Manufacturers make recurring revenue by invading the privacy of "dumb" users with their "smart" TVs.
It's probably only a matter of time before TV manufacturers establish their own ad networks.
Why? Because they can. They have the ability to fully control *their* "smart TV" (that you paid for) and show you ads that they control --- independent of any programming.
I'm cool with it provided I can use it as a very high quality HDMI display. Then I just got a nicely discounted product.
My worry is if they demand connectivity in order to work as a display. Or worse come with some kind of LTE transceiver to phone home then we're in trouble.
I'm cool with it provided I can use it as a very high quality HDMI display.
Most will work --- but not always *conveniently*.
On power up, a lot them will launch into setup if connectivity is not configured. Some may actually store/retrieve the TV configuration in their cloud.
I'm wondering if HDCP is paradoxically to the rescue here?
So the main concern with keeping it in dumb mode I would think is that they could still snoop in on your streams through the plain old HDMI port.
But if the HDMI is encrypted.....
With their antipiracy standard ....
God that would be amazing.
Also, I'm kind of surprised there isn't a raspberry pi open source project that does what those 20$ Roku fobs do.
Finally ... It kind of shows that hardware hacking is going downhill that there isn't a replacement os for the major brands of smart TVs. It's possible they've locked that down, but also the price points are so low you'd think they don't have the money to keep them out.
There will always beeoptions without. Some tvs are used in industrial settings to show safety information. If someone dies and the tv was, showing ads instead of safety information there will be big lawsuits.
this is how i learned that taylor swift had a birthday recently. my samsung television advertised it to me on the ad banner that goes across the top third of the home screen of the television.
For what it's worth, my LG TV (which is a few years old, to be fair) has never once showed up in my pi-hole's logs. We use an external box for the "smart" stuff, and the TV itself isn't up to any shenanigans as far as I can tell.
I have an entirely separate VLAN network in my house for "appliances". Any access to the internet from that network has to be explicitly whitelisted in my router.
pi-hole uses DNS, and will give out fake ip addresses based on the name lookup.
Unfortunately it is NOT a firewall.
Any device can easily do its own DNS like DoH (dns over https), nnot involve pihole in name lookups, and send package directly to the destination ip address.
Dumb TVs are called monitors, you can buy them. For large sizes, I guess you can look at the kind of displays they have in shops and meeting rooms.
Today, TVs are by nature not dumb, what make them a TV and not a monitor would be the presence of a tuner, and modern tuners are built-in computers that can at least decode compressed video, which is not a trivial task, especially at 4K.
The reason people don't like smart TVs is not because they have a computer inside of them with internet connectivity. It is because of ads and partnership deals. And of course people don't like it, because as much as manufacturers advertise them as features, they are not made to add value for the customer, they actually lower the value. But here is the thing: they lower the price even more.
Let's say a manufacturer makes a TV intended to be sold for $300, they reach for their sponsors and can get $50 of deals. Now they can chose to sell a "sponsored" TV for $250 or one without the annoyances for $300, and as it turns out, the majority of customers will go for the $250 option. So much that there is no good economic reason to even sell that $300 ad-free TV, the niche is too small. Competitors without sponsorship deals and $300 TVs will be out-competed by that $250 TV and will have to adjust. As a result, we all have the "smart TVs" we hate (but with a price tag we love).
Pros are ready to pay to avoid all that bullshit, but they don't need TVs either, they need monitors, that's why you can find monitors without that bullshit, for a price.
Your model is oversimplified in a way that downplays the value of ads to the manufacturer. They don't reach out to sponsors and get a $50 static offer per TV in deals. They do some math and figure out that they can make at least $X per customer on average over the lifetime of the TV by selling ad slots dynamically.
The subtle difference here is that because the sponsorships can be updated live across TVs that have already been sold, the actual value of each TV sale can be made to go up after the date of purchase by updating software and/or changing the ad deals.
So the manufacturer isn't pricing the TVs at a discount precisely equal to the ad revenue they receive per TV, they have to price the TVs based on a complicated formula that includes both a rough estimate of the minimum value of ad deals and customer willingness to pay (keeping in mind that customers are choosing their willingness to pay based on a landscape that has no ad-free models!). And what's more, the manufacturer is free to alter the deal after the sale is made to try to make a larger profit per-TV than was originally priced in.
You make it sound like it's a reasonable outcome of an efficient market, but the current situation—where one party can and does alter the deal retroactively and unilaterally—does not create an efficient market!
