with a customer's STB or their wifi, or what have you.
My TCL TV flashes a little ring light constantly if it doesn't have an internet connection. The best part is the LED is part of the IR receiver, so if you cover it up your remote stops working. I've dimmed it as much as possible through the hidden service menus, but the option to remove it was apparently removed in a firmware update at some point.
If that's real, then it's full refund or terrorism upon both the vendor and manufacturer.
orand
Anybody else have a weird level of fixation on the baseball player and the game character being in the same pose? Like, "maybe it's watching" kind of fixation?
I'd like to be exactly this high, please
First rule of smart TVs: if you really have to buy a smart TV, then never connect it to the internet!
I lobotomized our TV after making the mistake of connecting it to the internet when we first got it.
The ads slowed down the menu to switch sources so much it actually angered me. No more internet for you, you get to be a dumb tv forever now.
I've read at some other post that some smart TVs won't work at all if you don't connect it to the internet.
Read with caution, I haven't verified this.
Amazon fire TV requires an Amazon account to use basic features and they intentionally tell you they lock "certain" features
Some of them use wifi for the remote too.
Back to the store it goes then
I've also heard people say that they'll automatically connect to any open wifi networks. People make up a lot of stuff. Just don't tell your display device how to send any 1s or 0s to any server outside your home, and you'll be fine
Indeed, I remember people complaining about Roku for that.
My TLC hasn't done so up until now.
Like those single player games...
Oops, stepped on another $1200 landmine did you? Should have researched where you put your foot. Everyone knows this neighborhood is littered with landmines. No, there's nothing we can really do about it except hand out these exhaustive charts and navigation tools. Of course they need to constantly get re-updated and are themselves periodically hijacked by the pro-landmine industry to turn into a second-tier grift. But that just means you have to research who you research for your TV research.
Don't worry, you'll get it eventually. God gave us two legs for a reason.
Four legs good, two legs BETTER!
Looked at the CES reveals and aside from some minor improvements, its nothing but overloaded AI crap.
Even on TVs from 10 years ago, the first thing you had to do was turn off the stupid auto frame generation, smoothing, lighting, and other effects so you can actually enjoy your content in original detail and correct FPS.
My wealthy coworker buys top-of-the-line, really expensive TVs, and then just leaves all that shit turned on.
It took me way too long to figure out what was going on with those settings. One of my relatives tv's was like this back in the day and at first I thought it was just their "HD" setup which made me completely write off getting anything HD because of the fake look like a soap opera. It wasn't till I was gifted a blue-ray player that I realized their tv just had horrible "enchancement" shit.
Well yeah, minor improvements really stack up.
A friend is buying a TV or a screen for console gaming anyway and man, the TV's are actually pretty decent for gaming nowadays. I haven't checked out any for several years.
I bought a UHD LED tv in like 2016 and what a POS it is compared to these modern models. I mean I haven't had it for years gave it to my sister but still.
I thought they looked pretty damn nifty. And AI isn't a curse word when it comes to everything. I get being annoyed at the marketing, I am too, but, like isn't Nvidia DLSS AI? That's shit's actually good.
I can’t believe this is real. I’ve just bought a relatively cheap Samsung smart TV and it’s got nothing close to this. I would hardly even say it’s got adverts since it’s mostly just recommendations from my apps in the same way they all do now, I don’t think I’ve actually seen it try to sell me anything or get me to watch something that wasn’t free.
Who the fuck would buy a TV like this? If a company was going to introduce on-screen ads like this they’d start really small.
Your Samsung will start pushing ads after the warranty period
Is that true
Who the fuck would buy a TV like this?
mindless consumers
I didn't exactly do a lot of research into either of the two TVs I have and neither of them have ads like this.
My current TV has started to die. It's developing a purple spot that starts to be very distracting. I am not excited about researching a new model that doesn't pull out this kind a shit on me. I don't intend to ever connect it to the Internet. My current TV is nothing more than a big display for my NVIDIA shield TV and the next one will be the same.
I bought a 70" TV back in 2015 and it worked great until a couple of months ago when the screen suddenly went black. No amount of resetting or messing with it would fix it. Ended up ordering a new main board for around $125. Installed the new board and the TV works again. In fact I'm convinced the picture actually looks better.
