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Ask HN: How I buy a TV that don't show porn ads to kids?
So I bought a LG C1 OLED tv... It has that shiny new WebOS 6 that seemly is plagued with ads even if you disable all permissions, and I heard reports it is circunventing pi-hole too (by putting ads on same server as content you actually want).
The Brazillian version of it insists in advertising content available on "Looke", with little filtering, it has no shame in just pasting there posters of splatter horror movies or adult stuff, for example ads for a documentary about Rocco or another named just "Porn" with a giant naked ass on the poster.
Anyone know how I buy a dumb TV? One that does not need internet, at all? Or if it does need internet to update its firmware, it won't spy on me or fill stuff with ads?
OLED TVs aren't cheap either, and I am very disappointed that even paying a ton of money I am still the product.
- codevark 5y agoSceptre makes a 55" non-smart TV that only costs $400. Not OLED, but pretty nice.
- dplgk 5y agoI bought 2 of these from Walmart for $200 each. I was surprised at how decent the image quality is.
- memco 5y agoI got the 65” last year: took some adjustment to get the sound to be okay as the defaults were pretty bad. Otherwise it’s decent.
- MerelyMortal 5y agoThey make/made a 75" TV as well.
- ianai 5y agoDoes it need an internet connection to work as a display?
- traceroute66 5y agoI second this answer. Stop stressing out, just don't connect the TV to the internet. Job done.
- fsflover 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29384092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29384092 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29383507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29383507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29382742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29382742
- cpach 5y agoIs there any proof of that happening?
- boardwaalk 5y agoTin foil hat stuff, to be honest. Prove it or stop promulgating it.
- fsflover 5y agoIf it's technically possible, it will happen, I believe. Even if it's not the case yet. This is the curse of non-free software, as predicted by Stallman.
- RealityVoid 5y agoMaybe. But first prove the standing allegations.
- generalizations 5y agoIt doesn't do you or anyone else any good to be militantly skeptical that people with opportunity sometimes act maliciously. Also, this looks like the origin of the anecdote: https://web.archive.org/web/20200519095006/https://old.reddit.com/r/security/comments/bpjky4/worried_about_your_smart_tv_listening_in_simply/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200519095006/https://old.reddi...
- fsflover 5y agoSee also: What is the best dumb TV? (pointerclicker.com) 674 points by evo_9 on Oct 2, 2020 | 651 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24666968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24666968 Ask HN: What’s the best TV to buy? 56 points by colpabar 88 days ago | 90 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29343338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29343338 Ask HN: Are there any 4K “dumb” televisions? 436 points by luke2m 84 days ago | 500 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29382643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29382643
- falcolas 5y agoYup - look for a "commercial monitor" or "digital signage", not a TV these days.
- halo37253 5y agoThere is no good Dumb TV's. I'm sorry but nearly any dumb TV has crappy brightness and poor black uniformity. I value a good picture, and if you spend any time comparing TV's on RTings you'd know that budget TV's are not worth it. I personally can not justify spending money on a TV that doesn't even have 400nits of brightness in SDR content, and neither should you. I'd be surprised if any non Smart TV has more than 300nits, most are at best 200 or 250. The only time anyone should justify a shitty TV, is if that is all they can afford. Still do your research, there are cheap TVs out there that are decent for the money. Like article above doesn't talk about. Sure maybe you like a microwave with two dials and not smart functions as you like it simple. But if you've never used an inverter based microwave packed full of smart tech, you never used a decent microwave. Its a single button press and perfectly cooked/warmed product every time. No cold spots. Sure a dumb microwave is fine, if you like to waste time. A Dumb TV is no different. Sure it can be great after tossing a Fire TV stick onto it, and added a sound bar. But it still is going to have a budget picture, may have problems with ARC or no ARC at all, Bad menu system, etc. For a Budget TV you are better off getting a higher end Hisense TV. Which has a bright Picture and runs Android TV.
- Cerium 5y agoDo you have a recommendation for a good microwave? Mine is at least 15 years old and was bottom shelf when new.
- bni 5y agoNever connect any TV with Wi-Fi or Ethernet. It's a sad state thet there isn't any TV manufacturer that respects your privacy.
- halo37253 5y agoYou'd have to block it at the router level. Just block the IP addresses the TV is broadcasting too and receiving ads from. Honestly while LG makes a good TV. WebOS sucks. And their need to push ads is crazy. That's why I like Sony TV's, Google TV is a better interface. And The homescreen has no ads. I would just use a fire tv stick, roku, or even better yet a Nvidia shield and not deal with WebOS at all. The Worst thing about LG and Samsung TV's have always been the Interface, but I'd take Samsung's over LG any day of the week.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dawnerd 5y agoI definitely have ads on my google tv built into my Sony tv.
