I just finished setting up a custom router with dns ad blocking. Next comes a media player so I can purge this smart TV filth from my household.
Huge shout out to Louis Rossmann and the FUTO communuty contributors, check out the wiki on self-hosted software if you haven’t already.
Most smart TV OS are Cancer doesn’t matter how much you paid for it
LG TVs, at least three one I have, have a pretty good operating system. I’ve never seen an ad (yet)
I made my Smart TV into a dumb TV by never activating the smart TV functions. And then I plugged a relatively cheap computer into it. So I don’t have this kind of problem.
Your grandma does.
I installed her TV and internet last week. She barely understands the concept of switching TV inputs, and her Roku smart TV doesn’t let you rename inputs from HDMI1 to [ISP NAME] unless the thing is connected to the internet. It also defaults out of the box to show the smart TV bullshit every single time you turn it on, instead of just showing the last used input before the TV turned off. So she’s completely baffled how to watch simple television channels unless I spend 10 minutes reconfiguring this garbage so it’s usable.
Go visit your grandma, everyone. And reconfigure her smart TV. I’m joking but I’m not. I can only visit so many grandmas per day.
I haven’t had a living grandmother in… I don’t even know how many years at this point.
But the fact of the matter is, the older generations don’t really use Smart TVs, they’re still using Comcast boxes and accessing regular TV. Some of the more tech savvy will engage Netflix or Disney+ but beyond that, it’s doubtful they even know anything beyond those exist.
I’ll reiterate that I’m in a half dozen living rooms every day, and most of them are senior citizens. I’ve been doing this for years. They all have smart TVs, whether they use the features or not.
I’ll also reiterate that they flat out will not even use a TV sometimes because they’re defeated by the smart TV features that prevent them from getting over to their Comcast box. Did you even read my comment?
They get suckered by the cheap TV in middle of the aisle at Walmart or Costco and buy three. You can’t even go out and buy a TV that isn’t a smart TV without specifically looking for it. They don’t even know to begin to look for these things.
Do you think they’re still on an old CRT with a VCR hooked up via RCA? They had to go down some weird upgrade rabbit hole that they still don’t fully understand because they ended up with a DVD of some classic movie, went and got a DVD player only to find out they didn’t have HDMI ports so now they had to go buy some garbage TV thats subsidized by advertising companies. Again, I’ve seen this exact scenario play out a hundred times.
The fact of the matter is that your fix reeks of ‘I got mine’ energy, and it doesn’t fix anything. Large swaths of people will still get these ads in their faces and these companies won’t stop. Quite the opposite, they’ll keep looking for more ways to fuck their customers.
Which only works for now. They’ve already gotten you to be ok with the upcharge price for the “smart” hardware. Soon they’re going to require online activation for “reasons”. So choosing to not connect it won’t work. And they’ll do regular ad connection checks and if it fails to update ads after so much time the TV will prompt an error to please correct the network.
Hate it all you want, it’s going to happen.
It doesn’t need to happen if we actually do something about this hate.
Like what?
organize.
is a matter of pushing advertisement and privacy restrictions
I have a very old 4K Toshiba TV with a built in “smart browser” that, due to me never plugging into the Internet, has a home page with news about how well Obama’s doing in the polls for being a relatively unknown junior senator.
That is the way
Disable all internet functionality, set the time to the 1990s to prevent many timers from going off, attach the tv to another device that doesn’t have ads via your cable of choice. But why was your smart tv 1700? Did it have some special features?
Have you ever looked at OLED TV prices? This is absolutely a normal price.
Probably 4k oled
A cheap computer/laptop. HDMI cable. Ublock origin (sprinkle some sponserblock and privacy badger in there). A TV that is never connected to the internet. Voila. No ads. None. Zilch. Zero. Ad free.
Streaming platforms that have gone to ad supported formats make me laugh because it’s just a 3-5 second black screen, not the ad, and it’s back to the content. Been doing it for decades. Don’t sit there and get reamed by their bullshit.
What do we do when they come with 5G modems built in?
Razor blade to specific pcb traces?
Detailed instructions for things like this will need to documented. It starts with ads… does it evolve into 1984? Who knows, but it seems more likely in light of recent events.
I agree. I could see manufacturers add anti tamper features that could brick the device if opened if people started doing this anyway.
That’s unlikely, the additional R&D cost probably won’t weigh up to the costs incurred by the small minority that removes it.
Don’t buy a TV anymore. Seriously though with the direction things have been going in the “tech world” for the last couple years (maybe even decade) it is probably better to start adjusting to some level of digital minimalism. For some of us it will become a necessity for financial reasons anyway…
hah, there’s nowhere near enough infrastructure to handle that.
AFAIK this will only get you 720p to 1080p depending on the streaming service. No 4K, no HDR.