If it was purely competitive pressure, they'd be happy to let you pay extra to not have the ads.
Instead, they seem to make an effort to make sure no such model is available in stores. People have go hunt down display models intended for businesses, or never connect them to the internet, and display media from another device.
I suspect ultimately, they don't want to be manufacturers. They want control of a "platform" they can milk for infinite money, similar to what Facebook, Google, and friends have.
I suspect it's not quite that simple. First, is there actually enough demand for ad-free TVs to make the option worth including? I personally probably wouldn't pay $20 to avoid ads in the home screen since those kind of ads are just a minor nuisance, which makes me question the size of the market for the ad-free option.
Second, what would the pricing be for the option?
If it's $10-20, that'd probably be fine, similar to what Amazon did for Kindle. But if it's more than that, then I bet the negative PR they would get for including the option outweighs the potential benefit to customers. "I would never buy an X, they're extremely greedy and want $50 just not to show ads. Crazy. I'll buy Y brand instead (which has ads but no 'corporate greed' option to not show them)".
ahh - this is what I do and why I've never noticed "smart" TVs.
My TV is connected to my desktop and will never ever have an Internet connection or it's own - nor will it ever turn on to show anything other than my desktop.
That doesn't explain why it's impossible to buy, for instance, a 65" OLED without ads. We're talking about a TV with a four-figure price tag, and there's no ad-free option.
They've probably calculated that that the value they get from showing ads on more expensive TVs (read: to a more affluent audience) rises at least as fast as the sale price of the TV, maybe even faster.
On top of that, the dumb TVs could come from the same hardware line and just run different software. It's not like they need to spend millions to retool like they would for an unusual panel size.
TVs and monitors are technologically different. They are constructed to be focused on from different range depths and widths. You can't just buy a TV-sized monitor and use it like a TV.
> So... we get the cheapest TV and just hook a laptop up to it
Exactly, and that's another reason why "ad-free" TVs won't sell. Those who just want to connect their laptop via HDMI will buy the cheapest TV with that feature. They won't pay more to avoid seeing ads in the menu screens they don't use anyways.
Now, it may change if they force ads in the HDMI stream or something equally annoying, but they didn't go that far (yet?).
Agree. I nomad, and about 6 years ago I saw my last TV without an HDMI input. And only once in that time, I came across a DP monitor. I now carry a USB-C to HDMI cable that lets me use my phone as a desktop whenever it's plugged into a TV.
When post above you referred to monitors, they weren’t referring to computer monitors but any screen sold without a tv tuner including all kinds of units large distance viewing screens.
I WISH they would make a comeback. Smart TVs are the single worse piece of (shit) consumer electronics on the market. Any time you take anything electronic and connect it to the internet you're asking for trouble. Throw an operating system in it controlled by parasitic advertisers and that's where we are today.
Thinking about it too much makes me furious. We have supercomputers in our pockets and TVs but it all spies on us and nobody gives a shit because everything is cheap. It's a Faustian deal that sucks! Nobody would actually choose this yet here we are.
I only ever use mine as monitor ("PC mode") and have a different device drive it. It would take some major market dysfunction to lose large monitors with this feature.
A quick search for "Dumb TV" on amazon shows two Sceptre models, a 43-inch and a 50-inch. The 43-inch model says it's been ordered 500+ times in the last month and the 50-inch claims 50+. There is also a Pro Scan 40 inch that doesn't have ethernet connectivity. So they do exist, and it looks like there is at least some sales activity with them. I don't know if that's the last dying breath of the dumb tv as a product or if they are trying to make a comeback, though.
Yeah, the start-up can be atrocious on low-end smart TVs. I had a Samsung that I more often than not would turn off before it turned on, because I thought it hadn't registered the input from the on/off button.
And as salt in the wound, turning off takes like 10 seconds.
You absolutely can. But you'll want to pay attention to how insistent the TV is when it comes to being disconnected from the internet. I have an offline Samsung that will occasionally prompt me to accept the terms of service, which obviously fails because it's offline. I can imagine there are some brands/models that are more pushy.
I have a Samsung oled from 2022, I think S95B. It’s technically connected to the local network (I still want it to be usable with home assistant), but denied all connections at the firewall level. I don’t recall it bothering me about anything, and I pretty much always turn it on directly into Apple TV.
