Praise be the folks that curate these lists. Even without a pi-hole you can plug these into any firewall for your brand(s).
More annoying is the 15 second "home menu" that pops up on my OLED every time it is turned on. I almost always forget to manually dismiss it before I set the remote down and there's no option I can find to disable it.
I would pay a premium for a TV with no internet connection.
>I would pay a premium for a TV with no internet connection.
I bought a Samsung QLED TV recently, and it works fine without an internet connection. I did give it an ethernet connection to grab firmware updates, and it downloaded a bunch of ads and crap to clutter the home screen. Luckily, unplugging the ethernet cord and factory-resetting the device got rid of the garbage and kept the updated firmware.
I can't be the only one that thinks this (DNS blocking) is an exceptionally poor solution to this problem. It's essentially whack-a-mole. You either A) don't allow your smart TV ip address to egress traffic to the internet or B) don't connect it at all. There are some domains in that list like the *.cloudfront.net that might change over time.
I agree despite using DNS blocking myself. DNS blocking can easily be mitigated against with DoH or DoT at the application level. It's only a matter of time before advertisers start using either to bypass DNS blocking and serve ads.
Computer monitors are overwhelmingly "dumb", as well as having far lower latency and far higher refresh rates.
And also more expensive :) I wish I knew if that was because the crapware and ads on smart TVs are actually reducing the cost, or if it's just that smart TVs use crap hardware and software by comparison. Given how laggy they can be, that wouldn't surprise me.
I think mid-tier TVs are just a higher volume product with thinner margins compared to mid-tier monitors. The average american loves their 4K TV, but would never upgrade from the 1080p 60hz monitor they stole from work.
If you get quotes from chinese sellers on panelook, you'll find that monitor panels+drivers are cheaper than TVs with the same specs, even at 1pc pricing.
Almost certainly this is a 'little bit of a, little bit of b' type situation, right?
At least in terms of the actual display parts. The smart TV probably has some processing capabilities that are incomparably better than what you'd get in a monitor. This is, of course, used to display ads. However, the ads are necessary to subsidize the cost of the powerful SOC... wait, why do we need the SOC again?
I've wondered about this. Are the TV-sized 'gaming monitors' smart tvs? Looking at a couple of OLED ones - Aorus FO48U, Alienware AW5520QF - it doesn't look like it. No wireless, and they are expensive.
It's not clear whether they have HDCP, but... surely they must? That's table stakes for a computer monitor.
I think it's a little of both. The TV market is amazingly competitive, so it's not uncommon to find sales that are at or near cost. I suspect the reason there are so many players still in the game is because the monetary value of ads and data aggregation is really high.
>I would pay a premium for a TV with no internet connection.
No premium required. Just set your TV's with a static IP address and block outbound access to that address at your firewall.
I also blackhole the DNS entries of specific hosts that the TV attempts to contact. Blocking the IP address is sufficient, but I choose to nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. ;)
> Just set your TV's with a static IP address and block outbound access to that address at your firewall.
If you're assuming the TV is malicious, why trust it to honor that static IP setting? Doesn't even have to be malicious - a bug or carelessness could mean that it temporarily falls back to DHCP for some time in the boot process.
A separate VLAN (or wireless network) with the entire thing isolated and not being able to talk to anything is the way to go, but there just aren't many reasons to connect it to a network to begin with so save your time and just don't.
I really hope I’m not missing a silly point. I always buy a TV that has the specs I need and can afford, and have a steadfast rule that they are forbidden from ever connecting to my WiFi. No firmware updates! - if it does not work when I bought it, it goes back. If it works, I’m fine if it does the same job for its life.
What am I missing? Isn't every smart TV in the market a dumb TV if you don’t ever give it the keys to your network?
> I would pay a premium for a TV with no internet connection.
Why pay a premium when this is something that is extremely easy to achieve? Simply don't connect your TV to the internet. Criteria met. If you want to go further, you can also easily remove the WiFi antenna and ethernet ports.
I totally agree. My Sony TV has lost sound multiple times. A full restart is the only solution and that takes a few minutes.
Everything is so slow. Back when Freeview started being a thing in the UK, TVs then had a rapid TV Guide built in and everything felt instant. Now every screen change is a pause. I've got a PS5 so I'm much happier using that for apps.
It feels like feature phones were slow and laggy, we then got responsive smartphones. TVs were responsive, now they're slow and laggy.
You could pay a very small amount for a used house router and convince the TV that the house router is The Internet... and The Internet is down today. Best is if the TV doesn't try wifi when an ethernet cable is plugged in. Second best is if it has credentials to the wifi running on the used router.