Plenty of 4k with HDR on Real Debrid. Or even better quality and bitrate ripped from BRs, in the open waters.
Buy a smart TV box like Apple TV or Nvidia Shield. You can get full quality streaming with some ads but not nearly as bad as the software that’s built into some of these TVs.
I know, I was just letting people know that this guys solution comes with downsides.
HDMI 2.1 can support 4k. Find a ship that doesn’t sink. Voila. No ads. Zilch. Zero. Nada. No HDR? Better than a single second of an ad.
Return it. If you hold on to it (even if you block the ads and all) it will signal the manufacturer, that this practice is fine.
Apple TV was the best media thing I’ve bought in over a decade. No ads ever, incredibly responsive (league of its own compared to stuff like Roku), and is able to stream from my Jellyfin server. Beautiful interface, fast, clean, simple controller with a battery life that is easily over a year. Just a really good product. Roku can suck by nuts. Literal full page ads in a product that advertises that it has zero of them. Even the most expensive version. Fuck Roku.
Same here. One is the best made TV boxes period.
I agree. I switched from Roku to apple tv recently (and I don’t really have apple devices), and it was worth it.
I’ve found the shield pro is better, especially for customizability.
how does it go for codec support out of Jellyfin? I’m starting to collect and also rip AV1 content, which is fine for computers and phones (and my newer TV does it natively), but trying to find a streambox that wouldn’t need to transcode it is proving harder than expected
Perfectly. I’ve never encountered a codec my Apple TV couldn’t play smooth as butter. Been watching a lot of AV1 anime lately, never needs to transcode. I use Infuse Player for its Dolby Vision support, because that’s the only format the native Jellyfin app has trouble with, but Infuse is also just a really solid app in general, and for me is the perfect way to consume my Jellyfin server. But the native Jellyfin app is also solid, and there are some other players which would definitely meet your needs (MrMC for example is very good, but not as polished as Infuse).
Have a previous gen 4K, and have not encountered any issues with Jellyfin on streaming. There’s a spectacularly annoying bug that you lose your config if the atv is full to capacity - and with kids in the house it means frequent logins are required. The iOS client also seems to lag on features and updates compared to the other clients, but other than that niggle it’s been great.
Shield pro is the best, end of story
Are they still making those or are they all 5+ years old (2019 was latest I could find on eBay)?
Is American football not merely a vehicle through which advertising can be pumped? You’d think the entire sport had been designed from the ground up for such a purpose.
Four seconds of action, six minutes of commercials….3.6 seconds of action, 47 replays, five minutes of commercials.
P.S. Smart TVs can eat shit and die.
I went to a game for the first time a few years ago. I recall the moment where everyone was sitting around and not doing anything because they were waiting for the commercials to finish. It felt like watching actors drop their characters the moment they step out of the spotlight.
I’d honestly return it as faulty. Preloaded adware shouldn’t be acceptable.
Why the fuck does your television have a home page?
Never give the TV the wifi password.
Don’t ever connect a “smart” tv to the internet. Period.
I bought a new TV last year after my Hisense kicked the bucket and had a similar experience.
Not sure if it applies to your situation, but I just factory reset my TV, never enabled wifi, and hooked up a smart device I had lying around (Nvidia Shield). Now it all works great and if the smart functions upset me I can throw just the smart TV part in the trash and go back to my VCR.
It will be a dark day indeed when I allow my TV to connect to the internet. These things are glorified monitors.
Yo dawg! I heard you like ads. So we put ads in your ads
Congratulations! So, how does the TV work with the adblocker set up?
It’s absolutely no different! The TV is doing something weird to get around it, or these ads are just cached from earlier. I’m not sure yet. Good news is that the ad blockers definitely works, we’re getting 96/100 on https://adblock-tester.com/
what brand is it? just to know what to avoid
Hisense. Name and shame baby
*with Google’s TV OS
Google TV is the easiest to get rid of ads on. I have a Sony and a Hisense both no ads.
Look up and use the Projectivy Launcher.
You’ll also want to sideload an app that forces the default launcher to Projectivy (can’t recall the name) because they don’t allow changing it through the stock OS. Projectivy tries to use accessibility settings to take over on its own, but it breaks some other features so I don’t use them.
Check for HTTPS traffic as well as the regular let 53. They could be doing DNS over HTTPS to get around the block, or a static IP for a nameserver.
DNS calls are definitely cached. You’ll have to wait a few days until your TV refreshes DNS entries.
is this about the stupid football thing?
Yeah I guess the superbowl is soon, there’s another row of football ads one or two rows up. I’ll remind myself that I paid for the TV, the electricity to run it, and the bandwidth to connect it, yet I’m still shown full screen ads first thing when I turn my TV on. And I don’t even watch football. And I can’t disable it.
Corporate America and gargle my balls