During my research I found a lot of information about LED TVs. They basically only have 4 parts. A main board, LED backlight, LCD controller, and T Con board. From what I heard purple screens are often a cause of bad cables or the T-Con board. They are not complex, so if you are comfortable removing the back and messing with ribbon cables, then you can easily replace any part. Just try searching your model number on YouTube.
If you do go this route beware, there are a lot of places that say they have the boards, but they're really just a repair service. I was able to find a replacement board at shortcircuitsolution.com.
Sceptre makes a decent dumb tv.
I have one. I like it. 4k. Good enough for me.
This is where I would go to research a new tv https://www.rtings.com/
Check out “commercial” TVs. These are TVs for businesses (e.g. displaying a menu at a restaurant). They typically don’t have the “smart” features. You have to look for them specifically.
This looked really promising but it seems like they only have HDMI 2.0 or lower? Some don't list the version at all. Unfortunately HDMI 2.1 or better is kind of required in 2025.
I've been wanting a Sceptre for a long time but they are hard to find in Europe.
Interesting! I'll have to see if I can find one to a good price in Germany. Thanks for sharing.
The Nvidia shield ships with the exact same OS as many of these smart TVs
Doesn’t the Shield use Google Android? That box is also spying on you.
Yes it does. A significant portion of the traffic gets caught by pihole. I haven't taken the time of rooting it so far. But with an alternative launcher, SmartTube and Jellyfin, I have a completely ads free watching experience :)
pretty sure it can be rooted + degoogled.
I’ve seen LG getting trashed alongside the other offenders in the industry in smart TV discussions. I have an LG CX65 OLED from 2020, and I’ve always seen the onboard WebOS as pretty serviceable. Have they gotten a lot worse in the last few years? And/or does it vary by product price?
There are definitely some advertising options to turn off in the menus, and with all that taken care of the only UI I use is a row of app icons that pops up. No ads anywhere, and I don’t seem to be logged into the TV with any kind of account. (Though typing this reminded me that the cheap LG LCD in my son’s room does want a login in order to update firmware)
Note I said it was serviceable, not great. The UI could be more responsive on better hardware, but it’s also convenient for my family to just be able to use the Wiimote-like motion pointer built into the remote.
I have a newer C4 and I don't think it's bad. It's not too obtrusive and there are guides to opt out of everything, but then again I'm not too concerned with data privacy in regard to my television, so I might be biased
I have an LG, which is…fine.
But what I do like about it is that I basically never have to interact with its OS. 100% of my content is watched through an Apple TV. I turn it on with the ATV remote and it goes immediately to the correct HDMI input.
LG sucks in many ways. I have a cx as well. I rooted it and blocked updates and all lg services, which helps a lot
If you update it though lg automatically and silently opts you in to data sharing without your explicit consent, which is bullshit and disgusting, but you can turn this of by unchecking a box in settings, which is easy enough. Although given how they handled it I don’t necessarily trust them to honor the opt out and thus traffic from the tv has to be to whitelisted servers (I don’t use any webos apps aside from ad free youtube app)
That said imo compared to all the other smart tv options webos is one of the best options. Especially if it’s rooted (though rooting it is becoming much more difficult these days). Then you can install adfree youtube with sponsorblock, permanently block updates, etc.
Android tv is absolute garbage and loaded with more ads than anything. But at least android doesn’t break when you use adblocking; my old Roku tv doesn’t allow you to set custom dns servers and when you set an ad blocking dns server at a router level the TVs apps break. Android still works although googles ad game is so strong that even blocking all their ad networks still allows some ads somehow, even deleting caches. I’m pretty sure android tv just has ads installed in it
Of course the best thing to do is never ever ever connect your smart tv to the internet at all and buy a secondary device to utilize for watching media. I recommend ugoos devices. I use the am6b+ but they have other/newer devices that may fit your use case better. Stripped down android with 0 ads but can still run all streaming apps/dolby vision licensed and you can flash them with Coreelec so they natively boot to kodi
Instead of buying a TV, look for a digital signage display. It's a TV, but with none of the "smart" crap on it.
Alternatively, just don't hook your device up to the internet.
I've seen this advice over and over and I have to ask: does it really compare? Gaming for me is all about frame rate, and no, I'm not a competitive gamer or anything. What's the response time on those "digital signage" models designed to show static food menus 24/7 for a decade. I'm sure they don't have a "game mode", but what's the refresh rate? If you're going to literally pay more for a display sold to corporations, these factors need to be considered. Personally, I got a good consumer TV and just never connected it to the Internet...
