Smart TVs are honestly one of the dumbest inventions.
All they did was take power away from people so corporations could sell it back to them.
Streaming boxes and dongles are no better either. These days I use a laptop hooked up to the tv so I can block ads and limit tracking.
Same 👊
For those (like me) who bought a TCL tv at a stupidly cheap price on Black Friday, you have options.
- buy an AppleTV (even second hand) and don’t connect the tv to the internet. You won’t see any adverts on your Home Screen and be done with all this bullshit. What’s that? What’s the point in buying a £200 TV if you need to buy a £150 accessory? I hear you, read on…
- if you’re broke like me, you can disable the stock launcher with adb and install projectivy launcher. I needed to use some software called launcher manager from xdaforums to replace the stock launcher. I also used adb to uninstall the pre-installed apps I had no intention of using.
Hopefully there are enough key words in there for you to google / research what you need to get going. Good luck!
Gentle reminder Apple does actually take steps to protect you from tracking, the premium you pay comes with some protection from their need to sell you out.
It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the alternates by far.
1/1 mobile / OS security experts agree
I recommend to replace the default launcher on every Android TV, replaced the default Google Launcher on my Sony TV and it feels faster and has no ads
I remember when the Google launcher just worked fine. Suddenly, one update later, there’s now ads for shows on services I don’t even use taking up the entire top 2/3rds of the home screen. WTF google.
You got any recommendations for an lg webos tv?
Not the OP, but connect a computer to it and set it to turn on to the last input. I’ve had one for a year and can’t even remember what their interface looks like.
Dope thanks
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Note about the second bullet: Not all TCL TVs are Google TV, which can be switched to Protectivity - Roku TVs at this point, as far as I know, cannot disable ads if connected to the Internet.
If this is the case for you (I have both in my house), I recommend putting your RokuTV behind a Pi Hole DNS. It will block the TV ad requests at a DNS level while letting content and video go through.
The only problem I found with this is that Roku knows it’s being blocked so it’ll kill some apps over time (like the Plex app) in a way that forces you to fully reinstall the app. Which means unblocking their domain and allowing them to phone home (or disabling/bypassing pihole), because the app downloads go through that domain as well.
Before I just factory reset them and denied them any internet at all, Plex would break and need to be reinstalled about every 2 months like clockwork, and it wasn’t due to app updates or anything. I know this because I did a test once; reset on one tv, and 2 weeks later on another one. The first called for an update at roughly the 2 month mark, and the other exactly two weeks later. Meanwhile an absolutely ancient Samsung tv still has a copy of the Plex app that hasn’t been updated in like 5 years (it’s a fully obsolete tv)… works fine.
My speculation is that it records the data for that period, and then breaks things you use so it can phone home when you are forced to connect it to fix it.
Yeah, this is the answer. My wife does a lot of arduino/pi stuff so this is on our to-do list, but we just can’t find the time (building in cushion for inevitable network and setup troubleshooting).
You can spin the pinhole up in a docker image and have it run as a secondary DNS server. The rest of your network can use the existing DNS and only point the TV at the pi. If you sit down to watch something and it requires tweaking, just flick back to regular DNS :)
No way, that is so smart. I’ll have to look for a guide.
I’m struggling heavily to find that OS to learn more about it (literally just got a google tcl tv delivered today, as my old one died last week), can you provide a link of some variety?
I was very heartened to find out that it’s just big android, so there’s likely a lot that can be done with it (but I got it to be dumb).
Sorry, do you mean a link to a Roku TV? Assuming you mean a link to Projectivity, here’s a link:
https://xdaforums.com/t/app-android-tv-projectivy-launcher.4436549/
You can scroll to the bottom - basically you should just be able to enable installation from third party sources in your Google TV android options, and install the APK. I don’t have Google TV, but worked fine on Android TV. I forget if you have to fiddle with any other settings to get it to boot into Projectivity, or if you just change the launcher app in settings.
Nope, this is the info I was looking for, thanks :)
This is really the of stuff dystopian scifi.
A somewhat cliched saying comes to my mind when reading this article.
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” [1]
Hopefully, there will eventually be pushback against this techno-feudalism and oligarchy. For what it’s worth this seems to always happen in history. Ruling elites (in our case oligarchs and their promoters; the media, economists, politicians) consolidate their power and start to become disconnected from reality.
As a side note, it’s funny that AI-generated videos have themes of dystopia and rebellion against the system.