I’ve been very happy with my Sony in this regard. Its OS is extremely basic Android TV and it doesn’t bug you at all if you don’t connect it to the internet. Newer models than the one I have also come with a “basic TV” mode that disables most of the Android TV bells and whistles.
Yeah Sony means a higher price, so it’s not going to be as cheap as some other options, but peace is worth a lot of money in my opinion…
How often does it nag you to say yes, while using it as a dumb TV? are all features usable in that mode? I may need to rethink a Vizio if that's the case and not annoying.
That's how I setup and use my C2, which is fairly performant and non-egregious as far as smart panels go. It's not strictly necessary, but I even install firmware from USB.
For now (see e.g. [1]), though companies with surveillance capitalist business models are not only abusive but often sneaky and may do things like include a surreptitious prepaid mobile connection to better thwart your wishes. You really can't trust the bastards.
When TVs started to be computers, they started to have computer problems: bugs, outdated software, freezing, and so on. Recently I needed to buy a smart TV to replace a 2015 one that was OK as a TV, but its operating system (...) was so outdated that it couldn't open the apps anymore.
This is easy: when we buy a smart TV we buy a TV plus a computer. I really would like pay less only for the TV, using the "smartness" of other "computer" (Chromecast, Apple TV, Fire Stick, videogame console, an old computer, etc). If the TV or the computer stopped working, it's just a matter of buying _only_ it.
If you don't mind paying more, they do exist in the form of digital signage / commercial displays. They're usually either completely dumb or support "smart" features via standardized pluggable modules, which can host a normal x86 computer, amongst other options.
The reason they dont exist (or rather that they exist but are rare) is because you, and me, are in the minority. Most people do not care if their tv is dumb and likely would be upset if their tv didnt have built in app support.
If there was a larger more vocal market for dumb tvs, they would exist more readily.
You would have to. The smart features are there to generate ad revenue. It's part of the reason that TVs have gotten absurdly cheap over the past decade.
Why not just... do the thing you want? IE, the solution you alluded to in your comment: have a dumb [which here exclusively means not internet-connected] TV with an externally "smart" device like a Chromecast?
This is essentially your own preferred solution to a problem that just cost you several hundred dollars when you "had" to replace your 2015 TV
It's not so simple. It's almost impossible to separate the "smart" side from the "dumb" side. Just like trying to use a smartphone and use only the phone, it won't make Android or iOS (and their pros and cons) disappear.
I wouldn't mind smart TVs if they were as serviceable as most computers. There was that Sharp M551 panel that had a Pi CM4 as the onboard CPU and that seems ideal: a modular, replaceable, upgradable board.
The fact that this both exists and is utterly unrealistic in the consumer space just makes it more infuriating.
I would love to see this happen. In some ways, it's a story of the wrong system boundaries and modules. A mismatch between component age, manufacturer expertise, and how long software needs to keep being updated or patched.
You can see a similar phenomenon in car media systems, where the solution is an interface (e.g. Android Auto or Apple CarPlay) allowing the vehicle to be "dumber" but more reliable and robust over time. [0]
Televisions can be rescued even more easily, since we already have standards and conventions from the past to use.
[0] For folks unfamiliar with those systems, basically the car's touch-screen becomes an extension of your phone.
So did I buy a smart TV at some blink of time when the software had gotten pretty good but not yet infested with ads? I have an LG with WebOS.
I guess it might have ads for apps or content if I ever opened the app store thing or whatever it's called. But I never have any reason to do that beyond the initial setup when I installed youtube/netflix/some other apps or when they (very rarely) want an update.
So I'm perfectly happy with having apps for various services and a pretty decent UI with pointer remote, and easy casting and screen mirroring from my phone or laptop.
These homogenous threads make me wonder if I'm alone or got super lucky on the timing of my purchase. But since the OS does update sometimes I don't think that's it?
Who is this article for? I don't disagree with it, but manufacturers aren't somehow unaware of any of it. They don't want to manufacture dumb TVs. They're the ones _currently_ manufacturing smart TVs.
Plus, there is the problem that the vast majority of consumers want smart TVs due to a combination of subsidized lower price and "simplicity" (e.g., they may be worse but they are simpler)
Readit News
Manufacturers make recurring revenue by invading the privacy of "dumb" users with their "smart" TVs.
It's probably only a matter of time before TV manufacturers establish their own ad networks.