This is good advice, but I really wish we lived in a world where consumers could bond together and get laws passed that make this type of crap illegal so that buying TV's (or any type of appliance for that matter) didn't involve having to do research on weird non-consumer hardware just to have a nice experience.
EDIT: some morons in my replies keep on saying shit about "voting republican" and We Do In OtHeR CoUnTRiEs. I'm not american, I don't live in america, and I cannot remember the last time I set foot in america. Shut the fuck up, nobody asked you.
In other words, you wish we lived in a democracy instead of a plutocracy. 'Cause that's exactly how it's supposed to work. This thread is squarely about the FTC failing to do its goddamn job, because this should not be legal.
We do have that in other countries (so in this world), and you're going to laugh, but the Dutch one is literally called the Consumentenbond.
They cost like 5x more because they're marketed toward businesses. https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/pro-tv/bh-series/65-bht-series-qled-4k-uhd-hdr-pro-tv-terrace-edition-lh65bhtelgfxgo/
Alternatively, Sceptre are mostly sub-$1k
Plus side there though... Like most devices marketed towards enterprise, once they hit the used market, the price drops dramatically. You can get a pretty good deal on a used one.
There's other business oriented tvs that aren't just for signage. It's more for conference rooms.
Or just don't buy Samsung. Never had this kind of trouble with any other brand except Samsung. Because of this, I'll never ever buy another Samsung product.
The smart stuff isn't the issue. It is all the connected shit.
There are plenty of smart TVs that you just don't have to connect to the internet. Then it can't download ads, be laggy or reboot because of updates, send all your data to the manufacturer, ...
Just connect a small PC over HDMI like you would a dumb TV, and other than a slow boot it will work the same.
I can recommend TLC as a TV that doesn't require an internet connection. But I would steer clear of ever connecting it to a network, the remotes have microphones in them.
Take a crayon, jam it in the pinhole for the mic, then scrape the excess off the surface. Problem solved.
Verification can when?
Ads and bloat are the main reason I still use my 1080p Bravia from 15 yrs ago, which btw still looks great.
Well, that and that I have better uses for 1k usd
I bought a 47" or 49" tv for a few hundred AUD - it was a dumb TV - 1080p from memory. Thing lasted 10 + years, reasonable picture quality and only needed a Chromecast and eventually got a ShieldTV.
That TV since died after 4 moves, two of which were 350km+ but man it was money well spent.
We've now got a 60something" Hisense which is a bloated crapware box, it's not allowed on the network; same with the reverse cycle dryer, or any "smart" home appliance. The volume of traffic these devices send wherever is absurd.
I don't know if it's something you want to tackle, but making a separate VLAN on your home LAN and shifting all the IoT/smart devices to that network can keep them from whatever snooping or spying these devices might do on your LAN that you work and live on. Plus you can more easily monitor the unreasonably chatty ones and block them or at least prune off their ad-seeking IP addresses. PiHole for a home LAN can help a lot too, but that's another discussion.
No way, tell me that isnt real. I remember hearing a patent about being able to deliver ads over hdmi but dont tell me it actually got implemented.
That ad is not over HDMI. Its a smart TV it inserts the ad on its own.
Why would this need "deliver ads over HDMI". It's on the telly, ie the HDMI signal has already been transmitted and now the TV itself is overlaying web-derived images in one corner, the same way it will overlay the guide or whatever when you open it.
I totally believe this kind of thing could happens, but I’d expect broader outrage if it were.
When I set up my LG tv it wanted to show promoted content on the Home Screen and the screensaver.
I never connect my TV to the internet. People jerk saying they add wireless modems to them but in reality they don’t have to, most prime leave all the telemetry and “AI” features enabled.
Lmao you can tell no one on lemmy is a baseball fan. This is a meme making fun of the most recent World Series coverage where for the first time they started showing this dumb “Shohei Ohtani is up to bat in X batters” graphic as you see there
picture looks like a 'shop. look at bottom right corner of tv.
but, it's inevitable. corporate greed knows no limit, knows no boundaries.
test comment 2
test reply 5
So smart TVs are now smartass TVs?
Always have been.