Just when we think it can’t get worse, some rich asshole has to laugh and say “Hold my beer and watch me enshittify even harder.”
A while ago a company patented a method using eye tracking to monitor whether TV watchers were paying attention to ads.
It can always get worse.
So wear sunglasses when watching tv. Got it.
We also need to start mocking people who watch AI slop.
People don’t deliberately sit and watch ads.
Tell this to every person without an ad blocker installed
I reiterate: people don’t deliberately sit and watch ads.
You are vastly vastly vastly vastly overestimating peoples’ tech literacy. People don’t know that ad blockers exist, nor do they know how to install them.
When can we start to own things again?
As soon as you stop buying pre built SmArT shit and cobble the same together from regular components. I get a smart TV experience from a dumb tv/projector and a media PC with remote access or local kb/m. In the past I had a harmony remote that made it much closer to the real experience
Stop gobbling up corporate slop and these issues stop being an issue. You just have to deal with less slick experiences, but it’s worth it imo.
For TVs now, by buying used. Help yourself and the environment by buying an unwanted “dumb” TV that’s free of this sort of crap.
Or if budget allows, look at industrial displays.
Supply answers demand, is we stop buying junk smart stuff and take our money elsewhere the market will eventually follow.
It’s getting difficult to find outright dumb TVs now. Although some (including some Sony TVs) give you the choice on setup of choosing either “smart TV” or “basic TV”.
When we pay the actual price and not the ad subsidised price.
You can right now. What exactly are you having a problem owning?
It’s like in Diamond Age when Nell went to visit her brother later in the book and he spent all day consuming trashy ractives.
I’ve tried a few times to get into Diamond Age, and every time i lose interest within the first 50 pages. Is it worth another try?
The only Stephenson book I managed to “finish” was the first two thirds of Seveneves, totally lost interest in the last third of the book too.
It gets better, but I’ve never gone back and reread it. The ending, IIRC is goofy too.
Honestly, I love his writing, but the books of his I’ve finished are Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, Diamond Age, Zodiac, and ReamDe. The others I’ve either struggled to get into (Seveneves because the first chapter is so damn down) or just never started.
Honestly, ReamDe and Cryptonomicon are IMHO his most readable, maybe because they’re sent in the current time. Though I loved Snow Crash.
I will not use TCL then.
Yep. This is the new answer. Either buy a model assured to have jailbreak and replace the stock privacy nightmare; or spend more $$$ on a dumb tv.
Can I just get a goddamned monitor? Like, please can my TV just be a damn 70" monitor with hookups for whatever actual tech I want to use to watch stuff?
Is that too much to ask? My TV has to have its own shitty, unintuitive, slow, buggy OS stuffed with ungodly amounts of bloatware and bullshit?
God this shit is sad, I can’t believe anyone involved (besides the few making all the money) are remotely proud to have worked on this. I get that its a trope to not accept new technology/trends but ai always makes me put on a face of disgust without trying.
are remotely proud to have worked on this.
Usually the people working on this are too afraid of their financial standing to care about what they’re actually working on.
I don’t want to say they “need” the money, because odds are they can do with less. They are likely on the consumer bandwagon without even realizing it and want to make as much money as possible so they can spend as much money as possible.
The means are irrelevant.
Does anyone know if there’s something similar to universal android debloater for android tvs?
I bought a cheap TCL TV last year. If you can, turn off the wifi (I literally just wanted the TV, not the “smart” part). I play everything either through a hard drive, laptop or my PS and that works for me. You can also change the settings to open up to the last channel instead of the landing page. I can still connect my TV to Bluetooth. When I turn it on, I see the TCL logo, but after that, nothing.
I have a TCL running Google TV that I use Flauncher on - a nice little FOSS lightweight launcher that I like a lot. However, I am only able to switch inputs (for gaming etc.) when using the default launcher. Anyone found a way around this? Pretty sure its a Google/TCL hardware thing and not due to any alt launcher just not wanting to include that
Yes, I might be able to help. I changed my Onn set top box (which uses Android TV) fairly recently to use FLauncher (or Projectivity, I don’t remember which one I chose in the end), but it kept defaulting back to the default launcher. So I jacked it to change what the detail launcher was. After enabling some options ( developer options, USB debugging, verify apps over USB) on my Onn box, I plugged the box into my computer and then used the adb command line tool to change the default launcher (launcherx).
I imagine you could do the same to your Android TV. As long as it has a USB port.