- snek_case 5y agoI have a semi-recent Sony TV and it has shitty ads on the home screen too, unfortunately. I feel like there's an opportunity here for a brand to sell an ad-free TV. I know I'd pay an extra 200-400 and a lot of other people here too.
- drcongo 5y agoThere is not a chance in hell I would ever buy a TV running something called "Google TV". I can only think of two companies I trust less than Google, and those are Facebook and Samsung.
- allisdust 5y agoCan't you sue them? Isn't adult content regulated when displayed on television.
- capableweb 5y agoThat's like the most boring and long duration solution you could possibly engage with. While it'll solve the problem for others too, to reach that stage will take months, possibly years, not to talk about the amount of money it'll cost.
- samarthr1 5y agoI wonder if there is a market for a libre tv? Something akin to framework but more open
- phowat 5y agoI'm not sure if it's possible to downgrade the OS, but I have an older LG model with WebOS 5 and I don't get any ads. So it might be something worth investigating.
- ct0 5y agoDNS level filtering at the router has been my approach on my samsung tv from 2016. I can block using a service called NetDNS. https://perflyst.github.io/PiHoleBlocklist/SmartTV.txt https://perflyst.github.io/PiHoleBlocklist/SmartTV.txt
- rosndo 5y ago
- capableweb 5y agoEveryone knows that it's very damaging to naked bodies until you're at least 18 years old. Nudity is something we strive to hide as much as possible for this very reason. Who's naked in real life anyways? Only TV/media shows fiction like that.
- _dain_ 5y agomust we really go through this game where you pretend not to be an extremist and we pretend not to notice you are an extremist? the overwhelming majority of the world does not subscribe to your views on showing porn to children.
- rosndo 5y agoI see that you can’t actually come up with a reasonable argument to defend your archaic views. Over here in Europe naked asses and even gasp breasts are a fairly common sight at beaches. Normal people don’t object to this. I’s guess that in most of the world it’s still common to beat your wife, despite that I subscribe to the view that people who beat their wives suck.
- _dain_ 5y agoanother dishonest game where you pretend to not understand context and make someone laboriously explain it to you. there is a difference between advertising pornography and seeing nudity at a beach. by equating nudism with pornography, you're adopting the puritan frame you claim to oppose. that we can make obvious distinctions like this is the sign of a mature and healthy society; collapsing them into one concept is the domain of sex freaks and salafists.
- rosndo 5y agoThis was a documentary, not porn. It’s not a dishonest game, you just don’t like your views being questioned. > by equating nudism with pornography What? Being naked at the beach is “nudism” now? You certainly don’t need to go to a nudist beach to see exposed breasts.
- alexk307 5y agoI just got the LG A1, and I am also disappointed with how many ads they serve. I'm probably going to get an Apple TV to replace the shitty LG UI. There is a setting hidden deep in a menu that will turn off ads. I was able to find it, and it no longer serves me ads, but it continues to show recommendations, so I'm not sure if that will help your issue.
- halo37253 5y agoThe Apple TV is a pretty Crappy Device to replace it with. The UI is nearly just as bad. I will say the new Apple TV remote does make it usable. The old touch one was horrible.
- staticelf 5y agoConnect the TV to the network but block it in the network from internet access. That way, you can still use it to cast stuff to via wifi but you don't have to worry about the ads situation.
- NortySpock 5y agoHave you been able to test if PiHole ad blocking works on your TV? Might be quick to give it a shot yourself if you have a 'spare' home computer to use as a server. After all, you can't trust just any single comment on the internet.
- tmottabr 5y agoi have a Samsung TV, altough it is an older model it is a Tizen one. It does have ads but my dns adblocker (AdGuard Home) block then without problem. But i have my routed configured to block and redirect any DNS traffic to my AdGuard so even if they try using a different DNS server it will be force redirected to my local DNS. Just hope the day they start using DoH to go around that take a long time to come. EDIT: I have my AdGuard set to force secure search in youtube and it is working, so i know that it is using my local DNS and not whatever address it has hardcoded.
- irskep 5y agoI use an Apple TV with my LG TV and it has a better UI with no ads.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y agoI have an LG OLED TV. I didn't connect it to my Wifi. Works perfectly and has never nagged me to connect and update.
- projektfu 5y agoPerhaps pitch the story to a news outlet and embarrass the company. I can’t imagine Brazilians uniquely like this “feature”.
- aaaaaaaaata 5y agoYou can't?!