Note that the router should not actually be connected to any other network.
> I would pay a premium for a TV with no internet connection.
There is a solution for which time is running out but is currently still possible. You can find someone selling a used, perfectly good television made in the era right before every single TV was a "smart" TV.
For any Australians reading, JB Hifi still has dumb Blaupunkt TVs. They're neither big nor 4k, but if you're weird like me and feel technology peaked in 2009, they're perfect.
Just as long as you never have any guests that want to be helpful and connect it to the Internet either via your guest wifi or their own phone's hotspot so they can watch their Netflix or whatever on it.
Unfortunately LG has terrible sound - but a soundbar works well.
Unfortunately the LG soundbars - which integrate well with the TV - use a wifi based wireless subwoofer. the soundbar becomes a wifi access point.
There don't appear to be any wired soundbars. I guess a component speaker system + receiver is the solution, which is probably much better sound anyway.
The Gigabyte Aorus FO48U might work for you. A dumb OLED monitor the size of a small TV. Catered towards the gaming market of course but is a viable option: https://www.gigabyte.com/Monitor/AORUS-FO48U
Hopefully Software Freedom Conservancy's lawsuit against Vizio will lead to people being able to replace the OS pre-installed on smart TVs with standard Linux distros, so that blocklists like this are no longer needed. Of course even standard Linux distros have privacy issues, but they are easier to deal with than the ads and other issues in pre-installed vendor operating systems.
Best case, only Vizio will comply, and only if it turns out Vizio violated the GPL, and only if SF Conservancy resists any potentially lucrative attempts to get the case settled out of court.
Its pretty clear that Vizio violated the GPL, the question to be answered by the case is who gets to enforce the GPL.
If Conservancy win this case, then they get the precedent set that any recipient of GPLed binaries gets to sue for GPL compliance. That precedent applies to any person or company that distributes Linux or other copyleft code on hardware or elsewhere. That means any person who buys Linux hardware can sue if it doesn't come with source code. Potentially that means many more possibilities of GPL compliance suits, maybe even class action ones. The threat of that and the actual suits in turn will hopefully lead to much higher amounts of GPL compliance.
If Conservancy lose this case, then the copyright holders still get to sue for GPL compliance and I assume Conservancy will switch to pursuing Vizio in this way.
If you don’t want to do a lot of setup. If you set NextDNS as your DNS provider, you’re all set. NextDNS has a free tier that includes supporting block lists. In my opinion it’s pricing model is reasonable too.
I was just thinking about how much I hate our TV blasting random shows every time I turn it on. Who on earth wants more “recommendations by ai”? AI is short for advertising industry at this point.
Is the Pi-Hole even reasonably effective these days?
> Nearly 70% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles were found to contain hardcoded DNS settings - allowing them to simply ignore your local network’s DNS server entirely.
You can create port forward firewall rules to redirect any outbound DNS port 53 traffic. This will not work for DNS over HTTPS, which is going to be increasingly common for IoT I'd imagine.
Yes; PiHoles are used for far more than just blocking smart TVs. The difference between browsing the web at my house and browsing away from home is so stark that it's almost not worth browsing most sites if I'm not behind it.
I block my TV’s MAC at the router. I use a roku for the streaming apps, which doesn’t seem to hardcode it’s DNS yet. But when it does you can just write some iptables rules. When they switch to dns over https, well I don’t know then haha.
The workaround is already in use for ad hosting - serve all the content from one domain (or an IP) with services natted behind that, so if you block it, nothing works.
It probably depends on your use patterns. I have a console and a TV in my apartment, but I spend much more time on personal computers than I do on either. My Pi-hole instance is still reasonably effective for that, and I'm sure I could (eventually) be motivated to do the workaround described in the post you linked.
I've setup firewall rules to redirect traffic from some devices to avoid that, but some are starting to use dns over https which is more difficult to deal with
I don't get it. Also down below there's even a whole comment chain about how "hard it is" to buy a dumb TV. Why bother with all this blocking, just disable the surveillance entirely. Change your wifi password, don't give the new one to the TV, and use a computer as input. A TV is a big dumb monitor, full stop.
VLANs (if using Ethernet) or separate wireless network with no access to the internet nor your LAN (LAN->TV is OK, TV->LAN is not) is the only way to go. Anything else is a game of whack-a-mole that you're likely to lose.
A TV also shouldn't need an operating system that takes 30 seconds to boot up and gets laggier over time until it crashes and the TV becomes unusable. There's much more to a dumb TV than just a "smart" TV with the internet switched off.