Why? Because they can. They have the ability to fully control *their* "smart TV" (that you paid for) and show you ads that they control --- independent of any programming.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/12/tcl-tvs-will-use-fil...
https://www.axios.com/2024/02/26/why-walmart-bought-vizio
I'm cool with it provided I can use it as a very high quality HDMI display. Then I just got a nicely discounted product.
My worry is if they demand connectivity in order to work as a display. Or worse come with some kind of LTE transceiver to phone home then we're in trouble.
Most will work --- but not always *conveniently*.
On power up, a lot them will launch into setup if connectivity is not configured. Some may actually store/retrieve the TV configuration in their cloud.
So the main concern with keeping it in dumb mode I would think is that they could still snoop in on your streams through the plain old HDMI port.
But if the HDMI is encrypted.....
With their antipiracy standard ....
God that would be amazing.
Also, I'm kind of surprised there isn't a raspberry pi open source project that does what those 20$ Roku fobs do.
Finally ... It kind of shows that hardware hacking is going downhill that there isn't a replacement os for the major brands of smart TVs. It's possible they've locked that down, but also the price points are so low you'd think they don't have the money to keep them out.
Dead Comment
Unfortunately it is NOT a firewall.
Any device can easily do its own DNS like DoH (dns over https), nnot involve pihole in name lookups, and send package directly to the destination ip address.
For now at least this really isn't an issue. If and when these companies ever start requiring a network connection it's a different story.
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Today, TVs are by nature not dumb, what make them a TV and not a monitor would be the presence of a tuner, and modern tuners are built-in computers that can at least decode compressed video, which is not a trivial task, especially at 4K.
The reason people don't like smart TVs is not because they have a computer inside of them with internet connectivity. It is because of ads and partnership deals. And of course people don't like it, because as much as manufacturers advertise them as features, they are not made to add value for the customer, they actually lower the value. But here is the thing: they lower the price even more.
Let's say a manufacturer makes a TV intended to be sold for $300, they reach for their sponsors and can get $50 of deals. Now they can chose to sell a "sponsored" TV for $250 or one without the annoyances for $300, and as it turns out, the majority of customers will go for the $250 option. So much that there is no good economic reason to even sell that $300 ad-free TV, the niche is too small. Competitors without sponsorship deals and $300 TVs will be out-competed by that $250 TV and will have to adjust. As a result, we all have the "smart TVs" we hate (but with a price tag we love).
Pros are ready to pay to avoid all that bullshit, but they don't need TVs either, they need monitors, that's why you can find monitors without that bullshit, for a price.
The subtle difference here is that because the sponsorships can be updated live across TVs that have already been sold, the actual value of each TV sale can be made to go up after the date of purchase by updating software and/or changing the ad deals.
So the manufacturer isn't pricing the TVs at a discount precisely equal to the ad revenue they receive per TV, they have to price the TVs based on a complicated formula that includes both a rough estimate of the minimum value of ad deals and customer willingness to pay (keeping in mind that customers are choosing their willingness to pay based on a landscape that has no ad-free models!). And what's more, the manufacturer is free to alter the deal after the sale is made to try to make a larger profit per-TV than was originally priced in.
You make it sound like it's a reasonable outcome of an efficient market, but the current situation—where one party can and does alter the deal retroactively and unilaterally—does not create an efficient market!
Instead, they seem to make an effort to make sure no such model is available in stores. People have go hunt down display models intended for businesses, or never connect them to the internet, and display media from another device.
I suspect ultimately, they don't want to be manufacturers. They want control of a "platform" they can milk for infinite money, similar to what Facebook, Google, and friends have.
Second, what would the pricing be for the option?
If it's $10-20, that'd probably be fine, similar to what Amazon did for Kindle. But if it's more than that, then I bet the negative PR they would get for including the option outweighs the potential benefit to customers. "I would never buy an X, they're extremely greedy and want $50 just not to show ads. Crazy. I'll buy Y brand instead (which has ads but no 'corporate greed' option to not show them)".
My TV is connected to my desktop and will never ever have an Internet connection or it's own - nor will it ever turn on to show anything other than my desktop.
It's the solution for almost media issues tbh.
Can you explanin? AFAIK, TVs have dot pitch much larger than monitors. To me it seems better to have monitor as TV than a normal TV.
Is it? This is one of those things where I don't feel I've ever had a choice.
So... we get the cheapest TV and just hook a laptop up to it, and just watch stuff from a computer via HDMI.