Hope this helps.
ETA: Here are some more detailed instructions I took when I did this:
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On the ONN tv box installer flauncher and/or projectivity launcher via the Google Play store
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Make sure developer options is enabled on the ONN tv box (hit okay on Android TV OS build several times)
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Look up IPv4 address on the ONN TV box under Settings > System > Status
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Go to the new Developer Options menu item on ONN > settings > system, and make sure: a) Enable developer options is set to on b) USB debugging is set to on c) Verify apps over USB is set to on
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Download adb platform tools on windows from here: https://developer.android.com/tools/releases/platform-tools8
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Plug in usb cable between PC and ONN tv box
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On the ONN tv box go to Settings > System > Developer Options and make sure Select USB Configuration is set to MTP (Media Transfer Protocol)
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On Windows, open a command line as administrator and go to the adb path
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In the command line window on windows type: a) adb start-server b) adb connect [ONN ip address] (Note: it might initially say “failed to authenticate to [ip]”, that’s okay, see the next step)
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On the ONN tv box a pop-up window should appear asking to allow access from windows pc IP address, say OK
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In the command line window on windows type: adb devices
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You should see the device as active on the ip you stated and on port 5555
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Next in the terminal window type the following to disable the default ONN tv default launcher and listener: adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.google.android.apps.tv.launcherx
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Then in the terminal window type: adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.google.android.tungsten.setupwraith
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On the ONN tv box click the home button. It should now either a) go to the additional launcher you installed or b) prompt you for the home app (if you installed multiple additional launchers) so select the one you want (e.g. FLauncher)
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Now when you hit the home button on the ONN tv box it should always take you to the FLauncher launcher, not the default ONN launcher
Note: If you need to re-enable launcherx, you can use these commands in adb:
adb shell pm enable --user 0 com.google.android.apps.tv.launcherx
adb shell pm enable --user 0 com.google.android.tungsten.setupwraith
My adventures with doing this were based on this post on reddit.
Thanks for the detailed response will look into it!
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Try Projectivy.
Will look into it thanks!
TCL - That Cheap Life
This is annoying. Idk how we fix it.
Product placement was the least annoying. I’m pretty sure we all wanted to know why the original Daredevil law office had Progresso bread crumbs in their coffee corner, so it’s not like it went unnoticed.
Idk how we fix it.
Simple. Don’t buy a TCL television. If you do have one, or any other brand of “smart” TV then for gods sake do NOT connect it to the internet.
And even then, there have been smart TVs caught sniffing for same brand devices and open networks to connect to the web.
I’ve not heard of that… Got any links to articles about it?
Samsung did it, there was a Reddit thread where one users TV used a neighbours open WiFi to connect automatically
I’m only getting trash results now but there was an entire discussion on one of lemmys communities about tech safety and privacy and one user went into a lot of detail and provided articles on it.
I bought a Philips one. Turned off WiFi cause my mom doesn’t use streaming much, and to get rid of those effing “accept cookies?” pop-ups. Every once in a while it suggests to connect to the network. 😑😑
We don’t do “smart” TVs. We set up our own systems.
Buy a large flat computer monitor and plug a small PC into it
i wonder how long until they start putting shit to those too
Apple’s monitors have an entire OS in them. They have much of the same internals as an iPad. Honestly, I have no idea why, because they don’t do anything especially fancy.
Samsung makes “smart monitors” with Tizen or some shit like that.
Apple wants you buying from them. Remember how a simple charging cable was a problem back with the first iterations of the iPhone.
Isn’t that the entire idea behind Windows 11. Well, not the entire, it’s also about DRM.
You get a pirate ship and a nas to store your booty. Maybe a few specter TVs while they exist.
For some eyebleach:
A film written by AI, 11 years ago (it was Cleverbot).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkNA7sy5M5sI wish i could wipe the OS on my TCL tv
I have a tcl tv but it uses a roku os. Not sure how this will play into that
OTOH people who aren’t in the entertainment industry will use generative AI to make original films they otherwise never would have been able to. It seems like a great tool for individual creators who aren’t able to produce images by themselves. Yes, they won’t hire artists to do this, but they wouldn’t have anyway, and we’ll get to enjoy their work, which wouldn’t have existed otherwise. I don’t think we should demonize a very promising technology because we don’t like how some people are using it.
I don’t think their films will be able to reflect their personal creativity other than the story
I would be a fool to debate your psychic powers.