- patrickserrano 5y agoI have an LG OLED TV and I use pi-hole to block all of the creepy ad-tech that's built into to. Whenever I want to check if there are updates to anything on the TV, I disable the pi-hole for 5 mins and manually check for updates. This is a good starting block-list: https://gist.github.com/wassname/78eeaaad299dc4cddd04e372f20a9aa7 https://gist.github.com/wassname/78eeaaad299dc4cddd04e372f20...
- giantg2 5y agoAren't some devices now building in (or skipping really) DNS so they bypass pi hole?
- tmottabr 5y agoi just block the DNS traffic that is not going to your local DNS. I use AdGuard Home, find it better then Pi-Hole, and it use DoT for queries (can do that with Pi-hole but you need to set up a proxy for that manually) so i just block anything in port 53 that the destination is not my internal DNS.
- giantg2 5y agoYeah, but I mean they aren't looking up DNS entries and using hard-coded addresses. So they don't use port 53. https://www.reddit.com/r/Roku/comments/602cnk/is_there_any_other_way_to_change_dns_of_roku/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Roku/comments/602cnk/is_there_any_o...
- tmottabr 5y agoThe DNS server is hardcoded, so they use the DNS server that Samsung want instead of your local. But it will failover to local network DNS if it fail to connect to the hardcoded server as far as i know. It is not the ads server that is hardcoded. I doubt they will ever do that because that is hard to manage and does not escale. So there will be traffic in port 53 that will be captured and redirected to my local dns server.
- 5y ago
- cure 5y agoYeah, don't buy a TV, just buy a (very large) monitor. If you're happy with a 43", this one is a good choice: LG 43UN700-B - but it's not OLED.
- cyberge99 5y agoDoes anyone know of any monitors that can be used with a remote control? Or would hdmi CEC handle that?
- Nextgrid 5y agoI've had good success with Sony professional displays and the costs were very reasonable (maybe ~300£ more than the equivalent consumer grade model). It's stock Android TV with no bullshit what-so-ever, and of course you can use a separate set-top-box via HDMI-CEC or even just set it to power on/off upon receiving an HDMI signal like a computer monitor.
- cure 5y agoThat LG one I posted above comes with a remote.
- stonecharioteer 5y agoCEC can switch inputs, and you can get a portable keyboard/mouse for input.
- CynicusRex 5y agoEasy, discard TV's from your life entirely.
- kllrnohj 5y agoThere's a lot of unnecessarily complicated recommendations here. It's really quite simple. 1: factory reset the TV 2: don't connect it to the Internet. 3: use a decent set top box for all your streaming needs. Be it a console, Apple TV, Chromecast, or Nvidia shield (avoid the cheaper Android TV devices, those are heavily ad subsidized)
- fsflover 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30428510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30428510
- kllrnohj 5y ago1: not even a theoretical problem in many areas (requires open access wifi in range not restricted by a guest portal). 2: sounds fake AF. Proof or gtfo. TVs wifi squatting opens up some sketchy legal issues, that's the type of the thing company lawyers would shut down if it even made it that far. Unless of course there's an actual contract between say Comcast & LG granting authorization, but that then becomes the type of thing that should be a whole lot more probable than a random anecdote without evidence
- falcolas 5y ago> don't connect it to the Internet. Does a neighbor have an open wifi? They'll use that. Does a connected device have internet access? They'll try to use that (data over HDMI is available up to 48Gbit/s). There's also the possibility (though probably lower) that the device will come with its own 4G modem. Your data's worth a fair bit of money, after all (not that you will ever be allowed to sell it directly).
- downrightmike 5y agoYou should probably talk to your neighbor. Open wifi is dangerous
- tshaddox 5y agoAm I the only one who hasn’t encountered an open Wi-Fi access point in like 10 years?
- umvi 5y agoI never allowed my smart TV to connect to the internet. I only let dongles I approve (like Chromecast) to connect to the internet.
- brightball 5y agoSimplest thing is to just buy Roku TV's. The Roku OS is fantastic and neutral as far as the various content provider services go. It's got everything and the phone remote controls are great. Usually very well priced via Sam's Club too. It's the only thing I'll buy now.
- bsharitt 5y ago> The Roku OS is fantastic and neutral as far as the various content provider services go. I originally like Roku, because they used to be a neutral hardware provider, but that's not the case these days. Their OS is becoming more full of ads and are really trying to push their own content. And now nearly every time I see the Roku in the news is that they don't have new provider or that they're thinking of kicking off a provider because they're trying to get a cut of revenues.
- drcongo 5y agoRoku has more built-in tracking than anything you can possibly connect to your TV.
