I only witness it whenever any of my work colleagues anyone with a phone wants to show me a video. Always have to sit through ads before & during the video. Absolutely horrific. Mind you they also have to close multiple pop up ads in every app they ever use on their phone. I couldn’t live with it & not learn how to deal with it

People allow their TV to connect to the interpipes? Tut tut, I thought y’all were better than that!

OmsAnd can seem daunting for new users. I persevered because the map info is so detailed & it works offline. On a couple of occasions my family found ourselves in a new city in a foreign country in need of food etc & OsmAnd has had the info telling us exactly what we needed & where to go thanks to the dedicated community. It encouraged me to map my own city suburb in detail to help fellow travelers.

I also love its offline Wikipedia function.

If anyone is interested, even adding a park bench or litter bin helps & is quite simple with something like StreetComplete

For YouTube I hate the algorithm so i disabled YouTube app & only watch through browser. Of course mobile & desktop browsers are running uBlock Origin, Sponsorblock & DeArrow.

I never sign in. Instead of subscribing to channels or “watch later” I’m an avid user of Joplin notes so i have a specific note for YouTube for subscriptions & for any interesting looking videos I stumble across. The note is broken into video time length so i can watch something depending on available time, which helps if mindlessly watching stuff. Joplin syncs to all devices.

Its an extra few seconds for me to add a url & title to the note but its second nature now. The beauty is I only see stuff I’m interested in not crap they think I want to see. Plus this way its easy to save links for any video site.

Another thing I do is for audio style videos I’ve enabled background play so i can listen at night with a timer when going to sleep rather than having to sit & watch a video.

Go into this completely blind - do not watch the trailer, do not read about it first, just take a deep breath & enjoy the ride

Simplest option is probably speak to sales staff & specifically ask about the set up process. It might be worth phoning a couple of reputable TV vendors as they may have more understanding than the spotty herberts in the sheds at the local retail park.

I last bought a TV outside of your preferred time frame but back then Panasonic made, what for my needs, was the best panel for the price & didnt insist on having internet in order to set it up (no idea whether this has changed with current generation models)

It doesnt help with your hdmi concerns, but what about blocking the TV at router level or restrict it by putting it on VLAN/guest network then disconnecting it from the internet forever once set up.is complete?

For images, on Android you could use Imagepipe.

Once you’ve set it up, simply “share” the image to Imagepipe, it does its thing then automatically passes it on to whatever app you want - for example a messaging app for you to send on to others (it stores a copy of the image minus its metadata in an Imagepipe folder in your gallery for ease of access should you need it again).

For video, from memory I think mp3tag for Windows/Mac can remove metadata from some video formats

mobile Chromium doesn’t have ublock anyway…

Kiwi browser on Android is Chromium based & has had the ability to add extensions such as uBlock for years

Everyone knows the popular ones so here’s a shout out to a few that are perhaps not so commonly known:

• whoBIRD - Shazam for birds
• Subz - Subscription manager
• zCard - Loyalty/membership/store card wallet

My most used can no longer live without app:

• Joplin - Note taking. Various sync options. Brilliant app, helpful community & very regular updates (especially desktop)

Ha I once fell for this same issue with the exact same bars. To be fair they’re so darn tasty I’ve fallen for it again several times since!

I really like it. Tech comminities & some others are very bouyant & interesting but niche communities really struggle. Even direct replacements of big subreddits struggle. Hopefully this improves.

One tip from my own experience. I use Voyager & blocked a load of US politics keywords.

And another, I subscribed to as many interesting Lemmy communities as i could then browse Home feed in the main & occasionally All to see if any other interesting communities crop up that could be worth joining.

Welcome & enjoy.

Came here since the Reddit 3rd party app fiasco. Initially I blocked a load of non English language communities which at the time seemed to fill the All feed. Kept adding to my subscribed communities list then in my app (Voyager after Liftoff stopped being developed) blocked a load of keywords, essentially Trump/US politics related.

Now my Home (subscriptions) feed has some great content. I check out All from time to time to see if I can subscribe to more communities.

Niche communities are still lacking but hopefully that improves over time.

I’ve found Routines to be one of the most important features with Samsung - set up a car mode to auto run when charging AND connected by bluetooth to a specific device …and have it set the brighness dependant on the time of day. Turn location off completely unless certain apps are opened. Protect your battery if charging overnight …but go into power saving mode should charging stop for some reason. I find it invaluable. Even more powerful when used with Routines+ add-on

Looks OP has solutions but it looks like Routines also has options to separate sound on app specific basis

I dunno, we have a decent Dolby Atmos system I’ve assembled over the years which sounds immense & has a setting to accentuate speech, yet I always use subs for TV & movies. My brain is hopeless putting names to faces, the subs help me with this (plus slang & accents).

I think it’s something to do with how my brain processes sound as I have the same issue with songs - my brain doesnt comprehend lyrics, I don’t know the words to songs I’ve heard thousands of times no matter how well known the song is, maybe a few lines from a chorus but that’s about it

Ah fair enough. This never occurred to me as we dont have a power socket in the bathroom. Also I’m a typical man so didn’t bother to read the instruction manual.

My Philips shaver does not work whilst charging. What’s that all about?

Luckily the battery is good but it gives very little warning when its about to run out. I dont grow facial hair very quickly or very thickly but several times I’ve had to leave the house partially shaved. Doesn’t make any sense. That’s the whole point of electricity, to use stuff whilst plugged in!

I dunno if TV is dead per se as we all enjoy watching shows/movies. Not really interested in gimmicks - we only have 4K as all new TV’s are 4K & we only got it because our previous TV failed & they can no longer be repaired.

All i want is a good quality dumb screen. You can stick all your smart features where the sun dont shine, I’ll handle everything via a separate box that I control thank you. I’ll not be at the mercy of your shitty EULA, you won’t monitor my viewing habits or force ads into the UI or remove your dogshit apps without warning. Our TV has never been online, HTPC with a couple of USB TV tuners, uBlock Origin, an interface of my choosing, remote control & lots of storage handles everything. Still perfectly happy watching SD stuff, the only 4K we watch is YouTube.

Kiwi browser (Brave & Firefox on desktop) with: uBlock Origin, Sponsorblock, DeArrow (fights YouTube clickbait thumbs & titles, same dev team as Sponsorblock), Violentmonkey with a few scripts: Google Shut Up, Search cookie auto reject

MJ PDF

I use this Square Jellyfish tripod mount which screws onto any standard tripod.

It is spring loaded but unless you buy a phone specific mount I doubt you’ll find one that isn’t. It’s not too stiff so it’s easy to insert your phone.

It opens quite wide - handles my Note 20 Ultra 5G plus Poetic Revolution rugged case with no issues.