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More annoying is the 15 second "home menu" that pops up on my OLED every time it is turned on. I almost always forget to manually dismiss it before I set the remote down and there's no option I can find to disable it.
I would pay a premium for a TV with no internet connection.
I bought a Samsung QLED TV recently, and it works fine without an internet connection. I did give it an ethernet connection to grab firmware updates, and it downloaded a bunch of ads and crap to clutter the home screen. Luckily, unplugging the ethernet cord and factory-resetting the device got rid of the garbage and kept the updated firmware.
FYI I was able to update the firmware via USB stick without much hassle.
Painless experience and no ads.
And also more expensive :) I wish I knew if that was because the crapware and ads on smart TVs are actually reducing the cost, or if it's just that smart TVs use crap hardware and software by comparison. Given how laggy they can be, that wouldn't surprise me.
If you get quotes from chinese sellers on panelook, you'll find that monitor panels+drivers are cheaper than TVs with the same specs, even at 1pc pricing.
At least in terms of the actual display parts. The smart TV probably has some processing capabilities that are incomparably better than what you'd get in a monitor. This is, of course, used to display ads. However, the ads are necessary to subsidize the cost of the powerful SOC... wait, why do we need the SOC again?
It's not clear whether they have HDCP, but... surely they must? That's table stakes for a computer monitor.
No premium required. Just set your TV's with a static IP address and block outbound access to that address at your firewall.
I also blackhole the DNS entries of specific hosts that the TV attempts to contact. Blocking the IP address is sufficient, but I choose to nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. ;)
If you're assuming the TV is malicious, why trust it to honor that static IP setting? Doesn't even have to be malicious - a bug or carelessness could mean that it temporarily falls back to DHCP for some time in the boot process.
A separate VLAN (or wireless network) with the entire thing isolated and not being able to talk to anything is the way to go, but there just aren't many reasons to connect it to a network to begin with so save your time and just don't.
Why pay a premium when this is something that is extremely easy to achieve? Simply don't connect your TV to the internet. Criteria met. If you want to go further, you can also easily remove the WiFi antenna and ethernet ports.
Everything is so slow. Back when Freeview started being a thing in the UK, TVs then had a rapid TV Guide built in and everything felt instant. Now every screen change is a pause. I've got a PS5 so I'm much happier using that for apps.
It feels like feature phones were slow and laggy, we then got responsive smartphones. TVs were responsive, now they're slow and laggy.
Note that the router should not actually be connected to any other network.
There is a solution for which time is running out but is currently still possible. You can find someone selling a used, perfectly good television made in the era right before every single TV was a "smart" TV.
I ended up with a Costco 85" LG and unplugged the WiFi card before turning it on, and so far it's worked very well for me.
I wish I could have voted with my wallet on this.
Unfortunately the LG soundbars - which integrate well with the TV - use a wifi based wireless subwoofer. the soundbar becomes a wifi access point.
There don't appear to be any wired soundbars. I guess a component speaker system + receiver is the solution, which is probably much better sound anyway.
I am just waiting for the first "smart" computer monitor
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.htmlhttps://wiki.debian.org/PrivacyIssues
https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/principles.htm...
Its pretty clear that Vizio violated the GPL, the question to be answered by the case is who gets to enforce the GPL.
If Conservancy win this case, then they get the precedent set that any recipient of GPLed binaries gets to sue for GPL compliance. That precedent applies to any person or company that distributes Linux or other copyleft code on hardware or elsewhere. That means any person who buys Linux hardware can sue if it doesn't come with source code. Potentially that means many more possibilities of GPL compliance suits, maybe even class action ones. The threat of that and the actual suits in turn will hopefully lead to much higher amounts of GPL compliance.
If Conservancy lose this case, then the copyright holders still get to sue for GPL compliance and I assume Conservancy will switch to pursuing Vizio in this way.
I think the LG OLEDs are the best available option, but they’re not perfect either.
NextDNS is also great for something a little easier to manage than PiHole (plus also easy to use outside of your home network and on mobile).
https://i.imgur.com/Uo2n50s.png
Nice one. Added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
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> Nearly 70% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles were found to contain hardcoded DNS settings - allowing them to simply ignore your local network’s DNS server entirely.
https://labzilla.io/blog/force-dns-pihole
edit: method for this on pfSense: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/recipes/dns-redir...
https://codeberg.org/unixsheikh/dohblockbusterhttps://openbsdrouterguide.net/#blocking-doh
DNS over HTTP has got to be the most ill thought out "privacy" feature that has done more to HARM privacy then it could ever help
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https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Perflyst/PiHoleBlocklist/m...
(Though it is included as a preset, already, in AdGuard Home.)
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