- 5bolts 5y agoused to be pro roku, have several. updated its internal software started forcing ads on me. in the junk bin they went. I do 99% of my content consuming via xbox apps at this point. Youtube (red subscriber) self hosted Plex, and occasional Amazon TV content (really only for the expanse, but now that thats over... not sure i need it)
- zitterbewegung 5y agoAttempt to return the TV and then buy a monitor.
- forgotpwd16 5y agoYou shouldn't be looking for a TV that doesn't show porn ads but one that doesn't show any ads. I've a mid-priced Android TV that doesn't have any, neither in homescreen nor mid programme. But should mention, I read that Google revamped the homescreen within the last months and from screenshots it seems the entire thing is a big space to ad new content (similar to LG's WebOS and Samsung's Tizen).
- secretsatan 5y agoAs many others have said, just don't plug it into the internet.... But that might not be possible if you wanted to use netflix or something on it, as well as tv channels through an aerial. I just run everything through my PS5 (Previously a PS4, I'm sure there are other options, but I think a lot of set tops have their own advertising channels) The playstation doesn't show me any adds except if I go to the PSN store, you can download all the major providers like netflix, apple tv, plex etc I never switch to the TVs own channel
- post_break 5y agoMy very expensive samsung tv let me use it without even agreeing to the terms of service.
- argsnd 5y agoSome (all?) LG webOS TVs are now rootable, and I think this enables you to remove ads. https://github.com/RootMyTV/RootMyTV.github.io https://github.com/RootMyTV/RootMyTV.github.io
- simonmales 5y agoI still have a dumb TV, and I hope to keep it for many more years. I wonder if "Cloudflare for families" could help? https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-1-1-1-1-for-families/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-1-1-1-1-for-families...
- subjectsigma 5y agoIf the TV has an Ethernet port, could you possibly disconnect the wifi card? That way you know whenever it's on the internet. I don't know if TVs have detachable wifi cards or if they are soldered to the main board, but it might be worth a look. EDIT at least some of them do: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TOOo3gN9BiY&vl=en-US https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TOOo3gN9BiY&vl=en-US
- pinephoneguy 5y ago
- dang 5y agoI think it's more that you continue to jack up the threads with ideological rhetoric, which makes them both generic and more inflammatory. That's a double poison to the ecosystem here. It's not what this site is for, and we've already asked you to stop, so please stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- thisispete 5y agoThis was in my feed, seemed relevant. Father facing jail time in france for using a signal jammer to keep his kids off the internet https://hothardware.com/news/a-father-who-used-a-signal-jammer-to-keep-his-kids-offline-faces-jail-time https://hothardware.com/news/a-father-who-used-a-signal-jamm...
- Retr0id 5y agoRelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29938520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29938520 (Show HN: RootMy.TV)
- Frazo 5y agoI've got the same model but no ads. Where are you seeing the ads please? on the main interface when you turn on the TV? or while watching something?
- Marcelovk 5y agoSo, I have the same model, besides using a pihole another option is to use rootmytv https://github.com/RootMyTV/RootMyTV.github.io https://github.com/RootMyTV/RootMyTV.github.io + edit the hosts file blocking looke calls. I have successfully rooted my tv and will try to find which calls should be blocked, but might be only a few set of hosts
- newbamboo 5y agoCraigslist has non-spyware TV sets for free. With a 20 dollar antenna you can get real old fashioned tv. Or if you can accept that you are just going to be spied on anyway, maybe that’s a more sustainable position than trying to fight the capitalist social credit rating system/ad tech. Is it worth wearing a tinfoil hat all the time, even if it works?
- qubitcoder 5y agoI've had an LG OLED C9 for almost 3 years. I don't believe I've ever seen an ad. You can go into the Settings, poke around a bit, and turn off all the personalization/ad options. When I turn on the TV, it shows the last used input source. No ads or junk. At least in my experience, and that of friends, WebOS is minimalist, fast, and easy to use. The settings are easy to adjust, with plenty of advanced options you can drill into--and all presented in an intuitive manner. Not to mention being orders of magnitude superior to the slower-than-molasses Android abomination on my previous Sony X900F. If you're just using for Netflix, Amazon, etc. (or with an Apple TV--also built in now as an app), I'm not sure where you'd see ads.
- fetus8 5y agoI can back this up, I've had a LG OLED CX for almost 2 years now, and have never seen an ad or junk stuff on it. I have done a couple firmware updates, but have taken away the TVs ability to connect to my home internet. My parent's bought an LG OLED C1 this past fall, and they use some of the built in streaming apps. I have spent a bit of time watching their TV and haven't seen any ads or intrusive stuff on their TV either.
- marcodiego 5y agoI have a more general question: How I buy a TV that don't show ads by itself?
- bradgranath 5y agoProjector
- YaBomm 5y ago