Exactly, and that's another reason why "ad-free" TVs won't sell. Those who just want to connect their laptop via HDMI will buy the cheapest TV with that feature. They won't pay more to avoid seeing ads in the menu screens they don't use anyways.
Now, it may change if they force ads in the HDMI stream or something equally annoying, but they didn't go that far (yet?).
Also, the price of an excellent non-ad-supported computer (eg Apple TV) to replace the one that comes in the TV is $140.
That’s rounding error vs the price of a midrange TV, and it shouldn’t be a selling point in the > ~ $1000 range.
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Consumers regularly vote with their wallets against their best interests.
I don't need a tv home page.
Can't I just get a nice OLED smart TV and NEVER connect it to the internet?
Put MP4/MKV movies onto a USB stick and watch them in "AUX/USB" mode? Or use HDMI from my computer, and just treat it as a big monitor?
It might ask me to connect, but I can just decline and keep watching the USB/HDMI inputs, right?
It would be nice if top-of-the-line models were available with instant-on and unobtrusive UIs, like CRTs used to be.
And as salt in the wound, turning off takes like 10 seconds.
Yeah Sony means a higher price, so it’s not going to be as cheap as some other options, but peace is worth a lot of money in my opinion…
Since all I need it to do is come on automatically when the Apple TV turns on, it works great.
Until they start shipping wideband chips in them. Make sure your helpful in-laws don’t connect it either.
The biggest concern to me is built in 5g etc.
None of these TV show ads unless you connect them to the Internet. If it’s a big deal to avoid ads, plug them into a media center PC or an Apple TV.
The family has been instructed to never connect the LG TV to WiFi.
Anyway, I'm sure you could use HDMI from your computer and that seems easier than dealing with a USB stick.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/hdmi-customized-ad-i...
You might be better off buying a big monitor instead of a TV.
HDMI Ethernet Channel (HEC) was added to the HDMI spec in 2009 to allow Blu-ray players to access the internet without a direction connection.
There are zero devices ever released that support HEC.
There are zero OEM HDMI chipsets that support HEC.
The streaming device manufacturers have no incentive to enable this feature.
It's a nice reminder that a good amount of people on HN/Reddit have no idea what they're talking about, even if they use acronyms.
This is easy: when we buy a smart TV we buy a TV plus a computer. I really would like pay less only for the TV, using the "smartness" of other "computer" (Chromecast, Apple TV, Fire Stick, videogame console, an old computer, etc). If the TV or the computer stopped working, it's just a matter of buying _only_ it.
Until I did some research and found out there is no need to go to this extreme --- at least not yet.
It is possible to buy a "smart" TV at a price subsidized by the privacy of "dumb" users and still run it in a "dumb" display mode.
With the TV I just bought, this is called "store" mode. I use it as a big, dumb 4K display connected to "smarts" that I can control.
If there was a larger more vocal market for dumb tvs, they would exist more readily.
But the public has spoken, again and again, with multiple goods. All that matters is price.
You may be able to sustain business selling very high end stuff for people with means.
But most people, out of greed or need, will go with a low cost option. And that will push nearly everything out in a race to the bottom.
This is essentially your own preferred solution to a problem that just cost you several hundred dollars when you "had" to replace your 2015 TV
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The fact that this both exists and is utterly unrealistic in the consumer space just makes it more infuriating.
You can see a similar phenomenon in car media systems, where the solution is an interface (e.g. Android Auto or Apple CarPlay) allowing the vehicle to be "dumber" but more reliable and robust over time. [0]
Televisions can be rescued even more easily, since we already have standards and conventions from the past to use.
[0] For folks unfamiliar with those systems, basically the car's touch-screen becomes an extension of your phone.
I guess it might have ads for apps or content if I ever opened the app store thing or whatever it's called. But I never have any reason to do that beyond the initial setup when I installed youtube/netflix/some other apps or when they (very rarely) want an update.
So I'm perfectly happy with having apps for various services and a pretty decent UI with pointer remote, and easy casting and screen mirroring from my phone or laptop.
These homogenous threads make me wonder if I'm alone or got super lucky on the timing of my purchase. But since the OS does update sometimes I don't think that's it?
I have a EU model (LG) and I was able to decline some privacy popups which gives me a functional but dumbed-down version of the OS.
Plus, there is the problem that the vast majority of consumers want smart TVs due to a combination of subsidized lower price and "simplicity" (e.g., they may be worse but they are simpler)