Not as bad as this, but when I moved to a new town I got a free big TV with my new ISP. I was going with that ISP anyways so a free 4k HDR TV on top was a nice bonus.
I wish I had gotten some other bonus. Viewing angle is atrocious and it is impossible to get rid of the input lag (no there isn't a gaming mode or similar) so no games with precise timing can be played.
So now we have a big living room TV that is too good to replace with something better but bad enough to be a little bit annoying.
It really doesn't sound too good to replace? It sounds like you got free junk, and haven't actually bought a TV yet?
Don't have the budget anyways. And it's good enough for the wife and kids, they don't see any issues. And by now I'm disabled and can't get into the living room anyways.
I usually just assume that free shit given away as part of some other sale is going to be bad or shit quality. They probably bought a big batch of them for real cheap because they weren't selling so great in stores and eventually someone decided to just get rid of that inventory maybe at a loss.
Give it to your parents or some other older people who would use it just as a TV and buy yourself a decent TV.
Why not sell it?
Trade in for something slightly "worse" then?
computer monitor + sound bar?
This really seems to be the right answer. At least while computer monitors stay dumb.
Get one of those tiny PCs that you can just leave behind the TV, get a wireless mouse and keyboard too.
Nothing on TV isn't available online anyway. Paying the cable company for anything more than an Internet connection seems like setting money on fire to me. Maybe sports would be difficult, but that can literally be found if you know what you're doing. Even games you wouldn't be able to with TV.
Cable TV just seems to me like a boomer's version of the Internet. It has no place in a world with the Internet, change my mind. The ads on TV are worse than what you find on any popular website/app.
But as usual, capitalism is messing everything up with the marketing. In a world where hi speed Internet is widely available, "TV" just has no use. None. And worse, the commercials are now leaking through your literal screen.
I'm not saying that ads aren't a problem, but there's a hell of a lot more you can do about them.
In a perfect world, there would be a place you could go whenever you wanted something and find products and solutions for that thing, and there wouldn't be ads in anything else at all.
But until there's an actual argument to say TV technology isn't totally worthless, my stance is simply "no TVs are necessary or useful".
Or a beamer if you want a big screen.
I don't like sound bars, you can take my old 5.1 Yamaha system out from my cold hands!
I still use the 5.1 system I got with my first computer in '04.
Nothing to research. They're all the same bad or will get bad in the foreseeable future. Only thing that matters is the screen technology and the specs of your external media center.
My LG has none of this. Any advertising/ai can be disabled as can the network itself.
You mean it doesn't have any of this yet :)
I say this as someone with two LG TVs. Sure you can just not connect them to the internet, but a lot of people rely on the "Smart" part of the TV to view all their content.
I have a TLC that does none of this, too.
I needed a second t.v for the basement and i decided to just not buy one.
I had an old mini projector I repurposed and there a nice tv upstairs/phones for anything else.
Cant wait till "minimal" stuff becomes the trend.
Joke's on you! Projectors get this "smart" bullshit, too!
Not one from 2018
Get a commercial projector, monitor, or display to skip that intolerable bullshit.
I will be very sad when my 16 yo Sony Bravia TV dies
I still have a Panasonic plasma TV from 2008. Still going strong.
That thing likely gulps down electricity unfortunately and a replacement would pay for itself. Just don’t connect it to the internet and use a good streaming box and you’ll have none of these issues. Lemmy hates apple but the Apple TV is great.
I'm in the exact same situation. Old bravias were just about perfect for a television. I dread to think of what they are like now
Gaming on a TV? Wouldn't like that low refresh rate personally
Its not 1987 anymore.
144Hz TVs are a thing and common. I'm using a 65" 144Hz 4K OLED right now.
Modern TVs are excellent gaming monitors, and they're much cheaper than an equivalent PC monitor. Especially LG OLEDs, since they are built with gaming in mind. Input lag is a thing of the past.
My gaming PC uses an LG C2 OLED. 120Hz, 4K, HDR, FreeSync. At the time, gaming monitors with competitive specs were all sold out anyway or way more money.
That said, I don't connect any TV to Wi-Fi directly, hate all that "smart" crap. The smart TV apps usually all suck compared to just casting from other devices to a compatible cast device. For example I just cast from my phone to Chromecast as my primary method of controlling my TV and consuming media on it.
